Health Scoop News

1-Wellness Trend: GLP-1s📈

2-Eating behaviours for weight📒

3-Coffee for mental health☕

4-Eat fish for brain health🧠

I always have my nose in new health research, so I’m sharing some of the most relevant studies (and wellness trends) with you in regular editions of “Health Scoop News.”

[This news summary is a bit reminiscent of my old “This week in science for holistic health” newsletters that I used to do circa 2016 (I deleted most, but here’s one post I kept live), as well as the rEATsearch podcast I used to co-host.]

Below are brief summaries and links to a recent wellness trend, plus three health study picks (comment below to tell me which of these four updates are the most interesting/relevant for you!). All of these studies are more clinically relevant than individual studies done using animals, cells, or isolated chemical reactions because these studies were done with people, or they’re reviews/summaries of dozens of previous studies.

1-Wellness trend: GLP-1s📈

GLP-1s are injectable medications that reduce appetite so people can eat less and feel fuller. They are now very popular for weight loss, going by the names of Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro. There is a lot of talk about which celebrities are taking them and how these drugs are affecting them, and more and more content creators are sharing their personal experiences with these medications with their followers.

Here’s some background info:

• GLP-1 medications have been used for many years to help treat type-2 diabetes.
• “GLP-1, or glucagon-like peptide-1, is a hormone produced naturally in the gut and plays a key role in controlling blood sugar, appetite and digestion. After eating, it helps signal fullness and slows the rate at which food leaves the stomach, shaping how quickly nutrients enter the bloodstream and how much energy the body takes in.”
• “Rather than simply blocking hunger, they maintain a physiological signal associated with having recently eaten. . . . By reducing appetite and slowing gastric emptying, they can support sustained weight loss.”
• “Typically, weight loss of up to 5 to 8% can be achieved with a GLP-1 receptor agonist, although outcomes vary and tend to occur gradually over months.”
• Some people feel that these medications are having impacts on how society and the medical, health, and wellness industries view obesity, reframing it from a moral/willpower/personal responsibility/lifestyle choice failure to a medical issue that can be corrected with the right medication.
• Some are even projecting GLP-1s may soon “revolutionize” weight loss and have a huge impact on the weight loss industry.

For more information, here are links to a few articles that talk about the impact of GLP-1s:

• • https://theconversation.com/what-weight-loss-jabs-teach-us-about-how-appetite-works-276105
  • https://theconversation.com/weight-loss-drugs-make-it-harder-to-get-the-nutrients-you-need-heres-what-to-do-about-it-272936
  • https://www.mckinsey.com/mhi/our-insights/a-new-way-of-thinking-about-metabolic-health

To address this wellness trend for your health practice, whether you specialize in weight management or not, you probably have several clients who are asking about or taking GLP-1s. It may be important to be up-to-date on the nutritional, fitness, and lifestyle impacts that these medications can have on your clients so that you can best support them.

For example, eating less food makes it harder to get the nutrition people need, which may risk malnutrition and even deficiencies (of vitamins, minerals, and even protein and fibre). These medications can also make it more difficult for people to maintain healthy muscle mass (due to insufficient protein, etc.) and may increase several digestive issues (due to insufficient fibre, etc.). Personalized nutrition assessments can help determine how much people need to eat differently and at what point supplements may become essential.

*Note from Leesa: If you’re interested in sharing some of these insights with your community via a new done-for-you article that I can create and place in my shop, please comment below or email me so that I can prioritize an article on GLP-1s and how to best manage them with nutrition and lifestyle.

2-Eating behaviours for weight📒

Study title: Do routinized eating behaviors support weight loss? An examination of food logs from behavioral weight loss participants.

This is a study of 112 participants who were trying to lose weight. Due to the food environment (abundance of aggressively marketed high-calorie, ultra-processed foods), the researchers wanted to know if repeating the same foods regularly (i.e., less variety of foods and therefore fewer decisions to make) would help participants maintain a stable caloric intake and lose weight. “To date, it is unclear whether repetitive eating patterns (both in caloric intake and food choices) are more effective for weight control than flexible eating behavior.“

Here’s some background info:

• “The obesogenic food environment in the U.S. offers virtually limitless options of high-calorie, ultra-palatable foods, making self-regulation of eating behavior extremely difficult.“
• “The food industry has preyed upon this vulnerability, deliberately engineering “ultra-processed” foods that our appetitive systems are ill-equipped to resist, disseminating these foods widely, and marketing them aggressively. As such, choosing nutritious foods and limiting caloric intake requires constant, effortful decision-making which is typically difficult to sustain.”
• “Theories of habit formation suggest that a more stable caloric intake will lead to more effective weight control. When a behavior is enacted repeatedly (e.g., meeting a specific calorie goal each day), that behavior becomes more habitual, i.e., more automatic and easier to enact. Therefore, an individual with a more repetitive eating pattern may find calorie restriction less effortful. By contrast, a person who varies their caloric intake must continually engage in effortful decision-making regarding how many calories to consume each day.”
• “Some preliminary evidence shows that dietary repetition can lead to more effective weight control.”

Here’s what the researchers found:

• “The current study examines whether more repetitive eating patterns predict weight loss using food logs of adults with overweight/obesity during the first 12-weeks of a long-term BWL [Behavioural Weight Loss] program.”
• “More caloric stability was associated with better weight loss. Specifically, for every 100-calorie increase in the average deviation, weight loss was expected to decrease by 0.6%.”
• “Participants with more dietary repetition had greater weight losses over 12 weeks.”
• “Overall, findings suggest that more routinized eating patterns during a weight loss attempt may facilitate success.“

Here’s what the researchers concluded:

• “The current study suggests that establishing routines around eating behavior, such as maintaining a stable calorie intake and frequently repeating meals and snacks, can help adults with overweight/obesity lose weight.”
• “These findings are consistent with theories of habit formation, which suggest that repetition helps difficult behaviors become more effortless.”
• “Because long-term eating behavior is so difficult to measure accurately, more research is needed. “

In other words, make new habits easier to establish by repeating them more often and doing them similarly each time. For weight management, eating a similar amount of similar foods more consistently resulted in higher weight loss.

For more information, here’s a link to read the study for yourself:

• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41885884/
• https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fhea0001591
• https://doi.org/10.1037/hea0001591

3-Coffee for mental health☕

Study title: Daily coffee drinking and mental health outcomes: Sex differences and the role of caffeine metabolism genotypes

This is an analysis of data from 461,586 participants over 13 years to see if there were any links between their coffee consumption and mental health.

Here’s some background info:

• “Over the past decade, mental disorders have increasingly gained recognition as one of the most important disease burdens to global public health.”
• In 2019, the annual economic losses linked to mental disorders was over US$4.7 trillion.
• “Previous studies have explored the association between coffee consumption and mental health outcomes, however, the evidence remains inconsistent.“

Here’s what the researchers found:

• “Overall, moderate coffee intake (2–3 cups per day) was consistently associated with the lowest risk of mental health outcomes.”
• This mental health risk was even lower than those who drank 0 and 1 cup/day. This is a “J-shaped” association where the lowest quantities (0-1 cups/day) had a bit of risk, moderate (2-3 cups/day) had the lowest risk, and 5+ cups had higher risk that got higher as the number of cups/day increased even more.
• The mental health outcomes were: mood disorders and stress disorders.
• Also, note that “inter-individual differences in caffeine metabolism did not alter these associations,” which means that participants’ socio-economic, lifestyle, or ability to metabolize caffeine did not affect the results.

Here’s what the researchers concluded:

• “In this large population-based study, J-shaped associations were found between coffee intake and mental health outcomes, including mood disorders and stress disorders, with an optimal threshold of 2–3 cups per day.”
• “This pattern held consistent across various coffee subtypes, including instant, ground, and decaffeinated coffee.”
• “Moreover, the J-shaped association was more pronounced in men compared to women. However, inter-individual differences in caffeine metabolism did not alter these associations.”

In other words, drinking 2-3 cups of coffee per day lowers risk for both mood and stress disorders (and 5 or more cups/day has the highest risk).

For more information, here is the link to read the study for yourself:

• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165032725024346?via%3Dihub

4-Eat fish for brain health🧠

Article title: Fish consumption and brain structure: a comprehensive systematic review of observational studies

This is a systematic review of 24 studies that looked at the brain structures of people (mostly aged 60 or older) who ate varying amounts of fish to see if there are any consistent links/associations between brain structure and fish consumption.

Here’s some background info:

• “As longevity rises, the global burden of age-related neurological disorders is escalating, particularly dementia and milder forms of cognitive impairment.“
• “Fish consumption has been associated with slower cognitive decline and reduced risk of dementia, but a comprehensive evaluation of its relation with brain structures is lacking.”
• Several structural changes in the brain have been linked to symptoms of cognitive decline and dementia.
• These researchers systematically reviewed current scientific literature to see if there is any evidence relating fish intake and brain structures in human studies.

Here’s what the researchers found:

• “The present study reported accumulating neuroimaging evidence indicating that fish intake may exert measurable effects on brain structure.“
• Here is a visual image that summarizes this study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/tileshop_pmc_inline.html?title=Click%20on%20image%20to%20zoom&p=PMC3&id=13194236_40520_2026_3363_Figa_HTML.jpg

Here’s what the researchers concluded:

• “Inclusion of fish in a healthy and balanced diet is associated with better white matter grades on MRI and slower progression of white matter hyperintensities and reduction of vascular-related lesions of the aging brain, suggesting a potential role in preventing neurocognitive deterioration.”

In other words, eating fish as part of a nutritious diet is linked to healthier brain structure over the years, therefore fish may help to reduce neurocognitive deterioration.

For more information, here’s a link to read the study for yourself:

• https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13194236/

Signing off and toasting: To keeping up with the latest and greatest wellness trends and scientific research in nutrition, fitness, and health coaching!

Over to you

Which of these updates was the most interesting or relevant to you? Let me know in the comments below!