Medical
Clinically reviewed writing on medication, metabolic health, GLP-1s, and evidence-based medicine.
Medication or surgery first? Making sense of the new weight management landscape
Why so many people reach for the injection before the operation, what the long-term evidence says, and how the two paths actually fit together.
Why two people on the same dose get different results: matching the medication to what drove the weight
Two people start the same medication at the same dose, and one loses a fifth of their body weight while the other barely shifts.
Nausea, bloating and burping on GLP-1s: one mechanism, three feelings, and what to do about each
Nausea, bloating and burping are the most common early side effects of GLP-1 medications. Why they happen, which ones to worry about, how they change over time, and the strategies that actually reduce them.
The wonder drug, I wonder
Almost weekly, a new claim. The major non-weight-loss GLP-1 claims graded from best evidenced to most speculative, the confident-but-wrong ones flagged, and the two most-discussed side effects put in their proper place.
Delayed gastric emptying on GLP-1s: following the mechanism all the way through
Slowing the stomach is not a side effect of GLP-1 medications — it is the core mechanism. This piece follows it through to symptoms, upper-GI risks, procedural precautions, and the open long-term questions.
More than 1 in 5 men and young Australians don't see a GP. What that changes about care.
More than one in five Australian men don't see a GP in any given year. With no established GP relationship (or any particular desire for one), a telehealth avenue is a frictionless one.
The harder conversation: weight, antidepressants, and what we're actually asking medicine to fix
Roughly one in six Australian adults takes an antidepressant. Two in three live with overweight or obesity. The bind is real, the evidence is specific, and the clinical conversation most patients never get to have.
What body composition actually does on GLP-1s, and what to do about it
The bathroom scale is the wrong instrument. So is the muscle-loss panic. The body composition story on GLP-1s is more nuanced and more reassuring than the public conversation suggests.
Pharmaceutical development is starting to move at consumer-technology speed
For three years, GLP-1 medications have looked like the ceiling of what medicine could do for weight management. The consensus was reasonable. It was also already wrong.
Popular but wrong: "just eat less and move more"
The most-repeated piece of weight advice in English is technically correct and practically misleading. The body actively defends its weight. Here's what the science says instead.
Top 5 things diet, exercise, sleep, and stress actually do for weight
The standard advice treats diet, exercise, sleep, and stress as roughly equal levers. The evidence says they aren't. Knowing what each lever actually delivers makes the conversation honest.
What the system gets wrong about weight
Two-thirds of Australian adults live with overweight or obesity. The standard advice has not worked. The failing isn't yours; it's structural. The science has moved on, the clinical conversation hasn't.