{"id":1338,"date":"2009-03-31T00:50:54","date_gmt":"2009-03-30T22:50:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.ultimatefatburner.com\/?p=1338"},"modified":"2015-02-13T08:34:41","modified_gmt":"2015-02-13T13:34:41","slug":"whats-it-like-to-be-part-of-a-clinical-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/whats-it-like-to-be-part-of-a-clinical-trial\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s it Like to be Part of a Clinical Trial?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I thought this video from MedPage Today<\/a> was rather interesting…It’s about the experiences of a subject in a placebo-controlled clinical trial for a new obesity drug.<\/p>\n

The subject also happens to be the staff member who wrote the accompanying article<\/a>: contributing writer Joe Sussman.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Several points leaped out from the vid…<\/p>\n

1. How powerful the placebo effect<\/a> can be.\u00a0 He still has no idea whether he was given the active drug or the placebo, but – as he put it (in response to a question about how the experience\u00a0will affect his\u00a0writing\u00a0on\u00a0clinical trials):<\/p>\n

\n

“I now look very closely at the placebo response…and if I don’t see a very strong placebo effect, I would be somewhat more skeptical of the results of those trials…There should be a major placebo impact, if the trial was done with the outlook of improving the overall health of the person.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

2. How important the ongoing nutritional counseling, accountability and lifestyle changes were to his success. These things were just as important – if not more so – than the pills he took (assuming he was given the active drug, AND assuming it worked).<\/p>\n

3. How big the improvements to his health were, even though he’s still, technically, obese.\u00a0 He feels better, sleeps better, and\u00a0was able to reduce some of his diabetes medications.<\/p>\n

The moral of the story?\u00a0 Losing excess weight is worthwhile, even if you don’t end up with the body of your dreams.\u00a0 In the end, your health and well-being are more important.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I thought this video from MedPage Today was rather interesting…It’s about the experiences of a subject in a placebo-controlled clinical trial for a new obesity drug. The subject […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14,28,29],"tags":[386,494,959,1087,1287,1867],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1338"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8375,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338\/revisions\/8375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}