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Dieticians are warning that GLP-1 use can lead to extreme malnutrition, manifesting in diseases like scurvy, amid findings that the vast majority of studies fail to consider patients eating habits. While GLP-1s like Ozempic and Wegovy have surged in popularity in recent yearsand are now available through injections and in pill formleading dieticians in Australia have discovered that existing research hasnt considered what patients are eating, and how much. Nutritional Deficiencies While the drugs work by suppressing appetite, eating too little or making poor dietary choices can lead to further issues. A reduction in body weight does not automatically mean the person is well-nourished or healthy, Professor Clare Collins told the Australian Financial Review (AFR). Nutrition plays a critical role in health, and right now its largely missing from the evidence. She added that only two trials had recorded or published what GLP-1 users were eating. The current data shows that many patients using weight-loss medication are functionally malnourished, which can lead to severe vitamin deficiencies. A 2025 study of adults with type 2 diabetes found that more than 20 percent of participants had nutritional deficiencies after 12 months of GLP-1 use. And a study examining patients before joint surgery found that 38 percent of GLP-1 users suffered from malnutrition, versus 8 percent for patients not using GLP-1s. Last year, British pop artist Robbie Williams told The Mirror he had developed a 17th century pirate disease after taking something like Ozempic. He was referring to scurvy, a rare but serious vitamin C deficiency. In the worst cases, the illness can lead to death. Id stopped eating, and I wasnt getting nutrients, he said. Its exactly the kind of health emergency the dieticians are working to combat. The Proposed Solution Lets not wait for every GP (general practitioner) to see a case of scurvy, lets get on the front foot and link these GP chronic management plans to a dietician referral, said Collins. GLP-1 use has also been tied to thiamine deficiency, which can cause neurological and cardiovascular disease. Magriet Raxworthy, CEO at Dieticians Australia, said its essential that GLP-1 users receive nutritional guidance while taking the drug. Without personalized medical nutrition therapy provided by a dietitian, people may struggle to meet their nutritional needs and can be placed at risk of significant muscle loss, bone density loss, micronutrient deficiencies, and disordered eating behaviors, she said, according to the AFR. In this case, its clearmedication alone does not deliver sustainable health outcomes. Some GLP-1 providers do offer nutrition assistance, but the issue hasnt yet been centralized in a way that effectively prevents serious deficiencies that can accompany the medication. Ava Levinson This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister website, Inc.com. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
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E-Commerce
Weve grown to despise meeting culture, and I understand why. Think about the last few meetings youve attended. How many of them felt clear, succinct, like a truly effective use of your time? Ive sat through more meetings than I can countmany of them with half the participants multitasking, cameras on but minds elsewhere. As a certified facilitator who has designed everything from executive offsites to weekly team stand-ups, Ive learned that most meetings fail not because people dont care, but because leaders treat meetings as a necessary evil instead of the expensive, high-stakes collaboration moments they actually are. But what can we do about it? you might lament. Bad meetings are a part of getting work done. While it’s true that meetings are a critical part of doing business, they don’t have to be bad. Here are five of the most common mistakes I see people make when it comes to meetingsand simple fixes you can implement today to start making the most of your meeting time. Mistake 1: You dont start with the end in mind You may think you know what a meeting is for: the title of your meeting explains the purpose or your agenda lays out what you hope to cover. But really, the most important planning step is having a clear vision of the intended outcome of the meeting. Think about what you want people to walk away from each meeting with. Are they coming away with information? Are they supposed to finish having made a decision? Is the goal to simply introduce a topic and tease out which smaller group should convene for more specific next steps? Are they supposed to have a deeper understanding of their peers priorities? When people know where the conversation is supposed to lead, they can both prepare and participate more effectively. Plus, this makes it easy to close the loop with action items related to your objective (another element of successful meetings). Action item: As youre kicking off each agenda item in a meeting, state, out loud, what the outcome youre striving for is. Mistake 2: Youre not timeboxing your agenda Weve all been in meetings where every agenda item seems to take way too long. You tune out, check some emails, and tune back in only to realize that the topic still isnt wrapped up and the third person is now piggybacking on what the first person said without adding any new or necessary information. Unsurprisingly, by the end of the meeting, youve only gotten through two of the six agenda items, leaving the group with a few non-ideal options: schedule an additional meeting, move those points to next week (which further adds to the backlog of agenda topics), or attempt to cover those items asynchronously. Instead, use timeboxing for every item of your agenda. Your intended outcomes should guide your timeboxing. Exploring a controversial decision that will impact the whole organization? Build in more time for discussion. Running through updates that don’t require much input? Keep those timeboxes tight. And no need to get ridiculous here: If you have three administrative topics at the beginning, you can batch them into a five-minute admin section instead of putting one minute next to each. When you hit that time mark (most video conferencing systems now have built-in timers you can use), you dont have to stop immediately. Instead, do a check-in to see whether you need to continue. I often use a quick thumbs pollthumbs up means people want more time on the topic, thumbs down means they’re ready to move on, thumbs sideways means they’re neutral. If most people are ready to move forward, capture the action item and keep going. If you’re getting mostly thumbs up, set a new timebox and check in again when it expires. And if people are slow to respond or give you sideways thumbs? They’ve probably checked out. Action item: Add timeboxes to every agenda item in your next meeting, and actually check in when you hit them. Mistake 3: Youre not being exclusive enough Leaders often invite a core group of required attendees to a meeting, then tack on everyone else as optional just in case they might find value in some small portion of the discussion, or to avoid anyone feeling left out. You think you’re being inclusive, but what you’re actually doing is cluttering people’s calendars with unnecessary events they feel pressured to attend. Sure, the last five “optional” meetings didn’t yield anything useful for them, but maybe this one will be different, right? Do everyone a favor: Stop inviting optional attendees. And if you’re marked as optional on a meeting that consistently provides no value, stop going. There are better ways to stay transparent without wasting anyone’s time. Use an AI notetaker to generate a summary and action items that non-attendees can review quickly. Have someone post key takeaways afterward, especially decisions or information that affects people outside the room. Or invite specific people for specific portions of the meeting when their input is actually needed. Action item: Audit your upcoming meetings and remove all optional attendees, either making them required or taking them off the invite entirely. Mistake 4: You dont do a meeting audit often enough Finally, with the above implemented, its important to keep yourself honest and regularly assess whether the meetings on your calendar are a valuable use of your time. A simple question I like to ask myself as I consider my upcoming meetings is: If this meeting was taken off the calendar, what would the meeting attendees miss out on? How would it hinder their ability to do their day-to-day roles and responsibilities? The answer can make it clear which meetings can be removed or restructured. I also think its valuable for meeting facilitators to do a quick gut check at the end of each meeting, asking yourself: Did we make any decisions? Do people know what to do next? Did everyone participate in some way? Did everyone walk away with some benefit? If your meetings arent reaching their intended outcomes, or you dont know what those intended outcomes are, it might be time to revisit the cadence, attendees, and style of the meeting (or consider if it should be a meeting at all). Action item: Schedule 30 minutes this week to audit all your recurring meetings using the questions above, and cancel or restructure at least one.
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E-Commerce
A client once described to me what happened after they had lived through a traumatic assault. For a long time, life stayed busy enough that they rarely had to think about it. Work, obligations, and everyday distractions filled the hours. Whether intentionally or not, staying occupied kept the past at a distance. Then one day things slowed down. There was a rare stretch of quiet. And in that quiet the memory returned all at once, like a tsunami. We might not have lived through trauma of that magnitude, but the example reveals something about distraction itself. When our attention is constantly absorbed elsewhere, we can avoid more than a painful memory. We can avoid ourselves. Distractions are not merely problematic because they waste time. They also displace the self. Have you ever completely lost track of time while scrolling on social media or watching videos? Its not hard to imagine how that same pattern can play out in larger ways. Some have proclaimed our time as the attention economy. From the perspective of business, that feels true: companies are constantly vying for your attention. But from our individual perspective, it is more accurate to call it the distraction economy. That distinction matters, because attention is not merely a resource others extract from you. It is something you wield. Every time you direct your focus, you are making a choice, and every time you surrender it, you are making one too. Philosophers since Socrates have urged people to know themselves. Sren Kierkegaard understood what was at stake when that effort fails: “The greatest hazard of all, losing the self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other lossan arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc.is sure to be noticed.” Busyness Is Not a Self Many professionals have had the experience of reaching a milestone they spent years chasing, only to feel surprisingly hollow. When we never pause to examine what we actually want, we get very good at pursuing the wrong things, such as metrics that measure activity rather than impact and approval in place of self-knowledge. It’s well established that we don’t truly multitask. Our brains have to stop and start each time we switch tasks. Overloaded with stimuli, our attention spans erode. We want everything to be quick, but as we know from cooking, slow food is often healthier and usually tastier. When we talk about the dangers of distraction, we tend to default to productivity as the main concern. It’s a real issue, but it’s the lesser one. The deeper danger is what chronic distraction does to us as people. When we succumb to a distraction loop, we become more reactive or miss cues about others. For example, a leader half-present in a conversation may snap at a team member who raises a concern at the wrong moment, or miss the early signs that a trusted colleague is burning out. We end up thinking the answer is simply to work harder, mistaking motion for meaning. Keeping busy is not the same as being busy with a purpose. Cal Newport’s concept of deep work is usually understood as a productivity strategy: sustained, distraction-free focus as a path to better output. But its real value runs deeper than that. When we genuinely engage in focused learning, working, and interacting, we discover things about ourselves that scattered attention never surfaces: what we actually find meaningful, where our thinking naturally leads, what we value when no one is nudging us toward the next click. Losing ourselves to distraction leaves those abilities and understandings permanently untapped. Deep work, in this sense, is less a professional skill than a form of self-knowledge. This doesn’t mean every moment of distraction is a crisis. Some distractions are useful, like when we’re having a bad day and need to laugh. It’s the quantity and habituation that causes trouble. Reclaiming Your Attention The good news is that attention, like any capacity, can be rebuilt. A few practices help. Look at a painting or listen to music while doing nothing else: no phone, no second screen, no half-attending. Try it for five minutes. Art works for this purpose because it demands your full interpretive presence. Unlike a news feed, it cannot be skimmed. It asks you to dwell. Read a short passage of philosophy and sit with it before moving on. This isn’t about acquiring knowledge so much as practicing the act of sustained thought, following an idea through rather than bouncing off its surface. Both practices may feel surprisingly difficult at first. That difficulty is the point. It tells you something about how far the erosion has gone, and it’s where the rebuilding begins. While occasional fasting from devices or particular apps can be a useful cleanse, what we ultimately need is daily discipline, not as self-punishment, but as a form of self-respect. Discipline, in this context, is simply the decision to treat your own attention as worth protecting. The Quiet Return Most of us have been shaped by the distraction economy without fully realizing it. But that’s not cause for despair. It’s cause for attention. We don’t have to keep paying for a system we never consciously chose. We can reclaim ourselves, one focused moment at a time, and remember that the self we’ve been too busy to notice has been there all along. What you attend to is what you become. Make that choice deliberately, or it will be made for you.
Category:
E-Commerce
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