VAT Trap Blog

Appetite suppression is the dominant, well-evidenced mechanism behind GLP-1 and dual GIP/GLP-1 drugs. It is probably most of the story — but a patient losing a stone in six weeks on a sub-licensed dose, with almost no dietary change, sits in the part it does not comfortably explain. The grown-up response to that gap is not to pretend, but to ask better questions. This series asks one of them.

Cardiovascular deaths fell 70–80% in sixty years — one of medicine's greatest triumphs. But progress is now slowing. Visceral fat, not LDL-C, is the upstream driver of the four real epidemic diseases: atrial fibrillation, heart failure, type 2 diabetes, and dementia. The VAT-TRAP four-pillar framework addresses all four simultaneously.

Five key metrics—blood pressure, ApoB, glucose patterns, waist ratio, and muscle strength—redefine cardiovascular risk beyond outdated BMI measurements.

GLP-1 therapies reduce cardiovascular events, likely through visceral adipose tissue reduction, reframing cardiology treatment toward upstream metabolic disease targeting

If the pharmacological effects of GLP-1 drugs disappear within weeks, why does the weight rebound take years? And how can that gap be used as a permanent metabolic reset? Written by Dr Edward Leatham, Consultant Cardiologist© 2026 E. Leatham VAT-TRAP Series Key Clinical Findings 1 1 Weight regain is slow despite rapid drug clearance. GLP-1 pharmacological effects fade within weeks, yet full weight rebound takes an average of 1.7 years — because body weight is biologically de