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The Pill That Will Make You Thin - Pharma companies large and small are in hot pursuit of the blockbuster of all blockbusters -- a drug that lets you lose weight safely and effortlessly.

The article discusses a hormone called PYY3-36. According to the article, "all of those given the PYY injection downed nearly a third fewer calories than they did at another meal without the hormone. And when they went home, they continued to eat less for 12 more hours."

If you decode this paragraph from the journal Nature, you can see that the gastrointestinal tract releases peptide YY(3-36) (PYY) after eating to tell the brain how many calories you ate. By giving people PYY before a meal, it tricks the brain into thinking you have already eaten, so you eat less -- about 33% fewer calories.