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‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

nature.com

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Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#311

Post by verdenti »

Frost1x wrote: post #298
partiallypro wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new idea (mostly in the West) that being obese is/can be a healthy lifestyle is absolutely maddening. People being obese (and I don't mean a few pounds overweight) raises everyone's healthcare cost, because it is incredibly unhealthy and obese people tend to have more complications which requires more treatment, workers and subsidizing. It's not just an individual problem, it's a societal problem. There's a new "…

>The new idea (mostly in the West) that being obese is/can be a healthy lifestyle is absolutely maddening. We took the extreme of anorexia being healthy to obesity being healthy. The fact is neither extreme is healthy. Being not anorexic is not the same as being obese, there's a huge range of fairly healthy weights in between the two in terms of body fat percentages and muscle ratios.

[dead]

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#312

Post by bscphil »

whodatbo1 wrote: post #223
bioemerl wrote: post #182

> In the past, scientists and the public often thought that those with obesity simply lacked the willpower to lose weight. But evidence is growing that most people’s bodies have a natural size that can be hard to change. In the context where we have gone from obesity rates of 13 percent to 40, to suggest that people have a natural weight and that's the cause of this seems absurd to me.

Absolutely agree. Unironically through the first few paragraphs I though this was some very cleverly put satirical take on modern society. There is a great book about the effects of modern food, primarily on dental health, written back in the 30s - Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston Price. Even though it's almost a century old, the findings are quite fascinating and can be extrapolated to present day. It's…

I think it would be most accurate to say that people's bodies have a natural size given a particular food and social environment. That's a crucial bit of context that's very often neglected. Resisting one's environment is very difficult - it often requires you to have money, time, medicine, workout obsessed friends, or all of the above. Given changes in the environment in western countries over the last 50 years or so, weights are rising to their new "natural" levels as a consequence.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#314

Post by joshuahedlund »

m0llusk wrote: post #270
Cupertino95014 wrote: post #222

> “I’m really hesitant to be excited about something that I think is potentially harmful from a weight stigma perspective,” says Sarah Nutter, a psychologist at the University of Victoria in Canada, who specializes in weight stigma and body image. Putting the word "stigma" on things is a sure sign of a grifter. Instead of helping solve it, they're trying to make it a social science problem. Being overweight is unheal…

Down's Syndrome is also unhealthy. Should we stigmatize that also? The main issue is control. Many assume that weight is simple and under people's full control. Realistically, though, there are all kinds of reasons why weight gain happens and scientific measurement shows that wild animals are getting bigger too which suggests that pervasive presence of endocrine disrupting agents in the environment may be involved. I…

> scientific measurement shows that wild animals are getting bigger too which suggests that pervasive presence of endocrine disrupting agents in the environment may be involved

Do you have a good source for this?

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#315

Post by pixl97 »

plutonorm wrote: post #210
rajin444 wrote: post #56

This drug is a net good for society, but we have to fix the root problem. Much of the food we eat is filled with addictive ingredients (sugar, excess fats/oils, etc) that provide little nutritional value but are highly addictive. We’re subsidizing companies that create unhealthy addictive food and subsidizing companies to create drugs to counter the unhealthy addictive food. This is an enormous waste of resources.

I think that toxin exposure - unavoidable in the modern world - is likely the biggest culprit here. There are plenty of ideas about which toxins are causing the problem, but there are so many that it would be nigh on impossible to regulate them all out of the environment.

I would think you're completely wrong. The green revolution was the first time in history that we were able to continually produce excess food for (excluding distribution issues) the entire earths population. Even more so, the new foods we are able to supply via processing are highly calorically dense.

Simply put if you take mammalian models and allow them to eat all they want they blow up like little balloons. This is no different from bears feasting on salmon for the last millions of years. Creatures are designed to overconsume because the ones that didn't in the past didn't make it thru the lean times.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#316

Post by beloch »

Thought experiment: A drug* that reduces people's weight and massively boosts physical fitness with no negative side effects is discovered. The discoverer of that drug declines to patent it, making it a cheap generic available everywhere. What would your reaction be?

Take a moment to consider what your reaction is before continuing.

...

The comments I'm reading here are diverse and fascinating. Weight loss, diet, and fitness are almost quasi-religious issues that people tend to have strong and personal reactions to. The unfit are desperate for a solution, especially an easy one. The very fit subconsciously resent the notion that people could achieve, with a pill, what they have achieved through discipline and hard work (or genetic luck). Others are keen to point out diverse evils of modern society that they believe are the true culprits which must be tackled instead of masking their effect with a pill.

Nutrition and fitness are classic examples of pseudo-science. Studies that would meet the bare minimum standards of scientific rigour in any other field are practically impossible. Getting a statistically significant sample of people to go on special diets or exercise regimens long term is just not feasible. Whenever an "expert" makes a tentative statement on what they think might be the case, media picks it up and amplifies it. Butter is bad for you. Butter is good for you. Blueberries are superfood. Keto diets. Crossfit. etc. Countless "experts", often with no credentials and no compelling data, are happy to write best-selling self-improvement books. They assume that what works for them (or didn't work, but seems like it should have) will work for everyone. Everyone wants to know how to be healthy, fit, and happy, so there is insatiable demand for books that are, by scientific standards, pure spit-balling.

Then medicine and drug research, which are legally required to be at last somewhat scientific but are always profit-motivated, enter the fray. They can prove a drug meets safety standards and quantify certain specific effects, but interactions with the pseudo-science of the greater health industry eventually become unavoidable.

Perhaps the first step to becoming more objective about drugs like this is to recognize that we really aren't.

*a hypothetical one, not the one being discussed here

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#317

Post by groos »

glaucon wrote: post #259

(From a position of significant ignorance) It seems there is not a strong consensus on what has caused the great increase in obesity of the past fifty years, perhaps throwing greater effort in that direction would be a better long term solution ? To my mind it's strange that there seems to be a circular argument which starts with sedentary life style and "bad" foods cause obesity so exercise and diet control seems li…

It's pretty clear by now that the intake of high amounts of fructose, refined carbohydrates and packaged foods has resulted in obesity. The much maligned fat in a healthy diet was never the culprit. The Chinese on a rice diet were never very obese until they became rich and started consuming packaged foods. Now their obesity rates rival the US's.

Uncontrolled insulin levels cause obesity because of insulin's dual role in fat storage. The key is to change one's diet such that insulin levels are lowered and the stored fat can be utilized for metabolic needs.

Exercise is important for general health but trying to lose weight by exercising doesn't work if the diet stays the same. Food is just too calorie rich and the body too calorie efficient. The adage 'get fit in the gym, get slim in the kitchen' applies.

Genetically, a small number of people might have metabolic issues causing obesity.Drugs might be the right choice for them but for the vast majority of us, we just need to take a hard look at our diet.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#318

Post by Ancapistani »

beckingz wrote: post #208
Ancapistani wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm unfamiliar with the research around GLP1 drugs, but I my past reading about the long-term effects of metformin led me to a similar conclusion. Unfortunately, metformin causes me severe gastrointestinal issues that don't resolve themselves after a few weeks. There are lots of surprising findings w/r/t pharmaceuticals if you start really digging. Lots of missed opportunity for overall improvement in the human condi…

Gets into fun tradeoff questions of "Would you live an extra 20 years but have diarrhea every day"

I answered that one with "no" :P

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#320

Post by poszlem »

m0llusk wrote: post #301
HDThoreaun wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weight is not uncontrollable. It's not easy to control, but neither is any other addiction, and they're certainly stigmatized.

Could you link to a peer reviewed study concluding that? Just to point out one potentially complicating factor Dr. Robert Lustig's work appears to show that our diets increasingly include processed foods which are strongly associated with health problems including weight gain and metabolic disease. So if you can completely avoid institutional food such as served at company canteens and figure out and stick to a good…

Could you link to a peer reviewed study concluding that it's impossible to lose weight similarly to how it's impossible to get rid of an additional chromosome?

Asking because as a person who has lost a lot of weight (and kept it off) I would like to get them to reconsider their review process.

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