Live data from Hacker News

‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

nature.com

401–410 of 1001 posts

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that you could gain back the original weight plus more. Most adults who become obese have not increased their number of fat cells - their fat cells just become larger. The GLP-1 drugs literally increase the number of fat cells.

How does liposuction fare in long term fat loss?

Liposuction isn't a solution for fat loss beyond some localised cosmetic reduction. You can't use it to put a morbidly obese person in normal BMI range.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#402
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And even if he was, doctors push pills for commission, so don’t trust them too much either. Can you cite sources? Otherwise please don't post such claims. It's unworthy of Hacker News.

It’s well known that doctors receive money from pharmacy companies in exchange for promoting their products.

My wife is a doctor she’s never been paid by a pharmacy company.

It’s illegal to directly pay doctors for prescribing drugs. Pharmaceutical companies do pay some doctors for speaking gigs (a very small fraction of them).

The average doctor might get lunch in exchange for listening to a presentation. But I guarantee they aren’t there listening to a boring presentation because of a few dollars worth of food.

All these payments are public record, so you can look them up for any given doctor.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how breaking old habits and establishing new habits over a year or so would stop a serious rebound?

The low success rates of diets suggest very hard to establish new habits

Many things are hard, but that does not mean they should not be done.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if you have perfect bloodwork and a marvel movie body probably not necessary but otherwise yes. Heart disease, hypertension, high cholesterol, colon cancer rates are rising amongst everyone, even thin people. These drugs positively impact indicators of these things in everyone. Longevity makers have been betting on metformin for a long time and these drugs are like a supercharged metformin

These drugs positively impact indicators of these things in everyone. I think people's eagerness to jump from changes in markers to actual longevity is quite unfortunate. Medical "breakthroughs" often founder on such confusion and amateurs approaching things this way. See Goodhart's Law [1] (much as I generally regret the hn/geek tendency to lean these law, here it's reasonable). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhar…

Somewhat inevitable to use surrogates because you're going to take absolutely forever to get results on longevity (barring things with very strong negative effects on longevity).

Though communicating the difference between things that are only proven on surrogate markers and things shown to actually affect the real desired outcome is important, I agree.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#405

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.

Isn't all food addictive? Is there something more specific you mean about addition when it comes to these foods? It seems like it may be more about caloric density than addiction.

These foods are specifically addictive. I mean, water is addictive - I need it every three days, but that's not meaningful.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#406

[flagged]

>I'm not sure at what point in your life weight management was lauded as "easy". You have some tools in your toolbox on how to lose weight naturally (diet, exercise, different eating cycles) but you decided that these are too "hard" and opted for magic pills.

Why shouldn't technology make it easy?

>Just a shame to see people make progress in their weight loss journey the right(er) ways then succumb to weakness and opt for voodoo.

Voodoo doesn't work. These drugs do.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't controlled for body weight changes though. Nobody doubts that diets (if adhered to) can reduce weight. So if biomarkers improve relative to an alternative diet, the question is it because A) the Med diet is more effective at weight loss, or B) the Med diet has benefits outside weight loss. The research you linked is interesting, but confounded by weight loss. Research that has directly tried to control fo…

You just forget that there might be side-effects showing up in the long-run that we simply don't know yet (and possibly), why the mediterrean diet has been tested for a few hundred years already (where "diet" means what we have access to and eat, and not a small subset of foods forced on us that relies on a lot of mental effort to follow)

GLP-1 agonists were discovered in the 1980s, and there are already statistically significant population samples who have been using them to treat T2D for decades. Any serious common side effect would have been already discovered from the large-scale clinical trials that have been repeatedly conducted.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is not the food. The problem is obesity. Junk food corporations make profit by selling food, and they are extremely good at this. They rely on intense advertising, making the food addictive, targeting children. As a side effect, people get obese since they consume more calories that what they need. I don't know about GLP-1, but my intuition tells me that no drug is going to make eating Mac Donald's and…

I rarely eat junk food, and I'm fat. Your attitude is the same as a religious person telling depressed people they need jesus rather than prozac.

I didn't say that all fat people ate junk food, and I didn't say that obese people shouldn't take medication if that could help. Obesity rate in the US didn't got from 10% to 40% in a few decades simply because suddenly everybody started to develop thyroid issues or other condition.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#409
post #193

I’m currently taking one of these drugs and it has been no less than a miracle in my life. I became obese when I was around 5, topping out around a 34 BMI. When I was 20 I lost a substantial amount of weight the old fashioned way (diet and exercise), and within 8 months I was BMI 23. Losing weight was extremely challenging and socially isolating. 7 years later, I had a bad ankle injury and regained weight to about 29…

I think the main problem aside from the side effects you listed is the fact that frequent injections sounds really inconvienent, and the cost is pretty prehibitive unless insurance is covering it.

[deleted]

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is not the food. The problem is obesity. Junk food corporations make profit by selling food, and they are extremely good at this. They rely on intense advertising, making the food addictive, targeting children. As a side effect, people get obese since they consume more calories that what they need. I don't know about GLP-1, but my intuition tells me that no drug is going to make eating Mac Donald's and…

I rarely eat junk food, and I'm fat. Your attitude is the same as a religious person telling depressed people they need jesus rather than prozac.

You're fat because of what you're eating, and how little your moving, sorry dude but that's 100% true. Some of that might be out of your control, but it's reality...
Post reply on HN