‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers • Hacker News Board

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#671

Post by nerdbert » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 1:29 AM UTC

astura wrote: post #663

grogenaut wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're not eating every other day you can still go to the eating place and sit with folks. Also you can just talk more since they have to eat and you don't. Sounds like MORE socializing.

People feel really uncomfortable sitting down to have a meal with someone who isn't eating.

Being the only person eating can feel weird, but if I'm one person among a group I don't feel strange not eating and I've never picked up that it was strange for anyone else. Sometimes I don't feel like eating, and I don't force myself.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#672

Post by scarmig » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 1:30 AM UTC

tdeck wrote: post #662

scarmig wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s so hard to eat healthy, I honestly cannot fathom how people do it. When I started taking semaglutide, I finally understood it. I'd eat a salad... and be full and more than satisfied! I'd look at a muffin right after lunch, and go "eh, better things to do with my time" instead of immediately having an overriding desire to eat eat eat. Before, I could eat half a pizza and still be hungry (way out of what my body…

> Too many people are convinced that everyone has the same subjective experiences of hunger and craving, but it's simply not the case. Some people implicitly hold this idea because it's a convenient ideology that allows people to morally congratulate themselves for having a functioning satiety circuit. As someone who's always been thin and doesn't have a strong appetite, I couldn't agree more. I'm just enough outside…

I applaud that self knowledge.

It's always hard to know others' experiences. I have a friend who genuinely tried to help me lose weight in college with the typical advice and a lot of support: he had the strategy of just eating until he was full and then stopping, and he just couldn't get why that didn't work for me. But when he hit his 30s, he suddenly started ballooning up and suddenly couldn't put his strategy into practice, to his great frustration. Did his willpower dry up overnight? Nope; something else changed to upregulate his appetite.

(I pointed him to semaglutide, and he's already halfway to returning to his college weight.)

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

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Post by lumb63 » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 1:33 AM UTC

relaxing wrote: post #597

windpower wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also on one of these drugs (Tirzepatide) and have been for a few months. The first time I remember knowing I was fat was when a babysitter made fun of me for it at age 6. I've been fat ever since and I'm in my late 30s now. I've lost significant amounts of weight (60+ pounds) three times in my adult life, through simple calorie restriction (intermittent fasting, including before I'd ever heard the term). Every ti…

> I've heard people say that the solution is to eat (healthy food) when you're hungry, and stop when you're full. The thing is, I'm never full. This is what all the common advice doesn’t address. The only thing that has helped for me in the past was an SNRI (sibutramine) that was later withdrawn from the market. Then all the weight came back.

Common advice does address this. A lot of dieting has been, in my experience, finding ways to make less food make me fuller, or to think less about being full. For example, intermittent fasting is a great way to do both.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

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Post by heavyset_go » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 1:38 AM UTC

onionisafruit wrote: post #660

heavyset_go wrote: post #654

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> I've heard people say that the solution is to eat (healthy food) when you're hungry, and stop when you're full. The thing is, I'm never full. I can eat until I physically can't eat anymore (not something I do regularly, of course), and as soon as my stomach has emptied a bit, I feel fairly hungry again. "Eat until you feel full" is literally a human experience I had never really had. I had this exact same experienc…

I know what you mean. My doctor prescribed Naltrexone. The first day I took it I ate half my dinner and felt full for the first time in my life. As a middle-aged man I had never had that feeling before. Previously I assumed what people meant by feeling full is that you felt like you literally can't eat anymore. Unfortunately that stopped working for me after a few months. Hopefully this one will work better.

If that doesn't work out, I think they make a combination drug of naltrexone/bupropion if the naltrexone worked for you originally. The latter drug activates parts of the brain that are responsible for emesis and it works well with the reward blocking effects of naltrexone.

Good luck either way.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

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Post by gradys » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 1:41 AM UTC

rightbyte wrote: post #583

0xB31B1B wrote: post #21

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…

> was eating That sounds like half a days meals? Could it not be some of the side effects were actually from you starving?

That’s the effect of the drug.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

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Post by jessriedel » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 1:41 AM UTC

givemeethekeys wrote: post #578

JamesBarney wrote: post #548

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I don't know if I'd call a veterinary anaesthetist a foremost expert on fat metabolism. His thoughts on insulin signaling are not consistent with the consensus among obesity researchers. He thinks glp-1 works through uncoupling or fat browning which is just not true. The consensus among most obesity researchers is the cause of obesity is primarily neurological, not metabolic. Basically the brain can't properly regula…

Is human metabolism really so different from other mammalian metabolism?

1. If the expert consensus is that the cause is neurological rather than metabolic, it seems more important to not that human neurology really is so different than other mammalian neurology.

2. Clinical anesthesiology is pretty far from this topic.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

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Post by HealthNeed » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 1:41 AM UTC

SpeedilyDamage wrote: post #670

windpower wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also on one of these drugs (Tirzepatide) and have been for a few months. The first time I remember knowing I was fat was when a babysitter made fun of me for it at age 6. I've been fat ever since and I'm in my late 30s now. I've lost significant amounts of weight (60+ pounds) three times in my adult life, through simple calorie restriction (intermittent fasting, including before I'd ever heard the term). Every ti…

[flagged]

I think you are missing the point. People are not skinny because they "intellectually" know something. Nor are people fat because they are stupid, sometimes sure, but the societal trend towards obesity is not caused by ignorance. Read the article.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

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Post by insane_dreamer » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 1:43 AM UTC

tootie wrote: post #289

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.

Prior to the 20th century, it was pretty routine for average people to have inadequate access to nutrition. The rise in obesity corresponded with sweeping changed in agricultural policy that backstopped the prices of staple foods with subsidies and improved land and water management to prevent dust bowls. The result is everybody has enough food available cheaply all the time. Rolling any of that back is likely to rep…

> Rolling any of that back is likely to replace obesity with malnutrition

Based on what evidence? There are plenty of countries where people are not suffering from malnutrition and yet obesity rates are low compared to the U.S.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

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Post by TechBro8615 » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 1:45 AM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #337

fxtentacle wrote: post #224

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s/weak-willed/addicted/ There. Fixed it for you :) Yes, to me it seems like capitalism creates a society where most people get addicted just trying to cope with everyday life. For some it's alcohol, for some it's OxyContin, for some it's food, for some it's all-nighters in World of Warcraft. "59.3 million (21.4%) people over age 12 used illicit drugs in the past year." "Underage [..] 29% reported drinking alcohol" ht…

So before mass capitalism people didn't drink? Can I ask that you read a large number of history books across any number of cultures on addictive behaviors throughout history, because you'll find that anytime a society had an excess of time and labor/production that people find addictive behaviors to enjoy. This is not recent. This is not capitalism. This is humanity. What capitalism has done is given everybody enoug…

That actually sounds like an interesting read. Do you have any recommendations for books about the history of addiction?

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

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Post by komali2 » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 1:45 AM UTC

MaxHoppersGhost wrote: post #656

jfk13 wrote: post #553

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> everyone, even the skinny folks, should be on GLP1 drugs Seriously? No thanks. Think I'll give you all a few decades to see what the long-term effects are like, and let my body largely take care of itself except when specific medical issues indicate that an intervention is in order.

Being a young and very healthy person I felt this way about the COVID vaccine.

Why? Plenty of young and healthy people died of COVID. Only some vaccines are mRNA types, and, in the USA anyway, all vaccines went through the same testing process as any other medication, they simply sped the process up by layering some of the steps - all that means is that rather than wait to see if one study passes before doing the next one (save money or whatever), they just overlapped them. Even for MRNA vaccines, that's 2 decade old tech.

Were you also worried about cold vaccines?

Could this help alleviate some of your concerns? : https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...