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How long til we're all on Ozempic?

asteriskmag.com

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Re: How long til we're all on Ozempic?

#861

Stupid question but I wonder if the side-effects are a partial contributor to its success: feeling nauseous, upset stomachs, bloating, acid reflux etc? And are there similar, cheaper supplements/drugs that can induce nausea etc? I know my appetite falls off a cliff if I'm nauseous/have an upset stomach/suffering from reflux.

From my experience, it is probably contributing, but certainly not the major way glp-1 work. And I certainly had periods where I would overeat while already feeling bloated or nauseated. Glp-1 certainly does something to the body, that regulate eating on hormonal or neuronal level.

Re: How long til we're all on Ozempic?

#862

For the longest time people argued if overweight people ate too much or not. I’ve heard plausible sounding arguments on both sides. It seems Ozempic has answered that question decisively, no? The solution to being overweight is eating less in almost all cases it seems. And feeling less hungry with Ozempic can help get you there.

> For the longest time people argued if overweight people ate too much or not. Maybe uneducated people, but when was the last time anyone seriously doubted that excess calories make you fat? For serious people the discussion has always been about how to reduce the calories, because "just eat less" is provably ineffective. Simple minded people continuously suggest otherwise, but data really doesn't support their intui…

> when was the last time anyone seriously doubted that excess calories make you fat

There's quite a few people here on this page.

Although part of the problem is poor word choice. Eating less absolutely works. Telling people to eat less absolutely doesn't work, because people won't do it (if they did do it, then it absolutely would work).

Re: How long til we're all on Ozempic?

#863

As every conversation with weigth management/obesity treatment, there are still people thinking that just more willing power / better habits is what's needed. To those people I suggest you run an experiment : what ever your current body weigth is right now. Try loosing and keeping off 20%.

> To those people I suggest you run an experiment : what ever your current body weigth is right now. Try loosing and keeping off 20%. Easy peasy. I’d be borderline anorexie if I do that, but wouldn’t be much of a problem to achieve that.

Are you Dutch by any chance?

Because they seem have a society deeply structured around health, exercise and good eating habits. And they tend to have a "just do X, it's so easy" kind of attitude, forgetting they are benefitting massively from their environment and society and not just will power alone

Re: How long til we're all on Ozempic?

#864

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cagrilintide (paired with semaglutide) and retatrutide are the next wave, though I'm not aware of any research for either indicating an increase in muscle mass. My understanding of the literature is that there's nothing special about semaglutide or tirzepatide that promote muscle loss - it's just people who lose weight based purely on diet tend to also lose muscle mass. Even bodybuilders lose some muscle mass when cu…

Bodybuilders lose muscle and they do a lot of hypertrophy training and high protein eating to counteract it. Probably the average ozempic taker does neither of those so they end up losing more

Sure. You're going to lose some muscle mass no matter what you do. And yeah, if you don't do either of those things, you're going to lose even more.

But fat people actually frequently have quite a bit of lean body mass - it takes muscle to carry around all that weight, even if you're sedentary. If I somehow maintained the LBM shown in my DEXA scan at the start of tirzepatide, by the time I got to my goal weight, I'd be looking more jacked than when I was lifting 3 times a week.

Obviously, I won't. I'm adding more and more cardio and lifting back in as my weight is dropping and it becomes more maintainable for my joints, etc., and I've been supplementing protein since the start, and I'm sure I'll still lose plenty. But I have the room to lose A LOT and still be in the healthy range of body fat%.

Re: How long til we're all on Ozempic?

#865
post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a miracle drug that helps with all afflictions that come with our modern life/sedentary living.

The problem with this (and all diet plans/drugs) is the lifestyle that led to problem in the first place. If you do not change your lifestyle, for real and not just superficially, then you will relapse with a vengeance. That is to say, be careful with using a drug as a crutch. Sure, it can artificially make you much more interested in not consuming so many calories and/or perhaps being more active than before - but y…

It seems to be more like an orthosis than a crutch as it helps the body to get back into a healthy state instead of replacing it‘s functionality.

Re: How long til we're all on Ozempic?

#866
post #797
post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My view about obesity has shifted dramatically since Ozempic came out. Before this, I didn't think about it too much (I am not obese myself). I notice now that there is a LOT of judgement, bias(?), around obesity, that people, obese or not, carry with them [1]. I certainly carried that bias, and the reason I noticed it was because Ozempic is literally an external substance that you take that simply makes obesity go a…

This is a very American way of thinking about it - not invented here vibes all over. Of course people don’t choose to be obese, but the culture and environment inevitably pushes you to it. A proof of that is that there are places in the world, with similar genes, that don’t have the same problem in the degree that US does. I don’t think it is a personal failing, more a collective one - the society itself has chosen a…

Obesity is rising rapidly over much of the developed world, both in Europe and Asia, on a trajectory fairly similar to the historical trajectory of it in the US. Obesity in adult men in North Korea more than doubled between 2009 and 2019. The UK is already up to 26% obesity. 36% of adults in Mexico are obese.

America is an unfortunate pioneer in obesity, but it is not even remotely unique to America.

> It is still weird to me how US choose unironically to develop a drug for reducing addiction

Novo Nordisk, the company behind Ozempic, is Danish. (Eli Lilly is American, though, for the tirzepatide drugs.)

I don't disagree with your fundamental premise - a huge amount of the initial conditions for obesity are environmental. But they're incredibly far ranging, incredibly intertwined with modern life in much of the developed world. Unwinding those, even with strong support from the people, would take decades.

We should still do it. But in the mean time, there's a hell of a lot of people that would die earlier than they would if they weren't obese. And a hell of a lot of them can significantly increase their lifespan with the help of these drugs.

Re: How long til we're all on Ozempic?

#867
post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My view about obesity has shifted dramatically since Ozempic came out. Before this, I didn't think about it too much (I am not obese myself). I notice now that there is a LOT of judgement, bias(?), around obesity, that people, obese or not, carry with them [1]. I certainly carried that bias, and the reason I noticed it was because Ozempic is literally an external substance that you take that simply makes obesity go a…

For me, personally, it's that we don't really know the long term effects of these drugs ie are you actually "healthier". But we do know that diet and exercise work.

We know for sure that obesity is one of the single biggest increases in all-cause mortality. We know it is directly linked to most of the top disease-related causes of death.

> But we do know that diet and exercise work.

Do you think the ~40% of American adults that are obese don't know that they should eat better and exercise more? That they don't understand that they're cutting decades off their life?

Yes, it is 100% within the power of the overwhelming majority of them to fix things. And I think evolution has kept shame with us for a purpose and that it can be a useful emotion. But I also think it's plainly apparent that neither are causing a real reduction in obesity.

So, should all the people in the world that are obese just continue to fail at losing weight despite knowing what they should, in theory, be doing to resolve it? Because, despite being obese being one of the riskiest things you can do in life for your health and lifespan, we don't know if there might maybe be long term effects from something we know will get them to lose weight?

This room is on fire! I could run out that door over there - I know if I open it and go through I'll leave this room that is currently on fire - but, should I? What if whatever is on the other side of the door is just as bad as being on fire, or worse?!

Re: How long til we're all on Ozempic?

#868
post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My view about obesity has shifted dramatically since Ozempic came out. Before this, I didn't think about it too much (I am not obese myself). I notice now that there is a LOT of judgement, bias(?), around obesity, that people, obese or not, carry with them [1]. I certainly carried that bias, and the reason I noticed it was because Ozempic is literally an external substance that you take that simply makes obesity go a…

The real question is why so many people are obese in 2024 in the US while it was a fraction of the population 50 years ago? And other countries have by far not been affected by the same trend. So effectively something is making people really sick on the US.

It's simply not true that this trend isn't impacting other countries. Mexico is only 6% behind the US. The UK is 16%. Obesity is rising rapidly in South Korea - more than doubled in adult males between 2009 and 2019.

America pioneered the obesity epidemic, but a huge chunk of the rest of the developed world is doing their best to catch up.

Re: How long til we're all on Ozempic?

#870

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do we find it acceptable to help people who struggle with alcohol abuse, or nicotine addiction, or opioid addiction, but not to help people who struggle with food abuse? "Getting fit and staying fit" is a form of social capital, because it's extremely hard and only within reach of a small portion of the population. "Being fit" is strongly aligned with "being attractive" which confers all sorts of cross-cutting…

I would say my concerns are far more in the range of downstream effects from the medication. Specifically, I am concerned with muscle retention. Concerns aside, it's a little hard of an argument to swallow having visited many other countries where these things are simply not an issue. How can it be argued that the cause is anything other than behavior when so many others are doing just fine? There is more to this sto…

This is the essence of the moral argument: Someone chooses to abuse a substance, they become a more frequent abuser, and the abuse piles up damage, which the person ignores to continue abusing.

The essence of the argument against drug interventions is that the root cause is personal choice, and therefore a drug is a shortcut or crutch and does not address the root cause.

Many people feel that the real cause is the structural changes to the person's brain, body, and daily routine that reinforce, and are reinforced by the initial tiny over-consumption, which compounds over time. It's like a debt where you are stuck paying interest, no matter how much you'd like to pay off the debt. Addiction is a system in which the person's willpower goes against everything they have set up over decades. It's unreasonably challenging for nearly everyone to walk it all back. Insulin resistance is one of the most pernicious effects of even small over-eating over time. The body and mind do not feel satiated even though enough calories have been consumed. It's not "I would enjoy another slice of pizza", it can be "I am still starving".

And yes, the environment in which we live, where it is less stigmatized to overeat, and food is treated a certain way, more like a drug than fuel, is part of that system.

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