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How long til we're all on Ozempic?

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

#911

Post by zahlman »

CM30 wrote: post #463
vundercind wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s been studied pretty well. Possible effective solutions to the US obesity epidemic are pretty much limited to: 1) Radically alter aspects of food culture, work culture, social policy, and business regulation. 2) Magic pill (/injection) There appears to be no imminent progress on the many parts of #1 that need serious work, so if we want a big turn-around in the next half-century, #2 has suddenly and surprisingly…

Sounds similar to most major world/cultural issues today. You can make the exact same argument about climate change for example. But at the same time, part of me wants to ask... why is this a problem? Why shouldn't we just use science and technology to fix human problems and remove any unfortunate consequences from society? What's wrong with a world where anyone can eat as much of anything as they want, do no exercis…

>Why shouldn't we just use science and technology to fix human problems and remove any unfortunate consequences from society?

Because this comes at the cost of one's essential humanity.

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

#912

Post by jncfhnb »

andrewla wrote: post #351
jncfhnb wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think ozempic is counteracting this mystery force and it is mere unrelated coincidence that it results in eating substantially less?

Yes? A lizard whose bite makes its prey eat less is crazy but it exists. A lizard whose bite makes its prey eat more is also crazy, but maybe it exists? The first lizard is literal, the second lizard is a stand-in for whatever mystery force I am postulating the existence of. When you look at the historic literature on diet and nutrition from the first half of the century it's like looking into another universe. Peopl…

I feel it’s still not clear if you understand that ozempic causes weight loss because it causes reduced eating or if you believe ozempic causing less eating is incidental to the weight loss

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

#913

Post by zahlman »

pkulak wrote: post #658
dfxm12 wrote: post #170

Instead of a system that makes these drug available for purchase, I'd rather live in a system that promotes healthy food and active behavior. Unfortunately, I have to drive everywhere, work too many hours to have free time for recreation and have no idea which government subsidy is going to help big ag likely at the expense of my health. All things being equal, I'd prefer to spend less money on prescriptions and have…

I run three miles a day, never drive anywhere (bike or bus), eat reasonably healthy, and I'm still 20 pounds overweight. And what really scares me is that running is the only exercise I enjoy and if my weight fluctuates up just 5 pounds or so, I start getting hip/knee/foot etc pain. If I gain 10 pounds through some lapse in morality, I won't be able to run anymore and I'm cooked. If that happens, I'm banging down my…

>I run three miles a day

Which will burn somewhere on the order of 400 excess calories - about as much as a typical North American muffin (or two of the big cookies from Subway). But worse, your body was probably going to use most of those calories on something else (fidgeting, running a higher body temperature, other immune responses including inflammation) anyway, assuming that you haven't been gaining weight with your current habits. Exercise is healthy and reduces stress, but it just isn't effective for weight control. Humans are animals, and animals have on the order of a billion years of homeostasis technology behind them.

>eat reasonably healthy

Hardly anyone has any accurate picture of how much they consume, as measured in calories, except for those with actual explicit experience of measuring and accounting it.

If a pill happens to end up helping you eat an amount that lets you maintain a healthy weight, I'm all for that. But it's important to have your mental model properly calibrated.

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

#914

Post by wiseowise »

cthalupa wrote: post #872
wiseowise wrote: post #830

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? For the same reason why skinny person taking steroids is frowned upon - it is perceived as a shortcut.

Supra-physiological levels of testosterone and steroids have incredibly well known and well researched short, medium, and long term side effects. They've been well known for forever. In an alternate world where steroids had a good safety profile, it would be ridiculous to not use them if you were looking to add on muscle mass.

> Supra-physiological levels of testosterone and steroids have incredibly well known and well researched short, medium, and long term side effects. They've been well known for forever.

I’m pretty sure if you have professional pharmacist working on you then you can mitigate the issues and make it semi healthy. The point is that it is being frowned upon not because of health issues, but because it’s not an “honest work”.

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

#915

Post by zahlman »

gcr wrote: post #281
paulmist wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a realistic path to this? Being from Europe I visited US last year and was horrified at the quality of your food. You see a lot of documentaries/youtube videos/etc... discussing the problem, but how do you even go about this?

We have good food, but you won't find it on "The Easy Path." The Easy Path is that gentle encouragement to hit up Chipotle for lunch, because it's "right there." The Easy Path says dinner's hard and you've had a long day, so get something simple, like take-out or microwave. The Easy Path is entropy. The Easy Path is self-care over struggle. The Easy Path is simple carbs shown on prominent display in store shelves. Th…

>The Easy Path says dinner's hard and you've had a long day, so get something simple, like take-out or microwave. The Easy Path is entropy. The Easy Path is self-care over struggle.

If you see this sort of food as "self-care" then that's where the war has been lost.

>or you have to shop around the sides

Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only person in the world who enjoys this. Discovering, for example, the versatility and cost-effectiveness of skim milk powder was a real game changer for me. Similarly for dried legumes and fruits.

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

#916

Post by myprotegeai »

mahin wrote: post #901
myprotegeai wrote: post #898

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the future, this would be indistinguishable from an ad.

Or even now?

I'm trying to give them the benefit of the doubt that it is a real experience, but yes it currently reads like marketing material aimed at the obese, depressed tech worker.

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

#917

Post by cthalupa »

wiseowise wrote: post #914
cthalupa wrote: post #872

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supra-physiological levels of testosterone and steroids have incredibly well known and well researched short, medium, and long term side effects. They've been well known for forever. In an alternate world where steroids had a good safety profile, it would be ridiculous to not use them if you were looking to add on muscle mass.

> Supra-physiological levels of testosterone and steroids have incredibly well known and well researched short, medium, and long term side effects. They've been well known for forever. I’m pretty sure if you have professional pharmacist working on you then you can mitigate the issues and make it semi healthy. The point is that it is being frowned upon not because of health issues, but because it’s not an “honest work…

You can make short cycles once or twice a year relatively safe for some steroids. Keep close track of your liver enzymes and blood pressure, discontinue if those look bad, otherwise stay on for 4-6 weeks, take half a year off, repeat. Got exposed to people doing that when I was in the gym frequently, still keep up with some now, all their levels look fine.

But even with significant additional intervention, when you move beyond that to the "blast and cruise" setup, those interventions are just mitigating factors, not truly preventative.

I get what you're saying, I've never touched any of them myself, because the juice wasn't worth the squeeze (hah), but if they did have very good safety profiles, I would have zero problem with anyone taking them and would think it would be silly if anyone did.

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

#918

Post by zahlman »

arcticbull wrote: post #105
rootusrootus wrote: post #10

I'd think it more likely that it'll be one of the next generation drugs, but I do agree with the premise that it will be really common. A few weeks ago I started a low dose of tirzepatide (aka Mounjaro, aka Zepbound) and the side effects are interesting. The biggest negative, which just takes adjustment, is drastically lower stomach capacity. Used to be that two eggs and two pieces of toast was breakfast. Now I bette…

> "Just eat less and exercise more" is trite. If it were that easy, we'd all be in fantastic shape. Studies show it just doesn't work. There was a massive (18,000,000 people) cohort analysis published in 2023 that showed the likelihood of someone losing 5% of their body weight in any given year was 1 in 11 and the likelihood of going from severely obese to normal weight is 1 in 1667. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/…

>There was a massive (18,000,000 people) cohort analysis published in 2023 that showed the likelihood of someone losing 5% of their body weight in any given year was 1 in 11

Unsurprising. They ran statistics on arbitrary overweight and obese people, with no idea of who was actively seeking to lose weight or who was just coming away from such an effort. If a significant fraction of the overweight/obese population did lose 5% of body weight/year, we wouldn't be seeing a bunch of overweight/obese people.

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

#919

Post by tintedfireglass »

ironman1478 wrote: post #631
grecy wrote: post #94

My god no. I'm 42 and I've never taken more than the odd painkiller or antibiotic here or there - less than a pill a year on average I'm sure. The last thing in the world I want is to be permanently on some drug that alters how my body works. I hike, snowboard, go to the gym and eat sensibly. That's all the "weight control" I need.

` I hike, snowboard, go to the gym and eat sensibly. That's all the "weight control" I need.` So you are likely in an income bracket that enables you to have an active lifestyle outside of work and take the time outside of work to cook, in addition to probably other hobbies. this is not a criticism of you, but if I had to guess, you simply have a life that many other's do not. I work out and take care of myself becau…

That's so dystopian. So you are just saying that society doesn't have time to take care of themselves, so we need some drugs to fix our collective horrid lifestyles? It's an easy temporary fix but what cascading effects might that cause on the future? Who knows?

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

#920

Post by LinuxBender »

How long til we're all on Ozempic?

Just my own preference but I stopped doing tinker drugs some time ago and focus on things that make semi-permanent changes even if they are much smaller incremental changes. I call any drug that tinkers with feedback loops a tinker drug. An example for me personal was hypertension. I focused on finding the root cause which took a long time but now if I can't get a hold of the things I used to make changes I don't have to worry about a hard rebound swing back to and beyond where I was, something that BP drugs did when I could not get a hold of the drugs because of doctors screwing with me.

For weight I went with Berberine, prolonged fasting and paleo. It's slow but steady and for me personally slow and steady has been winning the race without side effects. That's just my methodological preference and not meant to be any form or fashion of advice for anyone else. I support people doing whatever they find works for them. This was just my long way of answering the question.

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