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Natural occurring molecule rivals Ozempic in weight loss, sidesteps side effects

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Re: Natural occurring molecule rivals Ozempic in weight loss, sidesteps side effects

#221
post #94

Maybe this one relates more with the Americans because Ozempic became a trend there: Why are most people jumping on this drug? At least for me, besides all the cliches and stereotypes about the USA people, there's huge access to nutrition, gyms, surgical procedures, capital for buying healthy food, and medicine in general.

Americans are overweight. Our entire food chain is full of preservatives, carcinogens, and things that should not be consumed by living beings . I've spent small amounts of time in Europe, and each time literally just eating whatever junk food I wanted, I came home losing 10 or 20 pounds. The food outside of the US is just fundamentally better. Let's say you're a teenager and you want to buy yourself some soda, in Am…

There’s some misinformation here.

The US does use more additives like BHA or potassium bromate (possible carcinogens—can you name others you’re thinking of?), but their link to obesity isn’t clear. As for soda, ‘hyper processed corn syrup’ I suppose just means high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS)—what’s the big difference you see from sugar? Research, like this meta-analysis (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9551185/), shows HFCS and sugar are metabolically similar in typical amounts, no disaster there.

Your weight loss in Europe might be more about activity than food quality. Short trips often mean more walking and exploring, which burns calories, even if you’re eating junk.

Re: Natural occurring molecule rivals Ozempic in weight loss, sidesteps side effects

#222
post #94

Maybe this one relates more with the Americans because Ozempic became a trend there: Why are most people jumping on this drug? At least for me, besides all the cliches and stereotypes about the USA people, there's huge access to nutrition, gyms, surgical procedures, capital for buying healthy food, and medicine in general.

Americans are overweight. Our entire food chain is full of preservatives, carcinogens, and things that should not be consumed by living beings . I've spent small amounts of time in Europe, and each time literally just eating whatever junk food I wanted, I came home losing 10 or 20 pounds. The food outside of the US is just fundamentally better. Let's say you're a teenager and you want to buy yourself some soda, in Am…

This is the truth - and it’s infuriating that assholes like RFK purport to want to remove nasty stuff from our food supply, but outside of total meme shit like a few red dyes and fake nonsense about seed oils being uniquely bad, he’s doing nothing to fix our insanely low quality and under regulated food supply.

I have had exactly the same experience as you every time I travel outside of the USA (luckily I’m already in good shape). I always come back skinnier than I left.

It’s infuriating that the only politicians who I can rely on to significantly regulate the ingredients in our food supply to remove slop will be hard left folks like Bernie Sanders - a breed of politicians which are going extinct.

But yes RFK, moving us to butter and tallow instead of fking seed oils will fix everything!!! (eyeroll)

Re: Natural occurring molecule rivals Ozempic in weight loss, sidesteps side effects

#223
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure that’s exactly what’s happening with GLP-1 drugs. I lost 40 pounds very quickly on them and hurt my hip then my shoulder then my wrist. Felt like I was constantly getting muscle strains and random injuries. I started drinking a protein shake once a day and the random mysterious injuries stopped.

A single protein shake typically provides around 22g of protein, which is a small portion of the recommended daily intake for maintaining muscle, generally close to 1g of protein per pound of body weight. As an example, I'm currently on a weight loss diet and have a 180g of proteins target per day. Unless you were significantly under-consuming protein, it's unlikely that the shake alone made a major difference.

Such high recommendations are for people that want to maximize muscle retention / growth not people that just want to be healthy. You can get by on much less.

Re: Natural occurring molecule rivals Ozempic in weight loss, sidesteps side effects

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans are overweight. Our entire food chain is full of preservatives, carcinogens, and things that should not be consumed by living beings . I've spent small amounts of time in Europe, and each time literally just eating whatever junk food I wanted, I came home losing 10 or 20 pounds. The food outside of the US is just fundamentally better. Let's say you're a teenager and you want to buy yourself some soda, in Am…

This is basically a meme at this point - Sandwich, US >:| Sandwich, Japan :O I don't know what to believe anymore. I think sugar isn't good for you, whether it's "real" processed sugar, or HFCS which is a fructose ratio that is the same as honey, or agave syrup which has even more fructose. And, other countries have obesity problems too - e.g. Mexico and the UK. Are they tainted by... whatever... is the actual proble…

In mexico (and south and Latin americas) case it’s primarily due to taking our obsession with sugar and multiplying it. They drink even more sugary soda than we do, and their deserts like tres leche cake are so delicious because they are diabetes on a plate.

Re: Natural occurring molecule rivals Ozempic in weight loss, sidesteps side effects

#225
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that fat, sick people lose a lot of weight and muscle mass and then become skinny and frail. It just puts you at risk of other medical issues. In older individuals this can cause decreased mobility and raise the risk of falls. Its well documented in medical literature, that's why people worry about it.

But my point is that this is no different from being skinny and frail in the first place . It has nothing to do with losing weight. Yes, that puts you at risk. That's why you should exercise, even if it just means daily walks. The point is, you're not winding up with too little muscle because you lost weight. If you're winding up with too little muscle, it's because you're not being physically active enough. If you'r…

If you were physically active enough and careful about your diet you likely wouldn't be on a GPL-1 drug. That's the point. People end up in bad shape for a lot of reasons, including injury. The search for a mechanism to burn fat without losing muscle is to help support people who are on GLP-1 drug because for whatever reason they were insufficiently active.

Re: Natural occurring molecule rivals Ozempic in weight loss, sidesteps side effects

#226
post #94

Maybe this one relates more with the Americans because Ozempic became a trend there: Why are most people jumping on this drug? At least for me, besides all the cliches and stereotypes about the USA people, there's huge access to nutrition, gyms, surgical procedures, capital for buying healthy food, and medicine in general.

I lost ~55 pounds on a similar drug over about 10 months during 2023-2024.

The drug avoids the need for any kind of willpower. You don't have to go out of your way or make lifestyle changes to lose weight. You don't even have to eat different food, but you'll almost certainly eat a lot less of it.

That's just a dramatically preferable proposition than changing one's lifestyle, diet, and habits manually, and then keeping all that going for the rest of one's life.

Re: Natural occurring molecule rivals Ozempic in weight loss, sidesteps side effects

#227
post #185

Since it is naturally occurring, it isn't patentable. Which means it is less likely that companies will develop a commercial product from it. Why pay to get FDA approval, if you don't get a government granted monopoly on it afterwards? This is one problem with using patents as the mechanism to incentivise development of medicine.

this is 1000% not true, plenty of naturally occurring substances are turned into profitable medicine, aspirin and insulin are examples off the top of my head.

Re: Natural occurring molecule rivals Ozempic in weight loss, sidesteps side effects

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is absurd. Muscle mass is a huge predictor of mortality and anyone who isn't actively strength training and maintaining higher levels of muscle would see a health benefit by doing so. The idea that an overweight person has "too much muscle" is nonsense. The side affect of muscle loss from these glp-1 agonist drugs is a serious downside that everyone should be aware of and try to mitigate if they choose to take t…

Yea what you're replying to is just pure fat-logic that isn't really backed by science. You will lose muscle from calorie restriction - that isn't really in doubt by anyone. However, when cutting weight, you can do a routine that maintains/builds muscle as you cut, to reduce the effect. A body with more lean muscle mass will be able to keep weight off for longer - this has been known, settled, and accepted in weight…

> Yea what you're replying to is just pure fat-logic

I can't even imagine what that's supposed to mean.

> However, when cutting weight, you can do a routine that maintains/builds muscle as you cut, to reduce the effect.

I literally talked about staying physically active.

The point is, you're going to have however much muscle your workouts and physical activity build/maintain. And you're going to lose whatever extra muscle isn't needed in your workouts. And that's fine, because you probably want well-balanced strength rather than legs that can carry around 300 lbs all day long.

None of this has anything to do with weight loss, except that simply walking around and daily movement becomes less of a workout as you lose weight because you're moving less mass. But it's not the weight loss directly that makes you lose muscle (assuming you're eating protein), it's the reduced physical strain because you weigh less so you're not needing those muscles. Do you get the distinction?

You don't need to work out even more to "reduce the effect" as you say. There's no effect. There's just working out to have whatever muscles you want. Weight loss will never lead to losing the level of muscle you need for your workout.

Re: Natural occurring molecule rivals Ozempic in weight loss, sidesteps side effects

#230
post #185

Since it is naturally occurring, it isn't patentable. Which means it is less likely that companies will develop a commercial product from it. Why pay to get FDA approval, if you don't get a government granted monopoly on it afterwards? This is one problem with using patents as the mechanism to incentivise development of medicine.

I've always been very, very skeptical of this claim. If there's an actual natural, identified substance with huge benefits to people, it's going to go gangbusters and you're going to make a lot, LOT of money selling it, even if you're doing it via roadside lemonade stand. It feels like this claim is usually used to promote cures and treatments with extremely low quality RCTs backing their use as a sort of panacea. I…

Right, but there is a free rider problem. Why should a company spend $100 million doing clinical trials to get FDA approval if once it is approved, all other companies can sell it, even though they didn't pay anything? Even if every actor in the market thinks there will be a good return on investment if they get FDA approval, there is a strong incentive to instead wait for someone else to do it and free ride on them. The result is no one acts.

Clinical trials are a significant expense in developing a drug. Kind of makes me think we should award patents not for coming up with some molecule, but instead award them for showing a molecule is safe and effective.

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