Semaglutide linked to lower predicted dementia risk • Hacker News Board

Re: Semaglutide linked to lower predicted dementia risk

#351

Post by majkinetor » Sun, Aug 16, 2026, 1:04 PM UTC

phil21 wrote: post #280

object-a wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is junk food? For example — are cheeseburgers and French fries junk food? What about when you make them at home, or at a fancy restaurant without artificial ingredients? Is it certain additives? If McDonalds makes a happy meal without additives, is it no longer junk food? What does treat them like cigarettes mean? Tax them? Ban them within 15 feet of a building entrance? Put warning labels? Is giving or selling…

> For example — are cheeseburgers and French fries junk food? What about when you make them at home, or at a fancy restaurant without artificial ingredients? Is it certain additives? If McDonalds makes a happy meal without additives, is it no longer junk food? Yes, this is all junk food. It's not that difficult. Eaten in moderation these things are fine. But they are highly palatable calorie dense meals that are not…

Burger is not a burger nor deep-fried is deep-fried. Depends on meat used, and oil used, and cooking duration etc.

It can be perfectly healthy if prepared well, even frequently.

Re: Semaglutide linked to lower predicted dementia risk

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Post by bluefirebrand » Sun, Aug 16, 2026, 1:12 PM UTC

spockz wrote: post #310

bluefirebrand wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be very hard to eat a healthy diet if you're poor or if you live in a food desert, or you have a dietary restriction, or some allergies...

And it becomes even harder when you mix any of those two criteria, let alone more. Then factor in your environment. It is way easier to eat healthily in Italy than in the US. (Maybe that is what you meant with Food desert.)

Food Deserts are a concept that can exist anywhere but yes, I think they are more common in the rural USA. They are places that don't have nearby access to decent grocery stores, basically. Instead they have to buy all of their food from convenience stores. Imagine doing all of your food shopping at a gas station store because that's the only groceries around. That's a food desert.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

Re: Semaglutide linked to lower predicted dementia risk

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Post by windsweptabove » Sun, Aug 16, 2026, 1:15 PM UTC

01100011 wrote: post #38

I'm a big semaglutide proponent after being on it for a year. I know research says it helps with inflammation, arthritis (separately from weight reduction), and all sorts of magical things. I lost 40 pounds in a year(230 to 190) at age 50. Great! I also went from being active and fat(weightlifting with some cardio) to basically having no energy. In the last year I've had arthritis appear in several joints. I'm awake…

If it makes you feel better I'm 50, and have developed those exact same symptoms over the half decade, without ever having to touching a GLP-1 agonist.

I do have some of it down to unwisely taking Ibuprofen semi-regularly, i.e. Kidneys, bladder.

Re: Semaglutide linked to lower predicted dementia risk

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Post by bluefirebrand » Sun, Aug 16, 2026, 1:17 PM UTC

degamad wrote: post #329

refurb wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree on the “if you’re poor”. I find eating healthy cheaper. You can prepare healthy meals from basic and cheap foodstuffs like vegetables, whole grains and legumes, eggs, low cost meat cuts etc. You can prepare delicious meals for under $1 each. Buying prepared unhealthy foods is what is expensive.

> I find eating healthy cheaper. Being poor is very expensive. > You can prepare delicious meals for under $1 each. If you have the time and resources to do so.

And also are located near a grocery store with those kinds of cheap prices.

Many poor people literally do not live near a grocery store, the only place they can get foodstuff is a convenience store. Those always have high markups

Re: Semaglutide linked to lower predicted dementia risk

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Post by jjallen » Sun, Aug 16, 2026, 1:19 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #23

So has anyone managed to separate the effects of semaglutide from the effects of weight loss? If this is caused by the weight loss, it is a little disappointing that public health didn't act quicker - lots of people have been overweight for a century now, so literally 10's of millions of people could have been saved from dementia had action been taken 100 years ago.

It’s been no secret that being fat is terrible for us. It’s getting people to actually eat less is the hard part.

Re: Semaglutide linked to lower predicted dementia risk

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Post by object-a » Sun, Aug 16, 2026, 1:38 PM UTC

dripdry45 wrote: post #288

object-a wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does grinding the meat at home make a huge difference vs grinding it in a factory? Depending on the cut you choose, the condiments you add, and the portion size, a hamburger at home could be Lot less healthy than a McDonald’s burger. McDonald’s patties don’t have any fillers afaict. The point is that “junk food” is a pretty amorphous and vague category. If you want to enforce portion or calorie restrictions you c…

The additives to the meat. Has to retain its color, be preserved, and they also add pink slime to it. McDonald’s adds soy, I believe, and there are all kinds of other things that go into it. If you grind your meat at home you’re going to get some delicious burger. Heh, grind your meat

As of the last 10 years none of this is true for McDonalds. Their published ingredients say 100% beef with no additives, and they stopped using pink slime 10 years ago.

But we’d still designate McDonald’s as junk food, so it can’t be the additives that make the category

Re: Semaglutide linked to lower predicted dementia risk

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Post by jsjohnst » Sun, Aug 16, 2026, 1:41 PM UTC

wildrice wrote: post #267

Suppafly wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish my insurance would cover GLP-1s, because I think reduction in fatty liver and other ancillary benefits, along with the weight loss, would be medically helpful for me.

I was paying $1400 a month of my GLP-1 (on top of the $2400 monthly health insurance premium). I eventually just bought a batch from a reputable online compounding pharmacy for a very small fraction of that (about 12 months of meds at a time), and send one of the vials in for testing at a mass spectrometer for about $500.

Amazon Pharmacy sells name brand GLP-1s (Ozempic, Wegovy, Zepbound, etc) for $250-400/month without insurance.

Re: Semaglutide linked to lower predicted dementia risk

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Post by goda90 » Sun, Aug 16, 2026, 1:50 PM UTC

prescriptivist wrote: post #250

goda90 wrote: post #17

Isn't lower calorie consumption in general correlated to longevity? (Assuming no major malnutrition)

Sure, but there is nothing in the world of the last 30-40 years that can compare to GLP-1s in terms of helping people consume fewer calories. This is a very coarse statement, but I'm confident in making it: there is nothing healthier than being skinny, and GLP-1s make people skinny in a way that is unique in modernity. Our modern food systems are optimized to encourage people to consume as many calories as they can,…

>there is nothing healthier than being skinny

Being fit is healthier. Studies support the idea that being overweight but physically active is cardiovascularly healthier than being skinny(GLP-1 or not) and sedentary.

Re: Semaglutide linked to lower predicted dementia risk

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Post by adjejmxbdjdn » Sun, Aug 16, 2026, 1:51 PM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #295

preg_match wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of this largely is not true. People think that paleothic humans ate a lot of meat - they did not. They ate very little meat, we eat the most meat we’ve ever eaten now. And the meat they did eat was lean game meat. It was high in unsaturated fats - like our modern day oils. Not like a steak. A steak is a product of farming. It’s a new invention, Yes oils are “refined”, but humans have been eating unsaturated oil…

No idea where you're getting this from. The paleolithic was during an ice age full of big fatty game like sloths, mammoths, and so on. Some believe we hunted these animals to the point of extinction with a tiny population, which would imply a very high level, arguably unbelievably high, of consumption of meat. Even if we didn't hunt them to extinction we certainly did engage in relatively large scale hunting and cons…

This is just not true.

In reality we have little to no idea what the proportion of meat to non meat humans ate at the time.

More realistically, different groups of humans ate different ratios of such foods.

There were almost certainly a pretty large group of humans, for example, who were basically frugivores.

You can simply look up Wikipedia and find all the references about our limited knowledge and the high likelihood that there was no single paleo diet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic

Ultimately, humans have been opportunistic omnivores capable of eating and surviving on whatever was most easily available, which is part of why they spread so successfully across the globe.

Trying to look at our history is a silly way to determine what is a good diet for humans today when we can scientifically examine humans today and identify what foods are healthier than others for them.

It’s like instead of noticing that drinking purified water has better outcomes for human beings today, insisting that we shouldn’t live drink untreated water straight out of streams and lakes because that’s what our Paleolithic ancestors did.

Re: Semaglutide linked to lower predicted dementia risk

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Post by inglor_cz » Sun, Aug 16, 2026, 1:56 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #23

So has anyone managed to separate the effects of semaglutide from the effects of weight loss? If this is caused by the weight loss, it is a little disappointing that public health didn't act quicker - lots of people have been overweight for a century now, so literally 10's of millions of people could have been saved from dementia had action been taken 100 years ago.

There are some effects of GLP-1s which definitely cannot be explained by weight loss. For example, some patients report that they lost their compulsive habits - gambling, shopping etc. In some, the effect is so extreme that it flips into outright anhedonia, an inability to enjoy anything.

GLP-1s are ultimately treatments that act on our neurohumoral regulation, and hormones tend to have a lot of functions all around the body. Claude would say that the expected "blast radius" of fiddling with hormones is much bigger than that of just losing weight.