Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Weight-loss drug found to shrink muscle in mice, human cells

ualberta.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 461 posts

Re: Weight-loss drug found to shrink muscle in mice, human cells

#221

Post by cthalupa »

diath wrote: post #215
echoangle wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why not just stay on the drugs?

You technically could but the idea here is to cut the excess bodyfat percent and get into the healthy range, rather than to keep losing weight, which itself is also unhealthy, but once you become dependent on the drugs to maintain your weight, without fixing your habits, you will just go between getting off the drug, binge eating, gaining the weight back, and hoping back on the drug and losing weight while barely eat…

Well, lots of people back off those dosages once they reach their goal weight and have minimal difficulty maintaining. As we know more about the long term effects of staying on the drug, it's totally possible it might make sense just to keep on it.

But as someone who spent a good chunk of their early adulthood having no problem with healthy habits and then slowly slipping into tons of bad ones, getting on tirzepatide has made it as easy for me to make those healthy choices that I made when I was in my 20s. Ones that I struggled with mightily after I got fat.

Hopefully more and more people will use them as a tool to help them get things back and order and then stay there, whether or not they keep taking it.

Re: Weight-loss drug found to shrink muscle in mice, human cells

#222

Post by bluSCALE4 »

echoangle wrote: post #212
diath wrote: post #207

The problem with appetite suppression drugs is that they simply make you not feel hungry, but do nothing to fix your lack of discipline and self-control, I'm sure most people who lose weight on these drugs, and then come off, will just go back to their bad habits.

So why not just stay on the drugs?

Most kill you. If I didn't misread articles on ozempic, they can cause digestive problems where food rots in your stomach. Bad depression was another side effect which blows my mind since you'd think looking better would make you feel great. And these were the minor things.

Re: Weight-loss drug found to shrink muscle in mice, human cells

#223

Post by phil21 »

echoangle wrote: post #218
diath wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You technically could but the idea here is to cut the excess bodyfat percent and get into the healthy range, rather than to keep losing weight, which itself is also unhealthy, but once you become dependent on the drugs to maintain your weight, without fixing your habits, you will just go between getting off the drug, binge eating, gaining the weight back, and hoping back on the drug and losing weight while barely eat…

Can’t you just adjust the dosage to stabilize?

Yes, you can. Or most people can. It’s called a maintenance dose and is usually the minimum dose available for the particular drug you are on.

As these become more common and doctors more aware, the dosing guidelines will become much more nuanced and dialed in.

Re: Weight-loss drug found to shrink muscle in mice, human cells

#224

Post by cthalupa »

nielsbot wrote: post #220
julianeon wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do have to factor in the (probable) cost of not using Ozempic, aka keeping the pounds on. It may be imprecise, but as an example, if a person was likely to die within 10 years at their current weight, any bad effects beyond the 10 year mark have to be heavily discounted.

I assume parent was talking about cosmetic and convenient weight loss not medically necessary weight loss.

I'm sure there are plenty of people taking it as a shortcut to dropping 10 or 20lb or whatever, but I imagine most people taking it are in the "I need to lose 70+ lb of fat" range.

Re: Weight-loss drug found to shrink muscle in mice, human cells

#225

Post by cthalupa »

bluSCALE4 wrote: post #222
echoangle wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why not just stay on the drugs?

Most kill you. If I didn't misread articles on ozempic, they can cause digestive problems where food rots in your stomach. Bad depression was another side effect which blows my mind since you'd think looking better would make you feel great. And these were the minor things.

> digestive problems where food rots in your stomach

I assume you mean gastroparesis - this is an extremely rare side effect

> Bad depression

Again, pretty rare side effect.

If you think these are the minor things I'm confused as to what you think the major side effects are.

Re: Weight-loss drug found to shrink muscle in mice, human cells

#226

Post by phil21 »

xk_id wrote: post #183
cthalupa wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I started resistance training 5x a week about a month in on tirzepatide and even with a severely restricted caloric intake (I just can't eat enough), I've gained LBM.

How did you measure the increase in LBM? This requires very advanced technical equipment. My suspicion is that you have noticed an increase in muscle volume and assumed it to be an increase in muscle mass. Those are largely due to water retention and increased blood flow. They revert quite quickly after you stop exercising for about a week.

Does ability to lift weight also decrease in about a week? I was recently out of town for over two weeks and came back with the ability to lift roughly the same amount I was able to prior to leaving.

My DEXA scans seem roughly correlated with the amount of weight I can do in my regular sets, which has increased about 50-70% depending on which muscle group you are talking about.

This is with heavy resistance training 3 times a week and Pilates once a week.

Re: Weight-loss drug found to shrink muscle in mice, human cells

#227

Post by tokioyoyo »

bluSCALE4 wrote: post #222
echoangle wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why not just stay on the drugs?

Most kill you. If I didn't misread articles on ozempic, they can cause digestive problems where food rots in your stomach. Bad depression was another side effect which blows my mind since you'd think looking better would make you feel great. And these were the minor things.

I don't think you realize the amount of people have taken Ozempic or similar drug. I'm lucky enough that I haven't had issues with body weight, but if I believe the stats (and my observations in real world confirm it), about 15% of adults are on it.

If it was "killing people", we would be seeing it literally everywhere. We're not talking about a small scale 50K+ observation... we're talking about literal millions.

Re: Weight-loss drug found to shrink muscle in mice, human cells

#228

Post by cthalupa »

phil21 wrote: post #226
xk_id wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you measure the increase in LBM? This requires very advanced technical equipment. My suspicion is that you have noticed an increase in muscle volume and assumed it to be an increase in muscle mass. Those are largely due to water retention and increased blood flow. They revert quite quickly after you stop exercising for about a week.

Does ability to lift weight also decrease in about a week? I was recently out of town for over two weeks and came back with the ability to lift roughly the same amount I was able to prior to leaving. My DEXA scans seem roughly correlated with the amount of weight I can do in my regular sets, which has increased about 50-70% depending on which muscle group you are talking about. This is with heavy resistance training…

A good portion of the strength related to any specific lift is CNS adaptation up until a certain point (and most new lifters won't hit that threshold for quite some time), so strength on a lift you've been doing regularly isn't necessarily a good indicator. Building muscle will of course increase your strength too, but I've doubled my squat since getting back into lifting while certainly not doubling the muscle mass of the respective muscles.

Re: Weight-loss drug found to shrink muscle in mice, human cells

#229

Post by cyberax »

jjallen wrote: post #203
tomhoward wrote: post #181

I'm not commenting specifically on the heart-muscle aspect of the study, but it shouldn't be a surprise that the weight loss from this drug is significantly attributable to muscle loss; it almost always is when dieting. It's the same with keto/low-carb or any other kind of caloric-restrictive dieting (which Ozempic facilitates). The modern weight-loss programs I'm seeing now (at least those aimed mostly at middle-age…

For the people who lift weights while on this/these drugs, how much lean muscle do they lose? The point is is that most people lose muscle because they’re not lifting. You will lose muscle if you lose weight no matter the cause, if you are not lifting weights.

> For the people who lift weights while on this/these drugs, how much lean muscle do they lose?

I was 92kg when I started on liraglutide (I was doing GLP-1 agonists before it was cool!) and 67% of muscle mass (61kg). I'm now at 69kg and 82% of muscle mass (56kg). I'm doing weight and resistance training twice a week, in addition to aerobic training.

One nice thing, while muscles don't become more massive, they for sure become more pronounced and visible with weight loss.

Re: Weight-loss drug found to shrink muscle in mice, human cells

#230

Post by phil21 »

siliconc0w wrote: post #126

It's pretty clear that GLP-1 should be prescribed with protein powder. When your appetite is crushed you don't go for the chicken breast, you go for what is immediately appetizing (usually carbs+fats like pizza or fries). IMO this and a lack of resistance training (which should also be prescribed) probably makes up a large % of the muscle loss on these drugs. The problem is that the FDA only looks at dumb measures li…

Tirzepatide let me stay away from the immediately appetizing junk food and almost exclusively eat a clean diet focused on protein.

My experience matches at least a dozen folks in my personal bubble. It’s sort of the point of the drug or it wouldn’t work very well.

Totally agreed on resistance training. The one thing I would change would have been starting that in a serious manner as soon I started the drug vs. waiting. Prescribing it is silly though - if that worked we wouldn’t need the drugs to begin with.

Post reply on HN