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‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

nature.com

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Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#241

Post by nextlevelwizard »

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #16

Have we actually studied if the weight loss is resulting in better health outcomes for the people in question? Outside of diabetics (there is evidence that significant weight loss can relieve the effects of type 2 diabetes), I would like to know if just weight loss benefits the cardiovascular system, blood pressure, etc. These aren't as intuitive as we'd like, for example, it turns out that low fat diets didn't make…

Wtf are you on? Of course losing weight results in a better life. If nothing else it will make moving a lot easier it doesn’t need to reduce any diseases if it does that is pure bonus

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#242

Post by hungryforcodes »

dougmwne wrote: post #162
iammjm wrote: post #20

At a risk of being ignorant: Isn’t obesity a function of calories intake and calories burn rate? If so, why do we even need a drug for that? What should a possible drug target here? Assuming no changes in behaviour and thus a continued steady daily caloric surplus, would it even work?

Yes, your instinct is correct, you have vastly oversimplified it in an unhelpful way. The body is not an energy equation to be balanced. The desire to eat is driven by our hormones and these are not easily overridden by willpower. In fact, study after study shows that willpower is insufficient for most people. Hunger is produced by a complex set of factors that we do not fully understand. What we eat and how we live…

The body is an energy equation to be balanced. Physics defines that.

What you are talking about substantially in your post is about willpower with regards to eating and exercise which is totally different.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#243

Post by haywood »

This is good news (probably?), but wanted to chime in with a tangent.

Also going to preface this by saying I have struggled with weight my entire life and have lost and gained substantial weight through diet alone, always gaining it back and then some — but I think I found something that has worked for me and I have been reflecting on what I wish I was told a long time ago.

It's not necessarily a problem to be "obese", meaning you can have extra fat on top of muscle but also be metabolically healthy. In those cases, the extra weight is just causing your calfs to be huge.

Instead of focusing on getting skinny, I started focusing on getting strong. All of a sudden diet was a supplemental tool to this goal, and not the main thing. I just made sure to eat more protein, and if I had a "bad day" of eating, I chalked it up to my body having more energy to synthesize new muscle :) Before a bad day would "undo" days of suffering on an energy deficit, and I would just give up. But if you frame it as: look, you have struggled your entire life to be 'thin', when in reality, your ability to be obese was a hidden superpower. Stop fighting it and lift weights, you were probably _made_ for this!

In this context I'm weirdly happy with my genetics? there are so many "hard gainers" that do everything in their power to put on 10bs so they can gain muscle. I'm gaining muscle without hardly trying. How many other obese, inactive people are like me and would respond amazingly to resistance training ALONE as well?

I focused on strength training and protein for a long time when I started, that was fun and easy, and my body composition started to change. Then I started to notice the changes, and now I have purposeful short-duration "cuts" in my routine and it seems like at some point I'll eventually not be obese.

Just trying to say that I wonder what would happen if people were told, "hey, you don't need to diet right now, just come in and train twice a week and eat more protein". Of course "energy toxicity" is absolutely real, but lean body mass can improve health markers A LOT before worrying about that.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#244

Post by nextlevelwizard »

curation wrote: post #90

Obesity drugs treat a North American symptom - obesity. The cause remains untreated.

It will help millions of people in life changing ways. Of course we should also fix the causes, but that is no reason not to pursue easier treatment

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#245

Post by psychphysic »

tptacek wrote: post #220
psychphysic wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably right the common side effects are all reason to not eat (nausea, GI upset).

The other effects (they're not a side effects, since they're the intended effects) are satiety and cessation of cravings. In the "appetite vs. hunger" dichotomy you set up, the drugs seem to be addressing mostly the former; in fact, it sounds like, from reports on this thread, pts on these meds very much still experience true hunger symptoms (weakness, headache, brain fog).

In the UK at least semiglutide is licensed only for diabetes.

So it's appetite suppression is a side effect. That's good because it means it gets reported.

Looking at the SPC[0] we can see decreased appetite is "common" (1~10%), while nausea is "very common"(>10% report).

That means more people feel nauseated on semiglutide than feel less hungry.

Add in other GI disturbances (diarrhoea is also "very common") and one can see why people lose weight with it.

[0] https://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/product/9750/smpc

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#246

Post by 8note »

joe_the_user wrote: post #187
dcolkitt wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. People genuinely enjoy those foods, because they're tasty and flavorful. And there's zero reason to believe that they're substantially unhealthy unless consumed to the point of sustained caloric surplus. We know this because we have hunter-gatherer populations who consume 50% of their diets in sugar (e.g. the Hadza) or fats (e.g. Intuit), and they have none of the diseases of abundance found in modern popul…

I don't think it's half-plausible to compare Hadza or Intuit diets to a Big Mac and a soda. Neither transfats nor processed sugars are in the Hadza diet, just for example.

Isn't honey a processed sugar? The processing being done by a bee instead of a machine

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#247

Post by nextlevelwizard »

thejackgoode wrote: post #238
nextlevelwizard wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats such bullshit. Sure, yes, there is 100% mental aspect to every obese person, but some of that shit is old and already dealt with, but since you are already fucked you cant get out from the cycle. Of course we should deal with the mental side but it will be a million times easier to deal with after you aren’t a fat fuck.

Case in point, "fat fuck" and "old shit that's dealt with" shouldn't normally belong to the same argument

And why not?

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#248

Post by poszlem »

mythhouse wrote: post #160
0xB31B1B wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if you have perfect bloodwork and a marvel movie body probably not necessary but otherwise yes. Heart disease, hypertension, high cholesterol, colon cancer rates are rising amongst everyone, even thin people. These drugs positively impact indicators of these things in everyone. Longevity makers have been betting on metformin for a long time and these drugs are like a supercharged metformin

> if you have perfect bloodwork I see a lot of health influencers always say whatever diet they are doing is best because nothing bad has shown up on their bloodwork. I am not really sure if bloodwork is all it takes to asses your health.

It's not. The obsession with bloodwork seems to be specific to certain countries (like the US). In most countries, where the medical system is focused less on charging people money and more on evidence based treatments, blood tests are done to find something specific, not to "see how a person is doing", as they care about the effects of overtreatment (unnecessary distress, surgeries, treatments).

Many people have this weird view of the "bloodwork" where they treat the results of them like a character screen in an RPG game.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#249

Post by GLGirty »

myshpa wrote: post #206
dcolkitt wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. People genuinely enjoy those foods, because they're tasty and flavorful. And there's zero reason to believe that they're substantially unhealthy unless consumed to the point of sustained caloric surplus. We know this because we have hunter-gatherer populations who consume 50% of their diets in sugar (e.g. the Hadza) or fats (e.g. Intuit), and they have none of the diseases of abundance found in modern popul…

> ... there's zero reason to believe that they're substantially unhealthy unless consumed to the point of sustained caloric surplus. We know this ... Disagree. > who consume 50% of their diets in sugar (e.g. the Hadza) "Their diet is made up almost exclusively of food that they forage on the forest and includes fiber rich and highly nutritious berries, bananas and honey while any meat they eat is hunted and caught wi…

> The food is the problem

Quality of food is certainly declining, but we are also seeing weight increases in lab rats with extremely controlled diets, so food probably isn't the entire story. There's no accepted explanation for this, but good candidates that might apply to humans are: subtle toxicity by microplastics, and changes in gut microbiomes.

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