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

ualberta.ca

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

#281
I'm always so baffled by warnings about losing muscle when losing weight.

Of course you do! If your body is tens of pounds lighter, then you don't need the extra muscle to lug it around. This paper is about reduction in heart muscle, and of course your heart doesn't need to be as strong because there's less blood to pump and less tissue to fuel.

When you gain weight, you also increase the muscles needed to carry that weight around. If you see someone obese at the gym doing the leg press, you may be astonished at how strong their legs are. When you lose weight, you don't need that muscle anymore.

Our bodies are really good at providing exactly the amount of muscle we need for our daily activities (provided we eat properly, i.e. sufficient protein), so it's entirely natural that our muscles decrease as we lose weight, the same way they increased when we gain weight. Muscles are expensive to keep around when we don't need them.

Obviously, if you exercise, then you'll keep the muscles you need for exercising.

But this notion that weight loss can somehow be a negative because you'll lose muscle too, I don't know where it came from. Yes you can lose muscle, but you never would have had that muscle in the first place if you hadn't been overweight -- so it's not something to worry about.

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

#282

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…

To be clear, these recommendations are already made very clearly before you take the medication. There is absolutely nothing in your comment that isn’t already clearly spelled out. Your last paragraph is literally already being done.

This isn’t a surprise unless people ignored reading about the drugs before taking it and ignored the doctors.

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

#283

I'm always so baffled by warnings about losing muscle when losing weight. Of course you do! If your body is tens of pounds lighter, then you don't need the extra muscle to lug it around. This paper is about reduction in heart muscle, and of course your heart doesn't need to be as strong because there's less blood to pump and less tissue to fuel. When you gain weight, you also increase the muscles needed to carry that…

[deleted]

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

#284

I'm always so baffled by warnings about losing muscle when losing weight. Of course you do! If your body is tens of pounds lighter, then you don't need the extra muscle to lug it around. This paper is about reduction in heart muscle, and of course your heart doesn't need to be as strong because there's less blood to pump and less tissue to fuel. When you gain weight, you also increase the muscles needed to carry that…

I wondered about exactly this.

The study is actually a published letter [1], and it doesn't appear to account for this. Science Direct even published a study about this in 2017 [2]:

> Weight loss, achieved through a calorie-reduced diet, decreases both fat and fat-free (or lean body) mass. In persons with normal weight, the contribution of fat-free mass loss often exceeds 35% of total weight loss, and weight regain promotes relatively more fat gain.

We already know how to reduce the effect of this, the person simply needs to increase exercise as the weight is lost in order to maintain lean muscle mass.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452302X2...

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S216183132...

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

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Gastroparesis is literally the method of action of GLP1 agonists. It slows gastric motility. Gastroparesis is literally slowed motility of the stomach (where 20% of food stays in your stomach after 4 hours). It doesn't matter why, that is the literal diagnostic criteria, ergo it literally causes gastroparesis.

Your position does not match that of medical researchers.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2810542

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10874596/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38443105/

Or more plainly worded

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/ozempic-wegovy-stomac...

Some people develop permanent gastroparesis.

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

#286
To reply to a now deleted comment about weight loss:

You will still lose "muscle", and some of that will be in the fat embedded into the muscle.

I would recommend checking out some of the learnings from the keto diet. You may or may not subscribe to it, but they had to very carefully tread these lines when the body was essentially in starvation mode. A few things I know of:

1. You have to maintain a certain amount of protein intake (~10% to ~20%) to prevent your body burning lean muscle mass.

2. Too much protein gets converted into sugars, these in turn are easily stored as fats.

3. Maintain exercise, use it or lose it.

4. Don't over-exercise. "Exercise flu" results in limited performance and muscle loss through gluconeogenesis. You break down muscle and convert it to energy due to lack of carbohydrates.

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

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Studies show strength training while losing weight can retain almost 100% of muscle. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5946208/

Anecdotally, it takes far less strength training than one would expect, too, to maintain muscle mass. From what I've experienced, 30 minutes a week, given sufficient stimulus, is enough.

There are more and more PhD researchers focusing on resistance training these days, and yeah, it turns out the minimum effective dose is waaaaaay lower than we previously thought.

https://www.minimumdosetraining.com/ - free training program + links to a bunch of studies the author was involved in on this specific subject.

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

#288
post #137

There are a lot of people here citing loss of muscle mass as a side effect of GLP-1s, when the reality is that weight loss almost always comes with muscle loss. For me, that hasn't even been the case. I'm down 40lbs on a relatively low dose of Semaglutide and my muscle mass has moderately increased over the last 6 months. The hysteria over this is totally unfounded.

> low dose of Semaglutide I thought its only approved at standard dose.

There is a dosing schedule for all the GLP-1s, with what is considered the minimal therapeutic dose being several times your initial dose.

However, a lot of people either see results on these initial doses, and plenty of people find them to be effective as maintenance doses.

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

#289
post #259

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…

I've heard this feedback on Ozempic et al from my wife who is a GP some 6 months ago, when I mentioned how US is too much in comfort zone and addicted to HFCS to actually lose weight permanently, ever, so in good old weight-losing fads fashion they will just throw money at the problem, experiencing somewhat variable success and who knows what bad side effects. My wife told me exactly this - potentially all muscle mas…

> addicted to HFCS

HFCS consumption (along with added sugar consumption in general) peaked in 2000 and declined steadily until 2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38094768

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

#290

I'm always so baffled by warnings about losing muscle when losing weight. Of course you do! If your body is tens of pounds lighter, then you don't need the extra muscle to lug it around. This paper is about reduction in heart muscle, and of course your heart doesn't need to be as strong because there's less blood to pump and less tissue to fuel. When you gain weight, you also increase the muscles needed to carry that…

What they need is to design some sort of mouse gym.
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