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

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

#321

Post by [deleted] »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #303
lee wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: "...explains this rate of muscle decline is significantly higher than what is typically observed with calorie-reduced diets or normal aging and could lead to a host of long-term health issues..." The warning isn't that you're losing muscle during weight-loss with these drugs. It's that the ratio of muscle vs fat loss is much greater with the drugs compared to traditional weight loss methods. It's be…

>>>Losing a lot of lean mass is incredibly detrimental to your longevity and quality of life. While true, its also true that if you manage to lose substantial fat in the process, it leads to longer and better quality life

[deleted]

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

#322

Post by jf22 »

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…

If found the opposite to be true.

I'm eating healthier than ever and don't care for junk foods anymore.

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

#323

Post by crazygringo »

jmcgough wrote: post #309
crazygringo wrote: post #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…

I'm always so baffled by people commenting without reading the article first.

> "Please don't comment on whether someone read an article."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If you care to actually have a conversation about the article, feel free to respond to some specifics I provided here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42204741

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

#324

Post by _yb2s »

akira2501 wrote: post #110
_yb2s wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's tons and tons of error checking- we have at least 5 different error correction and repair systems in DNA, cell cycle checkpoints, and extreme redundancy and feedback homeostasis at nearly every level. Every individual cell has it's own 4 copies of almost every critical gene- two of each chromosome made up of two strands of DNA each. Human bodies can function 70+ years, sometimes with no medical care- somethin…

Redundancy is not error checking. The "error correction" mechanisms are actually just "proofreading" mechanisms and are almost entirely local and centered around transcription. Common mode errors are harder to induce due to the plain redundancy of DNA pairs but also not impossible, and once induced, are impossible to locally notice or correct. In some cases the "error correction" machinery is the cause of these induc…

> Redundancy is not error checking

Yes, you are right that DNA repair mechanisms are not technically error correction in the sense that the term is used in computer memory and storage, where any isolated error is mathematically guaranteed to be correctable. You clearly have a bio background, but my intent was to point out in a simplified way to non-bio people that biological systems do have mechanisms to deal with errors. I incorrectly assumed that you didn't have a bio background, and I can see that my message would have seemed a bit condescending- my apologies.

> While we haven't pinpointed the mechanism, we have a pretty good idea of why

I study metabolism and have observed things that aren’t compatible with any of the leading theories- which I suspect are all dead ends. We are definitely missing something big still. In particular, I feel like the big anti-aging startups are throwing good money after bad, by massively funding researchers with mostly played out dead end ideas. Tech billionaires funding this stuff are re-playing the same scenario as the ancient Chinese emperors and their mercury based elixirs of immortality in modern times IMO.

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

#325

Post by jstummbillig »

0xEF wrote: post #310
jstummbillig wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The modern weight loss program you described is pushed because that's what people want; an extremely low-effort methodology that yields extremely high results. I think it's a mistake to think of it as what people want. It's what people can do. We have to acknowledge a fundamental struggle that we have with dieting and working out. Pretending it's just hard, when statistics show what is true at a societal level, wil…

I still disagree. Simplicity and convenience is what people not only want, but demand. And this extends beyond weight loss solutions to our modern world of ever-converging technologies creating ever-complex systems under the guise of efficiency. Multiple cultures have supported these values since the times of snake-oil salesmen, which did not exactly vanish with history, as we so often forget. Look at products like O…

> Simplicity and convenience is what people not only want, but demand.

Hmm, that is not my experience generally. People will take insanely ineffective routes if that is what the system pushes them toward, without taking much offense.

For example, on the topic of health/weight loss: Weight Watchers or yoga classes are huge industries while also being insanely elaborate and expensive ways of eating better and moving your body.

I agree with you that, for example, drugs are currently not a solution to these problems. But what I propose is: they are going to be. And they had better be because there is no other effective solution poised to work at a societal scale. We just can’t help ourselves. “Just eat the salad and walk every day” simply did not do the trick. We tried. While it works on a mechanistic level, of course, it does not work in practice. Blaming people for their inability to fight their nature is just inhumane and not how we usually progress: we fix reality for ourselves.

While it is not impossible to design a society that is healthier (see: Japan), it’s at such odds with our current culture, and societal change is slow. We should certainly get to work on this decades-long project, but we should also treat this like any other health issue that costs billions of life-years and find a more effective intervention.

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

#326

Post by toxik »

bArray wrote: post #284
crazygringo wrote: post #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…

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 p…

Meta comment here, but Science Direct is an aggregator, and it doesn't make sense to talk about it as publishing. Elsevier published the referenced work in the journal "Advances in Nutrition", vol 8, issue 3, pp. 511-519.

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

#327

Post by Auracle »

crazygringo wrote: post #320
lee wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: "...explains this rate of muscle decline is significantly higher than what is typically observed with calorie-reduced diets or normal aging and could lead to a host of long-term health issues..." The warning isn't that you're losing muscle during weight-loss with these drugs. It's that the ratio of muscle vs fat loss is much greater with the drugs compared to traditional weight loss methods. It's be…

If I'm reading the study [1] correctly, that conclusion is not warranted. It appears that they fed the control group and treatment group of mice lots of food to get them fat, then gave them identical normal diets, and gave the treatment group semaglutide. The semaglutide group lost significantly more weight (fig A.ii) than the control group, and also lost heart muscle. So it does not seem that they compared to an equ…

I guess perhaps the better conclusion would be that maybe dosages should be adjusted so that people don’t lose weight too quickly?

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

#328

Post by MrMcCall »

vundercind wrote: post #313
MrMcCall wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way to lose weight without damaging oneself is to combine more exercise with less eating, which means becoming comfortable being hungry. Yes, it's difficult -- especially after developing bad eating habits over a long time -- but moderation is required in all things. It takes a long time to become overweight, so the ramp down to a leaner existence must necessarily take a significant amount of time, or there'…

That's true for an individual , but if you're looking at a population then you're seeing a situation where we have zero other solutions that are actually effective at curbing obesity. The only "natural" way to solve it is probably to overhaul our entire culture, redesign our cities and neighborhoods, et c., and that's not happening. Skinny people move to the US and get fat. They're not skinnier back in their home cou…

A person's body mass is nothing more than the combination of what a person eats and what a person does in their life.

The only really effective policy is to inform people that that is the simple, honest truth of every single person, and that the quality of food we eat is important in that equation.

Eat better food, be more active. Yes, it is difficult, especially for us peasants.

But that is science. I hope a miracle drug helps folks preyed upon by the food industry, but side effects of that industry's drugs leave me skeptical of their being lastingly beneficial.

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

#329

Post by tokioyoyo »

bluSCALE4 wrote: post #311
tokioyoyo wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Really just meant it kills you if you plan on using it as a lifelong solution. I don't have an obesity problem but if I did, this is one of those drugs I'd journal about daily to keep track of how it's affecting me.

Where is any source about it, other than “it just feels wrong, people shouldn’t cheat their way out of obesity”? Sorry for being obtuse, but I have very close friends for whom it changed their lives.

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

#330

Post by Auracle »

cthalupa wrote: post #288
apwell23 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I took it for a bit as a non-overweight person and the minimum dose was absolutely enough for me to have a hard time eating enough to maintain my weight.
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