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Ozempic shows anti-aging effects in trial

trial.medpath.com

381–390 of 868 posts

Re: Ozempic shows anti-aging effects in trial

#381

I find it fascinating how much a pretty large group of people just hate semaglutides and seemingly need to believe that it's some kind of Faustian bargain. I'm not talking about the people who are cautious or suspicious, that's more than reasonable, but it's clear that it's not cautious optimism in many.

I studied chemistry at university and my master's was in medicinal chemistry.

My main takeaway was that "chemicals = bad" is a better heuristic for a starting point where you then look for exceptions or accept them as the last resort after exhausting other options.

Would you let AI loose on the software of your airplanes or nuclear power plants? Medicine is like a sensible idea that should be ok but is hard to rein in and localise to just the area of effect, we hope that it only makes the change we ask from it but we ultimately can't really say with certainty that it isn't also doing something else

I'm actually generally more surprised that people are so trusting of taking medicines and pop pills like they're candy

Re: Ozempic shows anti-aging effects in trial

#382
post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

none of the things you cited are “miracle weight loss drugs.” they are things people did to lose weight. these are the first class of drugs that actually cause people to lose weight.

I would have to check my sources but I'm pretty sure some of them have been prescribed for weight loss at various times. DNP and stimulants I'm more confident of, nicotine and tape worms I'm a bit iffy about.

The American Tobacco Company marketed cigarettes for women's weight control in the 1920's. Lucky Strikes 'Reach for a Lucky" campaign was a big example of this as well, although they marketed it as an appetite suppressant rather than simply a miracle weight loss cure.

Re: Ozempic shows anti-aging effects in trial

#383
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Calvinist society who think nothing good comes without suffering Or, some of us older folks have been around long enough to understand that we are, in an uncontroversial and factual way, the long term medical trial, and long term effects found in that trial, along with the eventual market withdrawal, may not show up until 10 to 20 years later, creating a healthy distrust in the money/corporations behind the, someti…

How many times has a drug had negative effects that only showed up after 10-20 years? Out of all the drugs that have been widely prescribed in, say, the last 100 years? And it’s not even actually a new drug class - Liraglutide was approved in 2010! Should we wait until the clinical trial participants all die of old age until we put a drug on the market?

It took us 10-20 years to find out about tardive dyskinesia due to antipsychotic medications and the long term dependency and withdrawal effects of benzodiazepines. Two entire classes of drugs that are now in common use, so it’s not unheard of.

I’m not saying we should take Ozempic off the market but don’t be fooled into thinking that we’re immune to unintended consequences just because we did a few studies (almost all of which were on diabetics with controlled diets).

Re: Ozempic shows anti-aging effects in trial

#384
post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No free lunch" is a reasonable question to ask when evaluating medication, if it would improve the evolutionary fitness of the majority of people. I think this is behind some of the skepticism. If Ozempic is so great then how come our bodies don't just produce more GLP-1? How come we aren't like chimps, with eternally shredded bodies and cheese grater abs, provided we get the protein to support them? I would guess t…

> How come we aren't like chimps, with eternally shredded bodies and cheese grater abs, provided we get the protein to support them? There are several reasons: Chimps have a higher density of testosterone receptors with a higher sensitivity than humans. Compared to humans, they are essentially roided out all the time. Humans are also hairless endurance hunters so we naturally have much larger fat reserves (15-25% of…

We also live on average more than twice as long as the average chimpanzee.

Re: Ozempic shows anti-aging effects in trial

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect that this info is intentionally down-played so that it doesn't affect sales. Yea, hard to figure out why drug companies keep producing "Faustian bargains" in our current system. What galls me is people assume the best for new drugs instead of forcing the _for profit_ entity to prove it's actually safe and useful. To the extent that, reliably, the first comment on these posts on Hacker News are some wishy…

Novo Nordisk is majority owned by a charity and is therefore not a for-profit entity. > What galls me is people assume the best for new drugs instead of forcing the _for profit_ entity to prove it's actually safe and useful. That's what the FDA approval process is. They already did that in 2017.

Novo Nordisk Foundation is a nonprofit but Novi Nordisk the pharmaceutical company is very much a for profit entity - it’s publicly traded on several stock exchanges including the NYSE. The foundation owns most of the voting shares but only about a quarter of all outstanding shares.

Re: Ozempic shows anti-aging effects in trial

#386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's completely illegal -- the drug is not for sale, obviously is not FDA approved, and is not manufactured anywhere, the only safe/legal way to get it is a via an ongoing trial: https://trials.lilly.com/en-US/trial/580035 As one might imagine though, capitalism found a way. A LOT of compounding pharmacies are now very good at manufacturing GLP1s (not necessarily the case that the knowledge transfers, but I imagine n…

Why is it illegal? Are drugs illegal by default or has it been specifically controlled/scheduled? I looked up which drugs are scheduled in the UK and found the list is about 100x longer than I thought it was and in fact the government don't even publish a definitive and exhaustive list of all substances.

Well for one they're flying in the face of the patent protection in place for Retatrutide -- that said the legalities around distributing prescription drugs or unknown chemical substances is murky (hence "gray" market).

Re: Ozempic shows anti-aging effects in trial

#387
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don't understand why comments about pharmaceutical companies and their incentives are accepted here, but if you mention the same in the context of vaccines, you're labeled a conspiracy nut.

There is a diverse set of opinions on this site. We don't all think the same.

Also, there's a distinction you're overlooking. Not trusting big pharma isn't the same thing as not trusting medicine. Big pharma will happily sell us drugs that work - it's the most profitable thing they do. You just can't trust them blindly, which is why regulation is important.

In the case of vaccines, they've proven effective over a very long time and the arguments against them are suspect at best. Questioning a new vaccine is healthy suspicion, questioning vaccines as a class of drugs requires a heavy burden of proof.

Re: Ozempic shows anti-aging effects in trial

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got a crowd of people raised in a Calvinist society who think nothing good comes without suffering, you've got people who feel this is a cheat where discipline should win out, and you have a bunch of people who are used to all easy solutions coming with either a bad lottery ticket or externalities on other people/the environment. They can all agree that they're waiting for the other shoe to drop. That said, we…

> That said, we are at a point where people are overweight enough that getting exercise has its own risks, and taking a medication that allows you to be more active is likely to cancel out some of those downsides. And yet we rarely ask or say "maybe I should just eat fewer calories?" Unless you have some other disorder that prevents normal bodily function, that does work (and would be viable I'd imagine for the major…

You think that is rarely asked?

Re: Ozempic shows anti-aging effects in trial

#389
I know why people hate Ozempic. It is because it devaluates struggle and voids moral superiority of those who did keep themselves from becoming obese by self-restriction before: now these people feel like fools because all of a sudden, everyone is becoming slim, and the advantage of being slim disappears. They naturally question how is it fair. Well, life's not fair.

Re: Ozempic shows anti-aging effects in trial

#390
post #209

This is specifically a study on people with HIV-associated lipohypertrophy, which is associated with accelerated aging. Not clear what this would mean for people generally.

True enough, but many studies show that calorie restriction reduces effects of aging

Not really applicable in humans. Effect is smaller than in mice, and requires some pretty drastic restrictions that aren't exactly pleasant.

The thing with ozempic is that is seems to do several things, most (all?) of them good for us in different ways. We probably just lucked out. It's not the only case - plenty of drugs do incredibly good things with only reasonable side effects. Antibiotics. Ibuprofen. Aspirin. Vitamin D.

A recent example - statins used to be seen as a tradeoff: you get better cardiovascular health, but some hepatotoxicity. Nope, it was wrong - they actually protect your liver. I think the official change came out this year, when I started them a couple of years ago I still found it framed as a side effect.

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