Live data from Hacker News

‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

nature.com

701–710 of 1001 posts

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s so hard to eat healthy, I honestly cannot fathom how people do it. When I started taking semaglutide, I finally understood it. I'd eat a salad... and be full and more than satisfied! I'd look at a muffin right after lunch, and go "eh, better things to do with my time" instead of immediately having an overriding desire to eat eat eat. Before, I could eat half a pizza and still be hungry (way out of what my body…

> Too many people are convinced that everyone has the same subjective experiences of hunger and craving, but it's simply not the case. Some people implicitly hold this idea because it's a convenient ideology that allows people to morally congratulate themselves for having a functioning satiety circuit. Where does this line of thinking stop? Is everything pre-determined by genetics? Is everyone who is smarter than me,…

"Hard work and discipline" are multipliers for the output of an otherwise-balanced brain and body chemistry. But they're no substitute for fixing that balance when it is imbalanced.

An analogy: "hard work" is what your car's engine does when you throttle it up. But that "hard work" isn't going to take you very far — or even in the right direction — if the car's wheels aren't aligned and balanced equidistantly on the car's axle. This "imbalance" will mean that any power put into the system, just gets shunted into running you faster and faster in circles, and/or into "spinning your wheels" and "burning out."

Bringing the car into balance is an overriding concern. You won't get anywhere without first doing that, no matter how hard you push the engine. Once you've done that, though, then the amount of power you're pushing through the engine — your "hard work and discipline" – becomes relevant.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obesity has increased uniformly across the US and much of the world. But in the US is fairly strongly, negatively correlated with income. And the obvious culprit here is thus processed and cheap food. Now, exactly how that manifests is probably quite complex. I see everyone offering their pet theory and that tends to muddy the waters but the basic outline seems reasonably clear.

https://www.prb.org/resources/for-women-in-the-u-s-obesity-l... . That correlation with income is almost entirely driven by women. Rich men aren't much thinner than middle class or poor men. Rich women are just a lot thinner than middle class or poor women. This tells a different story than cheap processed food.

Even your link ends with "Cheap Food, Unhealthy Food" and doesn't claim a refutation. It's' plausible higher income men aren't as concerned about healthy food as higher income women.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also on one of these drugs (Tirzepatide) and have been for a few months. The first time I remember knowing I was fat was when a babysitter made fun of me for it at age 6. I've been fat ever since and I'm in my late 30s now. I've lost significant amounts of weight (60+ pounds) three times in my adult life, through simple calorie restriction (intermittent fasting, including before I'd ever heard the term). Every ti…

I was just saying the exact same thing to my wife yesterday. We’re both trying to lose weight, for the millionth time in the 20 years we’ve been together. Exasperated, I just said “I don’t get it. I was an artist who had no technical background, and was able to teach myself computer science and now I’m a highly successful engineer. I did that. And yet I can’t lose 10 pounds to save my life.” It’s so hard to eat healt…

> It’s so hard to eat healthy, I honestly cannot fathom how people do it.

It's honestly just what you're used to.

If you eat tonnes of sugar and fat then that's what you crave.

If you cut sugar out of your diet, after a while the amount of sugar you used to eat will taste wayyy too sweet. Same with fat - eating chips for example will leave a gross fatty taste in your mouth.

99% of food bought out will have a whole lot of oil, fat, and sugar in it.

Eating healthy starts by controlling what goes into your own food. Cook and prepare meals yourself. Once you're in the habit of doing this you simply start to replace bad food for good.

Don't buy junk in the first place, then you won't eat it. Always shop for food when you've already eaten (and thus not hungry). Slowly reduce / eliminate the amount of fatty and sugary food in your meals. Just drink water (seriously, just water, no sweeteners).

Combine that with an exercise routine and you'll be set.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are missing the point. People are not skinny because they "intellectually" know something. Nor are people fat because they are stupid, sometimes sure, but the societal trend towards obesity is not caused by ignorance. Read the article.

People absolutely are skinny because they intellectually know something, but the word “intellectually” doesn’t mean smart/stupid, it means “apply critical thinking to a situation” as opposed to allowing your animal brain to keep control. To put it another way, system 1 will eat until its full, system 2 knows what a calorie is, and at least vaguely understands how many calories are in what you just ate against what yo…

I think executive function might be a better way to understand obesity, rather than Kahneman's system 1 and system 2 thinking. Inhibitory control in particular seems more relevant[0].

Applying critical thinking (as opposed to applying inhibitory control) is only useful against obesity insofar as you can make changes to your lifestyle and diet. Lots of people know what a calorie is yet still fail to lose weight, because intellectually understanding something doesn't mean you can do it.

[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01497...

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#706
post #379

It appears you can do the same thing with 3g of cinnamon https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19158209/ Conclusions: Ingestion of 3 g cinnamon reduced postprandial serum insulin and increased GLP-1 concentrations without significantly affecting blood glucose, GIP, the ghrelin concentration, satiety, or GER in healthy subjects.

If anyone wants to try this, make sure you're NOT using what's usually passed off as cinnamon in America (Cassia), you want the real thing (Ceylon) -- and from a vendor you can trust. That amount of cassia cinnamon is likely to cause liver damage: https://www.consumerlab.com/answers/cinnamon-coumarin-liver-...

As someone who is from Ceylon (Sri Lanka), I'd say to be careful of the most commercially available cinnamon that are meant to be used with food and tea too, because they may be flavored to dial down the otherwise strong taste/aroma of cinnamon.

I know because one of my friends has a cinnamon farm, and what he makes at his place is nothing compared to the cinnamon I could buy from supermarkets when I was living in the Netherlands. Look for Sri Lankan markets if you are looking for unaltered stuff.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#707
post #594

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…

This analysis lacks proper understanding of the role that hunger and food drive plays. Imagine that you are at the beach, and you can choose how deep you want to wade or how far you want to swim. If you like the water and the sun and the waves, this is very pleasant to imagine. Now imagine that you are dropped into the ocean at night 200 meters from shore and you can't see land, you can't see lights. This is very unp…

[flagged]

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we are drowning in quick to consume, non-nutritious, calories, we also have higher levels of anxiety, stress and more distractions. To your comment, maybe more countries should attempt to implement programs similar to the UK's success in lowering sodium intake by slowly adjusting the sodium content of all manufacturered foods. https://www.nature.com/articles/jhh2013105

> we also have higher levels of anxiety, stress Why should that be true? Your kids aren't going off to WW2 to die. You aren't going to starve if bugs ate your crops. You aren't going to get clubbed and robbed if you follow a forest path.

Maybe that's the point. A lack of overt threats leads to greater trepidation over covert threats. Wouldn't you think that there was more anxiety and stress in the Cold War among the civilian population than in WWII? Certainly societal upheavals seem to indicate so.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#709
The big elephant in the room is where did everyone's endogenous GLP-1 peptide go? A similar elephant in the room is why is synthetic thyroid hormone to replace all the missing endogenous thyroid hormones such a high selling drug?

What in the environment is slowly poisoning everyone so their bodies don't work normally?

Here's a clue, one of hundreds in the medical literature:

"The endocrine disrupting potential of monosodium glutamate (MSG) on secretion of the glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) gut hormone and GLP-1 receptor interaction" https://twitter.com/hashtag/AtmosphericRiver?src=hashtag_cli...

There is a huge bias against anyone saying anything in food or otherwise causing anything more than a trivial negative health effect. Everyone says eat healthy, but there's so much more the government in the U.S could do to protect the average consumer from damaging unnecessary food additives. The EU is much better about these food additive issues.

Re: ‘Breakthrough’ obesity drugs that have stunned researchers

#710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes sense but it may also be that you just need to make different social circles. There are tons of casual sports teams, for example, and those people are all bonding over playing volleyball casually (not at a high level or something) or things like hiking. Now your social activities are helping you lose weight

Nope, lots of casual sports teams will have people say, "hey we couldn't really socialize during the game, let's go grab a beer afterwards?". Hiking is similar, "hey let's take a break and eat some lunch."

Bring your lunch with you.

If you do order out, get a salad and skip the dressing.

Post reply on HN