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America’s Obsession with Weight-Loss Drugs Is Affecting the Economy of Denmark
- Broken_Hippo 3y agohttps://archive.vn/bGZEA https://archive.vn/bGZEA
- sschueller 3y agohttps://archive.ph/bGZEA https://archive.ph/bGZEA
- christophilus 3y agoPaywalled, but I recently listened to one of the vegan doctors (I think it was McDougall) talking about these. It’s pretty crazy stuff. Also, as an aside, it’s amazing to me the lengths to which people will go simply to avoid changing their habits. My endocrinologist has plant-based diet material all over her office. She tells her patients that she’d be out of a job if everyone would eat a healthy (McDougall, Gregor, etc) plant-based diet. Almost none of her patients follow her dietary advice.
- jasfi 3y agoWhat about fish and eggs? Those are some very nutritious foods.
- cj 3y agoI eat a plant based diet (vegan). Eggs are my 1 exception (although I usually throw away the egg yolk - that's where all of the cholesterol is, and the primary reason for eating vegan for me is to reduce cholesterol consumption). My typical breakfast is 3-4 eggs, with the yolk from only 1. A single egg yolk contains ~70% your daily cholesterol needs. Before going vegan I'd eat a 4 egg omlet with cheese, which would be 250%+ daily cholesterol consumption at breakfast, not including whatever meat I had for lunch/dinner. Fish, too. I have a few vegan friends, and fish is the 1st food they reintroduce when cycling off the vegan diet. Remember no one says you can't make exceptions while dieting. For example, the rules I set for myself are pretty simple "when at the grocery store, only buy vegan foods" but "when eating at a restaurant, no limits!" - I find this is the perfect balance for me, and makes going out to eat very much a treat compared to eating at home!
- Xenoamorphous 3y agoNo offense but aren’t you a vegetarian, if you’re eating eggs? Isn’t it pretty much eggs and dairy what separates vegans from vegetarians? It kinda sounds to me as if someone said “I’m vegetarian but steaks are my only exception”.
- cj 3y agoMaybe the difference is I'm not vegan or vegetarian for philosophical reasons, purely health reasons. I don't really care what the label is to be honest, it's just how I eat. Vegetarian is probably closer to being more accurate. But then again I will happily order a steak at a restaurant. So maybe I don't deserve any of these labels at all :) A better way to put it is I prefer eating vegan rather than I am vegan
- maxerickson 3y agoIn a sensible world, vegetarian would mean plant based diet and vegan would still mean no use of animal products at all (extending beyond diet). But you can be a vegetarian and eat fish apparently.
- cj 3y agopescatarian (if we want to get deep into dieting labels)
- maxerickson 3y agoYes, I understand there is a label for a diet that includes fish and not other animal protein. But my point is that people more or less ignore that there are specific labels with clear meanings and go for labels that have a vibe that they like, regardless of their accuracy. Like 'vegan' has a philosophical overtone, it isn't just a label for a plant based approach to eating, it's a strict approach rooted in a rejection of (at least perceived) animal exploitation. So someone that eats plants most of the time and grabs the occasional steak as a treat isn't really anywhere close to vegan.
- 3y ago
- paulcole 3y agoDid anyone say they weren’t?
- jasfi 3y agoThe parent post I replied to referred to a plant-based diet.
- paulcole 3y ago> She tells her patients that she’d be out of a job if everyone would eat a healthy (McDougall, Gregor, etc) plant-based diet. But it never says eggs and fish are unhealthy — just that a plant-based diet is healthy (which is true).
- refurb 3y agoThis sounds like a “the one secret doctors don’t want you to know” ad
- chiefalchemist 3y agoIt's sadly ironic you're being downvoted for suggesting prevention. It could be effective but there is no way to patent it. There's simply not enough profit in prevention. To your point, a high percentage of physical health, as well as some memtal health, could be prevented with changes to dirt and lifestyle. Americans have been (falsely) led to believe their diseases are common everywhere. That's simply not true. We increase demand and yet expect healthcare costs to fall. Not doubt, the healthcare system could use a makeover, but it's not the HC system's fault the American diet and lifestyle are so pro-ill health.
- ramraj07 3y agoWe never had a drug to treat obesity so y’all were “there’s no medicine so it’s not a disease, you just have to eat less and exercise and stop being lazy!” Now there’s a drug and “diet was not a marketable thing anyway!”
- rcxdude 3y agoI suspect it's because they've shoehorned a vegan slant to it, which is unnecessary for and to some extent counterproductive to improving diet overall.
- pxmpxm 3y agoBingo. The vegan thing is orthogonal to the topic at hand - a vegan diet made of HFCS held together by soybean oil will get you obese in no time.
- woodruffw 3y agoI don’t think they’re being downvoted for suggesting prevention; people overwhelmingly agree that eating healthy is the first step in weight control. Instead, they’re being downvoted for performing a dimension reduction from “unhealthy weight” to “overeating junk food.” This isn’t the reality for many people, and that assumption (including by doctor) does more harm than good.
- krisoft 3y ago
- jprete 3y agoChanging habits works poorly because one’s body and brain fight it every step of the way.
- paulpauper 3y agoor you run out of willpower due to stress or some other circumstance.
- frognumber 3y agoI don't think that's the problem. I put on weight in the US no matter what I eat if I eat until I'm full. I naturally drift up by about a pound a year, and faster if I recently dieted. The only way to lose weight is to be constantly hungry. I will sometimes do that for a few months to get my weight under control. It then wanders back up. I've tried all sorts of diets, including plant-based, and it doesn't help. I need to be hungry all the time. I find it easy to lose weight in less developed countries, even eating what would be considered much less healthy food in the US (fried fatty food, lots of meat, etc.). The food also tastes more, for lack of a better word, real. I'm not sure we have any clear sense of what, in out hyper-efficient industrial food economy does this. Come to think of it, we don't even know it's the food -- could be something else environmental. But that's how my own body behaves.
- fuzztester 3y ago>I'm not sure we have any clear sense of what, in out hyper-efficient industrial food economy does this. Come to think of it, we don't even know it's the food -- could be something else environmental. Food or environmental, but in a larger sense, it's likely to be some additives, is my uneducated gut-feel (pun unintended) guess. Here by additives, I don't mean only ones in food, but also fertilizers, pesticides, other synthetic chemicals, and agricultural and industrial effluents.
- collaborative 3y agoThat's why any amount of "processed" is bad. In doubt, cook from scratch. Anything that comes wrapped up is suspicious
- fuzztester 3y agoI agree.
- safety1st 3y agoApplying Occam's Razor I think the main contributor for most people is probably American portion sizes. The average American eats around 3,600 calories per day, more than any other country, and way more than they need (2000-2500 unless you're regularly doing strenuous physical activity). Anecdotally a meal in America is just way bigger than in most other countries I've visited or lived in. Once you get accustomed to the larger portion size it's hard to dial it back down. We don't need a complicated explanation, the simple factual explanation for Americans being the fattest people in the world is, they eat more calories than anyone else.
- thebigjewbowski 3y ago> Also, as an aside, it’s amazing to me the lengths to which people will go simply to avoid changing their habits. I couldn’t agree more on this point. I lost ~110 lbs in a year, exciting obesity by eating only meat and dairy with vigorous exercise. I’ve been able to maintain the weight loss for 2 years, even after entering carbs back into my diet. I gained back 10-15 lbs depending on the week but I’m still at a healthy weight. It was easy. No side effects. It was cheap — I largely stopped eating out. I feel way better overall everyday.
- prepend 3y agoFor interventions that work across populations we need to find things that work for millions of people. It’s good that you are able to do this. I think that’s a great accomplishment and you should feel proud. The challenge is figuring out how 100 million people can. It’s obviously not easy based on how many people struggle and fail. The hard part is the switch in attitudes and behavior that is very difficult to initiate and maintain. Saying “I did it through willpower is easy since I did it” is about as accurate and useful as saying “World peace is easy because the Dalai Lama did it through willpower.” We can take 1,000 people and test out your method vs. semaglutide and see which one has the bigger impact. I’m willing to bet that the semaglutide group will have a greater change.
- paulpauper 3y agoalso depends how much his starting weight was. probably easier to lose 30 percent body weight when already very fat compared to just modestly fat
- prepend 3y ago> it’s amazing to me the lengths to which people will go simply to avoid changing their habits. You think people are just choosing to not change habits? Do you also dislike people taking PrEP [0] because they could just change their habits? If anything this drug has shown is that habits and biology are so intertwined. “Following dietary advice” is very hard, as evidenced by the 2/3 of the US who are obese or overweight (and the 50% of Western Europe). It’s also hard to follow economic advice, as evidenced by not everyone making $250k/year. Similarly, if there was a new drug that cost $10k/year that made people make 30% more annual income, people would definitely take that instead of just studying harder or whatever advice they could follow to increase income. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/risk/prep/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/risk/prep/index.html
- colomon 3y agoThat "not changing habits" thing has nothing to do with Ozempic. Based on my experience with the drug (taken six months for type 2 diabetes), you won't lose any weight at all on it UNLESS you change your habits. What the drug does is make it easier for you to change your habits!
- prepend 3y ago> What the drug does is make it easier for you to change your habits! This is the entire point. The medication exists to change behavior. That’s why this medication exists and the habit changes are possible because of the meds. It’s like saying that depressed people just need to change their habits. And their anti-depressant meds just make it easier to change habits. But that the meds have nothing to do with habits.
- paulpauper 3y agoyeah eating less is way easier to do if you lose interest in food , as this drug tends to do
- NovemberWhiskey 3y ago>Also, as an aside, it’s amazing to me the lengths to which people will go simply to avoid changing their habits. That's such a wrong take. Try something more like: isn't it amazing that we're discovering the underlying biological causes of obesity?
- christophilus 3y agoHuh. Judging from the replies here, maybe the diet angle isn’t as common knowledge as I thought. If you think the science is unclear on this, I recommend listening to / reading Dr Caldwell Esselstyn, Dr McDougall, and Dr. Michael Greger (nutritionfacts.org). The latter has a non profit that reads 60k research papers annually and produces videos and materials explaining the findings.
- refurb 3y agoBillions in sales in an economy of $400B per year is affecting the economy? I would assume that things like energy costs would have a far bigger impact.
- exar0815 3y agoReminds me a bit of the Covid-Vaccine from Biontech. The small (220K inhabitants) City of Mainz was able to pay all it's debts within one year just due to the Taxes paid by them. And it shifted the state of Rheinland-Pfalz from receiver to giver ob subsidies to other states.
- rvba 3y agoThis article tells more about the drug: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaglutide https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaglutide
- friend_and_foe 3y agoWe see the problem of coincidence of wants here with regard to currency transfers, and the real effects of attempting to alleviate it. National currencies just don't make sense in a globalized economy.
- madsbuch 3y agoWhy not? We have this notion that currency is managed in a super-political way. However, there is everything political with currencies and currency management. It is literally the difference on depression and labor shortage. For me, it is weird that this responsibility is deferred from political processes and the democracy. If a sovereign country wants to own its own politics, it also need to own its own currency.
- brnt 3y agoYes, but at the same time nobody exists in a vacuum, especially not small countries like Denmark in highly globalised economies. Collaboration on something like the Euro makes small countries more powerful and effective, and thus more sovereign, compared to adhering to some technical definition of sovereign and being all the more easy to ignore or manipulate by global and/or much larger economies. For the small ones, cooperation bring power, it does not take it away.
- madsbuch 3y ago> Collaboration on something like the Euro makes small countries more powerful and effective, and thus more sovereign ... Effective, yes – just like a single party system is more effective than having multiple parties and democratic processes. more sovereign – how? I really can't see how Spain is more sovereign managing their unemployment issues when they can not control supply of their own currency, and thus investment?
- brnt 3y agoNo, nothing like a single party system. Or are you saying a nation only fighting for itself is like a single party system? Control = power x influence. The argument was that more control can be had through having a local currency. I think, for smaller countries, more control and thus more sovereignty is had through teaming up, because the cooperation is (at least in the case of the EU) democratic, and is a tool more powerful than any national tool ever could be, and therefore control is larger.
- philshem 3y agoRecent, related, long-form article from the New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/27/will-the-ozempic-era-change-how-we-think-about-being-fat-and-being-thin https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/27/will-the-ozemp...
- ohgodplsno 3y agoNothing more american than self-medication using drugs that should be for diabetics, leading to both diabetics ending up in life threatening conditions because of a lack of said medicine, as well as a high likelihood of suicidal thoughts and self harm coming from the use of said medicine (https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/ema-statement-ongoing-review-glp-1-receptor-agonists https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/ema-statement-ongoing-revi...) Watch as how, miraculously, every famous actor, singer, public personality that was overweight suddenly got thin because they decided to just "start exercising" a year ago, exactly as the time where Semaglutide's effects were starting to be known.
- woodruffw 3y agoYour link makes no claim about a “high likelihood.” In fact, it more or less says the opposite: > Liraglutide and semaglutide medicines are widely used, with an exposure of over 20 million patient-years to date. It is not yet clear whether the reported cases are linked to the medicines themselves or to the patients’ underlying conditions or other factors. (This is besides the fact that all medicine is iatrogenic in nature: medicine is prescribed not because it’s perfect, but because the side effects it produces are considered preferable against the symptoms it treats.)
- i_cannot_hack 3y ago> The review was triggered by the Icelandic medicines agency following reports of suicidal thoughts and self-injury in people using liraglutide and semaglutide medicines. So far authorities have retrieved and are analysing about 150 reports of possible cases of self-injury and suicidal thoughts. > Liraglutide and semaglutide medicines are widely used, with an exposure of over 20 million patient-years to date. It is not yet clear whether the reported cases are linked to the medicines themselves or to the patients’ underlying conditions or other factors. I think 150 case reports (3 reports from Iceland) across 20 million patient-years, with no evidence of a causality, seems to be very far from a "high likelihood" at the moment.
- davikr 3y ago> high likelihood of suicidal thoughts and self harm coming from the use of said medicine correlation != causation