12 ms·

What Happens When Ozempic Takes over Your Town

18 points by cwwc 2y ago

cwwc 2y ago
https://archive.ph/P8A8p https://archive.ph/P8A8p
alirate 2y ago
[flagged]
the_real_cher 2y ago
With the advent of Ozympic, it would be cool if at some point being slim became so commonplace and boring that we flipped back to being attracted to fat people like the middle ages.
- zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
  A town full of people with stinky burps
- AtlasBarfed 2y ago
  Nah, it will either lead to: - more trendiness of muscles/fitness - plastic surgery (like the russian/housewives-of inflated lips) People are lazy, I get it, but ozempic should provide the enabler for big people to get fit: it gets rid of a whole lot of fat that increases stresses on their joints. So you lose weight with ozempic, and then you could ... ideally ... start a good fitness program. But we all know it will be used just for the pill popping convenience.
  - yoyohello13 2y ago
    Yes, Ozempic removes the fat (and obesity related health problems) but doesn't remove the need for exercise. Exercise has a whole host of positive effects beyond weight management. I believe Ozempic will probably lead to a lot of thin, but sarcopenic people.
    - danielvaughn 2y ago
      It also doesn't remove the need for a healthy diet. For a bit, I had a personal trainer. He would always tell me stories about guys he trained that were super fit and seemed like they were in great health, but they ate like shit and ended up having heart attacks and all that in their 40's anyways.
      - malfist 2y ago
        Ozempic makes it so much easier to have a healthy diet too. I've been taking it for ~5 months now, losing a steady ~0.75lb/wk which is a perfectly health rate to lose at. Greasy, fatty, hyper processed foods are a quick trip to nausea-ville for me. The thought of a meatlovers pizza physically turns my stomach now. I am irrationally happy when my partner wants to go out to eat and we go somewhere that has grilled salmon on a salad. I'm not being driven by all the little fats and salts and cheeses they add to food to make it more additive, I can freely choose, and enjoy, healthier less processed options. It's also crazy the portion sizes. Like I'm losing just under a pound a week, that should mean I have roughly a 400 calorie a day deficit (roughly 1.5 klondke bars). I routinely eat half of what's served in restaurants, or a third, and still have a minuscule deficit. Portion sizes in the US are just too damn big, and everyone expects them. My partner has found it harder to eat large meals since I'm not eating large meals and he's lost weight too. It's been fantastic for both of us.
    - the_real_cher 2y ago
      Simply not being fat has a whole lot of health benefits...sarcopenic or not its a step in the right direction
  - the_real_cher 2y ago
    > But we all know it will be used just for the pill popping convenience. Hell yeah sounds good to me.
  - proteal 2y ago
    Most of weight loss actually happens in the kitchen, not the gym. A candy bar is roughly equivalent to a 20 minute run, in terms of Calories. Weight loss drugs surpress appetite urges. Even if you got super fit on the drug, without long term habit changes, most people are likely to put back on the weight quickly. Somewhat counter intuitively, fat people tend to have strong muscles to move all their mass around. My understanding with these drugs is that they artificially inhibit cravings, reducing the urge to eat, thus effectively stimulating weight loss. As soon as the drug stops being administered, the cravings return (and thus the weight) regardless of how fit you are. Just as an anecdote, I used to not understand how people got so fat. Just eat less lol? I’ve been a little light for my size pretty much my whole life, so I didn’t quite understand. In fact, if it were up to me I probably wouldn’t eat at all. So the concept of being overweight was foreign to me and I assumed that fat people must be lazy/weak/whatever. As I got older and a little more in tune with my body, I noticed what sugar cravings are really like. And my god, when that part of the brain complains, it gets front and center stage. I specifically remember trying hard to resist reaching for a soda for like an hour. I conceded and drank one. I couldn’t focus otherwise. Then I realized that there are people (typically easily spotted) that live every day of their life like this. And I get that the brain is hardwired for gluttony- I will literally never eat enough food in my life- so it’s a rather natural thing to want Calories. I’m lucky that I’ve got a passable relationship with food. I feel for those who struggle with it. I’m also glad that there is a stop-gap in drugs like ozempic that help effectively curtail eating, today. I’m also hopeful that the drugs of tomorrow will be even safer and more effective than we have now and that the systemic sources of obesity in society erode away. I think the future is only getting brighter (and lighter) for the millions struggling with their weight.
    - orwin 2y ago
      As an ex-obese, you partly understand the issue. It's true that craving are omnipresent (still are for me, and I'm at 25 BMI now, used to be 34). The main issue is hunger and physical pain caused by hunger though. It's an hormonal imbalance, I 'fixed' it by fasting (you need access, time and money to do that in a controlled way, but you can also wing it. Careful, the second day is extremely painful). If you can fix it with medication and without torturing yourself (which the fast felt like), more power to everyone. [edit] also you have a pretty empathic way of thinking.
  - spacemadness 2y ago
    I highly doubt your thesis. People losing weight with no effort is not going to enable them to put in effort to actually get fit. Especially later in life for folks that have spent most of their adult years not moving a lot. Coupled with that is the potential muscle loss from losing weight this way; trying to regain that lost muscle could be discouraging at first, especially without the right diet.
    - AtlasBarfed 2y ago
      My "theory" is about the evolution standards of beauty, not what people will actually do when they get thin. Getting fit is a big psychological and lifestyle barrier, I agree. But, not having an excess 50-200 lbs sure helps if someone does try to start.
  - consteval 2y ago
    > People are lazy, I get it No I don't think you do. We are dealing with a global crisis of obesity. We have a disease more prolific than ever before. There is something about the human brain that is wrong or imcompatible with the modern surplus of food. Something about our reward centers doesn't work. Not with modern society. Addiction of this scale cannot be solved with individual actions. "Just stop" doesn't save an alcoholic, nor does it save a smoker. Fundamentally we need to rewrite how we view obesity. We need solutions. Not more of this "try harder" fluff. Because it just doesn't work. If what you're saying is true, we wouldn't be in this mess. Obesity is more complex than we give it credit. It goes back to the food industry, health industry, advertisement. We can't just ignore everything and continue our "do nothing" approach. This is not a discipline problem, this is a human problem. The solution MUST then target humans, not their actions. If that's a drug, for now, that's fine.
    - AtlasBarfed 2y ago
      Except there are classes of people (often athletes or former athletes) that are spectacularly good at using exercise/staying fit. And there are examples like Iceland (this is secondhand from when Iceland made the World Cup, I don't have stats) where strongly enforced/encouraged sports participation leads to huge generational improvements in overall health. Exercise has a 1 month hump. You need to stick to it for 1 month before it sticks and your body's endorphin rush + increased pain tolerance overcomes the initial discomfort/shock of exercise. One month is obviously a long way. It does seem insurmountable to some degree based on decades of slow descent to the obesity valley that is America, but there are counterexamples in the world. But we also have never had a government that REALLY embraced comprehensive fitness and health policies over a generational timespan, despite ample evidence it would improve productivity, reduce health care costs, increase mental health, improve quality of life, increase intelligence, improve cooperation / social interaction / culture, and probably increase fecundity and turn around the demographic declines of advanced first world economies. That means extensive changes to schooling, heavily incentivizing the reconfiguration of urban centers for more human power transport, lots of facilities, probably a sea change of health care policy. There are huge and powerful lobbies that would probably kill those initiatives, from big corn syrup, big tobacco, big media, AMA, etc.
- Eumenes 2y ago
  "Fat" back then was roughly a BMI of 23-27. Average American BMI is around 30 today.
  - the_real_cher 2y ago
    That's because there was no processed food and high fructose corn syrup back then so 27 is probably the max BMI they can reach. Nowadays the sky's the limit for how beautiful one can be.
- EPWN3D 2y ago
  That won't happen because it never happened in the first place. The people of the middle ages were like us -- they broadly liked slender people, women with perky breasts, and men with broad shoulders. This should not be surprising. Attraction is pretty hard-wired into humans by evolution, and for most of our existence, food has been scarce. There is absolutely no reason why a time of more plentiful food due to agriculture (relative to most of human history) would have resulted in changing the body types we generally prefer. To say nothing of evolution's timescales, which are measured in tens of thousands of generations for significant changes like that. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8044k7/is_it_true_that_the_beauty_ideal_in_medieval/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8044k7/is_it...
  - the_real_cher 2y ago
    Gotta love using reddit as a source. Redditors unite!
    - EPWN3D 2y ago
      The post has a ton of links, and r/askhistorians is one of the most heavily vetted and moderated subreddits in existence. I'm sorry it's not what you wanted to hear, but no, fat people were not attractive in the middle ages because of food scarcity. Because there was no food scarcity. Relative to human history at the time, there was an abundance of food.
jncfhnb 2y ago
> “We’re redneck enough to be fat, but smart enough to do something about it,” says Mary Sansom Quite the quote
tartuffe78 2y ago
I was wondering if there really are no negative long term side effects, could this finally lead to universal healthcare in the US? It seems like a lot of our costs (aside from the obvious medical industrial complex skimming massive profits) comes from health complications related to our obesity epidemic.
- anon7725 2y ago
  IIRC the GLP-1 drugs have a black box warning for thyroid cancer, as well as some other potential side effects. Still, I think NNT < NNH all things considered.
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    Fractyl Healthcare is working on a gene therapy targeting this pathway. Chronic maintenance is a temporary hack imho. Long term fix is patching the genetic bug around a miswired reward center. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38495653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38495653
    - readthenotes1 2y ago
      So a drug to counteract the effects of the drug to counteract the effects of a poisonous calory-provisioning industry. Perfect!
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - toomuchtodo 2y ago
        Sort of? Gene therapy is a permanent fix where as GLP-1 agonist compounds are needed perpetually for maintenance. https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/dd4f2296-2186-45d6-b42a-10966b4f9263 https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/dd4f2296-2186-45d6-b42a-10966b4...
    - fragmede 2y ago
      there's also ultrasonic brain surgery to fix the miswired reward center. https://youtu.be/7BGtVJ3lBdE?t=869 https://youtu.be/7BGtVJ3lBdE?t=869
r0ckarong 2y ago
Industrial made problems need pharmaceutical made solutions. Second week on Mounjaro and it's crazy how all my overeating triggers, hunger pangs and sugar cravings are just gone.
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
  Yep, but Mounjaro is not approved for weight loss. It's for type-2 diabetes. After a month of Wegovy, I was barely eating and not hungry. Have lost 35 lbs. so far after going just on the side of obesity due to complications of the only antidepressant I've ever found to pull me mostly out of otherwise treatment-resistant depression. Too often, people will casually blame others for not having "stronger self-control" when the motivations, opportunities, and compounding factors make it extremely difficult or impractical to resist. Even so, Medicare doesn't cover Wegovy or Zepbound, but will cover Ozempic and Mounjaro because it's all about discriminating against obesity.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
moribvndvs 2y ago
[flagged]
- ed 2y ago
  You chose an insult over encouragement. Why do that? Be kinder
  - ughjkiu 2y ago
    [flagged]
- malfist 2y ago
  There's no call to insult something like that. If they choose to eat at Chick-fil-a because they don't have time (or don't know how to cook) that's fine. They should be commended on their food choices there. Chick-fil-a has so many fatty, fried food options and they choose something grilled, with vegetables. Besides, what toddler do you know of will choose to eat a kale salad?
  - ASalazarMX 2y ago
    The only questionable choices I see are 1. Chicken nuggets. Processed mystery meat. 2. BBQ sauce. Basically seasoned high fructose corn syrup. 3. Coke Zero. Artificial sweeteners can cause/aggravate insulin resistance. Still a level down from fried chicken and chips, every step in the right direction counts.
    - consteval 2y ago
      > Artificial sweeteners can cause/aggravate insulin resistance In regards to Aspartame this isn't true. Or, at least, the Jury is still out. There's competing evidence from studies.
    - cma 2y ago
      Grilled nuggets there are not "processed mystery meat."
- 2y ago
Eumenes 2y ago
[flagged]
- Etheryte 2y ago
  This isn't really a constructive way to look at the problem and I'm saying this as a former coach. If it was as simple as just eat less and exercise, everyone would do it. The thing is, it's not. It might be for you, in which case good for you, but a lot of people have been brought up with absolutely disastrous food habits, mental triggers for stress eating, etc, and all of these are ingrained in their body. It's often to the point that the way their body functions is fundamentally different from how it does for other people. Biological signals, their amplitude, how your brain perceives them, it's all way off. All of this is a very long winded way to say: these people are unwell and rather than criticize them for being lazy or unwilling, we need to support them. Many (most?) of them come from an environment where they had very little say in achieving a positive outcome and now they're stuck with what they got. Breaking out of it is hard — statistically nearly all eat less and exercise regimes fail. Rewiring your body isn't an easy thing to do.
  - samdunham 2y ago
    But it IS as simple as eat less and exercise. And no, not everyone would do it. Everyone isn't doing it. Because people are lazy, want instant gratification, and consequence-free eating habits. If 99.9999% of the people taking these drugs were to cut their caloric intake to something reasonable (1500-2000 calories per day) and exercise for half an hour to an hour a day, every single one of them would lose weight. It's not that they can't, it's that they don't want to.
    - Etheryte 2y ago
      This is like saying not being poor is as simple as earn more and spend less. It's simple as. It's not that people can't do this, it's that they don't want to. Hopefully you can see how absurd this framing is.
      - 2y ago
Frivolous9421 2y ago
[dead]
AI_beffr 2y ago
these medications are pulling the same metabolic levers as the ketogenic/carnivore diet. the exact same thing happens on each: everybody gets pregnant after not being able to, everybody loses fat, everybody is cured or nearly cured of alcohol addiction and various mental health ailments (keep an eye out for the impact of ozempic-like medications on PTSD), heart disease and many other kinds of diseases are massively improved. ozempic doesnt do this for everyone and there are way more and more serious side-effects with ozempic but the overlap is absolutely unmistakable. keto and these medications arent making people lose weight, they are making people fundamentally healthier (ignoring side effects). they are doing something that addresses the pathological nature of an agriculture-based diet. some day very soon, we will discover the exact pathways and levers that are being modulated by these therapies and we will create a solution that wipes out most modern diseases in one fell swoop with essentially no side effects. that is coming very soon because with ozempic, there is now a north star for researchers to follow. very exciting times. savor and appreciate this insane, backwards and brutal time before the great health revolution while you still can!
- spacemadness 2y ago
  Is this comment AI generated? It reads like nonsense.
  - AI_beffr 2y ago
    no. it might seem strange for someone who is not aware of whats going on. reality is often strange
facialwipe 2y ago
I thought this article was never going to end. It’s essentially the same point repeated three times.
baby-yoda 2y ago
No such thing as free lunch. Up to the individual to decide whats worse but the "miracle cure" positioning these drugs are enjoying in popular media is troubling. https://www.masseyeandear.org/news/press-releases/2024/07/prescription-weight-loss-drugs-linked-to-blinding-condition https://www.masseyeandear.org/news/press-releases/2024/07/pr...
- hombre_fatal 2y ago
  Human technology is nothing but free lunch after free lunch after free lunch for centuries. And the rate of free lunches is only increasing.
  - phmqk76 2y ago
    Very well said.
  - consteval 2y ago
    Thank you. "No free lunch" is perhaps my least favorite saying. Free lunch is good. We should strive for free lunch. You can actually make things better with no cost. These days is feels like a good segment of the population is decidedly anti-solution. Doesn't matter what the solution is, they don't want it. They take a "do nothing and hope it works" approach to everything.
    - baby-yoda 2y ago
      IMO "No free lunch" is not anti-solution at all, on the contrary its a problem solving (engineering?) tenet that simply acknowledges there are always trade offs and constraints. Just like any software engineering project can't be expected to do everything for all people with no cost. The "magic pill of health" aura that surrounds these new drugs is clearly opaque in terms of what the trade offs are, partly because its still way too early to know. Back to my original post, there is some evidence of risk of going blind as a result from taking Ozempic et al. Might be worth the risk for some, even many. I'm fully in support of options and letting people make informed choices. Informed being the key word here. It will take time for things to shake out, I do hope there is a net positive since we are talking about millions of people after all.
tzs 2y ago
"South Park" did a special on this, "The End of Obesity", which is available on Paramount+. It's hilarious, and, as is often the case with South Park, also quite accurate in the underlying themes.
hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
Ozempic is a dosage for type-2 diabetes, Wegovy is a dosage for weight loss due to obesity. It's the same medication, but FUD scapegoating or conflating one with the other leads to misinformation.

18 points by cwwc 2y ago

cwwc 2y ago

https://archive.ph/P8A8p https://archive.ph/P8A8p

alirate 2y ago

[flagged]

the_real_cher 2y ago

With the advent of Ozympic, it would be cool if at some point being slim became so commonplace and boring that we flipped back to being attracted to fat people like the middle ages.

zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
A town full of people with stinky burps
AtlasBarfed 2y ago
Nah, it will either lead to: - more trendiness of muscles/fitness - plastic surgery (like the russian/housewives-of inflated lips) People are lazy, I get it, but ozempic should provide the enabler for big people to get fit: it gets rid of a whole lot of fat that increases stresses on their joints. So you lose weight with ozempic, and then you could ... ideally ... start a good fitness program. But we all know it will be used just for the pill popping convenience.
- yoyohello13 2y ago
  Yes, Ozempic removes the fat (and obesity related health problems) but doesn't remove the need for exercise. Exercise has a whole host of positive effects beyond weight management. I believe Ozempic will probably lead to a lot of thin, but sarcopenic people.
  - danielvaughn 2y ago
    It also doesn't remove the need for a healthy diet. For a bit, I had a personal trainer. He would always tell me stories about guys he trained that were super fit and seemed like they were in great health, but they ate like shit and ended up having heart attacks and all that in their 40's anyways.
    - malfist 2y ago
      Ozempic makes it so much easier to have a healthy diet too. I've been taking it for ~5 months now, losing a steady ~0.75lb/wk which is a perfectly health rate to lose at. Greasy, fatty, hyper processed foods are a quick trip to nausea-ville for me. The thought of a meatlovers pizza physically turns my stomach now. I am irrationally happy when my partner wants to go out to eat and we go somewhere that has grilled salmon on a salad. I'm not being driven by all the little fats and salts and cheeses they add to food to make it more additive, I can freely choose, and enjoy, healthier less processed options. It's also crazy the portion sizes. Like I'm losing just under a pound a week, that should mean I have roughly a 400 calorie a day deficit (roughly 1.5 klondke bars). I routinely eat half of what's served in restaurants, or a third, and still have a minuscule deficit. Portion sizes in the US are just too damn big, and everyone expects them. My partner has found it harder to eat large meals since I'm not eating large meals and he's lost weight too. It's been fantastic for both of us.
  - the_real_cher 2y ago
    Simply not being fat has a whole lot of health benefits...sarcopenic or not its a step in the right direction
- the_real_cher 2y ago
  > But we all know it will be used just for the pill popping convenience. Hell yeah sounds good to me.
- proteal 2y ago
  Most of weight loss actually happens in the kitchen, not the gym. A candy bar is roughly equivalent to a 20 minute run, in terms of Calories. Weight loss drugs surpress appetite urges. Even if you got super fit on the drug, without long term habit changes, most people are likely to put back on the weight quickly. Somewhat counter intuitively, fat people tend to have strong muscles to move all their mass around. My understanding with these drugs is that they artificially inhibit cravings, reducing the urge to eat, thus effectively stimulating weight loss. As soon as the drug stops being administered, the cravings return (and thus the weight) regardless of how fit you are. Just as an anecdote, I used to not understand how people got so fat. Just eat less lol? I’ve been a little light for my size pretty much my whole life, so I didn’t quite understand. In fact, if it were up to me I probably wouldn’t eat at all. So the concept of being overweight was foreign to me and I assumed that fat people must be lazy/weak/whatever. As I got older and a little more in tune with my body, I noticed what sugar cravings are really like. And my god, when that part of the brain complains, it gets front and center stage. I specifically remember trying hard to resist reaching for a soda for like an hour. I conceded and drank one. I couldn’t focus otherwise. Then I realized that there are people (typically easily spotted) that live every day of their life like this. And I get that the brain is hardwired for gluttony- I will literally never eat enough food in my life- so it’s a rather natural thing to want Calories. I’m lucky that I’ve got a passable relationship with food. I feel for those who struggle with it. I’m also glad that there is a stop-gap in drugs like ozempic that help effectively curtail eating, today. I’m also hopeful that the drugs of tomorrow will be even safer and more effective than we have now and that the systemic sources of obesity in society erode away. I think the future is only getting brighter (and lighter) for the millions struggling with their weight.
  - orwin 2y ago
    As an ex-obese, you partly understand the issue. It's true that craving are omnipresent (still are for me, and I'm at 25 BMI now, used to be 34). The main issue is hunger and physical pain caused by hunger though. It's an hormonal imbalance, I 'fixed' it by fasting (you need access, time and money to do that in a controlled way, but you can also wing it. Careful, the second day is extremely painful). If you can fix it with medication and without torturing yourself (which the fast felt like), more power to everyone. [edit] also you have a pretty empathic way of thinking.
- spacemadness 2y ago
  I highly doubt your thesis. People losing weight with no effort is not going to enable them to put in effort to actually get fit. Especially later in life for folks that have spent most of their adult years not moving a lot. Coupled with that is the potential muscle loss from losing weight this way; trying to regain that lost muscle could be discouraging at first, especially without the right diet.
  - AtlasBarfed 2y ago
    My "theory" is about the evolution standards of beauty, not what people will actually do when they get thin. Getting fit is a big psychological and lifestyle barrier, I agree. But, not having an excess 50-200 lbs sure helps if someone does try to start.
- consteval 2y ago
  > People are lazy, I get it No I don't think you do. We are dealing with a global crisis of obesity. We have a disease more prolific than ever before. There is something about the human brain that is wrong or imcompatible with the modern surplus of food. Something about our reward centers doesn't work. Not with modern society. Addiction of this scale cannot be solved with individual actions. "Just stop" doesn't save an alcoholic, nor does it save a smoker. Fundamentally we need to rewrite how we view obesity. We need solutions. Not more of this "try harder" fluff. Because it just doesn't work. If what you're saying is true, we wouldn't be in this mess. Obesity is more complex than we give it credit. It goes back to the food industry, health industry, advertisement. We can't just ignore everything and continue our "do nothing" approach. This is not a discipline problem, this is a human problem. The solution MUST then target humans, not their actions. If that's a drug, for now, that's fine.
  - AtlasBarfed 2y ago
    Except there are classes of people (often athletes or former athletes) that are spectacularly good at using exercise/staying fit. And there are examples like Iceland (this is secondhand from when Iceland made the World Cup, I don't have stats) where strongly enforced/encouraged sports participation leads to huge generational improvements in overall health. Exercise has a 1 month hump. You need to stick to it for 1 month before it sticks and your body's endorphin rush + increased pain tolerance overcomes the initial discomfort/shock of exercise. One month is obviously a long way. It does seem insurmountable to some degree based on decades of slow descent to the obesity valley that is America, but there are counterexamples in the world. But we also have never had a government that REALLY embraced comprehensive fitness and health policies over a generational timespan, despite ample evidence it would improve productivity, reduce health care costs, increase mental health, improve quality of life, increase intelligence, improve cooperation / social interaction / culture, and probably increase fecundity and turn around the demographic declines of advanced first world economies. That means extensive changes to schooling, heavily incentivizing the reconfiguration of urban centers for more human power transport, lots of facilities, probably a sea change of health care policy. There are huge and powerful lobbies that would probably kill those initiatives, from big corn syrup, big tobacco, big media, AMA, etc.
Eumenes 2y ago
"Fat" back then was roughly a BMI of 23-27. Average American BMI is around 30 today.
- the_real_cher 2y ago
  That's because there was no processed food and high fructose corn syrup back then so 27 is probably the max BMI they can reach. Nowadays the sky's the limit for how beautiful one can be.
EPWN3D 2y ago
That won't happen because it never happened in the first place. The people of the middle ages were like us -- they broadly liked slender people, women with perky breasts, and men with broad shoulders. This should not be surprising. Attraction is pretty hard-wired into humans by evolution, and for most of our existence, food has been scarce. There is absolutely no reason why a time of more plentiful food due to agriculture (relative to most of human history) would have resulted in changing the body types we generally prefer. To say nothing of evolution's timescales, which are measured in tens of thousands of generations for significant changes like that. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8044k7/is_it_true_that_the_beauty_ideal_in_medieval/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8044k7/is_it...
- the_real_cher 2y ago
  Gotta love using reddit as a source. Redditors unite!
  - EPWN3D 2y ago
    The post has a ton of links, and r/askhistorians is one of the most heavily vetted and moderated subreddits in existence. I'm sorry it's not what you wanted to hear, but no, fat people were not attractive in the middle ages because of food scarcity. Because there was no food scarcity. Relative to human history at the time, there was an abundance of food.

jncfhnb 2y ago

> “We’re redneck enough to be fat, but smart enough to do something about it,” says Mary Sansom Quite the quote

tartuffe78 2y ago

I was wondering if there really are no negative long term side effects, could this finally lead to universal healthcare in the US? It seems like a lot of our costs (aside from the obvious medical industrial complex skimming massive profits) comes from health complications related to our obesity epidemic.

anon7725 2y ago
IIRC the GLP-1 drugs have a black box warning for thyroid cancer, as well as some other potential side effects. Still, I think NNT < NNH all things considered.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  Fractyl Healthcare is working on a gene therapy targeting this pathway. Chronic maintenance is a temporary hack imho. Long term fix is patching the genetic bug around a miswired reward center. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38495653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38495653
  - readthenotes1 2y ago
    So a drug to counteract the effects of the drug to counteract the effects of a poisonous calory-provisioning industry. Perfect!
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - toomuchtodo 2y ago
      Sort of? Gene therapy is a permanent fix where as GLP-1 agonist compounds are needed perpetually for maintenance. https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/dd4f2296-2186-45d6-b42a-10966b4f9263 https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/dd4f2296-2186-45d6-b42a-10966b4...
  - fragmede 2y ago
    there's also ultrasonic brain surgery to fix the miswired reward center. https://youtu.be/7BGtVJ3lBdE?t=869 https://youtu.be/7BGtVJ3lBdE?t=869

r0ckarong 2y ago

Industrial made problems need pharmaceutical made solutions. Second week on Mounjaro and it's crazy how all my overeating triggers, hunger pangs and sugar cravings are just gone.

hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
Yep, but Mounjaro is not approved for weight loss. It's for type-2 diabetes. After a month of Wegovy, I was barely eating and not hungry. Have lost 35 lbs. so far after going just on the side of obesity due to complications of the only antidepressant I've ever found to pull me mostly out of otherwise treatment-resistant depression. Too often, people will casually blame others for not having "stronger self-control" when the motivations, opportunities, and compounding factors make it extremely difficult or impractical to resist. Even so, Medicare doesn't cover Wegovy or Zepbound, but will cover Ozempic and Mounjaro because it's all about discriminating against obesity.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

moribvndvs 2y ago

[flagged]

ed 2y ago
You chose an insult over encouragement. Why do that? Be kinder
- ughjkiu 2y ago
  [flagged]
malfist 2y ago
There's no call to insult something like that. If they choose to eat at Chick-fil-a because they don't have time (or don't know how to cook) that's fine. They should be commended on their food choices there. Chick-fil-a has so many fatty, fried food options and they choose something grilled, with vegetables. Besides, what toddler do you know of will choose to eat a kale salad?
- ASalazarMX 2y ago
  The only questionable choices I see are 1. Chicken nuggets. Processed mystery meat. 2. BBQ sauce. Basically seasoned high fructose corn syrup. 3. Coke Zero. Artificial sweeteners can cause/aggravate insulin resistance. Still a level down from fried chicken and chips, every step in the right direction counts.
  - consteval 2y ago
    > Artificial sweeteners can cause/aggravate insulin resistance In regards to Aspartame this isn't true. Or, at least, the Jury is still out. There's competing evidence from studies.
  - cma 2y ago
    Grilled nuggets there are not "processed mystery meat."
2y ago

Eumenes 2y ago

[flagged]

Etheryte 2y ago
This isn't really a constructive way to look at the problem and I'm saying this as a former coach. If it was as simple as just eat less and exercise, everyone would do it. The thing is, it's not. It might be for you, in which case good for you, but a lot of people have been brought up with absolutely disastrous food habits, mental triggers for stress eating, etc, and all of these are ingrained in their body. It's often to the point that the way their body functions is fundamentally different from how it does for other people. Biological signals, their amplitude, how your brain perceives them, it's all way off. All of this is a very long winded way to say: these people are unwell and rather than criticize them for being lazy or unwilling, we need to support them. Many (most?) of them come from an environment where they had very little say in achieving a positive outcome and now they're stuck with what they got. Breaking out of it is hard — statistically nearly all eat less and exercise regimes fail. Rewiring your body isn't an easy thing to do.
- samdunham 2y ago
  But it IS as simple as eat less and exercise. And no, not everyone would do it. Everyone isn't doing it. Because people are lazy, want instant gratification, and consequence-free eating habits. If 99.9999% of the people taking these drugs were to cut their caloric intake to something reasonable (1500-2000 calories per day) and exercise for half an hour to an hour a day, every single one of them would lose weight. It's not that they can't, it's that they don't want to.
  - Etheryte 2y ago
    This is like saying not being poor is as simple as earn more and spend less. It's simple as. It's not that people can't do this, it's that they don't want to. Hopefully you can see how absurd this framing is.
    - 2y ago

Frivolous9421 2y ago

[dead]

AI_beffr 2y ago

these medications are pulling the same metabolic levers as the ketogenic/carnivore diet. the exact same thing happens on each: everybody gets pregnant after not being able to, everybody loses fat, everybody is cured or nearly cured of alcohol addiction and various mental health ailments (keep an eye out for the impact of ozempic-like medications on PTSD), heart disease and many other kinds of diseases are massively improved. ozempic doesnt do this for everyone and there are way more and more serious side-effects with ozempic but the overlap is absolutely unmistakable. keto and these medications arent making people lose weight, they are making people fundamentally healthier (ignoring side effects). they are doing something that addresses the pathological nature of an agriculture-based diet. some day very soon, we will discover the exact pathways and levers that are being modulated by these therapies and we will create a solution that wipes out most modern diseases in one fell swoop with essentially no side effects. that is coming very soon because with ozempic, there is now a north star for researchers to follow. very exciting times. savor and appreciate this insane, backwards and brutal time before the great health revolution while you still can!

spacemadness 2y ago
Is this comment AI generated? It reads like nonsense.
- AI_beffr 2y ago
  no. it might seem strange for someone who is not aware of whats going on. reality is often strange

facialwipe 2y ago

I thought this article was never going to end. It’s essentially the same point repeated three times.

baby-yoda 2y ago

No such thing as free lunch. Up to the individual to decide whats worse but the "miracle cure" positioning these drugs are enjoying in popular media is troubling. https://www.masseyeandear.org/news/press-releases/2024/07/prescription-weight-loss-drugs-linked-to-blinding-condition https://www.masseyeandear.org/news/press-releases/2024/07/pr...

hombre_fatal 2y ago
Human technology is nothing but free lunch after free lunch after free lunch for centuries. And the rate of free lunches is only increasing.
- phmqk76 2y ago
  Very well said.
- consteval 2y ago
  Thank you. "No free lunch" is perhaps my least favorite saying. Free lunch is good. We should strive for free lunch. You can actually make things better with no cost. These days is feels like a good segment of the population is decidedly anti-solution. Doesn't matter what the solution is, they don't want it. They take a "do nothing and hope it works" approach to everything.
  - baby-yoda 2y ago
    IMO "No free lunch" is not anti-solution at all, on the contrary its a problem solving (engineering?) tenet that simply acknowledges there are always trade offs and constraints. Just like any software engineering project can't be expected to do everything for all people with no cost. The "magic pill of health" aura that surrounds these new drugs is clearly opaque in terms of what the trade offs are, partly because its still way too early to know. Back to my original post, there is some evidence of risk of going blind as a result from taking Ozempic et al. Might be worth the risk for some, even many. I'm fully in support of options and letting people make informed choices. Informed being the key word here. It will take time for things to shake out, I do hope there is a net positive since we are talking about millions of people after all.

tzs 2y ago

"South Park" did a special on this, "The End of Obesity", which is available on Paramount+. It's hilarious, and, as is often the case with South Park, also quite accurate in the underlying themes.

hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago

Ozempic is a dosage for type-2 diabetes, Wegovy is a dosage for weight loss due to obesity. It's the same medication, but FUD scapegoating or conflating one with the other leads to misinformation.