4 ms·

>My opinion is to wait long enough to validate there are no long term harms, What's your threshold on that? How many years is "long enough"? Trying to calibrat

>My opinion is to wait long enough to validate there are no long term harms, What's your threshold on that? How many years is "long enough"? Trying to calibrate my own sense of risk.

dexwiz 1y ago
Not OP but 10-15 years for most drugs. Took about a decade for the general consensus around Oxy to change.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
  Haven't these been out for a very long time, just not for weight loss? A quick Wikipedia search shows Exenatide was FDA approved in 2005 for diabetes.
  - mapontosevenths 1y ago
    Ozempic itself has been in use for almost a decade now (originally approved for type 2 diabetes in 2017). Many millions of people have taken it, without much in the way of serious complication. Exenatide had been in use since about 2005, and by 2019 had more than a million people on it. Some of those patients have literally been on it for 20 years. It does have a worse side-effect profile than Ozempic (or the more modern GLP-1's like zepbound), but even then the benefits outweigh the risk for those diabetics. Today it is hard to argue the benefits of modern GLP-1s don't outweigh their risks. They've been extensively tested, the class of drug has been around for decades, and they are used by many millions of people. I personally lost 120 pounds on Zepbound in a little less than a year. It's been life changing, and anyone who thinks I might be less healthy now is very clearly wrong. Literally every aspect of my life has been greatly improved.
gryn 1y ago
I'm a late adopter to most things. my estimate would bigger than others and I would put it at 30-50years. I take smoking as a cautionary tale, in the beginning it was pushed as not just a recreational thing but a healthy activity that bring benefits with papers published to sing praises about it. my parents were even nudged by their teachers/doctors/etc when they were young to try smoking. now we all know that smoking is beyond bad and all that early "research" was just people paid off by big companies to promote it.
- daedrdev 1y ago
  I think a lot of people share similar concerns, but the benefits of a successfully therapy are so extreme it would take quite a lot to derail ozempic. People easily gain 5 or more years of lifespan by not being obese, avoid myriad related health conditions, and are truly much better off. It would take a lot to reduce someone's life expectancy by a comparable amount and we haven't seen that much besides gastrointestinal issues. We performed the surgical options like stomach reduction before this which come with serious danger for comparison
  - radiofreeeuropa 1y ago
    Under-discussed benefit: being able to have all your clothes actually fit at the same time (no wardrobe scattered between your "skinny" weight and your "fat" weight and rarely being in the right place for more than a handful of pieces to fit entirely correctly) so you can spend up a little on nicer clothes without worrying you'll only be able to wear them part of the time. Worst case, you start to pack on a little too much and they start getting tight, you increase the dose or go back on the drugs for a week or three (or just do it the old fashioned way—hey, it works some of the time, temporarily) and ta-da, right back where you want to be—you're not going to pack on weight and find yourself unable to lose, so buying "skinny clothes" isn't mortgaged against your future success at forcing yourself to eat less.
- krisoft 1y ago
  > I take smoking as a cautionary tale, in the beginning it was pushed as not just a recreational thing but a healthy activity While i agree the gist of what you are saying, also important to mention that humans started cultivating tobaco when mamoths still roamed the Earth. There was indeed a concentrated pro-smoking publicity campaign by tobaco manufacturers in the 1930s, but it was hardly “in the beginning” of our tobaco use.
- theshackleford 1y ago
  > with papers published to sing praises about it Links to these papers? I’ve always been curious because I’ve seen this claim many times, especially on HN but no one has ever managed to actually provide a source on one.
bradleyjg 1y ago
There’s two sides to that coin. Obesity has known long term harms. So what we are looking for in a deal breaker can’t be a small but statistically significant increase in some cancer or other. We’d need something as bad as smoking to outweigh the benefits.

>My opinion is to wait long enough to validate there are no long term harms, What's your threshold on that? How many years is "long enough"? Trying to calibrate my own sense of risk.

dexwiz 1y ago

Not OP but 10-15 years for most drugs. Took about a decade for the general consensus around Oxy to change.

2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
Haven't these been out for a very long time, just not for weight loss? A quick Wikipedia search shows Exenatide was FDA approved in 2005 for diabetes.
- mapontosevenths 1y ago
  Ozempic itself has been in use for almost a decade now (originally approved for type 2 diabetes in 2017). Many millions of people have taken it, without much in the way of serious complication. Exenatide had been in use since about 2005, and by 2019 had more than a million people on it. Some of those patients have literally been on it for 20 years. It does have a worse side-effect profile than Ozempic (or the more modern GLP-1's like zepbound), but even then the benefits outweigh the risk for those diabetics. Today it is hard to argue the benefits of modern GLP-1s don't outweigh their risks. They've been extensively tested, the class of drug has been around for decades, and they are used by many millions of people. I personally lost 120 pounds on Zepbound in a little less than a year. It's been life changing, and anyone who thinks I might be less healthy now is very clearly wrong. Literally every aspect of my life has been greatly improved.

gryn 1y ago

I'm a late adopter to most things. my estimate would bigger than others and I would put it at 30-50years. I take smoking as a cautionary tale, in the beginning it was pushed as not just a recreational thing but a healthy activity that bring benefits with papers published to sing praises about it. my parents were even nudged by their teachers/doctors/etc when they were young to try smoking. now we all know that smoking is beyond bad and all that early "research" was just people paid off by big companies to promote it.

daedrdev 1y ago
I think a lot of people share similar concerns, but the benefits of a successfully therapy are so extreme it would take quite a lot to derail ozempic. People easily gain 5 or more years of lifespan by not being obese, avoid myriad related health conditions, and are truly much better off. It would take a lot to reduce someone's life expectancy by a comparable amount and we haven't seen that much besides gastrointestinal issues. We performed the surgical options like stomach reduction before this which come with serious danger for comparison
- radiofreeeuropa 1y ago
  Under-discussed benefit: being able to have all your clothes actually fit at the same time (no wardrobe scattered between your "skinny" weight and your "fat" weight and rarely being in the right place for more than a handful of pieces to fit entirely correctly) so you can spend up a little on nicer clothes without worrying you'll only be able to wear them part of the time. Worst case, you start to pack on a little too much and they start getting tight, you increase the dose or go back on the drugs for a week or three (or just do it the old fashioned way—hey, it works some of the time, temporarily) and ta-da, right back where you want to be—you're not going to pack on weight and find yourself unable to lose, so buying "skinny clothes" isn't mortgaged against your future success at forcing yourself to eat less.
krisoft 1y ago
> I take smoking as a cautionary tale, in the beginning it was pushed as not just a recreational thing but a healthy activity While i agree the gist of what you are saying, also important to mention that humans started cultivating tobaco when mamoths still roamed the Earth. There was indeed a concentrated pro-smoking publicity campaign by tobaco manufacturers in the 1930s, but it was hardly “in the beginning” of our tobaco use.
theshackleford 1y ago
> with papers published to sing praises about it Links to these papers? I’ve always been curious because I’ve seen this claim many times, especially on HN but no one has ever managed to actually provide a source on one.

bradleyjg 1y ago

There’s two sides to that coin. Obesity has known long term harms. So what we are looking for in a deal breaker can’t be a small but statistically significant increase in some cancer or other. We’d need something as bad as smoking to outweigh the benefits.