Comment by joenot443 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by joenot443 | Hacker News Reader

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We normalized and encouraged obesity to the point where even the acknowledgement of one's state of obesity can be labeled as inappropriate speech. There's a growing sentiment that the term 'obese' is a slur [1] and should be removed from our lexicon.

Imagine if the same thing happened in the 60s as we started to understand the risks of smoking - all the smokers got together and decided that the science was hateful and they were being discriminated against. To rephrase a line from the article, using that silly hypothetical:

"In the end, says Flegal, defining smoking by number of cigarettes/day promotes anti-nicotine attitudes and tobacco stigma."

One can't navigate conversations about obesity without topics like "attitudes" and "stigma" being part of the conversation, but I don't think the hard biology of the results of excess fat tissue really cares.

I'm aware this is a bit of a goofy tangent, but hopefully it highlights the silliness of the current obesity discourse.

[1] https://conscienhealth.org/2022/04/obesity-how-does-a-diagno...

Nobody needs to smoke. Everybody needs to eat.

Abstinence is easier than moderation.

Well, nicotine is actually a pretty good ADHD treatment option.

That's part of the reason why we see more (adult) ADHD these days: people used to smoke a lot. (Chain smoking plus guzzling black coffee used to be the stereotype for eg journalists or editors.)

So nobody strictly _needs_ to smoke, but it helps some.

(Before you go and light one up: smoking is one of the worst ways to get nicotine. Use a patch or lozenge or vape instead.)

Oh, I had no idea about the ADHD/nicotine connection.

As a recently diagnosed & medicated ADHD person, who used to chain smoke and drink gallons of coffee daily, so much makes sense all of a sudden.

Thank you for making me aware of this!

FYI: Consumption of caffeine increases tolerance for nicotine. Drinking coffee and smoking will tend to lead to more smoking.

Not to dismiss the ADHD connection at all, but I would be hesitant to hang too much of the blame on that given the coffee drinking.

See https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine for more.

Wikipedia says

> The nicotine causes the receptors to release nitric oxide, which slows sensory inhibition causing a suppression of a subsequent stimuli

It seems unlikely that nicotine is the only discovered substance that causes this effect, meaning there should be a healthier method?

Yes, it's called amphetamine. There is an alternative to being fat too, it's called broccoli. The point isn't that there are no alternatives, just that choosing to smoke is just as morally justifiable as choosing to be fat. Whether that means you should judge both categories of people, or neither, is up to you, but there can be good reasons why people are in either category. Things are rarely so black and white in the real world.

> There is an alternative to being fat too, it's called broccoli

There's a lot of discussion on obesity and weight issues on hackernews that show zero shreds of empathy that it's just wild to me and this is not much different. I don't think anyone refutes that diet and exercise are great options to avoid/combat obesity, but statements like yours are as useful as walking up to a smoker and saying "just quit". You may be alienating the audience you are trying to help, given that is the intention

Congratulations on understanding my point!

> Yes, it's called amphetamine.

Just about any stimulant will work.

Eg adrenaline/epinephrine works fairly well. Your body produces that itself, especially when exercising or fidgeting. (And now you know one reason why ADHD people often fidget.)

Methylphenidate works, too. It's also known as Ritalin.

> meaning there should be a healthier method

Nicotine is a generally safe substance, as long as it's not delivered alongside acrylamide, VOC-carrying particulates, and tar, as it is in cigarettes.

Amazon sells the stuff in lozenge form for only 7 cents per mg.

The choice of food is in fact a choice, and moderation isn't really required if your main ingredient in a dish is egg plant. It might not be an exact match, but the similarities between nicotine addiction and food addiction are more numerous than the differences.

Just to be precise: nicotine by itself isn't really addictive. It's the whole cocktail of chemicals in cigarette smoke.

That's a very fair point. It's definitely not a 1:1 comparison between smoking and obesity.

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