This is the closet thing to a wonder drug for the 21st century. You can see the transformation ...people who used to be obese seeing the fat melt off, when nothing else seemed to work.
If that were true about the human condition in the same way that it’s true for conservation of mass, we wouldn't be living longer and healthier lives than our forebears. Yet here we are.
Of course we should be aware of side-effects. But there’s no law of nature that says there have to be any serious ones.
Take out infectious disease, post-partum maternal deaths, no sanitation, and obvious lifestyle choices like smoking, and are we really living healthier lives than prior generations? I'm not so convinced.
Now I'll take our modern scientific advances over not having them. Give me modern sanitation, surgery, antibiotics, and vaccines for sure. But I'm not sure I'd call the way many American elders around me are living in their 70s to be healthy lives. Many lack mobility, are obese, are on a fistful of prescription drugs daily, and have constant pain. Except for the ones that ate well and in moderation, didn't drink much, and exercised their entire lives.
I just hope people take these GPL-1 drugs but also get their bodies moving (particularly strength training).
I think we need a huge investment in physical therapy. Everyone who is obese and working to reduce their weight and increases their activity needs PT, and we need PT specialists who know how to work with heavy people. I know a lot of fat people (including myself) who get injured and discouraged trying to follow workout advice intended for people in substantially better physical condition, and also a lot who have had trouble finding trainers or physical therapists who know how to work with them.
And also totally agree that we need to invest in PT and educating PTs on how to work with people in larger bodies. As a formerly unhealthy person who only found exercise in their 30s, it's ridiculous to me that my high school gym requirements didn't teach me how to safely lift weights or use a gym. They would just let us use a barbell without any proper training, and the first time I tried to bench press with some friends (because we probably saw someone in a movie doing it) I injured myself. Every high school student should be learning how to use a gym, get through a yoga class, learn some calisthenics, etc. Set them up for their life so it's not so intimidating as an adult. Instead, at least for me in the 90s, it was a lot of playing basketball and baseball, nothing to keep me healthy on my own in my life.
Not saying it’s easy, and no it isn’t as simple as calories in, calories out, but it is close to that simple. Working out, running, weightlifting, all that can happen later. Eating “right” and just walking a lot can induce a lot of positives.
I'm always around 12-13% body fat, but to get them to show, absolutely, it's all diet. I'm vegetarian, so that probably works against me, but I've never had that 8% body fat ripped look even with all the activity I do in a week.
Those things you list are the bits which made our lives healthier. Just because you can list them doesn't mean they didn't happen.
John Adams: 90
Samuel Adams: 81
Benjamin Franklin: 84
This is medicine, not witchcraft.
I've also read anecdotal reports of skin burning sensations from people that take it.
If people can take it to lose weight and curb food addiction while also beginning strength training for long term health, I think that's a positive.
Obese people are also at much greater risk for diabetes, heart failure, kidney failure, liver failure, depression, anxiety and suicide.
If a drug can add 20 years to my lifespan, I'll take it and worry about long-term side effects later.
Because without the drug, there's a good chance I'd die from something else before reaching the long term.
The bigger problem is frankly the reaction you display, that even if the side effects were actually zero that people feel that’s “unfair” and that others shouldn’t be taking a pill to do something their personal body chemistry doesn’t do properly.
Your thyroid medication is really a moral failing, you see. Just eat less and your weight will remain healthy.
Weight lose drugs are just a shortcut for something that is possibly for the vast majority of people without any drugs. Don't get me wrong, they seem great! But a drug that can help with seizures, nerve pain, alcoholism and anxiety sounds a little more "wondery" to me.
I think pretty much anyone can find 5-6 hours in a week to go train something, it's really not much time at all.
These drugs are chemically induced intermittent fasting.
I’m okay with people saying “these drugs force people into healthy eating habits” but the weight loss itself is merely a symptom of the healthy eating habits that would be healthier on the body when done with discipline rather than chemically altering your digestion.
I have, and do, suffer from lack of discipline in facets of my own life.
I just want to be honest about these drugs.
I suppose that the drug also cures people with Parkinson's [0] through ... Discipline, right?
0: GLP-1 Receptor Agonists: A New Treatment in Parkinson’s Disease https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11011817/
Is there a better word that I can use in the future to ensure that my message is one of support free from misinformation?
I feel your link and the other studies showing it helps people with various other addictions is evidence against the drug being a “fat melter”.
1. Ignore the continual and catastrophic failure of the idea that we can will ourselves out of an increasing crisis
2. Pat themselves on the back for their smug victim blaming
Hence the negative reaction. I don’t have an alternative word for you to use.
Humans at a population level have severe limits on what they can deal with. This is why tech companies use dark patterns, because exploiting and abusing people until they can’t put up resistance works fantastically. Suggesting that the real solution to mass exploitation is just to have the discipline to not be exploited would and should receive a negative reaction.
Ultimately, the solution to obesity is to make the fix as easy to obtain as the primary causes of the problem. Can’t wait for a gambling and (working) smoking vaccine.
Yes
> These drugs are chemically induced intermittent fasting.
No, they're a type of calorie restriction, as is intermittent fasting.
This just seems painfully pedantic.
> Intermittent fasting is any of various meal timing schedules that cycle between voluntary fasting (or reduced calorie intake) and non-fasting over a given period.[1][2] Methods of intermittent fasting include alternate-day fasting,[3] periodic fasting, such as the 5:2 diet, and daily time-restricted eating.[1][4]
Treatments that are "one (or N) & done" tend to be surgical procedures which physical change your body or vaccines which train your immune system (which has a sort of viral memory bank).
Most other regular drug treatments are introducing chemicals into the body which your body consumes/breaks down/etc. The body is always self repairing, replacing cells, etc.
As a layperson, I conceptualize altering brain chemistry via a drug is a temporary thing the way adjusting your pools chemistry is. You have to constantly replenish with new chemicals as everything is constantly breaking down and changing.