Hacker News Reader

Comment by lenerdenator | Hacker News Reader

I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop on Ozempic. There has to be one. You're telling me that food has become so addictive and modern life so sedentary that we now need to fundamentally change human biochemistry to resolve the issues those things cause?

Also, rough name for the row.

View on HN

>You're telling me that food has become so addictive and modern life so sedentary that we now need to fundamentally change human biochemistry to resolve the issues those things cause?

Yes, absolutely yes.

The street has been famous under that name for centuries; the notoriety of Jimmy Savile is a blip in comparison.

Who is Jimmy Savile? I know I could google it easily and it's probably some guy who did something terrible, but it's certainly not a fact I could pull from memory. Savile row as a tailors' institution on the other hand is commonly known even over here on the mainland.

A children's TV presenter from the 70s to 90s, pedophile, and necrophilic.

Was protected by the BBC.

> change human biochemistry

We've done that in many ways already. For instance, essentially the entire adult population of the western world is dependent on and addicted to caffeine.

> I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop on Ozempic. There has to be one.

I don't have a problem with people using Ozempic other than if the people who really need it (e.g. type 2 diabetes people) aren't getting it cause they can't afford it or cause there's a shortage of it.

Having said that, I'm an obese person, and I still would not use it. I'd like to see in 10 years what the long term outcomes are before jumping in. I hope it's generally good for everyone. I don't need there to be an 'other shoe to drop' or some comeuppance for people who want to use it even just to look good. But I generally accept that there's no such thing as free lunches in life and that life is a series of tradeoffs.

I understand where you are coming from but as an obese person you should also be aware of the myriad of health problems that come with obesity.

Like the other commenter says, remember that obesity has many proven negative "long term outcomes" - as always, there is a trade off, taking the known danger over the unknown/possible danger

Food has been optimized for thousands of years to be as addicting as possible, so yes, that about sums it up. If anything the food has altered human biochemistry long before anything resembling Ozempic came to be and this is a course correction.

Packaged food optimization as an industrial, scientific process only really became a thing after WWII. Before that the effects were insignificant at the population level.

Thousands of years may refer to domestication of e.g. corn.

The other reply is correct in that I was speaking to a broader concept than just historically recent industrialization, but yes, that certainly accelerated things too.

I'd argue that it's a few thousand years old. Humans didn't evolve to live on grains, but for the last few thousand years we've gotten the bulk of our calories from rice & wheat flour.

In the US.

Savile Row has existed since 1735, predating the founding of the USA by 41 years.

I took it for six months and lost 20 pounds. I've been off it for a month and I've gained a few pounds back with my old appetite, so I will go on maintenance. It's healthy.

I don’t understand the bizarre haters that show up in every GLP-1 thread.

America is fat, and the health consequences of that make COVID look like a regular Tuesday.

“If people just X” clearly isn’t working, we need results and we need results fast. The state with the lowest obesity rate in 2025 is higher than the state with the highest obesity rate from 1990.

I'm not a hater (or OP), but I think it's because GLP-1s are often talked about as if they're a kind of miracle drug. And it's very rare that drugs don't have some kind of side effects, especially after long term use. They might not even be universal, and we might not know what they are for years.

Yes, I understand there's an obesity epidemic, I also understand that GLP-1 drugs can have benefits outside of overeating. But with any drug, it's worth being thoughtful about its use.

Whatever we do, we mustn't address the root cause. There's no money in it.

You're absolutely right. As we all know, the perfect must be the enemy of the good, and so we must shun and ban anything that might be helpful until we spontaneously reach a utopian society where there are no problems at all.

They’re not suggesting perfectly addressing the root cause, just actually addressing it at all.

And it's being addressed, but doing that takes a long time. In the meantime, real people are suffering actual hurt that is alleviated by this medicine.

Obesity is self inflicted, which means very low self control. Being obese and taking the easy way out signals zero willpower. It's laughable.

Yes. Or maybe, hormonal imbalance are so frequent more and more people become addicted to food?

My food addiction is caused by a grahlin hypersensitivity. It's hurtful to go on a fast, but I still do it every other year to rebalance myself. If I could have, I would probably also tried ozempic when I was obese. I'm now close the 'healthy' 25BMI so I probably won't though.

For people with addiction caused by insulin, I'd rather have them take ozempic than try the only method that worked for me.

I am a big proponent of fasts so I'm biased, but how is a weekly injection better than a free fast that you do once a year?

Because the injection is basically the only sustained weight loss mechanism that works on the population level. If a fast works for you knock yourself out. But fasts also come with risks like dehydration and malnourshiment.

Fasting hurts (the first one is really painful), demands prep, and I usually take time off when I do it. It only works with grahlin induced addiction. I will keep doing it because I have the habit now, but imho, on a macro perspective, openzic is better.

Only if the system was optimal to begin with - and it was very far from optimal so there is plenty of room to improve without so unknown hidden cost. Which is not so say that there is no unknown hidden cost - just that there doesn’t have to be.

>You're telling me that food has become so addictive

There are labs full of people whose job it is to specifically make food addictive.

More scientists and engineers have worked on the contents of a bag of Doritos than the Falcon 9.

Clearly yes?

The amazing part with ozempic is that it's been around for quite a while.

Timcast crew started talking about it on a recent show, with the clip on youtube: https://youtu.be/LsVk0O8ecF4?t=341 (jump to 5:41 if the timestamp link doesn't work).

Basically it seems to suppress appetite too much in some people, they starve without feeling like they're starving and end up with muscle and bone loss that doesn't rebound after going off of it.

The other shoe to drop will be when people start digging into why they are turning to food to feel good. Food is the what, not the why.

I don’t think you understand how GLP ones antagonist work if you think they’re fundamentally changing human biochemistry. The medication works by using your own chemical signaling to achieve the effect.

Let me guess, it will drop after the shoe drops from people getting covid vaccines?

This isn’t quite the forum for those kind of questions. But thank you for asking.

Why not?

Because, I reckon—as indicated by the downvotes and some comments—that at any appeal to human self-determination or a cultural/social redress of modern ideals that meddles in the reach of technological utopia runs contrary to the spirit of a significant portion of this community.

And my giving thanks wasn’t tendered in jest.

That said, I (and I suspect at least a few others here) have encountered questions like GP’s too, and would value HN-style patient, civil answers from the sorts of highly-informed biochemists and medical professionals who sometimes lurk around these parts :)

I’m curious what would disqualify this as an appropriate forum for “those kinds of questions,” and I’m not finding much in the guidelines ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) to explain it to me. Rather, it seems consistent with curiosity. In the interest of avoiding shallow dismissals, maybe you can help me understand why you’d exclude the GP’s question?

I can imagine myself asking something at a similar level about other topics that I’m fresh to, and I’d want to avoid asking unwelcome questions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com