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Comment by snapcaster | Hacker News Reader

I'd be worried about declaring victory too soon. I hope we don't discover any serious long term side effects but it does seem like it's rare to get a free lunch when trying to change our bodies

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GLP-1s have been around for decades. As far as medications go, that’s plenty long for “long-term” side effects to show up. Not saying it’s not possible, but it’s also not likely at this point.

Yes, and to be clear about where they were hiding, they started out as a treatment for diabetes.

There's enough evidence that it can cause liver damage that people taking semaglutide need to monitor their liver enzyme levels.

We should be monitoring liver enzymes anyway as part of yearly labs to identify issues like fatty liver. For what it's worth, since taking Zepbound, my borderline-but-not-yet-high enzymes are now smack in the middle. I'm on a few medications that have improved my health, but require monitoring to ensure that things don't go bad.

Obesity is now a bigger cause of liver failure and cirrhosis than alcoholism.

Frankly, I think even the most severe side effects we can dream up, short of dying, are probably nothing in comparison to the risks the people taking these drugs already face.

I never saw so much hand-wringing and pearl clutching when we started injecting botulism toxin into our faces to make them smoother.

Why are we so dead set on making sure overweight people struggle to put off the weight? Why can't it be easy for them?

I don't mock alcoholics for not being able to control themselves around alcohol. But we are determined to mock overweight people. Despite alcoholics having an easier time dealing with their vice.

Think about it, every other vice is controllable by simply avoiding the thing. Except for food. We must eat. It is a requirement. Having an issue with food is something you must deal with. You have to deal with the underlying issue. It requires true discipline. And it requires you to maintain that discipline 24/7. We don't ask that of any other vice.

I heard someone compare it to breathing. You have to breathe. You can't avoid breathing. But imagine a situation where taking deep breaths was considered undisciplined and weak. Sometimes your body craves air and you desperately want to inhale all the way, but people around you will roll their eyes at you. "There he goes again. He swears he just breathes through his nose, but we all know he opens his mouth when he thinks no one's watching."

There are already known short-term side effects, that's why it's not prescribed just for aesthetic weight loss, only to people whose weight poses health problems: https://www.gov.uk/drug-safety-update/glp-1-receptor-agonist... .

> There are already known short-term side effects, that's why it's not prescribed just for aesthetic weight loss, only to people whose weight poses health problems

I can't speak for countries other than the US, but here these drugs are being prescribed and used widely for entirely aesthetic reasons by many, many people.

Legally this isn't supposed to be true, but there are tons of online telehealth services that are clearly just rubberstamping prescriptions for anyone who wants one.

Same situation for prescriptions for pills to make your dick hard and baldness. There's CYA legal regulation for all of this but in the real world there's no actual barriers for anyone motivated to do so from getting their hands on this stuff.

> used widely for entirely aesthetic reasons by many, many people.

Do you have some numbers to back that up?

Go outside somewhere in the western world? i personally know dozens

As of May 2024, 6% of the US population was currently taking a GLP-1 agonist medication (https://www.kff.org/health-costs/poll-finding/kff-health-tra...).

The US also has a 40% obesity rate, so it isn't hard to imagine that 6% of them truly need the drug for medical reasons.

Post was made based on observational/anecdotal experience of knowing several people who take the drug without having had a hard medical need.

But its not hard to find various references to this as a widespread reality:

https://www.cato.org/blog/study-finds-glp-1s-are-effectively...

https://www.wired.com/story/glp1-ozempic-wegovy-semaglutide-...

https://www.aafp.org/pubs/fpm/blogs/inpractice/entry/glp-1-o...

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