But for fat people, the calculus looks different.
A decision to take semaglutides is a decision between the long-term negative effects of obesity *now*, or the possibility of long-term negative effects *later.*
Anecdotally, trans people have a similar calculus. Going unmedicated/unsupported brings significant mental health risk now[1], whereas going on hormone replacement may or may not cause complications much later in life (osteoperosis, hepotoxicity issues for some treatments, etc).
Either way, you gotta get to the "later in life" part before you can worry about the outlook there.
1: a CDC meta-review said that 26% of surveyed US trans students attempted suicide this year, N=20,103 surveyed, ~660 of which were trans. https://archive.ph/0H81G
It's worth noting that surgery isn't the only option. Hormone therapy has also shown to reduce suicide risk, which is more accessible across socioeconomic strata.
There's a meta-analysis here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10027312/
The research is also highly motivated. A researcher who found that sex change operations were harmful would be targeted for endless harassment by gender activists, if they could get published at all.
The fact that people can decide they’re not trans is not particularly material. This is very uncommon.
The conspiracy that such research must be politically motivated is a contrived argument and also falsely paints a dichotomy of saying that it must either help or harm. My assumption before doing the research was that they would find no effect.
You really lost us with this.
Many, MANY people dally with the idea of being trans and decide it's not for them. This is extremely common, and is probably the overwhelming majority outcome for all people who are ever trans-curious.
Show your research please.
A researcher who found this would be feted by the conservative/evangelical wing of the US political spectrum. They would stand to make a ton of money in the book and personal appearance circuit.
Depending on which study you look at, up to 80% of people who attempt lifestyle modification end up gaining the weight right back.
So yes, it's theoretically possible for everyone under ideal circumstances, but in the real world most people don't succeed. We can argue over why that happens - but the statistics remain.
So again... given these abysmal odds, for the 80% of people who try and (repeatedly) fail at lifestyle modification, what is the least bad alternative?
> 1: a CDC meta-review said that 26% of surveyed US trans students attempted suicide this year, N=20,103 surveyed, ~660 of which were trans. https://archive.ph/0H81G
This paper also finds that 5% of cisgender male and 11% of cisgender female students (out of ~8k surveyed for each) attempted suicide in the past year. It's kind of strange, because the age <=18 suicide rate (of "completed" attempts) is much smaller, approximately 1 in 5,000 to 1 in 10,000 [1].
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr024.pdf, Figure 3
We've got 20 years of data on this class of drug. Certainly there could be some long term issues that we're not aware of yet, but it's not likely that there are significant issues that affect a large percentage of users after 30 years that didn't affect the small sample of users that have been using it for 20 years or the massive number of users that have been using it for 10.
The list goes on forever. I'm betting this ends the same way.
Who the fuck cares? If you're not overweight and are reasonably then you're already winning in physiological terms. If you can maintain a good quality of life into old age and then die, what more do you want? Going through life worrying about whether you're missing out on some marginal health benefit from the drug-of-the-moment is neurotic.
all in all general unease about dealing with symptoms and not the root cause of overweightness except in rare genetic cases, its overwhelmingly a dietary/exercise issue.
in this country the pill/drug is the answer and solution to everything but all this does is pile on more bandages without addressing the root cause which a very American solution.
I do not think the full ramifications are realized or knowable when there are profits to be made on both side of the fence, sort of like the whole opiate crisis in America started out as magazine ads blew up into a major crisis 20~30 years later.
There's a really cool Modern MBA video [1] on this topic btw :)
So does obesity, so there is that.
In mice.
So in general, if something _doesn't_ cause cancer in mice, then it's probably safe for humans. The reverse is not necessarily true.
Also, GLP-1 was associated with thyroid, not pancreatic cancer.
After what happened with OxyContin I think wed benefit from some skepticism when a new drug gets oversold.
By itself this might be an ok question, but in context it's rather useless....
Diet and obesity changes by both lowering and increasing different hormone outputs in your body. You're balancing the question of "how is this hormone" versus "How bad is obesity on the body". Well, the answer is in, obesity is extremely unhealthy on the body in both the short and long term.
Drug overdoses cause somewhere around 100k deaths per year in the US. Obesity complications related deaths are in the 250-300k deaths per year.
You can be skeptical as you want, but behind smoking, obesity is the worst epidemic in the US.
They're not new.
Don't think you need to worry about that one.
>Fluoride is a mineral.
Most notably (in the context of un-intuitiveness), is Xenon - it is't even a chemical, but an element - a noble one, which is almost nonsensical given most's flawed intuition.
> fluorine is not a noble gas
…what?
I haven’t the faintest clue what you’re talking about. I don’t think you know what the word “psychoactive” means, either. By your definition, water is psychoactive too. Is that what you’re suggesting?
Personally, I give my kid water with the flouride filtered out via RO, but will still use topical flouride, e.g. toothpaste and treatments applied by a dentist.
I hate how issues like this are politicized... if I raise this issue anywhere, including on here I expect to be attacked for being a "conspiracy theorist" and "like an anti-vaxxer" etc. There is something really wrong when you aren't allowed to even talk about both sides of an issue- especially if, like in my case, I have a doctorate in the life sciences and am qualified to have my own informed scientific opinion based on the evidence.
How would you define "domain of expertise"? Reviewing literature from other fields I don't research myself and forming an opinion on how it applies to my research is part of my job and something I do almost every day. I am even also called upon to peer review articles and grant proposals that are not within my direct field of research, as is general practice to get "outside opinions."
In cases like this, I am able to be familiar with basically everything published on the issue. However an actual researcher in a specific field will have additional knowledge and opinions from firsthand experience, that cannot be found in literature.
In general, I think it is okay to have your own opinion on something even if you aren't e.g. a professional whose whole life is focused exactly on that one issue. No formal training, credentials, or firsthand experience are necessarily required to have an informed opinion. However, you still have the burden of making sure you really understand the issue deeply - which is probably something like 100x the effort most people think it would be. Anyone can do that if they take the time to do so. I wish more people would.
In any case, this was a few years back when I looked into it, and it seems like these concerns have become more mainstream and less controversial in the last few years, e.g. https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/publications/monographs/mgraph08
>The weight-loss jabs have apparently helped people kick habits from smoking to shopping, although scientists remain wary about recommending it as an addiction treatment
You’re already benefiting.
the life expectancy of someone with bmi > 40 is -5 years
and for bmi > 50, -15 years.
So I suspect someone ~ 65 with high BMI should be on it, the side effects would be: living.
People can't be bothered to take a walk or eat a salad instead of a pizza more often, but are willingly working multiple days per month to afford these drugs.
This is absurd.
Being able to lose weight while continuing to eat is a wonderful thing. There is no virtue in spending your willpower making your body do something it desperately doesn't want to do. That's some puritan shit.
This is sexist and absolutely not true, there are plenty of women capable of pre-planning what they're going to eat and sticking with it. It's not "dieting", it's living a healthy lifestyle and not regularly eating junk.
Granted, once you go past middle age, it can become a bit more complicated.
Someone brought up doughnuts as an example, but that's a ridiculous source of calories: I could probably down half a dozen doughnuts (a daily calorie budget) and then go for a normal meal afterwards.
Eating only becomes disordered if one can't be bothered to eat healthy food as a rule and then freaks out about weight gain as a result.
We're about to see the nutritional equivalent.
If you are right then there should be money to be made by shorting the stock.
This whole thing is about trying to find shortcuts to get to the pleasure of having a nice body while circumventing the pain and effort.
Pain and efforts are important, they forge character like nothing else. If you want to live in a world where adult-children simply take their soma to get what they want, you're just not thinking about the consequences.
Why is this particular thing the bad thing?
Also, about headaches and more generally physical pain that you know is only temporary and not a sign of radical bodily malfunction, I say yes: enduring a reasonable amount is important to develop a tolerance to it and willpower.
What I'm saying isn't new anyway, everybody knows some amount of struggle is needed to temper character and not fall to the most insidious poison of our times: constant comfort.
I'm not, someone who doesn't really need it. For example, some average weight housewife who just wants to fit in a dress a little better.
And still, I won't use it even though I can afford it cause it's the long term consequences are not entirely understood.