Viagra's original purpose was for heart conditions, that purpose didn't make the headlines (or spam folders) either.
i.e. the benefits of the weight loss almost certainly outweigh any side effects that are likely to manifest.
0: most kids, I just got the disease instead and the vax later
Only fools would convince themselves a drug has no sideeffect.
The worst is that these drugs were created for legitimate use but are now being abused by what I would call lazy fat who can't get their finger out of their arse and start eating healthy.
When there is a natural, effective and no side effects alternative, why go the medication way.
A few years after graduation, for unrelated reasons, I was on antidepressants. I massively over-ate, became obese, gained stretch marks that will likely remain for life.
There was no voice in my head telling me I was even over-eating, there was no awareness of what I was doing to myself even when I felt the weird tingle in my belly that in retrospect was the tearing flesh that has the outward sign of a stretch mark — I ate without thought.
There is no "natural, effective" solution, because our natural instincts are at odds with our unnatural world.
Seriously — the US and Europe have not been in a remotely "natural" condition since over a century before I was born. Even the air we breathe is significantly different from its natural condition.
Why do you think I gave that example?
Ozempic is exactly the type of drug Unilevel/Nestlé would create if they were tasked with reducing obesity. I wonder if they'll include a free 7 day dose of it with Mars bars.
That's pretty much the exact opposite of what you seem to think it does, and is exactly the kind of thing that will hurt Nestlé's junk food line. (Though probably not their bottled tap water line).
Would you also tell people suffering from depression to just cheer the fuck up instead of going the medication way?
Similar to zero-calorie sugar substitutes, "too good to be true" isn't always the case. Sometimes new inventions really are just better.
The opioids thing is hardly comparable. Everybody clearly knew the risks (for the past 100+ years) and chose to ignore them. This is an almost entirely new type of drugs.
OxyContin was marketed to be the safe alternative to all opioids that came before it, impossible to become addicted to and extremely difficult to overdose from. This was a lie.
Well.. no since you cant really win anything. With pharmaceuticals on the other I hand I think 1 Oxycontin/etc. like “situation” would be a reasonable price to pay for let’s say 4 major successes.
You were talking about decades. Surely you noticed the advancements in treating cancer, HIV and a multitude of other conditions since the 90s?
> This was a lie.
Sure. But it’s on the same level as saying that filtered cigarettes don’t cause cancer. If a doctor actually believes that he’s just too dumb to be a doctor… (although I assume most safety claims were relative to other opioids and not in absolute terms?)
Are there any signs that the situation with Semaglutides is that similar? Yes they are new and not well understood drugs (well not really but sort of..) and it’s not inconceivable that their longterm cost might end up outweighing the benefits but I don’t really see any signs of an actual conspiracy yet.
Ozempic's mechanism of action is not "ramp up your metabolism" or "make you absorb fewer calories from food." It's "make the desire to eat less intense, making it easier to remain on a diet plan." That diet plan could be, "eat exactly the same things but less of them," but it will often be, "cut out unhealthy snacks" or whatever.
If people can't be convinced to eat carrots over chips, what makes you think they're going to suddenly eat carrots over chips after eating medication that makes them want to eat less?
I'm not sure what angle you are getting. There is tons of data that shows that yes, people lose weight on it.
A lot of people struggle with intense cravings for foods that they know to be unhealthy. These cravings stack up against their willpower and sometimes overcome that willpower and they eat in ways that they know are unhealthy.
If the cravings are less intense, willpower wins more often, cravings win less often.
I think that you will indeed see that some people on ozempic eat much the same mix of foods as before, but less so. But others will in fact change their dietary mix. And I'm pretty sure that the empirical evidence supports me on this.
Yes N=2, small sample sizes, but I could also see how being less snacky makes one less likely to eat chips. (Why I almost pathologically don't keep easy to eat food in my pantry, granted this can also backfire too).
If you don't care much for food then you don't mind eating the carrots and you don't mind losing the chips. If your entire life is food, then you do mind.
So dangerous to extrapolate from anecdotal observation like this. If I see old people smoking, doesn't mean smoking is safe. It just means it doesn't kill at 100% effectiveness.
If you wait long enough, everything has a 100% effectiveness.
People tend to over-estimate the impact of both smoking and obesity.
Depending on your priors, This may be a lot or not
studies estimate that moderate obesity takes about 2-3 years of life expectancy (defined as having a BMI of 30-35), only people with severe obesity (BMI of 40-45+) lose on average 6-13 years, comparable to smoking.
Given that severe obesity is still uncommon even in the rich world it only has a small impact on life expectancy overall.
Hunched over old people do not have the muscle mass to help keep them upright, I guess amongst other things.
Weightlifting can improve mobility by:
- strengthening muscles around joints allowing for more controlled movement.
- increasing flexibility: Dynamic movements in weightlifting, like squats, lunges, and overhead presses, can stretch and strengthen muscles simultaneously, improving flexibility over time.
- improving joint health because loading the joints with resistance can increase the production of synovial fluid, which helps lubricate joints and promote better movement.
- promoting balance and coordination because exercises often challenge stability and coordination, which can help improve motor control and range of motion in everyday movements.
Most people still have a car but you wouldn't think about taking the car to go buy bread for instance.
Americans walk the least out of all, followed by Australians. When I visit the the US for work. People sometimes stop and asked me if I'm ok because I'm carrying my groceries home from the store. People would say: "What are you doing? do you need help?" lol
Virtually nowhere is designed for walking outside of say New York, parts of San Fran etc.
This is really hard to believe. Moderate obesity has to shave at least 10 years off life expectancy.
A 70 year old man 6' tall with a BMI of ~35 weighs 260 lbs. That is pretty overweight.
Anecdotally, I just don't see many people that overweight or heavier making it into their 80s.
When you're old, setbacks that cause you to lose your appetite are much more common and much bigger threats to the health of skinny people.
I don't know where you live, but I've met tons of moderately fat people in their 70s and 80s.
"here is the theoretical limit given adherence to modern recommendations on cardiovascular health, exercise, etc."
and
"you all didn't listen and got fat instead"
Quick Google search:
> what percent of australians are overweight?
> Over the last decade, the proportion of adults who were overweight or obese has increased from 62.8% in 2011–12 to 65.8% in 2022.
US NIH says: 73.1% are overweight (includes obese). Ref: https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statisti...
Sure, 73.1% > 65.8%, but Australia is still plenty overweight. Both are appalling.
So the line between normal and overweight is somewhat blurry. e.g. someone who is 6'3" and weighs 200 pounds is overweight. Which might or might not be the case (but you certainly don’t need to a body builder or invest a lot of time to maintain at least reasonably healthy 18-20% body fat ratio).
It's a pretty straightforward formula, and even though the cutoffs might be arbitrary, there's undoubtedly a u shaped mortality curve centered somewhere around 20-25. At a population level I don't think any of that is a relevant factor. No one thinks that your risk of death hinges on crossing an arbitrary line, but being fatter definitely isn't good for your health.
Bone density, muscle mass, torso height relative to leg height—none of these things are factored into BMI and all of these vary wildly depending on genes.
Being born with worse attributes doesn't mean those attributes are out of the equation. A lot of people die much younger than they should just by poor luck, with little or no control on their end.
If you happen to have higher bone density and higher muscle mass just because you have higher testosterone, you're still better off. Sometimes people just get the short end of the stick. That doesn't necessarily mean BMI doesn't work.
I've even met smokers, smokers! Who have better cardiovascular health than me and are skinnier. Which really fucking sucks for me.
Similarly, cancer risks may scale with the amount of tissue or the surface area for things like skin / colon cancer but it’s hard to see how being taller is beneficial.
Both are also largely meaningless because they're based on BMI, which is literally just mass/height^2. No measure of percent body fat, no measure of any other aspect of health, just mass by the square of height.
If you're comparing the BMI of two countries with very similar gene pools it's not a bad point of comparison (though the raw number still doesn't tell you much without more context about build types), but when you're comparing Australia to the US the gene pools of the non-European minority groups are sufficiently different to make BMI pretty worthless as a point of comparison for public health.
This says it's <20% there[1][2]
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_human_height_by_countr...
The worst life expectations are in underweight category.
It's hard to take seriously the aversion especially Americans seem to have against overweight and obesity
Funny the land of the free is so incredibly intolerant on this one point
I don't know what they based "normal" bmi weight on, but it's not by setting the middle of the range to max longevity.
These definitions are arbitrary anyway. In india they define a bmi of 25 as obese. The same indian after moving to America is not obese until a bmi of 30.
Meanwhile, the average height is also going up, which also correlates with lower life expectancy.
Cardiologists already had to back off their blood pressure guidelines when they defined the average middle aged man as hypertensive in the past.
Also in Asia, average bmi is 23, and average bra size is B. In the usa, average bmi is 29, average bra size is DD. Probably same thing applies for men in relation to bench press and deadlift numbers.
75% American are overweight..
Just let it sink a second, they speak about how many baby born after 2000 will reach 100 years old, how we are reaching the absolute limit of human survival.
75% overweight... Everyone know fat people don't live long. I bet all the studies done in the 90's that predicted we would easily be able to reach 100 years old didn't take that into account.