Other medications become lifelong medications but without this level of scrutiny. I am 100% in favor of finding a more permanent treatment, but switching blood pressure meds, and cholesterol meds, and other daily meds for a single once a week med is a massive improvement, especially since the all source mortality data keeps rolling in showing the efficacy here is orders of magnitude better than all the other medications out there. A constant issue here is that we keep calling this a 'weight loss drug' and society views being fat as a moral failing ant that you 'just don't have the will power' to overcome. We need to stop. If this is a lifelong drug it is worth it compared to the relatively ineffective, and just as lifelong, alternatives out there.
I doubt that willpower or lack thereof is a significant factor. It's more a matter of habits and discipline. Willpower can allow you to resist temptation for a few hours but it's not sustainable.
I know several people who were formerly obese and have achieved sustained weight loss without drugs or surgery. The common factor seems to be that they "hit rock bottom", sort of like a drug addict, and decided to make permanent lifestyle changes in order to survive and stop letting down those who depended upon them. These lifestyle changes are often pretty drastic, and involve more than just eating less and exercising more.
If people want to take GLP-1 drugs and understand the risks then I have no problem with that and don't see it as a moral failing. But they might want to evaluate whether this is just masking the symptoms of some deeper mental health condition.
I don’t think that’s a fair assessment. I’m all for life-long drugs that help with weight loss, I don’t view it as a moral failing. That said, it is easy to see why so many people are concerned about these drugs: people taking them can look terrible (“ozempic face”). Gaunt, sick, hollowed out, look at people like Sharon Osbourne, that’s the public face of these drugs. And so when people are committing to life-long use of these drugs, it is being viewed with the very visible side effects in mind, and that is concerning to a lot of people after these drugs seemingly appeared overnight.
"Ozempic face" is actually just "unhealthy rapid weight loss face". Ozempic makes it easier to starve yourself, but that isn't how it's supposed to be used.
Many of the fly by night digital proscribes just jack the dosage to show rapid gains. Coupled with people lying on BMI to get a script is a bad combination and why it’s so obvious.
Taking Ozempic also drops a lot of muscular mass and that ozempic face look totally makes sense.
There's no free lunch or wonder drug. While it's effective at weight loss it has a lot of unwanted side effects. And when stopping the drug the weight gain comes back so not sure if it's worth it.
A constant issue here is that we keep calling this a 'weight loss drug' and society views being fat as a moral failing ant that you 'just don't have the will power' to overcome. We need to stop. If this is a lifelong drug it is worth it compared to the relatively ineffective, and just as lifelong, alternatives out there.
I have noticed much less moralizing over the issue now compared to 2-3 years ago. I think more people realize these drug are safe and effective and not 'taking the easy way out', but rather a treatment for a medical problem than just blaming laziness or gluttony.
But it is factually true that it’s a matter of willpower, no amount of reframing it is going to change that.
It’s not like others like myself, currently on a cut cycle, don’t experience hunger. The idea that we are just “lucky” ignores all the willpower and discipline we fight through to do it ourselves.
I’ve eaten about 800 calories today and it is 4pm. Just finished 90 minutes on the indoor bike. My stomach feels hungry. I experience that and just sit with it. That is the difference.
People are different. Using your own achievements as evidence of other’s failings isn’t useful, we are all different. I can fast for 23 hours a day, 365 days a year (omad) with ease, not because I have more willpower than my fat friends, but because I’m different. My fat friends are objectively stronger and more resilient than me in almost every aspect of life, yet by your measure, because hunger doesn’t bother me, I have more willpower than them? Willpower isn’t measured on outcomes.
Congrats, your metabolism (FAO, gluconeogenesis, insulin sensitivity, …) works well. Don’t assume that’s the case for everyone, because it’s well researched that this is highly individual.
Why would we think that? Tolerating discomfort seems to be a skill that anyone can develop with deliberate practice. Perhaps genetics imposes some upper limit, but just like in sports most people never put in the work necessary to even approach their genetic limit.
It's winter in the Northern hemisphere right now. Try going for a walk tomorrow deliberately undressed to the point that you're deeply uncomfortable but not risking serious injury or death. Anyone can do this, and over time it makes tolerating other forms of discomfort easier.
Oh, you can't reach the items on the higher grocery shelves no matter how hard you stretch? That's just a deficit of tall-power. I also experience items on high shelves. No, you shouldn't use a stepping stool to grab those items; just stretch more, and grow taller, like me! Look how good I am at being a bit taller than you! Your failure to be slightly taller is a character flaw, feel bad.
How can you say that with any certainty, though? How do you know that hunger hits you in the exact same way it does another person? That overcoming it requires the exact same amount of willpower in all people?
Interesting link: a company called Fractyl Health is studying a surgical procedure they call "Revita," that they hope can keep weight off for patients after they discontinue GLP-1s.[0]
The premise, IIUC, is that obesity is driven partly by mucosal overgrowth on the duodenum. This thicker-than-expected layer of mucus is less porous, which leads your digestive system to underestimate the number of calories you've consumed. Revita basically re-surfaces the duodenum.
So, the idea is that you get to a lower weight with the GLP-1 drugs, and then Revita can hopefully reset your set point there.
Their first clinical trial is still in progress, but I think it's interesting to watch.
Fascinatingly, the body already has a mechanism for this: fasting. One of the many beneficial side effects is rapid mucosal atrophy, decreasing villus height and crypt depth.
You can find evidence of this in the literature, but it’s absurdly understudied, because big pharma would rather sell you a subscription to life.
Fortunately there are many good people in the world, especially in the field of medicine, who want to help their patients unconditionally. So there are glimmers of hope, like some of the top cardiologists in the world going against status quo and treating patients with fasting regimes instead of surgery.
Surprised this is still in first trial. I can recall reading about something like it in 2017. Apparently clearing the duodenal mucosa is a preparatory step for a gastric band fitting, but they found patients were making improvements before the bands were being fitted so a study was started to see if this less invasive procedure might be enough by itself.
My impression (and I'm not a scientist) is that the mucosal overgrowth comes from eating an obesogenic diet. (Some combination of too much sugar / salt / wrong types of fat?)
If you get the procedure and don't go back to an obesogenic diet, then it should be permanent.
Just like alcoholism, or any kind of other addictions.
I've struggled with alcohol abuse, and once you come to the realization that you're abusing it, the fix FOR ME was relatively simple: I stopped (under medical supervision) drinking, or to be more precise: I stopped starting to drink. I have no problems not drinking, I have a problem that when I start I cannot stop.
I have the same issue with food. Not eating is a lot easier than stopping to eat. But I cannot completely stop eating.
Yet with alcohol people are like: hey, good for you.
With my weight issues people are like: dude, just eat less, or exercise more.
"Just Eat Less" is roughly the way to lose weight, but the problem is not that fat people are so unbelievably stupid that they didn't know this. I am sure for some people it really is that simple. Not us.
My weight has been a bit of a rollercoaster. I've never been terribly thin, but I've been "not technically obese" from time to time. I'm currently back on the downswing, but God, what a pain in the ass. It feels like gaining weight is incredibly easy and losing it is incredibly hard (and I do believe this is validated by the science, because you wind up with more fat cells when you first gain weight, which I guess is both relieving and terrifying.)
No matter how many attempts it takes to fix my body, I'm obviously going to just keep trying, because obesity is horrible for you in so many ways. It saps your energy, it's carcinogenic, it increases your blood pressure and risk of heart disease, but it feels like one of those struggles that is never-ending. I've improved my diet numerous times but it never feels like it's quite enough.
There's a lot of very visible and conscious messaging about losing weight.
There's an equal and opposite level of messaging to keep eating, which is less conscious and runs under the radar.
Snacks are literally designed to be addictive. TV ads start from birth. Most restaurants have huge portion sizes. "Family" and "Festival" events assume overeating is expected. Junk food is cheap and quality food is expensive. Overeating is framed as being "naughty" but also indulgent and nurturing.
All of this is a huge social problem that's not acknowledged at all.
It's very, very hard to Just Eat Less when there's a constant barrage of messaging encouraging you to do the opposite, and you're not even aware of it.
The contradictory messaging is actually a classic crazy-making psychological double bind. So of course it's very difficult to make a dent in this, and even harder to permanently change habits so all the contradictions no longer influence you.
ppl keep blaming this, but this is contradicted by shrinkflation, yet people still are getting fatter than ever. There is nothing to stop someone from buying more food to offset smaller portions.
Shrinkflation is typically a retail issue, where pricing per unit is a massive psychological factor and competition is fierce and immediate (literally the next shelf). For restaurants it's much easier to just raise prices, or to bulk up plates with cheap stuff like bread.
> It feels like gaining weight is incredibly easy and losing it is incredibly hard
I feel like there is more to it.
Obviously, I sympathize with you, and I noticed that when I switch from a bulking cycle to a cutting cycle, it is a bit difficult to adjust for the first couple of weeks as well.
But by god, I truly am struggling to switch the other way around, and it takes me months to adjust to the bulking cycle, even with the help of stuff like weed. And when I don’t work out aggresively and don’t keep track of my cycle, it feels just natural for me to default to eating way less, as opposed to the other way around.
To be clear, this isn’t meant to be a dig at your take. All I mean is that, I feel like the whole issue is a bit more complex.
But by god, I truly am struggling to switch the other way around, and it takes me months to adjust to the bulking cycle, even with the help of stuff like weed
You could just have good genetics in which your body is resistant to weight gain or you have a low appetite to begin with. As shown by the worldwide obesity epidemic, this is apparently quite an uncommon problem. 75% of country overweight or obese.
If normal resistance to weight gain or appetite lead to 35+ BMI then we would not have had the obesity epidemic, it would be just normal state for humans to be 200+ lbs weight just like it's normal to be under 7' height.
This moral judgement whereby losing weight is "good" in absolute, is such bullshit. For most of history, humans have fought starvation literally every day, and often had to make do with minimal caloric intake for weeks or months - in that context, genetics that kept you thin were definitely very bad.
> "Just Eat Less" is roughly the way to lose weight
Maybe the messaging should be "eat healthier"? How many obese people cook for themselves and eat exclusively from the outer aisles of the grocery (fruits, vegetables, seafood, meat, eggs, dairy)?
I could be wrong but I have to imagine the average obese person has a terrible diet. Portion control won't work at that point, you're already doomed to fail.
To be fair, most people have a terrible diet, it's just that some lucky individuals have the metabolism to overcome it. It seems like those people are increasingly the exception and a bad benchmark for how humans should eat.
Differences in metabolism are very seldom the real reason. The people who claim they have a "slow" or "fast" metabolism can't back that up with actual RMR test results. They're just bad at estimating many calories they actually consume. This can go both ways.
Entirely anecdotal, perhaps useless information (and off-topic for anyone who doesn't current consume caffeine) but I've never had an easier time losing weight than I have since I entirely quit using caffeine after decades of normal usage.
After eliminating caffeine its like a switch entirely flipped in my brain turning off all the usual cravings I'd have for carbs/sugars/etc.
The quitting caffeine part was pretty horrible though. Not just because of the headaches (which weren't actually super bad for me) but I went through a couple of weeks of what I assume was for-reals depression/anhedonia as my brain figured out how to operate with non-blocked adenosine suddenly suppressing my dopamine levels.
> the problem is not that fat people are so unbelievably stupid that they didn't know this
I don't suggest this applies to you, but even a small amount of searching around and reading stuff on the web will reveal a substantial subgroup of outright thermodynamics deniers.
Can you provide an example of someone who outright denies thermodynamics?
I’m familiar with people who believe that there are details of how a body metabolizes fuel , expends energy, and generally operates that escape analysis focused on fuel volume and physical activity. I am familiar with people who characterize this as denial of the laws of thermodynamics, but I am not familiar with anyone who seems to believe that there are situations in which the laws of thermodynamics are outright suspended.
I've heard people say this before, but when reading those arguments it mostly turns out to be people who think there's something more complicated going on with digestion, excretion, or metabolism such that eaten calories are more efficiently used for some, and burned off or passed through without full processing to some degree for people who self-reportedly "can't gain weight".
Right, the body can choose to either convert surplus calories to fat or waste heat. The latter could explain how some individuals are much more resistant to weight gain than others. This is also supported by overfeeding studies, in which controlling for relevant factors, some people gain much more fat on a deliberate calorie surplus than others.
(and I do believe this is validated by the science, because you wind up with more fat cells when you first gain weight, which I guess is both relieving and terrifying.)
the data is pretty clear . the vast majority of dieters fail, even when the bar for success is set really low, like a 2-5% long-term weight loss of starting body weight for an obese person is considered a success.
The Time Magazine cover story in 1984 where they falsely claimed that consuming cholesterol from eggs and other sources was dangerous was a real turning point. That misunderstanding has caused tremendous harm to public health for decades. I think the journalists acted in good faith but they believed junk science.
the problem is, obese or formerly obese people clan eat a lot of anything before the full feeling sets in, no matter what. Eggs, chicken..does not matter.
Other countries do not have obese people, but have many drinkers!
It is issue of food and ingrediences. Too many sugars, fructose syrups from corn... If fat american moves to asian country, he loses fat, without changing a diet.
I have observed that being addicted drugs gets way more sympathy than being addicted to food even though the neural pathways and other factors are the same.
since I also share the ability to cold turkey on most anything, what you can completly stop eating is processed food, or anything that requires an advanced chemical engineering degree to decipher, ditch most of the carbs, ALL of the sugar.
Meat, veggies,fruit,grains,nuts,the most complex packaged foods I buy are yogurt, and bread from an outfit that contracts farmers to grow wheat, pickles, stuff from wierd and wonderfull ethnic groceries where they openly miss there country and insist on having you try the good stuff!, wild food, tucked away farm markets, but most of all, I put my body in charge, which requires listening, but once you realy clean up, perhaps you will find as I have, that certain off the record indulgences have very significant negative phisiological repercusions, on a one to one basis.
but this practice is not for dilly dalyiers, so
We need to start looking at obesity as a hunger disorder, and not as the result of an addiction, a lack of knowledge about nutrition, or a lack of self control.
When an obese person regulates their eating and loses weight, the hunger often doesn't go away - and often increases. This is physical, not psychological hunger. When the obese person almost inevitably returns to eating to fullness, they regain weight.
When a person takes GLP-1s, hunger is greatly reduced, and an obese person can eat less food while still achieving satiety without gaining weight. When they stop taking the GLP-1s, the hunger returns, and when they return to eating to fullness, they regain weight.
Similarly, when a person takes stimulant weight loss medication, they can eat less food while experiencing less hunger, and thus lose weight. Similarly, when they go off of the stimulant (or develop a tolerance), the hunger returns and when they return to eating to fullness, they regain weight.
In many obese people, the hunger is present even when they eat a nutritious meal at the appropriate number of calories to maintain their weight. Common advice is to say "this mix of macros or foods makes me satisfied!" and, well, that's great for you but not universal.
People who naturally feel reasonably satisfied with an appropriate number of calories to maintain their weight still experience hunger, but not with the intensity or insatiability of that hunger that many obese people do.
While it does occur with some who have severe eating disorders, most obese people do not overeat themselves into obesity by continuing to eat long after they're full. They eat until the hunger goes away.
It's the hunger. Take away the hunger, and the weight goes down. Bring back the hunger and the weight goes up. It's simple, it's obvious, and few say it.
In many obese people, the hunger is present even when they eat a nutritious meal at the appropriate number of calories to maintain their weight. Common advice is to say "this mix of macros or foods makes me satisfied!" and, well, that's great for you but not universal.
Yup..the high failure rate of dieting is true regardless of the type of food or the macros. Lecturing to 'just eat healthy' as the default mode of advice does not work for the large majority of obese people..this is supported by the literature and anecdotal evidence.
> "The environment that people live in needs to be one that promotes health, not weight gain. […] Obesity is not a GLP-1 deficiency," he says.
This is my biggest issue with weight healthcare, the idea that if only the patient would eat correctly they wouldn’t be overweight. It’s not some moral failing a person often over eats, it very well could be some physiological issue that should be treated. It would be like telling someone with asthma that they just need to get into better shape to breathe better.
I don't have a horse in this race, but from my personal experience eating satiating whole foods with lower glycemic index, higher fiber and protein content makes it very difficult to gain excessive weight.
On the asthma front, from experiences with someone close to me -- getting in great physical shape (with caveats regarding training) DID indeed help greatly with broncho-constriction and higher scores on FEV. Basically symptoms and inhaler use went down tremendously over a few years and a physical transformation.
Before GLP-1s, there was rarely any such thing as "satiation" for me. Getting full was something that happened without the feeling of having had enough. The main effect of wegovy, for me, was having a feeling of not needing to eat rather than just feeling too full to eat. It was quite an experience, and one I am not sure I had had in more than 30 years.
I find for me that doesn't work. I have to actively count calories to lose or maintain a healthy BMI range. If I don't, no matter what I eat, I end up stabilizing in the overweight category. I'm lucky enough that my wife has a very flexible work schedule where she is able to cook most meals for us, but she hates weighing everything out so I can track... we've tried to stop the tracking multiple times but it never works. I'll think I'm eating to the same satiety level as before, but I end up slowly creeping back up in weight. My wife is fine either with or without tracking for maintaining her weight, though she does also seem to have an easier time losing when she's counting her calories. I think this is why it's so hard to have discussions about it, people's experiences literally don't match even when they try the same things. I suspect I'd be one of those people that if they tried Ozempic would be able to lose tons of weight, and who would shoot back up as soon as they stopped, unless I track the whole time... at which point I wouldn't need the Ozempic in the first place
Some people have literally been able able to overcome asthma — or at least significantly reduce symptoms — by learning to breathe better. Getting in better physical shape can be part of this. That doesn't necessarily work for all patients but at least some have been successful.
As someone with asthma, let me tell you that they _do_ need to get into better shape to breathe better. Part of that is a medically proven practice called pulmonary rehabilitation, but also, regular cardiovascular exercise at different intensities and direct training of the abdominal muscles has a marked improvement both on pulmonary function (to a limit, but even more important as you age) and oxygen utilization from the reduced pulmonary function. Finally, both acid and laryngeal reflux are silent contributors to asthma by introducing acid and pepin into the airways, and weight loss can improve the symptoms of those.
Until we are able to fix the environment and culture, we're stuck with medications like this. The good news is that glp1 medicine can be used to break addictive behaviors, so it is the very tool that can help change our environment by reducing demand for junk food.
I don't count calories. I went off Ozempic (now Mounjaro) and I gain weight at about 0.5-1kg a month.
As I am resistance (gym) training, significant % of that ends up being muscle mass rather than fat.
So I end up taking Mounjaro for about 1-2 months every 3-4 months, approximately 33% of the time being "on".
Funnily, I end up with bulk/cut periods without doing them explicitly. This ends up working well for growing muscles.
Notice all people in the story are women. I guess pairing GLP-likes with bodybuilding works quite well for men. As times goes on, I end up needing mounjaro less due to my increased muscle mass.
When you restart taking it after an "off" period, do you immediately resume whatever dose you were at before? Or do you taper up each time? (Curious because I know for many people, side effects level out after they've been at a given dose for long enough, but temporarily return whenever they increase their dose; not sure how "off" periods affect that kind of tolerance.)
Question for people who have trouble losing fat (this was never my problem): have you ever tried instead of dieting to just force yourself to eat more fruits, vegetables, and protein daily while also allowing yourself free range in the remaining appetite room to have whatever? The human mind/brain/whatever doesn't do well with deprivation of a high dopamine reward, but what would happen if you started to shift your tastes by insisting that it get used to a more healthful diet as a precursor to getting what it wants?
I ask this because when I was younger, I also had tastebuds warped by hyper-palatable foods, but after incrementally getting my diet to such a clean and optimized place, I literally feel bad even while chewing and tasting something like a donut, heavily salted and oiled potato chips, or candy. It's probably like how I would have felt if I literally mixed a tablespoon of oil and sugar or salt together and swallowed it.
Is it that hard to shift the system toward better habits by incremental introduction of better ones, and crowding out the bad? Exercise helps here, because once you begin to enjoy fitness, you get a stronger feedback loop with the bad food creating bad outcomes.
I definitely lost weight easily on wegovy and just as easily gained it back when I stopped taking it. The whole experience definitely drove home how I needed to improve my mental health alongside any “purely physical” intervention. Same situation when I lost weight by meticulously calorie counting.
I think obesity is hard to fix even when you are not a “thermodynamics denier” (as another commenter said) because all you can practice is moderation from the get go. How many people would fail to fix their alcoholism if complete abstinence, even just a period of complete abstinence to rewire the brain, was never an option? They actually had to go down to the pub and practice stopping everyday at 1 pint?
Excuse the ramble: it maybe sucks more for people with eating addictions than alcohol in some sense. I am an alcoholic and I've been sober for, I dunno, years and years now. I did actually go to pubs and cocktail bars when I first got sober, I didn't drink I just sat and felt awful and wanted to drink badly. I felt I needed to learn how the feeling of the craving was going to work so I can plan for it etc, especially when stress creeps in. So, as another comment said, I got sober by stopping the first drink. For me it's very logical, if I have a drink, I will drink, I will not stop, I cannot stop, so if I take the first drink it doesn't matter that is is, it's done, so I don't drink the first drink since I decided that, hence sober.
...I suppose it's hard for someone who struggles with eating to stop food all together. That said, after I got off booze, I started on sugar, never been into sugar in my life, didn't like cake, ice cream any of that stuff, but getting off booze that started, I craved ice cream and stuff all the time, and gave in not realizing what was happening, once I told my dr and he explained the body was substituting the alcohol... so I stopped sweet stuff (mostly all of it, honey and fruit juice seem fine, I don't crave them). I don't have very many cravings any more, I know that "you're going to crave this if you have it more than a few times" feeling as soon as I consume something now, and, I just, don't. Is it hard? Every time, but I prefer the control more tbh.
Maybe I live a kinda boring life now, oh well, at least I feel great.
Then just continue to take them? The article just once seems to mention side effects and these were suspected to be related to rapid weight loss and less to the drug itself.
Pointless human interest story with some rent-a-quote expert sprinkled in that tries to imply some ominous danger but can't come up with any hard data on that themselves.
If you’re substantially overweight, you have to wonder if the long term side effects of GLP-1 are better than being obese
That said, its a little disheartening to see people who are 10-15kg overweight also resort to these drugs - this kind of excess weight can be fought with simply diet and exercise
TLDR: "...evidence so far suggests that, between one and three years after stopping the medication, people will see a "significant proportion of weight" go back on...Somewhere in the region of 60 to 80% of the weight that you lost will return..."
What's striking here is that this is roughly the same outcome as essentially every other diet (with the intent of losing weight) out there. It's just more expensive. And possibly more hyped.
It's not hyped. It's the most effective way I've seen the people around me lose weight. Some of them have lost a tremendous amount of weight very quickly.
But a know a couple of them that went off it and the weight came back pretty quickly. It really is just a suppression of hunger, nothing more than that.
> It really is just a suppression of hunger, nothing more than that.
It is actually a lot more than that. Many people on Ozempic report better impulse control (food or otherwise). Many stop or significantly reduce alcohol intake. It seems that gut hormones are linked to reward pathways in the brain.
It can be hyped because jabs bring immediate results. And it can be prescribed by almost every doctor so number of people who can report is big, and therefore visible results can be further disseminated (hyped).
But… treatment is working.
Question is at what cost.
If something is too good to be true, one has to ask what is behind it. But perhaps it is a similar situation to when antibiotics were invented.
Other medications become lifelong medications but without this level of scrutiny. I am 100% in favor of finding a more permanent treatment, but switching blood pressure meds, and cholesterol meds, and other daily meds for a single once a week med is a massive improvement, especially since the all source mortality data keeps rolling in showing the efficacy here is orders of magnitude better than all the other medications out there. A constant issue here is that we keep calling this a 'weight loss drug' and society views being fat as a moral failing ant that you 'just don't have the will power' to overcome. We need to stop. If this is a lifelong drug it is worth it compared to the relatively ineffective, and just as lifelong, alternatives out there.
I doubt that willpower or lack thereof is a significant factor. It's more a matter of habits and discipline. Willpower can allow you to resist temptation for a few hours but it's not sustainable.
I know several people who were formerly obese and have achieved sustained weight loss without drugs or surgery. The common factor seems to be that they "hit rock bottom", sort of like a drug addict, and decided to make permanent lifestyle changes in order to survive and stop letting down those who depended upon them. These lifestyle changes are often pretty drastic, and involve more than just eating less and exercising more.
If people want to take GLP-1 drugs and understand the risks then I have no problem with that and don't see it as a moral failing. But they might want to evaluate whether this is just masking the symptoms of some deeper mental health condition.
I don’t think that’s a fair assessment. I’m all for life-long drugs that help with weight loss, I don’t view it as a moral failing. That said, it is easy to see why so many people are concerned about these drugs: people taking them can look terrible (“ozempic face”). Gaunt, sick, hollowed out, look at people like Sharon Osbourne, that’s the public face of these drugs. And so when people are committing to life-long use of these drugs, it is being viewed with the very visible side effects in mind, and that is concerning to a lot of people after these drugs seemingly appeared overnight.
"Ozempic face" is actually just "unhealthy rapid weight loss face". Ozempic makes it easier to starve yourself, but that isn't how it's supposed to be used.
Many of the fly by night digital proscribes just jack the dosage to show rapid gains. Coupled with people lying on BMI to get a script is a bad combination and why it’s so obvious.
It’s also accelerated muscle loss, even heart tissue. I‘m not saying it’s not worth it, but this should be kept on the radar for sure.
Taking Ozempic also drops a lot of muscular mass and that ozempic face look totally makes sense.
There's no free lunch or wonder drug. While it's effective at weight loss it has a lot of unwanted side effects. And when stopping the drug the weight gain comes back so not sure if it's worth it.
But what if these weight loss drugs are making you hungrier than you ever would have been had you not started in the first place?
A constant issue here is that we keep calling this a 'weight loss drug' and society views being fat as a moral failing ant that you 'just don't have the will power' to overcome. We need to stop. If this is a lifelong drug it is worth it compared to the relatively ineffective, and just as lifelong, alternatives out there.
I have noticed much less moralizing over the issue now compared to 2-3 years ago. I think more people realize these drug are safe and effective and not 'taking the easy way out', but rather a treatment for a medical problem than just blaming laziness or gluttony.
The article explains they they are not safe nor effective
But it is factually true that it’s a matter of willpower, no amount of reframing it is going to change that.
It’s not like others like myself, currently on a cut cycle, don’t experience hunger. The idea that we are just “lucky” ignores all the willpower and discipline we fight through to do it ourselves.
I’ve eaten about 800 calories today and it is 4pm. Just finished 90 minutes on the indoor bike. My stomach feels hungry. I experience that and just sit with it. That is the difference.
People are different. Using your own achievements as evidence of other’s failings isn’t useful, we are all different. I can fast for 23 hours a day, 365 days a year (omad) with ease, not because I have more willpower than my fat friends, but because I’m different. My fat friends are objectively stronger and more resilient than me in almost every aspect of life, yet by your measure, because hunger doesn’t bother me, I have more willpower than them? Willpower isn’t measured on outcomes.
Congrats, your metabolism (FAO, gluconeogenesis, insulin sensitivity, …) works well. Don’t assume that’s the case for everyone, because it’s well researched that this is highly individual.
The ability to tolerate discomfort is probably as genetic/inante as metabolism.
Why would we think that? Tolerating discomfort seems to be a skill that anyone can develop with deliberate practice. Perhaps genetics imposes some upper limit, but just like in sports most people never put in the work necessary to even approach their genetic limit.
https://eastermichael.com/book/
It's winter in the Northern hemisphere right now. Try going for a walk tomorrow deliberately undressed to the point that you're deeply uncomfortable but not risking serious injury or death. Anyone can do this, and over time it makes tolerating other forms of discomfort easier.
You know nothing about my metabolism.
Well one of those has to work well or you would have fainted by now.
Oh, you can't reach the items on the higher grocery shelves no matter how hard you stretch? That's just a deficit of tall-power. I also experience items on high shelves. No, you shouldn't use a stepping stool to grab those items; just stretch more, and grow taller, like me! Look how good I am at being a bit taller than you! Your failure to be slightly taller is a character flaw, feel bad.
How can you say that with any certainty, though? How do you know that hunger hits you in the exact same way it does another person? That overcoming it requires the exact same amount of willpower in all people?
My hunger feels 8 trillion times worse than an obese person’s. Since I am making the claim, everyone else has to affirm it now.
But you’re disproving your own point. Other people’s experiences aren’t knowable so you can’t say it’s just a willpower issue.
What is your definition of willpower? What is it, mechanistically, that you have and others lack?
On the one hand I'm impressed but 800 is really super low. I was losing about a kilo a week at the peak of my diet eating double that.
Willpower is just brain chemistry. Some are lucky, some are not.
Interesting link: a company called Fractyl Health is studying a surgical procedure they call "Revita," that they hope can keep weight off for patients after they discontinue GLP-1s.[0]
The premise, IIUC, is that obesity is driven partly by mucosal overgrowth on the duodenum. This thicker-than-expected layer of mucus is less porous, which leads your digestive system to underestimate the number of calories you've consumed. Revita basically re-surfaces the duodenum.
So, the idea is that you get to a lower weight with the GLP-1 drugs, and then Revita can hopefully reset your set point there.
Their first clinical trial is still in progress, but I think it's interesting to watch.
[0]: https://www.fractyl.com/our-platforms/revita/
Fascinatingly, the body already has a mechanism for this: fasting. One of the many beneficial side effects is rapid mucosal atrophy, decreasing villus height and crypt depth.
You can find evidence of this in the literature, but it’s absurdly understudied, because big pharma would rather sell you a subscription to life.
Fortunately there are many good people in the world, especially in the field of medicine, who want to help their patients unconditionally. So there are glimmers of hope, like some of the top cardiologists in the world going against status quo and treating patients with fasting regimes instead of surgery.
Do you have some good links for that? I only found this
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/16/1/128
which says that the changes reverted quickly after resuming normal feeding
Surprised this is still in first trial. I can recall reading about something like it in 2017. Apparently clearing the duodenal mucosa is a preparatory step for a gastric band fitting, but they found patients were making improvements before the bands were being fitted so a study was started to see if this less invasive procedure might be enough by itself.
> Revita basically re-surfaces the duodenum.
Does this reduce mucous production going forward? Otherwise, it seems like it would be a temporary effect.
My impression (and I'm not a scientist) is that the mucosal overgrowth comes from eating an obesogenic diet. (Some combination of too much sugar / salt / wrong types of fat?)
If you get the procedure and don't go back to an obesogenic diet, then it should be permanent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodenum
Fascinating.
Being overweight is a chronic disease.
Just like alcoholism, or any kind of other addictions.
I've struggled with alcohol abuse, and once you come to the realization that you're abusing it, the fix FOR ME was relatively simple: I stopped (under medical supervision) drinking, or to be more precise: I stopped starting to drink. I have no problems not drinking, I have a problem that when I start I cannot stop.
I have the same issue with food. Not eating is a lot easier than stopping to eat. But I cannot completely stop eating.
Yet with alcohol people are like: hey, good for you.
With my weight issues people are like: dude, just eat less, or exercise more.
(I stopped sharing the food story with people).
It's frustrating.
"Just Eat Less" is roughly the way to lose weight, but the problem is not that fat people are so unbelievably stupid that they didn't know this. I am sure for some people it really is that simple. Not us.
My weight has been a bit of a rollercoaster. I've never been terribly thin, but I've been "not technically obese" from time to time. I'm currently back on the downswing, but God, what a pain in the ass. It feels like gaining weight is incredibly easy and losing it is incredibly hard (and I do believe this is validated by the science, because you wind up with more fat cells when you first gain weight, which I guess is both relieving and terrifying.)
No matter how many attempts it takes to fix my body, I'm obviously going to just keep trying, because obesity is horrible for you in so many ways. It saps your energy, it's carcinogenic, it increases your blood pressure and risk of heart disease, but it feels like one of those struggles that is never-ending. I've improved my diet numerous times but it never feels like it's quite enough.
There's a lot of very visible and conscious messaging about losing weight.
There's an equal and opposite level of messaging to keep eating, which is less conscious and runs under the radar.
Snacks are literally designed to be addictive. TV ads start from birth. Most restaurants have huge portion sizes. "Family" and "Festival" events assume overeating is expected. Junk food is cheap and quality food is expensive. Overeating is framed as being "naughty" but also indulgent and nurturing.
All of this is a huge social problem that's not acknowledged at all.
It's very, very hard to Just Eat Less when there's a constant barrage of messaging encouraging you to do the opposite, and you're not even aware of it.
The contradictory messaging is actually a classic crazy-making psychological double bind. So of course it's very difficult to make a dent in this, and even harder to permanently change habits so all the contradictions no longer influence you.
Most restaurants have huge portion sizes.
ppl keep blaming this, but this is contradicted by shrinkflation, yet people still are getting fatter than ever. There is nothing to stop someone from buying more food to offset smaller portions.
Shrinkflation is typically a retail issue, where pricing per unit is a massive psychological factor and competition is fierce and immediate (literally the next shelf). For restaurants it's much easier to just raise prices, or to bulk up plates with cheap stuff like bread.
> It feels like gaining weight is incredibly easy and losing it is incredibly hard
I feel like there is more to it.
Obviously, I sympathize with you, and I noticed that when I switch from a bulking cycle to a cutting cycle, it is a bit difficult to adjust for the first couple of weeks as well.
But by god, I truly am struggling to switch the other way around, and it takes me months to adjust to the bulking cycle, even with the help of stuff like weed. And when I don’t work out aggresively and don’t keep track of my cycle, it feels just natural for me to default to eating way less, as opposed to the other way around.
To be clear, this isn’t meant to be a dig at your take. All I mean is that, I feel like the whole issue is a bit more complex.
But by god, I truly am struggling to switch the other way around, and it takes me months to adjust to the bulking cycle, even with the help of stuff like weed
You could just have good genetics in which your body is resistant to weight gain or you have a low appetite to begin with. As shown by the worldwide obesity epidemic, this is apparently quite an uncommon problem. 75% of country overweight or obese.
If normal resistance to weight gain or appetite lead to 35+ BMI then we would not have had the obesity epidemic, it would be just normal state for humans to be 200+ lbs weight just like it's normal to be under 7' height.
> good genetics
This moral judgement whereby losing weight is "good" in absolute, is such bullshit. For most of history, humans have fought starvation literally every day, and often had to make do with minimal caloric intake for weeks or months - in that context, genetics that kept you thin were definitely very bad.
Having a smaller appetite could have been advantageous by allowing food to last longer
> "Just Eat Less" is roughly the way to lose weight
Maybe the messaging should be "eat healthier"? How many obese people cook for themselves and eat exclusively from the outer aisles of the grocery (fruits, vegetables, seafood, meat, eggs, dairy)?
I could be wrong but I have to imagine the average obese person has a terrible diet. Portion control won't work at that point, you're already doomed to fail.
To be fair, most people have a terrible diet, it's just that some lucky individuals have the metabolism to overcome it. It seems like those people are increasingly the exception and a bad benchmark for how humans should eat.
Differences in metabolism are very seldom the real reason. The people who claim they have a "slow" or "fast" metabolism can't back that up with actual RMR test results. They're just bad at estimating many calories they actually consume. This can go both ways.
Entirely anecdotal, perhaps useless information (and off-topic for anyone who doesn't current consume caffeine) but I've never had an easier time losing weight than I have since I entirely quit using caffeine after decades of normal usage.
After eliminating caffeine its like a switch entirely flipped in my brain turning off all the usual cravings I'd have for carbs/sugars/etc.
The quitting caffeine part was pretty horrible though. Not just because of the headaches (which weren't actually super bad for me) but I went through a couple of weeks of what I assume was for-reals depression/anhedonia as my brain figured out how to operate with non-blocked adenosine suddenly suppressing my dopamine levels.
> the problem is not that fat people are so unbelievably stupid that they didn't know this
I don't suggest this applies to you, but even a small amount of searching around and reading stuff on the web will reveal a substantial subgroup of outright thermodynamics deniers.
Can you provide an example of someone who outright denies thermodynamics?
I’m familiar with people who believe that there are details of how a body metabolizes fuel , expends energy, and generally operates that escape analysis focused on fuel volume and physical activity. I am familiar with people who characterize this as denial of the laws of thermodynamics, but I am not familiar with anyone who seems to believe that there are situations in which the laws of thermodynamics are outright suspended.
> outright thermodynamics deniers
I've heard people say this before, but when reading those arguments it mostly turns out to be people who think there's something more complicated going on with digestion, excretion, or metabolism such that eaten calories are more efficiently used for some, and burned off or passed through without full processing to some degree for people who self-reportedly "can't gain weight".
Right, the body can choose to either convert surplus calories to fat or waste heat. The latter could explain how some individuals are much more resistant to weight gain than others. This is also supported by overfeeding studies, in which controlling for relevant factors, some people gain much more fat on a deliberate calorie surplus than others.
(and I do believe this is validated by the science, because you wind up with more fat cells when you first gain weight, which I guess is both relieving and terrifying.)
the data is pretty clear . the vast majority of dieters fail, even when the bar for success is set really low, like a 2-5% long-term weight loss of starting body weight for an obese person is considered a success.
What works for me is to eat highly nutritious low-glycemic food until I feel full (eggs, avocado, quinoa, etc)
Otherwise I over eat crap and gain weight easily
How many years have you been able to keep that diet up?
Particularly eating a lot of eggs daily for about 3 years
The Time Magazine cover story in 1984 where they falsely claimed that consuming cholesterol from eggs and other sources was dangerous was a real turning point. That misunderstanding has caused tremendous harm to public health for decades. I think the journalists acted in good faith but they believed junk science.
https://time.com/archive/6855517/hold-the-eggs-and-butter/
https://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,...
the problem is, obese or formerly obese people clan eat a lot of anything before the full feeling sets in, no matter what. Eggs, chicken..does not matter.
It takes time and discipline to make the stomach smaller
I was pre-diabetic at 100kg and went down to 70kg over a year of low carb diet and intermittent fasting
It’s a daily struggle trying to NOT eat until literally feeling pain in the belly, and even then, I know if I wait 30 minutes more I can keep eating
Other countries do not have obese people, but have many drinkers!
It is issue of food and ingrediences. Too many sugars, fructose syrups from corn... If fat american moves to asian country, he loses fat, without changing a diet.
I have observed that being addicted drugs gets way more sympathy than being addicted to food even though the neural pathways and other factors are the same.
since I also share the ability to cold turkey on most anything, what you can completly stop eating is processed food, or anything that requires an advanced chemical engineering degree to decipher, ditch most of the carbs, ALL of the sugar. Meat, veggies,fruit,grains,nuts,the most complex packaged foods I buy are yogurt, and bread from an outfit that contracts farmers to grow wheat, pickles, stuff from wierd and wonderfull ethnic groceries where they openly miss there country and insist on having you try the good stuff!, wild food, tucked away farm markets, but most of all, I put my body in charge, which requires listening, but once you realy clean up, perhaps you will find as I have, that certain off the record indulgences have very significant negative phisiological repercusions, on a one to one basis. but this practice is not for dilly dalyiers, so
I really, really, really like mayonnaise though
We need to start looking at obesity as a hunger disorder, and not as the result of an addiction, a lack of knowledge about nutrition, or a lack of self control.
When an obese person regulates their eating and loses weight, the hunger often doesn't go away - and often increases. This is physical, not psychological hunger. When the obese person almost inevitably returns to eating to fullness, they regain weight.
When a person takes GLP-1s, hunger is greatly reduced, and an obese person can eat less food while still achieving satiety without gaining weight. When they stop taking the GLP-1s, the hunger returns, and when they return to eating to fullness, they regain weight.
Similarly, when a person takes stimulant weight loss medication, they can eat less food while experiencing less hunger, and thus lose weight. Similarly, when they go off of the stimulant (or develop a tolerance), the hunger returns and when they return to eating to fullness, they regain weight.
In many obese people, the hunger is present even when they eat a nutritious meal at the appropriate number of calories to maintain their weight. Common advice is to say "this mix of macros or foods makes me satisfied!" and, well, that's great for you but not universal.
People who naturally feel reasonably satisfied with an appropriate number of calories to maintain their weight still experience hunger, but not with the intensity or insatiability of that hunger that many obese people do.
While it does occur with some who have severe eating disorders, most obese people do not overeat themselves into obesity by continuing to eat long after they're full. They eat until the hunger goes away.
It's the hunger. Take away the hunger, and the weight goes down. Bring back the hunger and the weight goes up. It's simple, it's obvious, and few say it.
In many obese people, the hunger is present even when they eat a nutritious meal at the appropriate number of calories to maintain their weight. Common advice is to say "this mix of macros or foods makes me satisfied!" and, well, that's great for you but not universal.
Yup..the high failure rate of dieting is true regardless of the type of food or the macros. Lecturing to 'just eat healthy' as the default mode of advice does not work for the large majority of obese people..this is supported by the literature and anecdotal evidence.
> "The environment that people live in needs to be one that promotes health, not weight gain. […] Obesity is not a GLP-1 deficiency," he says.
This is my biggest issue with weight healthcare, the idea that if only the patient would eat correctly they wouldn’t be overweight. It’s not some moral failing a person often over eats, it very well could be some physiological issue that should be treated. It would be like telling someone with asthma that they just need to get into better shape to breathe better.
I don't have a horse in this race, but from my personal experience eating satiating whole foods with lower glycemic index, higher fiber and protein content makes it very difficult to gain excessive weight.
On the asthma front, from experiences with someone close to me -- getting in great physical shape (with caveats regarding training) DID indeed help greatly with broncho-constriction and higher scores on FEV. Basically symptoms and inhaler use went down tremendously over a few years and a physical transformation.
Before GLP-1s, there was rarely any such thing as "satiation" for me. Getting full was something that happened without the feeling of having had enough. The main effect of wegovy, for me, was having a feeling of not needing to eat rather than just feeling too full to eat. It was quite an experience, and one I am not sure I had had in more than 30 years.
I find for me that doesn't work. I have to actively count calories to lose or maintain a healthy BMI range. If I don't, no matter what I eat, I end up stabilizing in the overweight category. I'm lucky enough that my wife has a very flexible work schedule where she is able to cook most meals for us, but she hates weighing everything out so I can track... we've tried to stop the tracking multiple times but it never works. I'll think I'm eating to the same satiety level as before, but I end up slowly creeping back up in weight. My wife is fine either with or without tracking for maintaining her weight, though she does also seem to have an easier time losing when she's counting her calories. I think this is why it's so hard to have discussions about it, people's experiences literally don't match even when they try the same things. I suspect I'd be one of those people that if they tried Ozempic would be able to lose tons of weight, and who would shoot back up as soon as they stopped, unless I track the whole time... at which point I wouldn't need the Ozempic in the first place
Some people have literally been able able to overcome asthma — or at least significantly reduce symptoms — by learning to breathe better. Getting in better physical shape can be part of this. That doesn't necessarily work for all patients but at least some have been successful.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/547761/breath-by-ja...
As someone with asthma, let me tell you that they _do_ need to get into better shape to breathe better. Part of that is a medically proven practice called pulmonary rehabilitation, but also, regular cardiovascular exercise at different intensities and direct training of the abdominal muscles has a marked improvement both on pulmonary function (to a limit, but even more important as you age) and oxygen utilization from the reduced pulmonary function. Finally, both acid and laryngeal reflux are silent contributors to asthma by introducing acid and pepin into the airways, and weight loss can improve the symptoms of those.
Until we are able to fix the environment and culture, we're stuck with medications like this. The good news is that glp1 medicine can be used to break addictive behaviors, so it is the very tool that can help change our environment by reducing demand for junk food.
We still need to talk to our Congress critters.
That's what GLP-1 drugs are doing? Like...this is the premier argument as to why they work.
I did lose 30-40kg about 2 years ago on Ozempic.
I don't count calories. I went off Ozempic (now Mounjaro) and I gain weight at about 0.5-1kg a month.
As I am resistance (gym) training, significant % of that ends up being muscle mass rather than fat.
So I end up taking Mounjaro for about 1-2 months every 3-4 months, approximately 33% of the time being "on".
Funnily, I end up with bulk/cut periods without doing them explicitly. This ends up working well for growing muscles.
Notice all people in the story are women. I guess pairing GLP-likes with bodybuilding works quite well for men. As times goes on, I end up needing mounjaro less due to my increased muscle mass.
When you restart taking it after an "off" period, do you immediately resume whatever dose you were at before? Or do you taper up each time? (Curious because I know for many people, side effects level out after they've been at a given dose for long enough, but temporarily return whenever they increase their dose; not sure how "off" periods affect that kind of tolerance.)
I don't count calories. I went off Ozempic (now Mounjaro) and I gain weight at about 0.5-1kg a month.
yeah that is how ppl become obese. over 2-5 years it adds up
Notice all people in the story are women.
Probably due to social media. Women may be more inclined to show off their success online. Also, women respond better to these drugs compared to men.
Question for people who have trouble losing fat (this was never my problem): have you ever tried instead of dieting to just force yourself to eat more fruits, vegetables, and protein daily while also allowing yourself free range in the remaining appetite room to have whatever? The human mind/brain/whatever doesn't do well with deprivation of a high dopamine reward, but what would happen if you started to shift your tastes by insisting that it get used to a more healthful diet as a precursor to getting what it wants?
I ask this because when I was younger, I also had tastebuds warped by hyper-palatable foods, but after incrementally getting my diet to such a clean and optimized place, I literally feel bad even while chewing and tasting something like a donut, heavily salted and oiled potato chips, or candy. It's probably like how I would have felt if I literally mixed a tablespoon of oil and sugar or salt together and swallowed it.
Is it that hard to shift the system toward better habits by incremental introduction of better ones, and crowding out the bad? Exercise helps here, because once you begin to enjoy fitness, you get a stronger feedback loop with the bad food creating bad outcomes.
I definitely lost weight easily on wegovy and just as easily gained it back when I stopped taking it. The whole experience definitely drove home how I needed to improve my mental health alongside any “purely physical” intervention. Same situation when I lost weight by meticulously calorie counting.
I think obesity is hard to fix even when you are not a “thermodynamics denier” (as another commenter said) because all you can practice is moderation from the get go. How many people would fail to fix their alcoholism if complete abstinence, even just a period of complete abstinence to rewire the brain, was never an option? They actually had to go down to the pub and practice stopping everyday at 1 pint?
Excuse the ramble: it maybe sucks more for people with eating addictions than alcohol in some sense. I am an alcoholic and I've been sober for, I dunno, years and years now. I did actually go to pubs and cocktail bars when I first got sober, I didn't drink I just sat and felt awful and wanted to drink badly. I felt I needed to learn how the feeling of the craving was going to work so I can plan for it etc, especially when stress creeps in. So, as another comment said, I got sober by stopping the first drink. For me it's very logical, if I have a drink, I will drink, I will not stop, I cannot stop, so if I take the first drink it doesn't matter that is is, it's done, so I don't drink the first drink since I decided that, hence sober.
...I suppose it's hard for someone who struggles with eating to stop food all together. That said, after I got off booze, I started on sugar, never been into sugar in my life, didn't like cake, ice cream any of that stuff, but getting off booze that started, I craved ice cream and stuff all the time, and gave in not realizing what was happening, once I told my dr and he explained the body was substituting the alcohol... so I stopped sweet stuff (mostly all of it, honey and fruit juice seem fine, I don't crave them). I don't have very many cravings any more, I know that "you're going to crave this if you have it more than a few times" feeling as soon as I consume something now, and, I just, don't. Is it hard? Every time, but I prefer the control more tbh.
Maybe I live a kinda boring life now, oh well, at least I feel great.
Then just continue to take them? The article just once seems to mention side effects and these were suspected to be related to rapid weight loss and less to the drug itself.
Pointless human interest story with some rent-a-quote expert sprinkled in that tries to imply some ominous danger but can't come up with any hard data on that themselves.
If you’re substantially overweight, you have to wonder if the long term side effects of GLP-1 are better than being obese
That said, its a little disheartening to see people who are 10-15kg overweight also resort to these drugs - this kind of excess weight can be fought with simply diet and exercise
Can't be worse long-term than inhaling nicotine, the previous widely deployed strategy to combat food cravings.
TLDR: "...evidence so far suggests that, between one and three years after stopping the medication, people will see a "significant proportion of weight" go back on...Somewhere in the region of 60 to 80% of the weight that you lost will return..."
Taking recovered drug addicts and placing them in a situation where everyone's using all the time would probably lead to equally bad outcomes.
Our food is too rich in calories, too abundantly available, and too addictive for most people.
What's striking here is that this is roughly the same outcome as essentially every other diet (with the intent of losing weight) out there. It's just more expensive. And possibly more hyped.
And it works much better for most people
Yeah I think this is the missing piece. Same impact as dieting but with higher adherence and duration is a huge win.
> And it works much better for most people
I thing it takes less effort to be effective but it has pretty bad side effects.
It's not hyped. It's the most effective way I've seen the people around me lose weight. Some of them have lost a tremendous amount of weight very quickly.
But a know a couple of them that went off it and the weight came back pretty quickly. It really is just a suppression of hunger, nothing more than that.
> It really is just a suppression of hunger, nothing more than that.
It is actually a lot more than that. Many people on Ozempic report better impulse control (food or otherwise). Many stop or significantly reduce alcohol intake. It seems that gut hormones are linked to reward pathways in the brain.
It can be hyped because jabs bring immediate results. And it can be prescribed by almost every doctor so number of people who can report is big, and therefore visible results can be further disseminated (hyped).
But… treatment is working.
Question is at what cost.
If something is too good to be true, one has to ask what is behind it. But perhaps it is a similar situation to when antibiotics were invented.
Most developed medical technology doesn't have "a cost". That's puritan morality theater masquerading as wisdom.
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Diet is the food you eat. If you change the food you eat, you’ve changed your diet.
Any attempt at a temporary food change is already a failure for long term health.
Surprise surprise, it's not like the drug did anything to improve the patient's discipline...
I guess it's a dialect thing, but I have become accustomed to disregarding absolutely every article that employs the word "jab".
That's just what they call it in British English, and this is a BBC article.
> (British) A medical hypodermic injection (vaccination or inoculation).
From https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/jab
I hope that helps
The word itself is just insufferable at this point. The media collectively went bonkers for it while describing COVID vaccine delivery.