this post was submitted on 10 May 2025
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[–] barneypiccolo@lemm.ee 38 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Besides helping with addictions, it also seems to help with dementia, as well as a bunch of other things.

It's a miracle drug, that should be available cheaply to everyone, but so far it's only for rich people.

[–] lennybird@lemmy.world 43 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (20 children)

I would really hesitate calling it a miracle drug as there are documented side-effects and side-effects yet to be fully understood after long-term use.

Additionally while GLP-1 can reduce caloric intake, it doesn't actually fix the poor dietary choices that got you there in the first place. Like a smoker people will misconstrue having a low BMI with being overall healthy, even though there could be a host of macro and micro-nutritional deficits from fiber to omega-3's to vitamins to antioxidants, and still a relatively high consumption of processed foods with things like added sugar.

So sure it reduces the total amount of poor foods being consumed, but of course does nothing in promoting adoption of nutritionally-positive foods. In one respect, the caloric weigh-loss still is itself a net-positive, hopefully people don't end up masking or cementing their other poor eating habits as a consequence.

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 19 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Additionally while GLP-1 can reduce caloric intake, it doesn’t actually fix the poor dietary choices that got you there in the first place.

This shows an ignorance of how obesity actually works. The primary difference between skinny people and fat people is that fat people are just hungrier. Skinny people have functioning satiation reflexes, while fat people's have been damaged, likely from exposure to highly processed foods during childhood.

Have you learned nothing from the effect of GLP-1 inhibitors? For years, people have been demonizing fat folks as lazy and ignorant, smug in the self-satisfaction that their superior character and intellect could save them from that fate. And now we've apparently learned to bottle willpower, to condense "good dietary choices" into an injection. People take these medicines, and suddenly they find themselves drawn to eat a healthy amount of food, and to eat less sugary and refined crap.

This shows beyond any doubt that people were not making poor choices. They didn't lack willpower. They never had any fundamental character flaws. They just had a broken metabolism that forced them to crave unhealthy levels of unhealthy food. We give them a shot, and somehow this profound flaw in their moral character just vanishes into the wind.

Obesity is a medical problem. It's not an education, a willpower, or a character problem. We have tens of millions of people who have had a core part of their bodies - their satiation reflex, poisoned and damaged by the food industry. And instead of helping them, we declare their poisoning to be a moral failure.

You have learned nothing.

[–] CalipherJones@lemmy.world 11 points 3 days ago

When I was fat hunger had little to do with it. I ate to mask my emotional pain.

[–] RBWells@lemmy.world 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

This is all true, but if overweight is your most urgent health issue, and if the excess fat is causing other health issues, simply reducing weight by whatever means can improve health, and there are virtuous cycles too, if you are lighter you can move more, maybe you feel better about your body and treat it better, an upward spiral. The epidemic of overweight (or more specifically over-fat) is causing so many cascade effects here that it's well worth treating aggressively.

What I'd like to know is are these beneficial side effects just due to the weight loss, or are they available to normal weight people who take the drug? Is it actually the drug, or would they get the same benefits by losing weight some other way?

[–] Spitefire@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

Anecdotal, but I think this tracks with what you're asking. I have never been obese, but due to family history of both connective tissue disorders and diabetes it has always been extremely important to me that I keep my weight in a normal range. It took an intense amount of mental effort on my part, religious food tracking and extensive exercise for decades.

When I started on a GLP-1 (due to a weird health situation that's not really relevant), the amount of mental energy I needed to expend to maintain my weight was suddenly gone. I don't feel sugar cravings like I used to, so I don't need to stay so vigilant about my diet. I don't spend my days monitoring my intake, planning out a rigorous fasting schedule, working out more than I'm naturally inclined to just to counteract that brownie I couldn't stop myself from eating. It's both a literal and emotional weight off. I am taking a very low dose but even so I honestly can't believe the difference. I am one of the ones who was will-powering through calories in/calories out and it was miserable. Now it's just...not.

[–] lennybird@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Fair points, thanks! You raise a good point that if the weight-loss itself is inhibiting your capacity to otherwise want to, say, go running or be more active then you can break the destructive feedback loop and give it another go. In that respect, I'm curious if these drugs are generally prescribed with no limit or prescribed until reaching a target weight? I don't know.

To your second paragraph, I'd like to know too. My guess is the benefits at least in the short-term are similar to what can be achieved by maintaining a healthy diet (Mediterranean / dash / mind diet, notably) — again, at least in the short-term. If poor eating habits persist even if at a lower caloric level, then eventually as those nutrients run out, things will wear down no differently than a poorly maintained engine.

[–] RBWells@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I do agree with the consensus here - it's weirdly moralistic to say fat people should just do willpower harder, if there a drug that works for so many. It's a lot like telling an anorexic to just eat more. Eating disorders are complicated. A drug that fixes the appetite and improves blood sugar handling is an enormous improvement compared to what we had before.

I've never been fat, but have been eating disordered in the other direction and there is no way I could have been convinced to eat more just because it would have been healthier. If there had been some drug to fix my relationship to food back then, I feel like nobody would have said "just use willpower and eat better."

[–] lennybird@lemmy.world 0 points 3 days ago

It's interesting that this strikes at the heart of left vs right mindset, at least in America. Conservatives have a tendency to romanticize the notion of free will and individual freedom; that you alone are responsible for the choices you make absent of anything else like — will over systemic forces or regions of your own brain working against you. Whereas the left has a stronger tendency to recognize these other variables that apply pressure in such a way as to shape the path of least resistance in what you may choose to do.

It's like a story I heard about the mindset of Americans vs. Germans when they have a vehicular accident. In America, blame is often quickly pointed to the person for skidding off the road while in Germany they may send a team of engineers to assess how to reduce the environment to prohibit this from being possible in the first place (e.g., putting up a guard-rail). This is surely exaggerated and America of course has civil engineers, but you get the idea of a default state of responsibility.

Maybe the reality of executive responsibility and external forces is somewhere in the middle. Nevertheless, a systemic problem tends to require a systematic solution. So I definitely don't fault obese people for not being able to get skinny. I agree: definitely the wrong mindset!

My main concern is that if the cost of this weight loss is a masking of symptoms and warning-signs of other poor dietary habits, could that result in even more people suffering ailments kicked under the rug just because they perceive themselves to be healthy when looking in a mirror? (e.g., the smoker arguments of old).

[–] barneypiccolo@lemm.ee 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Expecting NO side-effects is an unrealistic objective.

You contradict yourself when you claim there have been no long-term studies, then say it's been used for 20 years, and that's how they discovered the weight loss SIDE-EFFECT.

It certainly does get to the bottom of one of the worst aspects of obesity - overeating. You are assuming that all obese people are eating poor quality food, but that isn't always the case. Often they are eating high quality food, they are just eating too much of it. This address that issue, reduces cravings, and teaches them to eat less. It also seems to help in reducing cravings for poor quality food.

And you are avoiding the addiction issues. That alone makes this drug worth exploring further.

The real issue with this drug isn't the lack of research, it's the fact that it is difficult to access for the average person. Here is a drug that could go a long way in reducing some of the most pressing health issues in our society - obesity, addictions, dementia, etc., and yet insurance companies won't cover it. The cost of the drug would be far cheaper than the associated costs to a society who allows those serious health issues to exist unchecked.

[–] barneypiccolo@lemm.ee 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

All drugs have side-effects, so what?

You are focusing on the weight loss issue, which is a miracle in itself. So what if they still make unhealthy choices? They are still losing massive amounts of weight, which is us already a HUGE improvement. You can't let perfection be the enemy. So it doesn't solve 100% of the problem, solving 75% is still a worthy improvement.

Then there are all the other things it does. It reduces cravings in addicts of drugs, alcohol, and tobacco, making it much easier to quit. So an unhealthy person with addictions and diabetes can take this drug, get their diabetes under control, lose a ton of weight, and quit smoking and drinking and whatever else, and we're supposed to avoid this drug because there might be some side effects? As long as the side-effects aren't dying 20 years sooner, they're better off with the drug.

It also seems to help with dementia, and other drugs.

You know, all those things like weight loss and addiction control are side-effects, right? They are an unintended consequence of taking the drug, which is what a side-effects is. Sometimes side-effects are bad, sometimes they're good.

[–] lennybird@lemmy.world -3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

All drugs have side-effects, sure, and key to note 1) some drugs have more; some have less. 2) some have extensive longterm research. Others do not. While ozempic-like drugs have been around for 20 years, for the vast majority of that time they were centered on treatment of diabetes, which as you said they realized it had beneficial side-effects alongside the bad like weight-loss. This is simply why I say to caution anything as being a "miracle drug," unless you wish to define that yourself — because that at least to me implies no side-effects and implies a comprehensive resolution of the problem as opposed to a masking of the root causes, while also having been thoroughly studie. At least with say antibiotics, sure, there are some serious side-effects; but they get to the heart of the issue and eliminate the bacteria. Moreover it's a solution to a problem we cannot yet resolve in any other way. In the vast majority of cases where ozempic is being prescribed, weight-loss, that is not the case.

I'd rather not repeat myself too much but it is again like smoking. Tobacco and pharmaceuticals would hail cigarettes as "miracle drugs" because the long-term research had yet to bear out what many had long feared: that the weight loss comes with a hefty a price. Well, in kind, I am concerned there is a hefty price and anything too good to be true usually is — especially when it comes to pharmaceutical marketing.

Again, I just want to again reiterate: Literally everything Ozempic does positively, from dementia to cravings to weight-loss, can be achieved by eating a healthy diet. Period. Full stop. This isn't like antibiotics where you can just take vitamin C and eliminate C-diff. Unless you have problems creating GLP-1, all the benefits of Ozempic — KEY POINT: AND MORE because you're actually avoiding anti-nutrients and taking in a diverse array of nutrients — can be achieved by simply eating what scientists have already concluded as being the healthiest diet: A Mediterranean plant-based diet. (and that doesn't even mean excluding all meats).

And no, I'm not saying it should be taken off the market; only that I'm practicing skepticism and not calling it a miracle drug because it masks a poor habit; it doesn't fix it. If Ozempic caused someone to stop eating all poor food and start eating their leafy greens and stop chugging starbucks coffees and adopt the scientist-recommended Mediterranean diet, then sure, I might be more likely to call it that. It does not.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 4 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Generally, most people we're talking about here don't have dietary nutritional deficiencies. You'd have to specifically eat an unbalanced diet, like chicken nuggets for every meal, for that to happen.

I would bet that anyone prescribed ozempic has also talked with their doctor about their diet before starting.

[–] Rookwood@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 3 days ago

This is false. The processed food that makes up a majority of our modern staples is well known for being nutritionally deficient. A significant portion of the population is deficient in things like iron, calcium, magnesium, and omega 3s.

[–] lennybird@lemmy.world 0 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Can you elaborate? If you're taking Ozempic for obesity, then in the vast majority of cases there is generally a nutritional deficiency at the heart of your diet — that includes missing nutrients like fiber, or adding anti-nutrients in the realm of added sugar. Unless you have some thyroid issue or are already diabetic, etc., which would require a different sort of intervention.

In dealing with my mom's ailments and navigating the medical system, most general doctors don't know jack shit about nutrition, and there is no mandatory referral to a dietician before prescription for ozempic.

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