Reporting on these drugs is so bad. Most of the benefits AND downsides they keep reporting are the same for any major rapid weight loss. Be it hair shedding or sleep apnea resolving. They keep acting like these are novel drug specific side effects rather than weight-loss related side effects.
At this point it might legit be impossible for a side effect to be discovered that outweighs the immense health benefits of losing weight.
It feels like people want there to be some horrible side effect to these drugs. Idk if it’s some moral objection to weight loss without discipline, or just general mistrust of big pharma.
It's absolutely the moral thing. Even on HN there are an endless number of people who treat the use of GLP-1s as a failure that must be publicly shamed.
> It feels like people want there to be some horrible side effect to these drugs.
Being able to lose weight is, in many minds, associated with self-discipline. A route to the same goal that elides self-discipline is consequently viewed as a cheat, a shortcut.
It's a product if the cultural pervasiveness of the Protestant work ethic and its relation to the health and wellness domains. That fine, in my opinion, if one is Protestant, but why carry the baggage for someone else's religion if you're not one, ya know?
Culture and religion are intertwined even if separate. Western civilization is "culturally Christian" even in secular countries like France. Many places in the US are thus "culturally Protestant" even if most of their current-day population don't follow that religion.
I'm a doxastic voluntarist, as in, we think ourselves to be less able to change our beliefs than we actually are. The idea that weight loss by means other than self-discipline seems, at least to me, quite easy to choose to not believe in.
Recently I've talked to someone who said she is worried about those drugs as they will create 2 tier society because only people with money will get thin. This also increases already bad fat phobia in our society according to her.
She has a PhD in biotechnology and works in a lab. She is also quite thin (always was).
It's crab mentality disguised as moral position. It's especially obvious when the same people advocate for free access to drugs, alcohol or gambling. You should have freedom you do anything as long as it doesn't improve your life or move you to in social hierarchy.
I would give you the name but that wouldn't be ok.
Other than that what else can I do? I've spent time writing about an encounter I can with someone I know for 20 years and you just called me a lier because the story sounds improbable to you.
Isn't the whole point to read about what others think or experienced to learn about things you personally hasn't?
“Millions of people live longer healthier lives by reducing cardiovascular and diabetes risk, but their fingernails might be more brittle!” Doesn’t hit the same does it?
Yes, it does look superficially like the kind of thing that happens with nutrient deficiencies. Many of these people eat extremely unhealthily and continue to, but now in significantly lower quantities.
I lost 170 lbs natty (100lbs the first year) and my hair and nails only got better. If your generative follices are dying off you are not losing weight healthily.
if you're losing it as a weight loss drug and that's a side effect of the rapid weight loss that otherwise wouldn't occur it's a side effect of the drug in any practical sense, or are you trying to establish the 'guns don't kill people' for pharmaceuticals?
It's a side effect of the treatment regimen that many people in all likelihood aren't even aware of so it's good to report it like this
Idk, i think its important to distinguish between side effects that would also happen via diet and exercise vs side effects that do not happen when losing weight via other means.
If you shoot someone in the face, generally speaking that person will die. Not everyone who takes GLP-1s actually lose weight. A decent fraction of people are non-responders. Those people also tend to not lose their hair or have their sleep apnea and knee problems go away. Your analogy isn't as clever as you might think.
no listed side effect on every drug, or effect for that matter applies to all people. Anti-Depressants don't work for a fairly large amount of users, that doesn't mean we don't list those effects.
it feels like you are being deliberately obtuse so I may be wasting my time, but I'll attempt to assume the best and try one more time. This is very basic correlation vs causation stuff. The side effect is related to rapid weightless of any kind. Weightloss is a "side effect" of the drug. Hairloss is a side effect of rapid weight loss. There is a chain of effects there but it's not X causes Z, it's X might cause Y, which causes Z. This distinction matters less for negatives - still good to tell people but for positives it is disingenuous. If you don't lose weight, your sleep apnea doesn't go away. Your joint pain doesn't get better. Your blood pressure doesn't go down - because the drug doesn't cause those things, the weight loss does.
FDA trials follow this approach. If something bad happens it’s logged as an adverse event; if they croak it’s a serious adverse event (SAE).
So if you have a treatment for moles, and a patient (trial participant) has a mole on their back treated and then falls down the stairs or is run over by a trolley the agency wants you to do an analysis to see if the treatment might have had something to do with getting run over or not taking the lift.
Note: this is not an exaggeration. I have written phase I and phase II clinical trial protocols earlier in my career.
GLP1s do seem like incredible science but I will admit to being a little floored when I saw how far they spread and how quickly. I really hope small numbers of hair loss and nail issues are the biggest issues we face.
Very large studies already exist. They’re safe. Fearmongering about side effects is actually harmful at this point, because skepticism could keep someone from getting safe, effective treatment.
Not only that but the weight loss is often a side effect of fixing other issues, for me I’ve been taking a low dose for autoimmune related ME/CFS for about 4 years now.
Could these be signs of malnutrition? I see a lot of people who take them but don't also adjust their diet or exercise to make sure they're getting solid nutrition and start looking sickly.
That was actually my thought. When I started controlling my diet a lot more I was surprised about the (positive) change in my nails. I had heard it was a thing but had never experienced it before.
I feel like waaay more than people think depends on nutrition. You literally are what you eat. Like for example, sometimes my skin oils get messed up somehow to where everything starts sticking to it, and then I eat some food and it's fixed. I have no idea what this is or how to make it stop happening between every meal, but it doesn't seem related to whether I touch the food while eating, so it's probably something about nutrition.
> Though these issues aren’t necessarily too serious, both patients and doctors should be aware of the potential risk, the researchers say.
> “For people taking or considering GLP-1 receptor agonists, the main takeaway is: do not panic, and do not stop an effective treatment on your own because of your hair or nails—but do mention these symptoms to your doctor,” study author Charles Taïeb, a clinical dermatologist at Necker University Hospital in Paris, told Gizmodo.
Wow. Sounds pretty fuckin serious. Can't believe people are taking these highly dangerous drugs instead of mustering up a mass of eternal self-discipline they clearly already don't have and never will. Shame on them and the doctors! Side-effects are very serious even if the people taking about them are like "uhhh yeah not a huge deal, but like, be aware and talk to your doctor about it", why not just try being a perfect human being like me! Try not being fat! I am very smart!!!!
But there's lots of lunches with such a huge benefit and such a minimal cost, that it's virtually a free lunch, that's most of medicine, you just take penicilin and it kills lots of infections, wash your hands and avoid diarrhea, etc...
In an economic sense the cost that you'd associate with those is research, which you would have already paid when choosing to use a drug with a net positive effect.
i've visited many subreddits, telegram and discord groups i see this common pattern:
People import it from China from suppliers and do not know how to properly dose it. Many are using it in knee jerk fashion with no proper dosing protocol.
Why they do it? it's because it's cheaper this way and they have to answer or explaining the use to no one.
Others have this strange idea, "if i am using GLPs, exercise and dieting is no longer needed".
I feel like you're misunderstanding something here. Nearly every obese adult has unsuccessfully tried a number of other strategies to lose weight. What GLP-1s immediately illustrate to most people who try them is that there's a real, physical problem with their appetite that only GLP-1s successfully correct. A few weeks after I started taking GLP-1s, I started to feel full again for the first time since college. Everyone should work out daily and maintain a varied, healthy diet, but I did and they never made me feel that way alone.
I do encourage anyone who can remotely afford the name-brand drugs to buy them, but even with price cuts they're still quite expensive. So while I'm never going to encourage buying pharmaceuticals from sketchy grey market producers, I find it very hard to tell the people who can't afford GLP-1s that they have to just deal. It'd be like not being able to buy painkillers.
>Nearly every obese adult has unsuccessfully tried a number of other strategies to lose weight.
What's the source of this info?
The market is filled with "Eat X for weight loss, eat Y for weight gain."
The average person actually does not choose the right strategy for weight loss which is "Calorie Deficit"
But implementing it is not "EASY" until you understand how expenditure, calorie intake, and weight movement work, which is too much work to understand for an average Joe.
OKAY, vasty majority of people on HackerNews can probably wrap their head around these concepts if they find the right resource, but average Joe can't.
Let's take something as simple as "calorie deficit."
Being at a calorie deficit itself requires knowing two things:
1. How much you burn in a day (total daily energy expenditure or TDEE)
2. How much your intake is for the day
Deficit = TDEE - Intake
You can do calorie counting for #2. But what can you do for #1?
The average guy does not know how to calculate these properly, let alone judge weight movement, which can move a lot in the opposite direction due to water weight fluctuations that can exceed 1 kg+ of movement a day.
We've 17,000+ users why? because #1 is a difficult problem for many.
>What GLP-1s immediately illustrate to most people who try them is that there's a real, physical problem with their appetite that only GLP-1s successfully correct.
That doesn't mean every guy who is overweight by 5-10kg needs GLPs.
>A few weeks after I started taking GLP-1s, I started to feel full again for the first time since college. Everyone should work out daily and maintain a varied, healthy diet, but I did and they never made me feel that way alone.
Sorry but most people diet poorly, dieting well requires training and education.
Have you actually worked on this problem? or you just make bunch of assumption and accept them as "truth"?
At the end, I am not a GLP “hater.” If you fail to stay at a deficit for several weeks (deficit 300-400kcal) due to poor appetite regulation, you feel insanely hungry even after volume eating methods, improving physical activity by walking more and lifting 1x a week etc..., you are perhaps a valid candidate for GLP, so you can reach out to doctors.
But saying all fat people need GLPs is something I am not going to agree with.
It feels like people want there to be some horrible side effect to these drugs. Idk if it’s some moral objection to weight loss without discipline, or just general mistrust of big pharma.
Being able to lose weight is, in many minds, associated with self-discipline. A route to the same goal that elides self-discipline is consequently viewed as a cheat, a shortcut.
It's a product if the cultural pervasiveness of the Protestant work ethic and its relation to the health and wellness domains. That fine, in my opinion, if one is Protestant, but why carry the baggage for someone else's religion if you're not one, ya know?
She has a PhD in biotechnology and works in a lab. She is also quite thin (always was).
It's crab mentality disguised as moral position. It's especially obvious when the same people advocate for free access to drugs, alcohol or gambling. You should have freedom you do anything as long as it doesn't improve your life or move you to in social hierarchy.
- Concerned about fatphobia
- Worried Ozempic might create a two tier society
- Believe we should have unrestricted access to gambling and drugs
This sounds like a goomba to me.
Isn't the whole point to read about what others think or experienced to learn about things you personally hasn't?
I know with the famous 382 day fast guy they fed him vitamins, but I don't believe they do that with GLP-1/Ozempic prescriptions? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri%27s_fast
It's a side effect of the treatment regimen that many people in all likelihood aren't even aware of so it's good to report it like this
It sounds more like malnutrition and starvation.
I'll concede it may still be better than being fat, though.
So if you have a treatment for moles, and a patient (trial participant) has a mole on their back treated and then falls down the stairs or is run over by a trolley the agency wants you to do an analysis to see if the treatment might have had something to do with getting run over or not taking the lift.
Note: this is not an exaggeration. I have written phase I and phase II clinical trial protocols earlier in my career.
> “For people taking or considering GLP-1 receptor agonists, the main takeaway is: do not panic, and do not stop an effective treatment on your own because of your hair or nails—but do mention these symptoms to your doctor,” study author Charles Taïeb, a clinical dermatologist at Necker University Hospital in Paris, told Gizmodo.
Wow. Sounds pretty fuckin serious. Can't believe people are taking these highly dangerous drugs instead of mustering up a mass of eternal self-discipline they clearly already don't have and never will. Shame on them and the doctors! Side-effects are very serious even if the people taking about them are like "uhhh yeah not a huge deal, but like, be aware and talk to your doctor about it", why not just try being a perfect human being like me! Try not being fat! I am very smart!!!!
In an economic sense the cost that you'd associate with those is research, which you would have already paid when choosing to use a drug with a net positive effect.
People import it from China from suppliers and do not know how to properly dose it. Many are using it in knee jerk fashion with no proper dosing protocol.
Why they do it? it's because it's cheaper this way and they have to answer or explaining the use to no one.
Others have this strange idea, "if i am using GLPs, exercise and dieting is no longer needed".
When long term experienced GLP users say, you still need a dieting and workout protocol, https://www.reddit.com/r/tirzepatidecompound/comments/1omfgx...
GLPs are very useful but they are not needed by vast majority of people who use it.
And key questions
1. Do you really need GLPs? how did you figure this out?
2. How much do you need?
3. What's your dieting and workout strategy?
Very few GLP users actually run through these questions.
People should stop pushing it as a “miracle” and instead see it as a “tool” used in specific cases.
I do encourage anyone who can remotely afford the name-brand drugs to buy them, but even with price cuts they're still quite expensive. So while I'm never going to encourage buying pharmaceuticals from sketchy grey market producers, I find it very hard to tell the people who can't afford GLP-1s that they have to just deal. It'd be like not being able to buy painkillers.
What's the source of this info?
The market is filled with "Eat X for weight loss, eat Y for weight gain."
The average person actually does not choose the right strategy for weight loss which is "Calorie Deficit"
But implementing it is not "EASY" until you understand how expenditure, calorie intake, and weight movement work, which is too much work to understand for an average Joe.
OKAY, vasty majority of people on HackerNews can probably wrap their head around these concepts if they find the right resource, but average Joe can't.
Let's take something as simple as "calorie deficit."
Being at a calorie deficit itself requires knowing two things:
1. How much you burn in a day (total daily energy expenditure or TDEE)
2. How much your intake is for the day
Deficit = TDEE - Intake
You can do calorie counting for #2. But what can you do for #1?
The average guy does not know how to calculate these properly, let alone judge weight movement, which can move a lot in the opposite direction due to water weight fluctuations that can exceed 1 kg+ of movement a day.
Have you seen the math required for figuring out "Maintenance Calories?, see this: https://macrocodex.app/knowledge/rethink/adaptive-tdee/
And all the factors that go into this? see this: https://macrocodex.app/knowledge/macrocodex/smart-calorie-bu...
We've 17,000+ users why? because #1 is a difficult problem for many.
>What GLP-1s immediately illustrate to most people who try them is that there's a real, physical problem with their appetite that only GLP-1s successfully correct.
That doesn't mean every guy who is overweight by 5-10kg needs GLPs.
>A few weeks after I started taking GLP-1s, I started to feel full again for the first time since college. Everyone should work out daily and maintain a varied, healthy diet, but I did and they never made me feel that way alone.
Sorry but most people diet poorly, dieting well requires training and education.
GLP users themselves say this, https://www.reddit.com/r/tirzepatidecompound/comments/1omfgx...
Have you actually worked on this problem? or you just make bunch of assumption and accept them as "truth"?
At the end, I am not a GLP “hater.” If you fail to stay at a deficit for several weeks (deficit 300-400kcal) due to poor appetite regulation, you feel insanely hungry even after volume eating methods, improving physical activity by walking more and lifting 1x a week etc..., you are perhaps a valid candidate for GLP, so you can reach out to doctors.
But saying all fat people need GLPs is something I am not going to agree with.