New drugs could spell an end to the world’s obesity epidemic | Hacker News Reader

New drugs could spell an end to the world’s obesity epidemic

economist.com

15 pointsMoSattler8 comments

We need to solve what’s causing the epidemic - http://achemicalhunger.com/, declining mental health, deteriorating relationships with food, pandemic habits, and other things.

Even if this medication offers 15% fat loss, each of us on average in western countries probably earn that in a decade now. We’ll need a lot more of these inventions if we wish to ignore the root causes of obesity.

It’s way more than that. It’s metabolic disorder too. People are way less physiologically resilient with modern day foods and environments.

Well, removing antibiotics, contaminants and lithium from all food and water sources across the whole world seems like a great idea that may require concerted efforts of several generations, to be very optimistic. I'm not sure who "we" in "we need to solve" is referring to, but I certainly can't do much about solving any of this in my lifetime.

But if someone smart came up with a way on an individual level to counterbalance these negative factors, lower the leptin levels and help reset the "lipostat" to a saner set point, that would be an improvement in my book.

(thanks for sharing that link! i've read some posts, but this was like a TLDR of the entire blog, very interesting!)

"We" the humanity. Of course, those in certain positions have more power than others to make a change.

I don't know if reseting the "lipostat" is much more than a bandage on a bullet wound. Yes, it's better to have it, and it's a step in a good direction. But I'm skeptical it will be the ultimate solution. The way we're polluting our environments have other negative externalities, too. Now it's the obesity epidemic, coming right up is the infertility crisis, and I don't feel confident we won't have a cancer epidemic next.

I'm not against pharmaceutical progress and shaping our bodies to fit our world more. We've certainly caused a lot of evolutionary pressures for ourselves in the last few hundred years. But maybe it would be healthier on an individual level to just move to a region less touched by industrial pollution.

https://archive.ph/xp5eL

No, they probably won't. While these drugs are an amazing breakthrough, you still develop tolerance to them and have to keep raising the dose. Also, if you decide to stop, good luck maintaining that low weight without any of the fit lifestyle habits people spend years developing.

> you still develop tolerance to them and have to keep raising the dose

i googled briefly but didn't find any links that say you need to perpetually up the Wegovy dose, beyond the initial ramp-up of a couple of months. Could you share a source for that?

> without any of the fit lifestyle habits people spend years developing

That's probably true, but at the link above in the comments, it says that currently people exercise more than before, but that doesn't do anything to even slow the nonstop obesity rise in the population, let alone reverse it. So years of developing habits, while undoubtedly a big health benefit for those who persist, don't really help the bigger picture.

> People are exercising more today than they were 10 or even 20 years ago. Contrary to stereotypes, more than 50% of Americans meet the HHS guidelines for aerobic exercise. But obesity is still on the rise.

I was just reading the subreddit r/Semaglutide. It seems very common for people to start at a low dose and increase it as needed and when they feel like hunger is coming back. But some posters say they are at the max dose and are starting to feel hungry again.

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