Ozempic May Be Reshaping the Brain, Scientists Say (yahoo.com) 116
A research team found "extensive changes" on brain scans of 13 young women taking
GLP-1 drugs, reports the Washington Post:
Within only a few months, the brain connections in the salience network, which helps target attention, had multiplied... ["We didn't expect to see this effect, and we really don't know what it means," said an assistant professor assisting the research.] Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs were initially understood as a metabolism breakthrough: medicines that act like hormones to control hunger, blood sugar and weight. But as researchers probe deeper into how the drugs work, early evidence suggests that GLP-1s may also be reshaping parts of the brain.
Tens of millions of people are now taking the medications worldwide, turning what began as an obesity and diabetes treatment into what could be modern medicine's largest unplanned neuroscience experiments... Long before Oprah Winfrey and social media influencers helped popularize GLP-1 drugs, physician-scientist Lorenzo Leggio was studying them as a possible addiction treatment... Several major studies examining GLP-1 drugs on nicotine dependence, opioid- and cocaine-use disorders, gambling addiction and binge eating are also underway. "It's very exciting times, but we don't fully understand how it works," Leggio said...
As evidence has grown that inflammation, metabolism and mental health may be far more connected than scientists once believed, researchers have become intrigued by patients who say GLP-1 drugs appear to ease anxiety, compulsive thinking and emotional distress. Daniel Drucker, a University of Toronto researcher and GLP-1 drug pioneer who receives funding from several drugmakers, said researchers are investigating the medications across a variety of psychiatric and neurological conditions, though none are approved for them. "We have so many anecdotal reports: They were treated for blood sugar and then they felt much happier. Or they took one dose of the drug and their brain fog cleared," he said.
The article suggests social media complaints "raise deeper questions about what, exactly, these drugs are changing.
"If GLP-1s alter the brain systems involved in reward, craving and motivation, researchers wonder, where is the line between quieting a person's destructive impulses and reshaping personality itself?"
Tens of millions of people are now taking the medications worldwide, turning what began as an obesity and diabetes treatment into what could be modern medicine's largest unplanned neuroscience experiments... Long before Oprah Winfrey and social media influencers helped popularize GLP-1 drugs, physician-scientist Lorenzo Leggio was studying them as a possible addiction treatment... Several major studies examining GLP-1 drugs on nicotine dependence, opioid- and cocaine-use disorders, gambling addiction and binge eating are also underway. "It's very exciting times, but we don't fully understand how it works," Leggio said...
As evidence has grown that inflammation, metabolism and mental health may be far more connected than scientists once believed, researchers have become intrigued by patients who say GLP-1 drugs appear to ease anxiety, compulsive thinking and emotional distress. Daniel Drucker, a University of Toronto researcher and GLP-1 drug pioneer who receives funding from several drugmakers, said researchers are investigating the medications across a variety of psychiatric and neurological conditions, though none are approved for them. "We have so many anecdotal reports: They were treated for blood sugar and then they felt much happier. Or they took one dose of the drug and their brain fog cleared," he said.
The article suggests social media complaints "raise deeper questions about what, exactly, these drugs are changing.
"If GLP-1s alter the brain systems involved in reward, craving and motivation, researchers wonder, where is the line between quieting a person's destructive impulses and reshaping personality itself?"
How about (Score:4, Insightful)
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Humans are omnivores. We're not designed to live on vegetables.
If eating meat was bad for us, we would have evolved out of it long ago.
Your logic is flawed. (Score:4, Interesting)
"Omnivore" doesn't mean "you MUST eat a little bit of everything." It means "you CAN eat a huge variety of things."
Some meats, like red meat, have been shown to cause colon cancer. We didn't evolve out of that.
Our evolutionary strategy has largely been "eat whatever we can get our hands on, and get as much nutrition out of it as we can." There was never some magical perfect diet that kept us perfectly healthy. There was always just a set of complex needs that our bodies have, and a set of plants/animals available, and we just did what we could. So, many forms of food are both healthy and unhealthy for us, at the same time, in different ways.
Contrary to propaganda from the meat and dairy industry, it is totally possible to thrive on a vegan diet. Some people will have an easier time of this than others, because details about metabolism vary widely based on a person's genetics. One nutrient in particular, B12, causes a lot of confusion. That's one that our body must receive directly, we cannot synthesize it ourselves. Our most readily-available food source of it is animals, but not because those animals synthesize it in their bodies...but rather....because they eat dirt-covered food right off the ground (or consume food along with the river/sea water that surrounds it). B12, you see, is exclusively made by a family of microorganisms, and everything that needs it ultimately gets it from that source (sometimes by means of intermediaries). Supplemental B12 is not some chemically synthesized frankenfood....it is just harvested straight from colonies of microorganisms that produce it. So, strict vegans are going to need to take a supplement for that (or....eat home-grown carrots straight from their yard without washing them first).
Beyond that, our bodies are really good at extracting the nutrients they need from plants. Plants also provide phytochemicals (which meats do not), so they are useful to us above-and-beyond whatever meat we might eat.
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Or, you should eat a variety of things, rather. Right?
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Yeah. Eating too little variety risks leaving you without an essential nutrient. But the details matter of course. You can get all the needed nutrients on an all-plant diet so long as you are getting a proper variety of plants, and B12 one way or another.
Re:How about (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe not a vegetarian diet but say like the typical street food in Vietnam. Vegetables, rice, and a bit of protein like shrimp or pork. That and walking your tubby ass around the block would do wonders for people’s health.
Re:How about (Score:4, Informative)
That isn't to say that vegetarianism isn't healthy - it's just that you need to put in a decent amount of extra work to avoid deficiencies and many people either don't realize it or don't follow through with it until they have issues.
Re:How about (Score:4, Interesting)
Fun trick:
Apply the same test to your typical non-vegan diets.
Most are deficient in even more nutrients than what they find for vegans.
MOST people need to put in a decent amount of extra work to avoid deficiencies, no matter what they're eating if we want to speak honestly about this.
(Saying this as a vegan since 1990 - my last blood work came up stellar, and I race bikes.)
Re: How about (Score:2)
You do realize that "non vegan diet" doesn't mean that you're not alllowed to eat vegetables, right? Only that you're not required to restrict yourself to those?
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Holy shit, really?!?!
Ugh.
Re:How about (Score:4, Informative)
Modern diets barely resemble early diets. While hunter-gatherer diets have varied greatly (paleoarctic people eating significantly more meat than average, for example), modern diets compared to the average paleodiet are high meat, high protein, and very low fibre.
If you want an "average caveman diet", you'd be swapping out a lot of the red meat for plant fibre.
Re:How about (Score:5, Interesting)
I am curious to know how many people are eagerly trying out this new drug, but were too afraid to get covid vaccines.
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If that turns out to be the case, we get to find out something about what reshaping the brain means.
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Apples to Oranges comparison. Vaccines for covid help me build antibodies so that if I happen to catch covid, it helps my body fight it off. Ozempic helps with weight loss and diabetes.
Weight loss is about health but also vanity. Society says thin is better and more attractive. So if I take a weight loss drug, I will therefore be thin and more attractive as a result. The vaccine on the other hand, you can opt not to take it and if you are otherwise healthy, will likely be just fine without it.
Much easier to
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Weight loss is about health but also vanity.
I feel like society thinks that alive people look better than corpses too, so why not remind the vain to get vaccinated.
Re:How about (Score:4, Insightful)
"There is also no controversy over taking a weight loss drug where as there is controversy over the vaccine."
Which is the point. Vaccines are rather well understood and limited side effects. Random drugs that affect your brain have a lot more potential for side effect. And yet some people fear vaccines more than random drugs. A bit like someone ranting about corrupt politicians and voting for the most obviously corrupt moron of all time...
Re:How about (Score:5, Funny)
But COVID vaccines are poison. I was told this by someone who just had a botox treatment. No I'm not joking. This is something a real person did, inject a literal neurotoxin protein into their face and then tell me they weren't getting a vaccination because that is poison.
Re:How about (Score:5, Informative)
You know what else distributes spike proteins throughout the body in orders of magnitude greater quantities (rather than the barely-measurable quantities you're referring to)? *Getting infected*. And the lower your antibody titres, the more the spike proteins. Also, vaccine spike proteins are mostly disabled. They're double-proline stabilized; while they can still bind with ACE2, they can't retract the way the virus does for cell entry.
You know what causes far more significant long-term antigen persistence? *Infection, particularly without preexisting immunity, such as from vaccination*.
You know what also causes cardiovascular distribution, prolonged antigen production, and immune-mediated injury vastly more often and more seriously than vaccination* *Infection, particularly without preexisting immunity, such as from vaccination*.
Re:How about (Score:4, Funny)
they were poison to some
Sure. If you don't know what the words mean. Wait... are you the Botox woman? I didn't think you were on Slashdot too.
Notably, spike protein or its fragments have been detected in blood and tissues for months after vaccination in a subset of individuals — with reports extending up to 6 months or longer — indicating that expression can persist far beyond initial expectations for this novel mRNA platform.
Wow tell us you don't know the point of vaccinations without telling us.
These findings highlight significant risks inherent to mRNA technologies: unintended organ distribution (particularly cardiovascular)
... you say "unintended", just how did you think "mRNA technologies" work? Whisper sweet nothings into your ear and hope there's no detectable change in cardiovascular systems and COVID just magically ignores you because it thinks you're a cool dude?
There's nothing "unintended" about this.
Re:How about (Score:4, Informative)
GLP-1 is not a new drug. It has been studied for decades. The use for weight loss (and impulse control) is new.
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GLP-1 isn't a drug at all...
Re:How about (Score:4, Funny)
We need a small portion of anti-vaxers. If one day, we all turn into zombies because of some long term effect no one picked up in time, they will continue the species. It probably is a step back in evolution though.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Not eating garbage and exercising takes effort. This is America and we can’t do that.
Re: How about (Score:4, Insightful)
It only does in a certain system that encourages it. Tax processed food enough to pay for healthcare, give people access to fresh veggies (already the case in many places but not everywhere, can be subsidised), give people enough free time to cook by capping contract hours and setting a decent minimum salary, make cities walkable with grocery shops around the corner or easily reachable by public transport.
I'm just describing life most European cities by the way, even though things are changing slowly.
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I'd also add we should be making our food aid into GOOD meal kits, as opposed to every fast food restaurant having a large "We accept EBT" sign in the window. I already subscribe to one that results in fairly delicious healthy meals, and ramped up I can't believe this wouldn't be doable.
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I'm doing it right now, and It's fairly difficult. The hardest part, though, isn't access to healthy things or maintaining the work - though that is difficult. The hardest part is peer pressure. Donuts at work. C'mon, just have one. People going out with you and chiding you for not eating enough or chipping in on large orders. Friends wanting to drink, but you're not so you're somehow a downer. All that.
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If you mean veg + tubers and grains, yeah enjoy your starchy diabetes-inducing diet. Oh, beans? Less than 300 calories a pound!
The human digestive tract isn't built for bovine grazing. We evolved with fire and meat as a key part of the fuel that powers these energy-intensive big brains:
https://www.amnh.org/explore/s... [amnh.org]
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There is also a reason why we have terms that distinguish between "root vegetables" (carrots, beets) and "tubers" (potatoes, cassava). OP might have meant "plant based" since fruits (which are not vegetables, I hope we can agree) were probably intended, too, but I go by what people write.
Grain is a frui
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Legumes, when they are pulses (i.e. dried), are parts of plants you can eat, sure, but no one will think of navy beans as "vegetables".
To the contrary. They are vegetables, and anybody who doesn't understand that they are vegetables is misled.
They get treated differently in a number of ways by nutritionists.
Show me one nutritionist-- one-- who says beans aren't vegetables.
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Looked it up in case my memory was bad. From wiki,
Re:How about (Score:5, Informative)
I decided to randomly pick one of your claims to fact check - that beans are "less than 300 calories a pound!" Here's the info I find:
Cooked Bean Variety Calories per 100g Calories per Pound (approx.)
Red Kidney Beans 127 kcal ~576 calories
Black Beans 132 kcal ~600 calories
Navy Beans 140 kcal ~635 calories
Pinto Beans 143 kcal ~649 calories
Chickpeas (Garbanzo) 164 kcal ~744 calories
Great Northern Beans 139 kcal ~630 calories
Lentils (Cooked) 116 kcal ~526 calories
According to FAO, the average person eats 1,88kg (4,1 pounds) of food (wet mass) per day. Thus beans, with an *average* dietary wet mass (not that one can't readily just eat more!) corresponds to 2157-3050 calories per day.
Globally, most hunter-gather tribes get most of their calories from plants, not animals. Meat commonly acts like a multivitamin - while not that much is eaten compared to plant matter, it provides nutrients that are hard to get (or impossible) from plants. My favorite example is that there are tribes that get the vast majority of their calories from sago, with the Yimar/Yimas getting 93% of calories purely from sago alone. BUT they also eat the sago grubs they find while pounding sago. Sago provides the energy, and the other 7% (commonly shrimp and small fish) provide critical protein and nutrients that aren't present in the starchy sago.
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Please read: Cooked bean variety.
The "beans in your pantry" data you're looking at are probably per serving. Here, let me grab the beans in *my* pantry. Roland BLACK BEANS Habichuelas Negras Supreme Calidad. Net weight 15.5 OZ / 439g. Serving size: 130g. Calories per serving: 180.
There's 453,6 grams per pound, so that's 0,968 pounds. 439/130 = 3,15 servings, times 180 calories = 567. In 0,968 pounds, that's 586 calories.
Or look online [eatthismuch.com]. "172 grams of black beans (cooked, boiled, unsalted) contains 227
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Using the numbers you supplied, your beans come out to 1.38 calories/gram, uncooked. 1.38 X 195 = 269 calories/pound, cooked. I hope I don't have to explain the full arithmetic
Volume-wise, that's over a cup of beans, which is waaaay more than I would want to eat at a sitting.
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Canned beans are ALREADY COOKED. *facepalm*. You can eat them straight out of the can.
I can't think of a single ingredient - any ingredient - that I would want to eat exclusively as my diet, so this is a really stupid argument.
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Just in case you need help:
Your calculation: 195g (dry weight) × 1.38 kcal/g = 269 calories per pound of cooked beans.
Correction: Because you used 1.38 kcal/g (the cooked density) as if it were the dry density, you essentially diluted the calories twice.
The Actual Math: 195g of dry beans * 3.4 kcal/g (actual dry density) = 663 kcal.
When those 195g of dry beans absorb water to weigh 454g (1 pound), they still contain those same 663 calories (since water has zero calories).
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Oh, forgot to link the dry density for you: here you go [eatthismuch.com]. 341kcal/100g. Aka 3,41kcal/g.
Which, like I said, should be obvious, since they're almost entirely carbs (~4kcal/g) and protein (~4kcal/g), and they're, as noted, dry (12-16% moisture). It would be quite the trick indeed to get something that is dry and and is almost entirely comprised of things that are 4kcal/g to be 1,38kcal/g! ;)
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How about you take a look at obesity rates in vegetarian countries. There is no link between obesity and plant based diets.
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A vegetable-based diet and daily activity? No, beef tallow is not a health food.
How about recognizing that (many) people will do enjoyable things even if they have long-term negative consequences?
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Maybe the world we made is a bit shit (Score:1, Flamebait)
If you have got to do this to yourself.
More dark side of capitalism. If profit is the goal and you don't care how you get there. This shit happens.
There must be a better way, harness that creative ambition without it doing harm.
Our ancestors weren't obese, they had to work for their food and they had a lot less of it. The obesity problem is very simple, sugar and fat sells, it exploits our survival extinct for lazy calories, you get the dopamine reward, addiction starts.
Ration or ban that crap from food, yo
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extinct / instinct ... extinct for later.
Re:Maybe the world we made is a bit shit (Score:4, Insightful)
So wait, are you proposing that we should pass laws that make highly-desired food illegal because too much of it is bad for a person?
If that is truly what you mean, then you aren't actually criticizing "Capitalism" so much as "personal freedom."
Why shouldn't people be free to live an unhealthy lifestyle, and accept the consequences?
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Even tobacco has fringe benefits.
Q: Do you smoke after sex?
A: I don't know. I've never checked.
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The problem is the human brain didn't evolve (or wasn't created) to contend with an essentially infinite supply of Doritos. A lot of hyper processed foods are designed specifically to be "craveable" and hook people. Therefore, a lot of people end up locked into an unhealthy lifestyle they don't want, much like a drug addict ruins their life even though they want to stop. See, a drug addicts bears some personal responsibility for their choices. But we also routinely give long sentences for the dealers who se
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Yes in the same way we banned cocaine and heroine because they are highly addictive and kill people.
Capitalism is often confused with Personal Freedom.
In Capitalism, you are the labour, an indentured worker , working more and more hours for less and less and you get into debt to buy toys, eat crap food, drink booze, jerk off to endless porn and play games all night to give you some happiness and escape from the fact that deep down you know you are a slave struggling to keep your head above water.
Don't beli
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They should. But how many really want to? They are victims of their biology. If we can help them the way we'll help the businessman who couldn't control his stupid financial instincts or underestimated his capabilities (bankruptcy) why can't we help with a drug that will help these people transform and maybe even contribute back more than we give them.
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The evolutionary pattern was created because food was unreliable and energy demands were unpredictable - but high, due to the large brain. (Possibly larger than it is today, but there seems to be conflicting data there.)
Now, rationing extreme energy foods is certainly one option, but it's not a particularly satisfactory one as the energy demands vary by profession and by time within a profession. You simply can't predict what people will need and there's no way to standardise this.
There is a second option.
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Or you know, people could pack their own lunches and then they wouldn't have to rely on fast food and shitty cafeteria food. It's really easy to just bring leftovers or make yourself a sandwich, toss in an apple or make a salad.
That people are lazy fucks is on them.
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Lazy, yes. Bright, no. If you can't trust the average person to figure out that bread that's loaded with salt and sugar isn't healthy, then you can't trust the average person to figure out what a healthy balanced meal is.
Weird (Score:4, Interesting)
> As evidence has grown that inflammation, metabolism and mental health may be far more connected than scientists once believed,
I remember some bloogers talking about how many of our health problems were caused by persistent inflammation years ago. But The Science said they were cranks.
Weird.
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Sometimes, the source of inflammation is difficult to identify. An injury that isn't evident, an undiscovered tumor, or even an infected but asymptomatic tooth. But the existence of inflammation is easily evident. By detecting elevations in the bodies defenses in response to it.
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FWIW, if they want to class insecticides as "toxins", I think they're probably right. Also plasticizers. And likely a few other industrial chemicals that aren't properly cleaned up.
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They probably were. Every single thing cranks say isn't necessarily wrong, especially with enough retrospective eye squinting. The very best cranks take a grain of truth, inflate it out of proportion and use it to sell you their expensive vitamin C pills and blueberry powder.
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I remember some bloogers talking about how many of our health problems were caused by persistent inflammation years ago. But The Science said they were cranks.
The bloggers you remember were claiming causality, where the science only shows correlation.
Re:Weird (Score:5, Interesting)
Please understand that there is a balance. Taking things to "reduce inflammation" or to "boost the immune system" run counter to each other. Inflammation *is* the reaction of the innate immune system. The immune system defends not just against pathogens, but also cancer. If you shut down the immune system too much, you can shut down cancer surveillance, which I don't need to stress, is a bad thing.
The downside to inflammation is that, yes, it is damaging. Needless inflammation is bad. And, as an added twist, from a personal example: my mother has Sjögren's and MALT lymphoma in the salivary glands. Sjögren's is an autoimmune condition that attacks exocrine glands. In doing so, it triggers a nonstop immune reaction in the salivary glands and the development of lymphoid tissue, with lymphocytes constantly proliferating. This nonstop proliferation runs the risk of - as in my mother's case - developing mutations that lead to lymphoma. So too much of a needless immune reaction can also cause cancer.
The immune system is an extremely complex, with hundreds of known cytokines, each causing various activation / suppression effects in others and having various other interactions with the body. So it's extremely hard to say, if you tweak this one thing, what will be the overall impact in the long term?
These GLP-1 agonists inhibit the NF-kB pathway and downregulate pro-inflammatory cytokines like TNF-a, IL-6, and IL-1. We think that this sort of downregulation is probably in general beneficial, in that in most cases it should not weaken cancer surveilance, and actually can help with certain types of cancers (but still can be harmful to some). Everything is situation dependent, and there's a lot we don't know.
"...and why it's definitely a good thing!" (Score:3)
Ozempic was always behavioral (Score:2)
At a basic level, these are drugs you consume to change your behavior. The fact that that behavior is eating maybe led physicians to see it as a drug with primarily metabolic effects.
It's starting to sound less like the behavioral effects are incidental to the metabolic effects, and more that they are integral to them.
Destructive Impulses? (Score:4, Interesting)
"If GLP-1s alter the brain systems involved in reward, craving and motivation, researchers wonder, where is the line between quieting a person's destructive impulses and reshaping personality itself?"
It is annoying to see this framing. Eating "food" designed by chemical engineers and marketed by PhD psychologists until you are too fat to function is not wholly a "choice." Yes, personal responsibility is involved, but we should also acknowledge that this is in some ways a form of mind hacking on the part of big business. Now we have a new big business selling medications that cancel out the powers of the other big business.
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
It's not just that though. The human body is instinctively wired to eat. We've been getting fatter long before chemical engineers started specialising in driving addiction (though this has really accelerated it), and that has largely been made possible by abundance.
Forget the "food" design, focus on the fact that you're within 1 minute of the ability to eat something basically your entire adult life. I'm going to a concert tonight. I'm going to cycle to the station like a healthy person. That cycle ride tak
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If only we had an institution that young people had to attend that could teach them healthy eats habits, to view marketing with skepticism, to understand how credit cards, loans and other money management systems worked. We could call it "School". Crazy idea, but just maybe it could work.
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It's a lot like smoking. Once your brain gets addicted, it's very hard to quit. Then nicotine patches were invented, and vaping, and it got easier.
It's kind of insane that none of this stuff has been banned. But that's how we do things - cannabis is illegal in many places, but addictive tobacco products and foods engineered to destroy your health are fine.
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Salience network? (Score:3)
No need for Ozempic, just slam vodka.
"Increased salience network connectivity in college students who engage in binge drinking: A resting state EEG study"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]
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There was probably a blunt in rotation, too. Don't blame all the mind-expansion on the alcohol.
Correlation/causation (Score:4, Interesting)
Might it not be... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Might it not be... (Score:5, Interesting)
I haven't read these particular studies, but a lot of the fascinating impacts of GLP-1 agonists occur whether the person loses weight or not. For example, the cardiac benefits are massive, like 2/3rds of the scale of benefits of being on statins, and it apparently occurs independent of weight loss.
One of the annoying things about our wetware is that systems aren't isolated; a "part" that gets used for one thing might also be used for half a dozen unrelated things.
Reavers (Score:1)
Do you want Reavers? Because this is how you get Reavers [wikipedia.org].
Isn't it basically a (neuro) toxin? (Score:2)
IIRC this class of substances is won from venomous animals. If it's a toxin that enhances brain function that would be cool. Perhaps something with the effect of stimulants, but permanently.
However, I'm not taking these new drugs just yet.
I'd rather wait a little longer and see if the Ozempic crowd turns into a bunch of blind Zombies or a bunch of Superhumans.
Then I'll make my call.
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I'm thinking about starting a very low dose when the pills come out in Europe. That gives an extra year for more data.
For me it's purely about health (well, about 90% about healthj). I'm a marginal case weight-wise, but the overall health impact profile looks spectacular. If a pill seems likely to add a number of healthy years to my lifespan, yes please. But the more data the better.
One thing that held me back was, I'm very averse to addiction, to anything that might have withdrawal symptoms. People repo
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I will comment that I started taking Semaglutide about 6 months ago, ostensibly out of my own curiosity and because I was having difficulty losing weight. Yes, I dropped weight (around 25 lbs) which now puts me at a healthy weight I haven't seen in years. Worth noting I'm 53 now and so methods to lose weight became more and more difficult as I passed 40. I'm still working out and not relying solely on GLP-1's (just got back from a 4 mile hike) for weight loss but it is remarkable how much that changed.
Howev
"Just eat less, keep input output" know-it-alls (Score:5, Insightful)
To all of those who say "you just need better impulse control", piss off.
I have two friends who have lost 12 kg with Ozempic and 30 kg with Mounjaro, respectively. Both had starting weights over 110 kg. Both had good diets, exercised regularly. Tests showed good endurance and muscle mass.
I'm myself starting Mounjaro next week, starting at 105 kg.
The problem is *not* diet. It's the fucking hunger. If I eat my stomach full of fries and pizza and cheeseburgers - the epitome of "fat" food, then MAYBE I'll be without hunger for...two hours. Then the hunger comes back. I've stayed - note, *stayed* at the current weight by not eating at all until late evening, because then I can get some sleep with the hunger.
Diet doesn't help. Switching to veggies => fine, I'll eat 4 plates of veggies at a meal instead of the burger. Switching to keto diet => no help.
Getting exercise every day - no effect. Improves resiliency. I can easily bike around the city or jog for kilometers without a break. I can lift weights.
The hunger is *pain*.
We give medication for people suffering from chronic migraines.
We give morphine in palliative care to take the pain away.
We give insulin to diabetics.
We give statins to folks with high cholesterol.
Why the fuck shouldn't we medicate constant feeling of HUNGER?
GLP-1 medications do not "cause" weight loss. They remove the pain of overwhelming hunger. The weight loss happens as an effect to that cause.
There are studies that confirm this - if you are eating because of the feeling of hunger - your body signaling that you NEED food- GLP-1 medications help. If you are eating because of "feelings" - classic stereotypical example chomping chocolate ice cream after a bad breakup as "comfort food" and NOT as reaction to hunger, GLP-1 medication does not help. Because you are not eating because of hunger, so there is nothing to take away.
So all you holier-than-thou fucks who keep repeating "just have some self-control" - stick some thorns in your ass and don't take them out or treat the pain, and you are arriving at the same situation as those of us who just feel hungry ALL the fucking time except 15 minutes since previous meal.
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Why the fuck shouldn't we medicate constant feeling of HUNGER?
In most modern societies medication is usually a last resort. Equating hunger to the pain of a chronic migraine makes it sound like you have a serious mental condition. Hunger isn't painful, sure maybe it may be to some who do have a medical condition, but to be clear 10% of the population doesn't suffer from this. Nearly everyone taking Ozempic is not feeling pain due to skipping a meal. A bit tired maybe, their gut may be making some weird sounds they can laugh about when they happen in a quiet room, but
Re:"Just eat less, keep input output" know-it-alls (Score:4, Informative)
However.
For people who have seasonal allergies, the smart thing to do is take second-gen antihistamines for the entire allergy season. It’s not a last resort thing. If an allergy sufferer skimps on the claritin, their eyes tend to swell shut (misersble) and polyps grow and clog up their nasal cavities over many years, leading to a surgery that could have been avoided by taking a tiny, cheap pill that has almost no side effects.
Most humans evolved to survive in conditions of food insecurity. Most of us are biologically very poorly equipped to live in a “burgers and fries are available any time you feel like it” environment. I suspect GLP-1 drugs will eventually be the best way to deal with this mismatch for most people. There’s also the meditteranean diet, which is solidly proven to work. But, not everyone can sustain it. I sure havent succeeded.
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In most modern societies medication is usually a last resort.
You must be joking. Antidepressant use is so widespread in the Scandinavian paradise of Denmark that all the fish are on them too due to how much gets passed into wastewater via the bodies of medicated Danes.
https://news.ku.dk/all_news/20... [news.ku.dk]
I saw a report that 13.5% of Canada is on antidepressants and 17% of Iceland too.
In the US, the CDC says about 47% of people reported using a prescription drug in the past 30 days (most recent data from right before Covid): https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus/t... [cdc.gov]
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I'd believe the Iceland numbers. I had a doctor once who wanted to get me on antidepressants, and got mad when I didn't want to, and completely ignored my pleadings of "But I'm not depressed", "I enjoy life", "I'm probably the least depressed person you'll meet", etc. He just really liked his patients to be on it. The Icelandic medical system is very into anything that "medicates symptoms" rather than treating diseases. For example, during COVID, it was essentially impossible to get drugs like paxlovid,
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Its at least comparable to the discomfort of eczema. In the west this is treated with medication in practically 100% of cases. Doctors do not simply tell people to stop scratching it and send them home.
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I'm going to take a wager that if I were to open your medicine cabinet right now, there would be painkillers in it, which you take as will when you get headaches, body aches, etc.
Yes, different people have different baseline hunger levels. This is well accepted in the scientific community.
Re:"Just eat less, keep input output" know-it-alls (Score:4, Interesting)
Always hungry all the time? Are you absolutely sure you don't have some kind of under-riding issue that's causing this because that doesn't sound normal. Sure, hungry two hours after fast food sounds about right, because that's garbage and it won't keep you full. A salad does the exact same thing. It last about two hours. Makes a great appetizer before dinner and it's much healthier then fast food.
I'm not discounting your pain here. I get hunger pangs as well. Maybe they aren't nearly as bad for me and maybe for some people they are terrible. It's reasonable enough.
Now, with that said, are you REALLY trying to tell me that nearly half of society is this way? That sounds like an extraordinary claim that will require extraordinary evidence. That's why I wonder if there are not other issues at hand here besides just hunger pains. I know we all tolerate pain differently as well.
Maybe those of us that are thinner just have a higher pain tolerance. It's very likely a large combination of things, including the food industry and marketing industry actively working against us.
I don't doubt some subset of people do need extra help in this area, but I also see a lot of examples of people that use to be thin but just eat garbage all the time and years later, are no longer thin. Same exercise levels but they eat and drink garbage daily and it matters. I see this in some of my younger coworkers and I've also seen others turn things around.
P.S. I don't consider myself to have a high pain tolerence though I am thin. I try to watch what I eat, keep salts and sugars low and my job definitely helps me stay fit as it's a physical job with lots of lifting. If I sat in a chair all day, I'd most certainly have to spend time in the gym to balance this. I do sit in a chair after work a decent amount though. If I eat a lot of chips and pretzels instead of salads, I can see myself gain weight. Choices in food matter and it starts by not having it in the house in the first place.
Re:"Just eat less, keep input output" know-it-alls (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, with that said, are you REALLY trying to tell me that nearly half of society is this way? That sounds like an extraordinary claim that will require extraordinary evidence. That's why I wonder if there are not other issues at hand here besides just hunger pains. I know we all tolerate pain differently as well.
This part is completely anecdotal and based only on formed opinion, but I also tried to think back on when the "hungry all the time" started, and my best guess is sometime between 20 and 25. What was I doing then? Well, living on a shoestring budget and studying at university. What do you eat when you live on a shoestring budget and need to study for exams and courses burning midnight oil? Ready-to-eat ultraprocessed crap, fast food, all that jazz.
Not a problem at that time, but my belief without anything really to back it up, is that that particular diet hardwired something in my brain to make my body demand stuff at unhealthily regular intervals stayed even after graduation and better living conditions. After starting a family, diet as in the ingredients in food got even better (you make more effort in cooking when you are no longer just doing it for yourself). However, in your 20s and early 30s, your metabolism can still keep up.
My weight started rising late 30s/early 40s, and ever since then - for the past 10 years, I've tried "everything". Bloodwork and treadmill tests show I'm in excellent health and physical shape apart from that BMI indicator.
Is this something you can generalize to the massive number of people in US (and first world in general really)? Maybe. Don't know. For me, seems plausible but I have nothing concrete to back it up with except the popularity of fast and "ultraprocessed" food in the US. And no, I do not even have a definition for ultraprocessed. This part about original causes for the hunger is all just personal opinion based on following news on the subject.
I made my bed in my early 20s and I'm glad now there's finally some *hope* for fixing it, even if it costs a bunch of money right now. The constant hunger *is* real. It's the same for my two friends I mentioned in GP - I wouldn't have started the medication without discussing with them at length about this - they specifically felt the same way. Now for first time ever I can hope to get rid of it. And no, there are studies that placebo effect (the hope itself) alone doesn't cut it - 20% weight loss with Mounjaro vs 3% with placebo, tops *if* you previously had an inactive lifestyle.
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Now, with that said, are you REALLY trying to tell me that nearly half of society is this way?
Consider for a moment that we live in a society where profit motivates food companies to make their food as addictive as legally possible.
Re: "Just eat less, keep input output" know-it-all (Score:2)
It is probably more accurate to say that we live in a society where profit motivates food companies to make their food as addictive as possible, regardless of legality.
Re:"Just eat less, keep input output" know-it-alls (Score:4, Interesting)
To all of those who say "you just need better impulse control", piss off.
As someone on Zepbound currently who has had pretty good results, I'm going to agree and disagree with you.
1) Yes -- 100% with you, they can f all the way off -- In late 2020 I gained about 30 lbs (14kg) out of nowhere in about a month with no significant changes to my diet. My then PCP says something to the effect of how I need to control my diet more. At the same time other things were starting to shout: 'something is wrong here!', my A1c was elevated for the first time ever and mysteriously my lower left leg got rather swollen. Just to put that amount of weight gain into perspective... it's roughly as though you ate 200 costco hot-dogs in addition to what you would normally eat.
2) Yes -- Diet and exercise are not always effective -- in the wake of that and for several years after with my then doctor making snide comments like 'you know it's good to be hungry' I tried literally everything -- extending my workouts, caloric restriction down to where my intake was only around 1000 calories per day and somehow I was continuing to gain weight... our traditional understanding of weight says 'not possible' but as a 6'3" guy eating ~1000 calories per day I should be dropping weight rapidly (and sometimes I would for about 3 days before it reversed). All told it crept up another 40 lbs on top of the earlier 30 lbs while that same PCP was saying 'those calories are sneaking in somewhere'. All the while other lab-based health markers are continuing to ring alarm bells like my A1c was continually going up... random spikes and drops in others... but no, "just put down the entire costco pie you housed last night fatty" even though all I actually ate the day before was a plate of lettuce and a 160 calorie protein shake.
3) No -- it wasn't hunger control or 'food noise'. I said F-this doctor, found a new one eventually and also went to mayo endocrinology... 5 minutes into my first visit: "you've got almost every indication of hypercortisolism". 6 months of testing that confirms excess cortisol and non-responsive to suppression tests, but the imaging is unable to locate the suspected adrenal adenoma. I suggest we try a glp1 and see if we can have any impact and just over 1 year later, I've lost all the weight I'd gained in the past 5 years. My diet and exercise stayed pretty consistent with my previous baseline.
Another more anecdotal part of my personal story -- I took a cruise to Europe a couple months prior to my first visit to the endo -- first two weeks were on a ship and I felt like I ate a ton. 2 more weeks staying with my in-laws who think 50 lbs of cevapi and pljeskavica with 4 loaves of bread is a light meal -- I somehow lose 15 lbs. Stress reduction from a month on vacation... food quality difference... random noise? I don't know, but it was an interesting blip.
Re:"Just eat less, keep input output" know-it-alls (Score:4, Interesting)
But, the core of the problem is more complex than “dah hungeerrr”. You mentioned the problem of shovelling burgers and fries down your throat and then being hungry a few hours later? Yeah, we evolved that way because most of human history included a heaping serving of food insecurity. The idea that you can eat a burger and fries anytime you like - that’s unprecedented in our evolutionary history, and our bodies aren’t built to deal with it. So, yeah, modern diet makes most of us fat. For most of human history, you managed to get a “burger and fries” meal once or twice a week when someone in the tribe successfully hunted something larger than a rabbit. The rest of week you got by on roots, shoots and grubs because you had no choice. No opportunity to get fat except for a very small window of time at the end of the summer and fall, and you burned off ALL the fat by the end of the winter/dry-season. If you were lucky enough survive another year, that is.
Now, the flip side is that you’re wrong about diet. There’s actually a really simple system that works for weight control, for most people, even the overweight ones. It’s called the mediterranean diet. Basically when you’re hungry, you stuff your face with veggies and fruits. You eat only very moderate amounts of meat, fat and just enough carbs to hit around 2000 calories. It’s very, very simple. It works for almost everyone. And it’s almost impossible to pull off when the modern grocery store is shoving high calorie food in your face from every angle.
When it comes to weight, exercise and fitness are almost meaningless. It’s all about diet, diet, diet, diet and diet.
I’m actually pretty positive about the future of GLP-1 drugs. In a decade or two, they’ll understand them way better and newer generations of the drugd will mitigate the side effects. Nowadays, if you have seasonal allergies, people don’t judge you if you take antihistamines. It’ll be the same with GLP-1 drugs.
Just to be clear, I’m not lecturing you to “eat a carrot and git skinny”. I’m sitting on the couch eating a bowl of ice cream while typing this.
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Your constant hunger is as much a result of habits or boredom as of an empty stomach.
When I did my masters, I was forced to use the crappy MS Fortran compiler of the day, and resolved I will not go to lunch before the code compiles. Turns out that I reached this state only at 3 or 4 in the afternoon when the canteen had long closed. Did that for a week and felt no hunger around lunchtime anymore.
So your habit of stuffing something in your mouth every two hours makes sure you will feel hungry after the next
Brain not that easy to affect (Score:2)
For centuries panicky fools have spread alarm about things affecting the mind. Comics, D&D, porn, sugar, etc.
Real effects tend to be strong enough to easily detect within a year. Often immediately or at least within a day. One dose of LSD instantly affects you and some times some of those effects are permanent. Rabies takes no more than a year, usually 3 months or less.
Things that are not detectable in a couple of years tend to have minimum effects and are often reversible. Diabetes for example tak
Re: Brain not that easy to affect (Score:3)
I have been taking Ozempic since last August. The effects were definitely not felt early on. My BMI has gone from 29.9 to 25.7, and is still going down. The effects are slow but steady.
My observatuon is that it reduces appetite. I can now be full on the same size plates i grew up with in France. Not the much bigger serving sizes I got used to in America the last 30 years. This is a very positive change.
I'm on the minimum dose. I tried a higher one in december. The nausea ruined my holiday meals. That still
"Ozempic May Be Reshaping the Brain" (Score:2)
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https://www.everydayhealth.com... [everydayhealth.com]
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In general, "damping pleasure" is not most people's experience with GLP-1 agonists. What it does is more like separate pleasurable experiences from having an urgent need to continue doing them.
is there a major regression in these forums ? (Score:2)
When quoting in Firefox for Android, the post ends up in a different thread than the one I hit reply on. This has happened repeatedly.
Of course hunger affects brain function (Score:2)
It should be obvious that hunger affects behavior. It's a fundamental survival mechanism. They might be surprised at exactly what effects but shouldn't be surprised that there are any. Hunger changes priorities and should affect the brain. However, it gets rid of call kinds of hunger because it isn't selective. Sounds like we're learning that people "hunger" for things that aren't food - drug addictions, success (or lack thereof that creates anxiety), and probably several other things that share chemic