While Silicon Valley obsesses over AI, a weight-loss drug is quietly becoming the biggest economic disruptor since the internet. Here's why your job, investments, and future depend on understanding it
The one person at my work who is taking GLP-1 is the laziest, stupidest person in my team who has absolutely no ability to control his emotions and is an absolute basket case. This seems like yet another overhyped fad with horrible consequences that we haven't yet started to see.
The guy I was referring to is not fat at all, just extremely vain and narcissistic. I am against over-medication, I don't have any hatred towards fatties.
Perhaps your argument has limited merit. Perhaps not. First, GLP 1’s were developed to control blood sugar in type 2 diabetics. Of the insulin resistant type 2’s less than half result from over-eating most are from other issues including genetics. Two there is no correlation between IQ and weight/ BMI. Find me the study. Third the article focuses on how disruptive the drugs are to consumption. It is true you can see that disruption in real consumer data—-point of sale data. However, the author misses the point of when a significant disruption occurs in behavior what is the learned response by those taking the drug in this instance or by those purchasing insurance for other things like their cars. Its called moral hazard. Once a person purchases insurance their behavior can change. That is the point, once on these drugs aggregate consumption of sugary drinks alcohol etc all decline. Overtime though it would appear the drug taker after achieving their desired weight starts to indulge to the point where weight loss stops. In essence a balance is struck between consumption glp1 use and weight loss. Few patients stop these drugs. So for me I presume moral hazard prevails.
3. You provided no evidence for this assertion, and even if people did “strike a balance”, as you claimed, aggregate demand would have still decreased. To borrow your own terminology, your arguments have “limited merit”…
Interesting piece.,The author is correct in his analysis. Whether the numbers pan out is the question. There are lots of even better drugs in the development pipeline. I find it sad, not surprising, but still disappointing that people talk negatively about overweight people purely in terms of behavior. As more is learned about cellular metabolism and obesity, the more we find molecular mechanisms that differentiate the people who tend to easily store fat and those who do not. While we should all strive to be healthy, picking on fat people is like picking on someone because they have asthma. It’s says more about the jerk doing it than the person they are abusing.
The other question is who’s going to pay for all these drugs. They are costly and if a big chunk of the population is using them it’s going to be a trillion dollar market in itself.
From the primary study cited: The conclusion that obesity damages the IQ during the first half of the life course is premature. Because extant studies were cross-sectional, they could not establish the temporal ordering of obesity and low IQ. To advance research and refine causal inferences about the obesity–IQ association, life-course studies are needed that use individuals as their own controls. Such studies can test within-individual changes in IQ from childhood, before the onset of obesity, to adulthood, after obesity develops (2, 13).
I would also add here that my response was to Orlando and though you seemed to answer on his behalf I have provided an answer by definition to you both if you are not the same. Broadbrush swipes at people who have a variety of maladies but are otherwise capable in our society betrays a remarkable level of insensitivity. We all are imperfect, we all carry our own baggage in life, making our way forward is not dependent on denigrating others.
The Wiley published Meta study is different and the authors suggest when accounting for the confounding factors there is still a suggestion obesity and IQ are inversely related. It is a meta study conducted in the UK. Tens of thousands of participants is the sum total of the study’s Meta database. It is fine to use Meta data in studies when they are comparable studies with similar datasets and survey questions. As the authors also emphasize the unliklihood of education attainment as not being a likely confounder, which begs some question in and of itself. I will review the meta database construction further. The authors also point out that the data results could be affected by respondents self reported weight and height data and the general tendency by all groups to under report weight over report height, thus affecting BMI calculation which is weight (lb) divided by the height (inches) squared pounds to inches or kg to meters on the same terms.
Similarly, when analyzing the welfare consequences of unemployment insurance, Chetty (2008) uses the term “liquidity” to capture this income effect and argues that unemployment insurance affects the duration of unemployment through two channels: the income effect that brings welfare gains and the substitution effect that causes welfare losses. In the following research, Chetty and Finkelstein (2013) expand this analytical framework to other social insurance including health insurance. In general, the moral hazard induced by health insurance can be decomposed into an efficient income-generated portion and an inefficient portion caused by the substitution effect (Nyman et al., 2018).
The presence of an alternative outcome from behavior and adjustments therein are often quantifiable over time. The effect of wegovy (same as ozempic) or mounjaro have not been studied for anything other than their aggregate benefits to patients with either obesity related issues or Type 2 diabetes. There are many studies highlighting the side effects of the drugs. My point in suggesting people
Self moderate is the observation that they do so in many activities including in healthcare behavior and other insurance like markets. Look at vaping as a substitute for smoking for smokers trying to quit the habit. It is more successful than a number of other methods but it is not all curing. Again resolution of the tar and formaldehyde issues does appear to reduce the healthcare dangers of smoking but not completely as constriction of blood vessels still occurs potentially damaging the heart and other
Vascular damage. The contents of vape products and manufacturing standards vary and may be worse at some brands than others. The point here is some
people do eliminate or reduce their exposure to nicotine products, a great public good. But the presence of risk reduction leaves some with a perceived relative gain in health outcomes. That is the adjustment factor at work. Whether a real benefit or not is not clear.
The primary response in my initial response to Orlando’s wide ranging assertion that obesity is fat lazy and low IQ. He has since adjusted his comment in a further response which still is denigrating. Your point on Obesity being T2D is not what you suggest as depicted In the Harvard study. T2D is a disease of inflammation first and metabolism issues like insulin resistance as a result of said inflammation. Likewise within the Wiley Meta study data I did not see within survey data whether participants were all questioned on Thyroid diseases. Perhaps it is there, I have not seen it. Second in the Harvard study because 90% T2D patients are obese or overweight is not the same as 90% of obese people are T2D. Perhaps that was not your intent to suggest.
The findings of the present study showed that a lower IQ score is associated with higher BMI. However, this relation appears to be largely mediated when the socioeconomic status was considered.
That is interesting Russell. The sad part is I don't know if most people will care or understand the long term impact to muscle lose. Our society wants a quick fix pill to solve the problem. Hopefully people that are on it, understand the side effects and proceed with caution but I worry that will not happen. Appreciate the comment.
It’s not a quick fix. You still have to work at it. These drugs don’t make it easy — they make it POSSIBLE.
And all the people who used to really enjoy the feeling of superiority over fat people are now faking concern for their health and pretending these drugs are harming people. While every drug has side effects, these drugs are doing AMAZING things for people’s health.
The author believes the drug will have widespread effects in our economy and social life but doesn’t that assume it will be used far beyond where it is truly needed and become just another lifestyle choice that corporations will strongly incentivize (I.e. force) you to make? Sounds like it should be severely to restricted to real medical need.
No. WTF is wrong with you? Got a problem with overweight people having an effective treatment? Or do you campaign against every single new drug because every drug has some kind of side effect?
Studies demonstrate heart benefits for Ozempic, not deterioration. Ozempic has been around since 2011. Plenty of long term data. Second studies are demonstrating some benefit to those with potential degradation of cognitive function (I.e. Plaque related issues in the brain). Kidney and liver function improves as visceral fat declines. Hence benefit to those with secondary effects of higher than normal weight.
Studies have shown that patients taking Ozempic have a slightly higher risk of developing NAION compared to those not taking the medication. The exact risk is not well-established, but it is estimated to be around 0.1% to 0.2%.
Less than the chance you poke your eye with a pin by mistake. NAION is also present in diabetics as well so hard to tell cause/effect and prior likelihood given already present metabolic disease.
A human skeleton only weighs 25 pounds or so. If 40% of your weight loos was skeleton, you'd only be able to lose 62.5 pounds before you had zero skeleton left to lose.
I think many of the people benefiting from Ozempic are losing on the order of 50-60 pounds.
There's always going to be side effects, assuming the drug is given to sedentary people is the same effect seen if they are also put on a suitable cardio program?
Exactly. It will take awhile to figure out but people will eventually understand it is killing them. Pharma is not your friend. Covid proved that. There is no magic pill.
You sound like someone who just cannot fucking stand it that fat people have an effective medication and now there may be fewer of us for you to feel superior to.
It's NOT killing me. It's been extremely good for me in every possible way.
Also, if you think the drug companies caused Covid, please just go away. That's ignorant.
Very interesting thought experiment. However, drug induced impulse control looks a bit too dystopian for my liking. There are some things that require the exercise of our human faculties, leading to personal growth and maturity. There are no easy ways out - well, no safe ones anyway.
No. I have the opposite problem. I’m trying not too loose weight. My personal bias was expressed in my comments. If that is not your point of view, so be it. Anyway, I am sure you have weighed the potential harms of taking a drug long term against the benefits. Your choice. Good luck to you. But please don’t presume to know how I feel about weight challenged people, when you know both about my situation. I’m not against medication; I prefer to use herbs and food rather than a synthetic product. Again, my choice, my bias. It doesn’t reflect on you - unless you want it to.
If you naturally don’t experience food noise and abnormal hunger, why are you bitter about a medicine that enables others to feel as you do? That is the main thing I get from this medication. It has normalized my hormones and allowed me freedom to feel well on less food.
You aren’t superior to obese people: YOU JUST HAVE NOT HAD TO FIGHT THEIR BATTLE. And now you’re concerned? Please.
Interesting article that stimulates a couple questions. I’ve never had trouble with impulse control, yet I’ve never been on these drugs. I’m certainly not the only one. Are your cumulative system wide economic impact estimates taking into account the % of the population that already has impulse control? And, additionally, what are the negative side effects of the drugs, and how will those play into the economic adjustments when millions of people are experiencing those?
Fascinating read. GLP-1 so far is the pencillin discovery of our generation. It's crazy to have your identity tied up in the food your entire life and with one tiny shot a week, you instantly lose all desire to overeat, or even eat much at all.
So, hurrah for big pharma, eh? You know, those rotten companies, fronts for the US DOD, who were happy to put their names on, and profit from, the widespread distribution of all the poison vaccines, from those many they stab into newborns to the ‘Covid’ kill shots, every single one.
Those who allow themselves to be injected or drugged with any of pharma’s ‘medications’ will not be healthy. These ‘wellness clinics’ you write about that are supposedly replacing shops and casinos will cater to those who have been hoodwinked into making themselves very ill from these ‘medications’. As others have commented here, there is no easy fix for obesity or, for that matter, impulse control, and if you think there is a drug for these two things…well I have a ‘pandemic’ to sell you…The cabal that makes and controls ‘vaccines’ and pharmaceutical drugs wants everyone to be sick and impulsive- how else are they going to make billions. Sorry, but you are on the wrong track here. Industrial pharmaceuticals are not the answer to human nature.
Our food supply is riddled with chemicals, from field to plate. Maybe JFK will help clean that up.
These chemicals have myriad effects on our endocrine and other systems and are a likely suspect for a good bit of US’s weight loss problems. It’s not just impulse control. Anecdotally, my endocrinologist has seen patients thyroid function improve when they live in Europe. The Europeans use less and safer spray as well as additives and processing.
This article does not present a complete picture , and comes off as a plug for big Pharma.
Sorry to say, because it has been written in an apparently ernest posture.
I live in England and the people here are very over weight, too. My daughter lives in France and even there obesity is beginning to be a problem. I was very alarmed by this article - how can anyone have lived through the last five years and still imagine drugs and vaccines are the answer to good health? I read Sasha Latypova and she has convinced me that the biggest threat to health are those things we allow to be injected into our bodies. Next, health depends on what we put in our mouths, food, drink, tobacco, drugs….but vaccines….? Human and animal health would vastly improve world wide if all vaccines, every single one, were banned
No, I want them to live long and healthy lives, free of all the dreadful diseases that plague them now. Very, very few children died of any of the diseases that doctors vaccinate against, and those children who did die - very few - could have been saved by better medical care, better nutrition and sanitation.
No, I want them to live long and healthy lives, free of all the dreadful diseases that plague them now. Very, very few children died of any of the diseases that nowadays doctors vaccinate against, and those children who did die - very few - could have been saved by better nutrition and sanitation. Your comment is very silly in that it shows you have never looked into history, especially the history of vaccines. Do you simply believe what the television tells you? Read about how vaccines are made and what goes into them, if you do you will never allow yourself to be injected with such poison again. Start with a book called Dissolving Illusions; read Virus Mania. Think about the amount of money vaccines make - tens of injections given to a baby in the first year of life? How’s that working out for ordinary children? How’s it working out for extremely wealthy evil creatures like Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci? Children are dying, yes, but not from measles and mumps - always quite harmless to children not already destroyed by extreme poverty. They are dying and being very badly harmed from the toxicity of vaccines.
Only someone who never lived in the era before vaccines were invented could believe and disseminate such utter rubbish. At least 3000 years of smallpox killing 30% of victims and scarring many more was ended by vaccines. We don't even vacinate against it any more. Then there's Polio...but what's the point, you're not going to respond to facts are you? And you, and any kids you have, will almost certainly get away with it....because the majority of us are still vaccinated.
I think you are right in that vaccines are the main problem. They may be the primary culprit that is causing obesity because they deregulate the endocrine system. My natural dentist thinks it is the amalgam fillings. It is a perfect storm obviously orchestrated.
If the hype is right, you're picking a shorter life span and potentially being denied traditional treatments. Why pay for your insulin if Ozempic can prevent you from getting diabetes?
But since you're already avoiding vaccines, you're probably good with the unhealthy choice.
I don’t take insulin because I’m not over weight - being fat is a major cause of type 2 diabetes and most chronic illness. Lifestyle changes such as low carb, high fat diets and taking more exercise is far, far better than subjecting yourself to experimental drugs. As for vaccines….well keep taking those boosters and flu shots, one in each arm, I’m sure the aluminium and mercury, the fetal tissue and the bits of monkey kidney will do you the world of good.
You sound awfully judgmental on your high horse. You obviously have never dealt with being overweight. Good for you! You seem like someone who avoids vaccines too so you most likely do not believe in herd immunity or the protection of others. Hope you never are near me or my family during next pandemic. These treatments have been around a long time for diabetes and it is not always weight related.
I don't think people on GLP-1 feel less enjoyment. Their focus just shifts from looking for the next sugar-high to more sustainable joys. They do not feel depraved of anything from what I have heard and read by people with first hand experience.
We stop feeling food noise and we don’t feel intense hunger. Eating small portions satisfies our hunger — just like it already does for naturally thin people. It normalizes our hunger. Before this medication, I felt nausea and light-headed and ravenous if I ate as little as I eat now. I’m eating the same exact healthy diet I have always eaten — I’m just satisfied with small portions.
All my blood work is greatly improved. So is my blood pressure, mobility and everything else.
I sincerely despise all these people pretending to care about the health of people using these medications. They don’t care about people like me — they’re mad they can’t feel superior to us.
If the alternative to "buying live laugh love decor at target, Costco sprees and stanley cups" is "sugar high" ill take the sugar high. Though I prefer drinking beer and looking at the mountains
You have a profound misunderstanding of this entire topic. Your assumption that overweight people all like Target decor and Stanley cups and such is incorrect and distasteful. Your assumption that overweight people are getting a "sugar high" by overeating sugar is also incorrect and distasteful.
The drug does that for rich people. It doesn’t do that for poor people because we were already spending little on food, entertainment and impulse purchases. Right now, it’s mostly rich people taking this drug. The effects you see for rich people can’t and won’t be true for the rest of us.
Trust me. I’m a person without much money who is taking one of these drugs. I haven’t changed what I spend at all. I was buying stuff like black beans, brown rice, cabbage, oatmeal etc before and it’s what I’m still buying and cooking now. I was rarely eating out then and am rarely eating out now. I was never blowing money on doordash then and I haven’t started now.
I swear, nobody seems to understand how poverty works or just how many Americans are broke.
Fascinating. Articles like these are the reason I’m on Substack. Rather than kick into knee-jerk reactions as so many have on this thread, I view these pieces as thought experiments. The arguments around air conditioning give the piece some weight. Thanks for making me think this morning.
This is a great article, thank you I am going to look deeper into this and reflect on the connections with the global digital monetary transformation via blockchain and crypto that's happening right now. Interesting angles, and interesting reflections. Great job. I will be following up with an article of my own.
This all sounds, well, sound but have you thought about the population of aging Boomers as drivers of the moment? Also, behavior changes across society seems a leap toward what we are already seeing from social media business models and Skinneresque dreams returning to vogue.
I remember a story about Oreo cookies in China. Nabisco, in order to gain market share, had to create a recipe with much less sugar and reduce the size and cost of packaging.
Thanks for this analysis! A truly healthy society would break a lot of banks. But I wonder if we are gaining some self-control or forfeiting it.
The one person at my work who is taking GLP-1 is the laziest, stupidest person in my team who has absolutely no ability to control his emotions and is an absolute basket case. This seems like yet another overhyped fad with horrible consequences that we haven't yet started to see.
Tell me you hate fat people without telling me you hate fat people.
The guy I was referring to is not fat at all, just extremely vain and narcissistic. I am against over-medication, I don't have any hatred towards fatties.
Your use of the pejorative description says otherwise.
Truly
He didn’t even use fat in his original comment, reach harder. But yes, I do hate fat people.
Fat people are lazy, unhealthy, gross looking and uneducated eaters.
And some people who aren’t fat are just gross, mentally unhealthy and uneducated. See? You’re not special in any way, shape or form.
Actually there are probably way more people you know on these meds but you have chosen to focus on the one guy you want to talk shit about.
Perhaps your argument has limited merit. Perhaps not. First, GLP 1’s were developed to control blood sugar in type 2 diabetics. Of the insulin resistant type 2’s less than half result from over-eating most are from other issues including genetics. Two there is no correlation between IQ and weight/ BMI. Find me the study. Third the article focuses on how disruptive the drugs are to consumption. It is true you can see that disruption in real consumer data—-point of sale data. However, the author misses the point of when a significant disruption occurs in behavior what is the learned response by those taking the drug in this instance or by those purchasing insurance for other things like their cars. Its called moral hazard. Once a person purchases insurance their behavior can change. That is the point, once on these drugs aggregate consumption of sugary drinks alcohol etc all decline. Overtime though it would appear the drug taker after achieving their desired weight starts to indulge to the point where weight loss stops. In essence a balance is struck between consumption glp1 use and weight loss. Few patients stop these drugs. So for me I presume moral hazard prevails.
1. Almost 90% of adults with some form of T2D are overweight or obese. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/03/the-big-setup/
2. Obesity is correlated with low IQ. Here are several studies across tens of thousands of participants and numerous countries:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3813310/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/lim2.11
https://www.nature.com/articles/nutd201527
3. You provided no evidence for this assertion, and even if people did “strike a balance”, as you claimed, aggregate demand would have still decreased. To borrow your own terminology, your arguments have “limited merit”…
Interesting piece.,The author is correct in his analysis. Whether the numbers pan out is the question. There are lots of even better drugs in the development pipeline. I find it sad, not surprising, but still disappointing that people talk negatively about overweight people purely in terms of behavior. As more is learned about cellular metabolism and obesity, the more we find molecular mechanisms that differentiate the people who tend to easily store fat and those who do not. While we should all strive to be healthy, picking on fat people is like picking on someone because they have asthma. It’s says more about the jerk doing it than the person they are abusing.
The other question is who’s going to pay for all these drugs. They are costly and if a big chunk of the population is using them it’s going to be a trillion dollar market in itself.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment and reading the article.
From the primary study cited: The conclusion that obesity damages the IQ during the first half of the life course is premature. Because extant studies were cross-sectional, they could not establish the temporal ordering of obesity and low IQ. To advance research and refine causal inferences about the obesity–IQ association, life-course studies are needed that use individuals as their own controls. Such studies can test within-individual changes in IQ from childhood, before the onset of obesity, to adulthood, after obesity develops (2, 13).
As it relates to aggregate demand I believe I asserted similarly in my comments on consumption ex population growth.
I would also add here that my response was to Orlando and though you seemed to answer on his behalf I have provided an answer by definition to you both if you are not the same. Broadbrush swipes at people who have a variety of maladies but are otherwise capable in our society betrays a remarkable level of insensitivity. We all are imperfect, we all carry our own baggage in life, making our way forward is not dependent on denigrating others.
The Wiley published Meta study is different and the authors suggest when accounting for the confounding factors there is still a suggestion obesity and IQ are inversely related. It is a meta study conducted in the UK. Tens of thousands of participants is the sum total of the study’s Meta database. It is fine to use Meta data in studies when they are comparable studies with similar datasets and survey questions. As the authors also emphasize the unliklihood of education attainment as not being a likely confounder, which begs some question in and of itself. I will review the meta database construction further. The authors also point out that the data results could be affected by respondents self reported weight and height data and the general tendency by all groups to under report weight over report height, thus affecting BMI calculation which is weight (lb) divided by the height (inches) squared pounds to inches or kg to meters on the same terms.
As for moral hazard in insurance markets and human behavior. https://www.fdic.gov/center-financial-research/insurance-pricing-distortions-and-moral-hazard-quasi-experimental#:~:text=Insurance%20can%20weaken%20the%20insured, pricing%20and%20firm%20behavior%2C%20
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11675956/#:~:text=The%20RAND%20Health%20Insurance%20Experiment,associated%20with%20comprehensive%20health%20insurance.
Similarly, when analyzing the welfare consequences of unemployment insurance, Chetty (2008) uses the term “liquidity” to capture this income effect and argues that unemployment insurance affects the duration of unemployment through two channels: the income effect that brings welfare gains and the substitution effect that causes welfare losses. In the following research, Chetty and Finkelstein (2013) expand this analytical framework to other social insurance including health insurance. In general, the moral hazard induced by health insurance can be decomposed into an efficient income-generated portion and an inefficient portion caused by the substitution effect (Nyman et al., 2018).
The presence of an alternative outcome from behavior and adjustments therein are often quantifiable over time. The effect of wegovy (same as ozempic) or mounjaro have not been studied for anything other than their aggregate benefits to patients with either obesity related issues or Type 2 diabetes. There are many studies highlighting the side effects of the drugs. My point in suggesting people
Self moderate is the observation that they do so in many activities including in healthcare behavior and other insurance like markets. Look at vaping as a substitute for smoking for smokers trying to quit the habit. It is more successful than a number of other methods but it is not all curing. Again resolution of the tar and formaldehyde issues does appear to reduce the healthcare dangers of smoking but not completely as constriction of blood vessels still occurs potentially damaging the heart and other
Vascular damage. The contents of vape products and manufacturing standards vary and may be worse at some brands than others. The point here is some
people do eliminate or reduce their exposure to nicotine products, a great public good. But the presence of risk reduction leaves some with a perceived relative gain in health outcomes. That is the adjustment factor at work. Whether a real benefit or not is not clear.
The primary response in my initial response to Orlando’s wide ranging assertion that obesity is fat lazy and low IQ. He has since adjusted his comment in a further response which still is denigrating. Your point on Obesity being T2D is not what you suggest as depicted In the Harvard study. T2D is a disease of inflammation first and metabolism issues like insulin resistance as a result of said inflammation. Likewise within the Wiley Meta study data I did not see within survey data whether participants were all questioned on Thyroid diseases. Perhaps it is there, I have not seen it. Second in the Harvard study because 90% T2D patients are obese or overweight is not the same as 90% of obese people are T2D. Perhaps that was not your intent to suggest.
In the nature summary: Conclusions
The findings of the present study showed that a lower IQ score is associated with higher BMI. However, this relation appears to be largely mediated when the socioeconomic status was considered.
It just came out that Ozempic weakness your heart muscles and 40% off weight lose is from skeletal & other muscle deterioration.
That is interesting Russell. The sad part is I don't know if most people will care or understand the long term impact to muscle lose. Our society wants a quick fix pill to solve the problem. Hopefully people that are on it, understand the side effects and proceed with caution but I worry that will not happen. Appreciate the comment.
Such bullshit.
It’s not a quick fix. You still have to work at it. These drugs don’t make it easy — they make it POSSIBLE.
And all the people who used to really enjoy the feeling of superiority over fat people are now faking concern for their health and pretending these drugs are harming people. While every drug has side effects, these drugs are doing AMAZING things for people’s health.
The author believes the drug will have widespread effects in our economy and social life but doesn’t that assume it will be used far beyond where it is truly needed and become just another lifestyle choice that corporations will strongly incentivize (I.e. force) you to make? Sounds like it should be severely to restricted to real medical need.
Why would you want to restrict it? It's helpful in so many ways. I am going to be pissed if I'm unable to get it. Nothing has helped my health more.
The side effects of GLP-1 drugs were brutal for me. My entire GI tract locked up and I developed gallstones. So, amazing for many, terrible for some.
Like going blind?
No. WTF is wrong with you? Got a problem with overweight people having an effective treatment? Or do you campaign against every single new drug because every drug has some kind of side effect?
Yes, this could be Vioxx all over again?
Or the gene-tampering Covid injection
Lol
Oh please.
I block idiots on first sight.
I thought they were joking. …..right?
Or Phen-fen
Or phen phen
Please cite your sources, LOL.
Ok
Studies demonstrate heart benefits for Ozempic, not deterioration. Ozempic has been around since 2011. Plenty of long term data. Second studies are demonstrating some benefit to those with potential degradation of cognitive function (I.e. Plaque related issues in the brain). Kidney and liver function improves as visceral fat declines. Hence benefit to those with secondary effects of higher than normal weight.
Don't forget blindness too.
Studies have shown that patients taking Ozempic have a slightly higher risk of developing NAION compared to those not taking the medication. The exact risk is not well-established, but it is estimated to be around 0.1% to 0.2%.
Less than the chance you poke your eye with a pin by mistake. NAION is also present in diabetics as well so hard to tell cause/effect and prior likelihood given already present metabolic disease.
According to this site: https://measuringly.com/how-much-does-human-skeleton-weigh/
A human skeleton only weighs 25 pounds or so. If 40% of your weight loos was skeleton, you'd only be able to lose 62.5 pounds before you had zero skeleton left to lose.
I think many of the people benefiting from Ozempic are losing on the order of 50-60 pounds.
Yep! I guess my skeleton must be completely gone because I’ve lost about 50 pounds and ALL my health metrics are drastically improved.
Bull
Many are going blind as well. The side effects coming out are horrendous and it’s still relatively new. Who knows how much worse it could be.
Some people just cannot stand that overweight people are for the first time able to lose weight. Who will you hate on now?
There's always going to be side effects, assuming the drug is given to sedentary people is the same effect seen if they are also put on a suitable cardio program?
It didn't just come out that 40% of the weight loss is muscle. That has been out there for years.
Bullshit.
Exactly. It will take awhile to figure out but people will eventually understand it is killing them. Pharma is not your friend. Covid proved that. There is no magic pill.
You sound like someone who just cannot fucking stand it that fat people have an effective medication and now there may be fewer of us for you to feel superior to.
It's NOT killing me. It's been extremely good for me in every possible way.
Also, if you think the drug companies caused Covid, please just go away. That's ignorant.
Very interesting thought experiment. However, drug induced impulse control looks a bit too dystopian for my liking. There are some things that require the exercise of our human faculties, leading to personal growth and maturity. There are no easy ways out - well, no safe ones anyway.
100%
No. I have the opposite problem. I’m trying not too loose weight. My personal bias was expressed in my comments. If that is not your point of view, so be it. Anyway, I am sure you have weighed the potential harms of taking a drug long term against the benefits. Your choice. Good luck to you. But please don’t presume to know how I feel about weight challenged people, when you know both about my situation. I’m not against medication; I prefer to use herbs and food rather than a synthetic product. Again, my choice, my bias. It doesn’t reflect on you - unless you want it to.
‘When you know nothing about my situation’ - correction.
If you naturally don’t experience food noise and abnormal hunger, why are you bitter about a medicine that enables others to feel as you do? That is the main thing I get from this medication. It has normalized my hormones and allowed me freedom to feel well on less food.
You aren’t superior to obese people: YOU JUST HAVE NOT HAD TO FIGHT THEIR BATTLE. And now you’re concerned? Please.
There are no easy ways out until...maybe there could be one?
I'm picturing Soma from Brave New World. Obviously it's a dystopian novel, but it certainly didn't feel dystopian to the citizens experiencing it.
You’re just mad that fat people are losing weight and you can’t feel superior to them now.
Interesting article that stimulates a couple questions. I’ve never had trouble with impulse control, yet I’ve never been on these drugs. I’m certainly not the only one. Are your cumulative system wide economic impact estimates taking into account the % of the population that already has impulse control? And, additionally, what are the negative side effects of the drugs, and how will those play into the economic adjustments when millions of people are experiencing those?
🎯
I don't have any problem with impulse control either. But I am one of a former generation which was expected to exercise impulse control.
?
Impulse control? Could you give a dose to your President?
Fascinating read. GLP-1 so far is the pencillin discovery of our generation. It's crazy to have your identity tied up in the food your entire life and with one tiny shot a week, you instantly lose all desire to overeat, or even eat much at all.
So, hurrah for big pharma, eh? You know, those rotten companies, fronts for the US DOD, who were happy to put their names on, and profit from, the widespread distribution of all the poison vaccines, from those many they stab into newborns to the ‘Covid’ kill shots, every single one.
Those who allow themselves to be injected or drugged with any of pharma’s ‘medications’ will not be healthy. These ‘wellness clinics’ you write about that are supposedly replacing shops and casinos will cater to those who have been hoodwinked into making themselves very ill from these ‘medications’. As others have commented here, there is no easy fix for obesity or, for that matter, impulse control, and if you think there is a drug for these two things…well I have a ‘pandemic’ to sell you…The cabal that makes and controls ‘vaccines’ and pharmaceutical drugs wants everyone to be sick and impulsive- how else are they going to make billions. Sorry, but you are on the wrong track here. Industrial pharmaceuticals are not the answer to human nature.
Our food supply is riddled with chemicals, from field to plate. Maybe JFK will help clean that up.
These chemicals have myriad effects on our endocrine and other systems and are a likely suspect for a good bit of US’s weight loss problems. It’s not just impulse control. Anecdotally, my endocrinologist has seen patients thyroid function improve when they live in Europe. The Europeans use less and safer spray as well as additives and processing.
This article does not present a complete picture , and comes off as a plug for big Pharma.
Sorry to say, because it has been written in an apparently ernest posture.
Yes, the heroin addict with no medical experience is who you should trust.
🙄
He's a lawyer who makes his money by telling grieving families to let him sue companies.
I live in England and the people here are very over weight, too. My daughter lives in France and even there obesity is beginning to be a problem. I was very alarmed by this article - how can anyone have lived through the last five years and still imagine drugs and vaccines are the answer to good health? I read Sasha Latypova and she has convinced me that the biggest threat to health are those things we allow to be injected into our bodies. Next, health depends on what we put in our mouths, food, drink, tobacco, drugs….but vaccines….? Human and animal health would vastly improve world wide if all vaccines, every single one, were banned
So you want children to die?
No, I want them to live long and healthy lives, free of all the dreadful diseases that plague them now. Very, very few children died of any of the diseases that doctors vaccinate against, and those children who did die - very few - could have been saved by better medical care, better nutrition and sanitation.
"Very, very few children died of any of the diseases that doctors vaccinate against"
You have been lied to.
When the next small pox outbreak occurs we can all see the effects to unvaccinated individuals. Ie those born after 1979
No, I want them to live long and healthy lives, free of all the dreadful diseases that plague them now. Very, very few children died of any of the diseases that nowadays doctors vaccinate against, and those children who did die - very few - could have been saved by better nutrition and sanitation. Your comment is very silly in that it shows you have never looked into history, especially the history of vaccines. Do you simply believe what the television tells you? Read about how vaccines are made and what goes into them, if you do you will never allow yourself to be injected with such poison again. Start with a book called Dissolving Illusions; read Virus Mania. Think about the amount of money vaccines make - tens of injections given to a baby in the first year of life? How’s that working out for ordinary children? How’s it working out for extremely wealthy evil creatures like Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci? Children are dying, yes, but not from measles and mumps - always quite harmless to children not already destroyed by extreme poverty. They are dying and being very badly harmed from the toxicity of vaccines.
Bullshit.
In the 1950s, we averaged 500k cases a year and over 500 deaths ANNUALLY from kids getting measles in the US.
We had modern sanitation and clean drinking water in the 1950s.
500 may be a very small number to you but I'll bet it wasn't to their parents. Or their schoolmates.
Listen, Marion, I don't care if you don't vaccinate. But if you want to willfully push this nonsense, put your money where your mouth is.
Tell the NHS you won't ever need coverage for any disease which could have been prevented by a vaccine.
Only someone who never lived in the era before vaccines were invented could believe and disseminate such utter rubbish. At least 3000 years of smallpox killing 30% of victims and scarring many more was ended by vaccines. We don't even vacinate against it any more. Then there's Polio...but what's the point, you're not going to respond to facts are you? And you, and any kids you have, will almost certainly get away with it....because the majority of us are still vaccinated.
I think you are right in that vaccines are the main problem. They may be the primary culprit that is causing obesity because they deregulate the endocrine system. My natural dentist thinks it is the amalgam fillings. It is a perfect storm obviously orchestrated.
You and your dentist are full of disinformation
JFK fix something? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Did… did they reanimate him or something because he’s been dead since 1963
Don't take them then.
If the hype is right, you're picking a shorter life span and potentially being denied traditional treatments. Why pay for your insulin if Ozempic can prevent you from getting diabetes?
But since you're already avoiding vaccines, you're probably good with the unhealthy choice.
I don’t take insulin because I’m not over weight - being fat is a major cause of type 2 diabetes and most chronic illness. Lifestyle changes such as low carb, high fat diets and taking more exercise is far, far better than subjecting yourself to experimental drugs. As for vaccines….well keep taking those boosters and flu shots, one in each arm, I’m sure the aluminium and mercury, the fetal tissue and the bits of monkey kidney will do you the world of good.
Sorry, Marion, I did want to warn you about one thing.
You don't take insulin because you haven't been diagnosed with diabetes.
While being overweight and/or sedentary are major risk factors, they are not the only causes of Type II diabetes.
Please do not think you are safe from diabetes because you're skinny and active. Make sure you see a doctor annually and have regular blood work.
With any luck, you'll never get it. But if you do, getting diagnosed early can save you from serious damage.
I have a friend who is 5’7” and 150 lbs and has Type 2 diabetes, it just runs in his family.
Yep.
I told a family friend he was either going to the ER or I was going to take him.
5'9" 175. Walked everywhere. Ate healthy.
But an open sore on his foot.
He lost the foot but they saved the leg.
That’s awful, but glad they saved the leg at least.
You know best.
19k people have died from the flu this season, including 86 kids.
450k have been hospitalized.
Of the kids who have died, earlier reports suggest 83% were unvaccinated.
And while the numbers are coming down, that may be a lag in reporting.
I'm healthy with no known risk factors.
I get vaccinated to reduce transmission and cut the numbers of deaths and hospitalizations.
Because I don't want to see even antivaxxers die from preventable diseases.
You do you.
You sound awfully judgmental on your high horse. You obviously have never dealt with being overweight. Good for you! You seem like someone who avoids vaccines too so you most likely do not believe in herd immunity or the protection of others. Hope you never are near me or my family during next pandemic. These treatments have been around a long time for diabetes and it is not always weight related.
🎯🎯🎯
I noticed this on a smaller scale a couple of years ago.
I was working in pharmacy when statins came out. I had it explained that grapefruit juice was contraindicated for those taking the drugs.
I love grapefruit juice. Over the years my consumption dropped.
Then 2 summers ago, I wanted to make a punch I used to make. I needed grapefruit juice. I couldn't find it. I went to several stores.
It used to be everywhere. More than one brand.
Now it's not.
I suspect that the increased use of statins and, I'm told, some birth control pills, have a lot to do with reduced grapefruit juice production.
I've since found some. One brand. One type.
Spreadsheet-americans about to suck the last drops of enjoyment we have left
I don't think people on GLP-1 feel less enjoyment. Their focus just shifts from looking for the next sugar-high to more sustainable joys. They do not feel depraved of anything from what I have heard and read by people with first hand experience.
We stop feeling food noise and we don’t feel intense hunger. Eating small portions satisfies our hunger — just like it already does for naturally thin people. It normalizes our hunger. Before this medication, I felt nausea and light-headed and ravenous if I ate as little as I eat now. I’m eating the same exact healthy diet I have always eaten — I’m just satisfied with small portions.
All my blood work is greatly improved. So is my blood pressure, mobility and everything else.
I sincerely despise all these people pretending to care about the health of people using these medications. They don’t care about people like me — they’re mad they can’t feel superior to us.
If the alternative to "buying live laugh love decor at target, Costco sprees and stanley cups" is "sugar high" ill take the sugar high. Though I prefer drinking beer and looking at the mountains
You have a profound misunderstanding of this entire topic. Your assumption that overweight people all like Target decor and Stanley cups and such is incorrect and distasteful. Your assumption that overweight people are getting a "sugar high" by overeating sugar is also incorrect and distasteful.
No, you’re wrong. Let me explain it to you.
The drug does that for rich people. It doesn’t do that for poor people because we were already spending little on food, entertainment and impulse purchases. Right now, it’s mostly rich people taking this drug. The effects you see for rich people can’t and won’t be true for the rest of us.
Trust me. I’m a person without much money who is taking one of these drugs. I haven’t changed what I spend at all. I was buying stuff like black beans, brown rice, cabbage, oatmeal etc before and it’s what I’m still buying and cooking now. I was rarely eating out then and am rarely eating out now. I was never blowing money on doordash then and I haven’t started now.
I swear, nobody seems to understand how poverty works or just how many Americans are broke.
Edit: I wrote about it here: https://medium.com/minds-without-borders/how-i-lost-50-pounds-8702ecf0a74d
Do GLP-1 drugs also reduce impulsive scrolling? Is there a change also coming for social media companies?
Fascinating. Articles like these are the reason I’m on Substack. Rather than kick into knee-jerk reactions as so many have on this thread, I view these pieces as thought experiments. The arguments around air conditioning give the piece some weight. Thanks for making me think this morning.
This is a great article, thank you I am going to look deeper into this and reflect on the connections with the global digital monetary transformation via blockchain and crypto that's happening right now. Interesting angles, and interesting reflections. Great job. I will be following up with an article of my own.
This was a really good read and a perspective I hadnt thought about. thanks for sharing.
Thank you for the information. It really gave a relatable example of the impact new innovations can have.
This all sounds, well, sound but have you thought about the population of aging Boomers as drivers of the moment? Also, behavior changes across society seems a leap toward what we are already seeing from social media business models and Skinneresque dreams returning to vogue.
I remember a story about Oreo cookies in China. Nabisco, in order to gain market share, had to create a recipe with much less sugar and reduce the size and cost of packaging.
Thanks for this analysis! A truly healthy society would break a lot of banks. But I wonder if we are gaining some self-control or forfeiting it.