Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk facing pressure as study finds $1,000 appetite suppressant can be made for just $5
https://fortune.com/europe/2024/03/28/ozempic-maker-novo-nordisk-facing-pressure-as-study-finds-1000-appetite-suppressant-can-be-made-for-just-5/Open linkView original on lemmy.world601
Comments157
Literally almost every drug in existance.
Then after the parent rubs out, they make a slightly different version and repatent it.
Insulin: new formula now 0.0005% more effective for only 9000% increase in profit!
Whoo boy that typo had me going at first lol
That typo is hilarious enough that I must leave it. 😁
We thank you for your service.
Every neighborhood should have community drug labs (not just the sheriff's meth lab like we have now) and every pharma researcher should be spilling their guts or spilling their guts.
I dunno, Sheriff’s meth lab can help with the adderral shortage.
I'm not saying we can't re-use the hardware, maybe even the staff, but are you honestly proposing anything involving the police would ever be allowed to be used for good?
You are right, they would find some way to make it bad.
both stimulants also suppress appetite
article doesnt present any pressure they are facing. also
Prices are never about cost, its what people are willing to pay. Which gets brutally exploited by pharmaceutical industry.
To be fair, drug development is pretty expensive. A lot of the budgets for it are public-because it happens at public institutions.
obviously
anybody who believes pharma costs are justified by materials is... well, let's just call them uninformed. It's not justified by R&D costs or production issues. It's justified by the stock market, by the CEO having a race with other pharma CEOs for the biggest bonus, and by no other thing.
I work in med device, close to pharma, but a bit different. There is a lot of overhead. Beyond all the validations required for startup of each line, there is quite a lot of Sustaining work.
I'm not trying to defend this price, or the gouging that pharma does regularly. But I don't think the $5 price includes all the overhead of the QMS.
It's like taking the price of the ingredients for a pizza and saying it's what it should cost.
It's really cheap to make a book but that doesn't stop publishers from selling them at a large markup. This is a pretty basic supply/demand scenario. The pharma company doesn't owe anyone anything. They exist to make money. The best way to lower the cost is for a competing product to enter the market.
Well if the materials to make a pizza was 5 dollars and it was being sold at 1,000 dollars, saying "oh thats just necessary overhead" would lead me to wonder why the hell that level of inefficiency was tolerated.
Patents, e.g. legal monopolies.
Maybe fines and penalties for undercutting someone who holds a patent should be scrapped for nonprofit manufacturers of generics.
Maybe profit should come second to the betterment of humanity.
Because each new type of pizza is made of brand-new ingredients, not just standard wheat flour, tomatoes, cheese, spices, etc. And they're baked anew and taste-tested to make sure they're not disgusting, or worse, have toxic effects.
Im not in charge of the checkbook, but I do place purchase requests. I also am in charge of reducing direct labor and know what our overhead numbers are. We are a small company though. It should be possible to reduce overhead in larger companies due to economies of scale, however, it is not always the case as the bureaucracies required to interface with the FDA are not trivial.
I was involved with a product transfer for a large company one time. Due to the small volume of the product and the complexity of Sustaining and reporting activities it had a 60% overhead. I did look at the books on that. While that's an extreme case, I've also seen product launched with 40% yield. One device I worked on was a stapler for the heart. We had to load the tiny staples into the device, fire it, evaluate the staple formation, then reset and reload the staples. It had about 80-90% yield if I remember correctly.
These aren't roast beef sandwiches. People die if you fuck up.
...and you are shit-canning someone else's input because they don't know everything based on your even more limited experience, suspect knowledge, and a heavily biased opinion of how you think the world should work. Lay out your superior knowledge or admit you're just spewing a party line for the upvotes because it sure sounds like they know a hell of a lot more about the subject than you do.
Them:
You:
Well done.
I'm sure there are some costs associated with developing drugs, and I'm sure it's not cheap.
The problem still stands, though, and the solution is capping executive pay in public companies.
It's justified by asking "how much money can we suck out of the people it helps?"
Novo Nordisk's CEO was paid $9.8 million last year, inclusive of bonus and benefits.
The R&D is often publicly funded by research grants, with free labor by grad students. Our tax dollars are paying for extortion over our health in this completely broken system.
As you pointed out, this is literally just sociopathic CEOs doing what capitalism demands of them.
Normally you can think of these prices as the reward to taking a risk. The chance of developing a drug and bringing it to market is usually small, and the reward should accordingly be high. However, in the particular case of Ozempic, the company attempted to develop a diabetes drug, and accidentally found that the drug works against obesity. That means that the reward in this case outweighs the risk by an obscene amount.
Your starting premise relies on the idea that the costs associated with making drugs are justified. In essence, this implies that the insane rewards are justified because risks associated with not producing a drug are so high.
Most of our science is funded via taxes and controlled by the government, given to researchers through grants that are awarded based on merit as determined by their peers. We've developed an adjacent system where drug discovery is funded by capital and investments from non-scientists based on the idea that "striking gold" in the medical world could make them rich.
Why not just remove the cost-barrier to entry? Require all drug discovery to be funded through grants like other research? Pay people working on drugs whether they discovered a new drug or not, as long as they provided proof of their efforts? Researchers would not need to please those with money (banks, investors) to give them funds for a drug, and so would be free to work on drugs that have a low likelihood of being profitable (such as for forgotten illnesses, or using cheap and widely available medicines in novel ways). And when an amazing drug was discovered, our society would be free to use it efficiently and at-cost, since there wouldn't be stakeholders hungry for their massive payout.
The grant system is a mess, also. And in an ideal world those whose ideas and research led to amazing discoveries would be rewarded extensically somehow, both with appreciation and a reasonable amount of money (the staff of an entire research organization could be set financially for life for a tiny, tiny fraction of the amount of money we shovel over to pharmaceutical company stakeholders). And all of this is also tied up in the clinical medical industrial complex, with all its own neuroses.
So there are barriers to implementing something like this... But holy shit do I hear this idea a lot, that high risk justifies the insane rewards. I think it's bogus!
Most of the research on drugs is done by universities with grant money or government labs and then the production is sold to private companies. They aren’t taking nearly the amount of risk you are claiming.
Meanwhile volvo assigns the patent for the 3-point seatbelt to the public domain because it will save countless lives.
A Swedish company not being evil? What are they, the opposite of America?
Novo Nordisk is a Danish company, not American.
We were talking about Volvo.
Right. But based on context clues, it's implied that the full meaning of the post was "Volvo did something for the public good, therefor Volvo is good. Volvo is a Swedish company. Swedish companies are good. Sweden is in Europe. European countries are good. American countries are bad. Novo Nordisk did something bad. It must be an American company."
Admittedly, my mistake was not being more clear about the point of my response which is that geography is irrelevant - capitalism and all companies are evil (or at best, amoral).
You didn’t have a clarity issue
That was in no way what I was saying, which about U.S. companies pretty much never doing the right thing and European companies actually doing that sometimes.
Double pop! First time I've seen a privacy popup on top of a privacy popup. The top one you can only accept.
Extra privacy wow!
Ah I see they are going the Roku route.
you can also block or remove the elements with UBlock Origin. either on desktop or mobile, just enter element picker mode, select the popup and tap create.
Use uBlock Origin, it allows you to block these popups.
does it do that by simply accepting them, or bypassing them, and would it make sure the sites don't track me if I used it?
It doesn't accept or deny the popup, it just hides it. Technically if you don't answer the cookie banner it needs to be treated as if you denied it. But you can just block all third-party cookies in Firefox and you'll be fine.
It pretty clearly says "accept it or gtfo"
Are you expecting a No button that redirects your to Google or something?
Well... it doesn't. Why would i have to accept twice if i did?
First is "this isn't a negotiation. Accept or leave" Second is "pick the cookies you want"
I dont see it this way. They contradict themselves. If i accept the first one but reject the one bellow, that should override the first. Its not logical to force me to accept in order to get to the next one where i can reject
What you are rejecting in the second one are optional tracking/performance cookies.
Well you see… there’s the yacht, the yacht they have to land the helicopter, and the smallish yacht they use to go into port because berths at dock are hard to come by.
Oh and the. There’s the helicopter, the pilots, the mansion in every state. Except, uh, the ones that tax rich people.
It’s all part of the cost…
@FuglyDuck @return2ozma
Have you seen all those hoes and bitches that get on those yachts and they all got their titties out and showing their ass and pussy. It's a great trickle down economy Ronny put together.
"Don't think he knows about second yacht, Pip."
CAD$650/month in Canada. I've lost 36 Kg (80 lbs) and I'm still losing weight. My blood work shows no signs of diabetes, my cardiac indicators are also excellent, but my hemoglobin is low because I don't eat beef anymore (not because of the Ozempic, I haven't been able to digest it for about six years.) I'm taking an iron supplement to build it back up.
Ozempic sucks until you stop fighting it. After that it's an easy ride.
I'm wearing an XL t-shirt and large sweat pants today down from 3XL in both eight months ago.
Any side effects?
It acts by slowing down the emptying of your stomach. That means that whatever you eat stays in your stomach for many hours. If you eat too much at night or something that is acidy or spicy it causes terrible heart burn and reflux/regurgitation. I take an omeprazole with sodium bicarbonate at bedtime to relieve the acid.
I eat a granola bar or a couple of eggs for breakfast then a small bowl of whatever is on offer for dinner and that's it. My stomach is never empty. Sometimes, if I want to have something spicy or acidy I will have it for breakfast. I've had a fajita for breakfast and I once had chicken parm for breakfast. Then I eat something easy for dinner.
The most upsetting side effect was the fact that I went from a daily bathroom guy to every three or four days. I was eating so much less and my body was making such good use of what I ate that I just didn't produce much. It can cause constipation but you need to avoid taking laxatives because you can become dependant. Just drink lots of water, eat lots of fiber, and walk a lot and you will be fine.
If you fight it it's going to make you miserable. If you lean in you will lose a lot of weight fast. I've lost so much weight so quickly that my body freaks me out a bit. When I'm sitting on the edge of the bed and look down at my legs I don't recognize them. I told someone a few weeks ago that I just wanted a little candy because I'm fat and she said, "No you're not."
On the plus side I mentioned to my doctor that I was getting shorter (in in my late 50s and went from 5' 10 1/2" to 5' 9 1/2" and he asked, "Your penis?" I said, "No, that's getting longer!" He laughed and said, "It was hiding." I've actually gained an inch and a half of useable penis. (That's a happy side effect.)
Are there plateaus like with other weight loss?
I'm not eating any solid food due to a medical issue (long story) and I have lost 80 pounds as well. My weight can drop very quickly sometimes, as much as a pound every few days. Other times, like recently, it takes a long time to go down. It's taken me a good two months to go from 190 to 180, whereas I was 260 at the start of January 2023.
If not eating enough period causes plateaus, I would think Ozempic would as well.
I plateaued in the low 220s for a month or so then the weight fell off me to the low 200s. I'm creeping down now at about half a pound per week. My ultimate goal was to get to 200 lbs but I'm now thinking that I may go to 190 lbs since the weight is continuing to come off. I don't want to go lower than that. I don't want to be a thin person. I just want to be less fat.
My husband plateaued with it and had to go to a higher dose. No idea how common that is.
I'm definitely no expert on this, but it's my understanding that weight loss plateaus are pretty common. I'm not sure why though.
If you're on 1mg you will plateau, weight loss was a side effect of Ozempic, 2.5mg was the magic number for consistent weight loss. I heard they had people on 3mg during trials but the side effects outweighed the benefits.
That's pricey. Here in the UK, I think it's like..hmm... $256 CAD. Still expensive though which puts it out of reach for a lot of people to keep it up regularly.
76.58€, here. 30% reimbursed by social security, probably another 30% by your work insurance.
I think you mean Wegovy, because I pay $220 for Ozempic at Costco, coworker pays $280 at SDM (Loblaws gotta take their cut)
Rybelsus the pill form of Ozempic is more expensive but I heard it's in the $400 range similar in price to Mounjaro.
You've gotta be on Wegovy
Edit: Also based on your replies below you're losing too much weight for it to be 1mg of Ozempic. Sure you lose some weight at 1mg but after a couple months you plateau and some of the side effects you describe are more inline with Wegovy. I've been on Ozempic 3 years and it affects my life absolutely zero at this point. It keeps my blood sugar in the optimal range and helps me avoid the snack food aisle but that's about it
I'm on 1mg off Ozempic. Wegovy isn't approved in Canada. There are typical weight loss numbers but I've really leaned in to the Ozempic and have done very well.
It's been approved since 2021 just not available, much like Mounjaro is approved but only available in vial form. Mounjaro is the superior drug but since you have to inject via syringe less people are opting for it.
Ok...so not available...so how is it that you think I must be on Wegovy?
What defect of personality is it that makes you think is appropriate to tell a complete stranger that they are mistaken about the drug that they are taking (have been taking for eight months, and took last night before bed), about the dose (Ozempic is only available as 1mg), or that they have lost too much weight?
Seriously, what is wrong with you. Have you considered seeking professional help?
I started out at 283. I got an to 265 then my doctor started me on Ozempic. I'm not some lazy fuck who just lies around waiting for the drug to make me thin. I've dramatically changed my eating habits and I live an active lifestyle for someone my age and weight. I leaned into the drug and did better than most people. (Look up the medical definition of "typical".)
It was the extra inch and a half of penis that triggered you, wasn't it? Sorry, dude. Not everyone is cutout for porn.
Woah, that was alot. It wasn't my intention to downplay your efforts. I was just trying to figure out how you were paying $650/month in a Country where it costs $220-280 depending on the pharmacy. There is no place in this country where you should be paying that much, my questions were asked so I could figure out if you were taking an off label dosage.
I don't give a fuck about your small dick, or your exercise routine I was just interested in your dosage and why you were paying so much.
Congratulations on doing well on Ozempic, very few stick with it over the side effects. Friend of mine just got put on it, 4 weeks of 0.25, 4 weeks of 0.50 4 weeks of 0.75 and only then will he get 1mg. Alot of people don't do well on the drug. I'm sorry I came off as a dick I just didn't want you to be scammed. $650 is inline with what Wegovy will sell for in Canada when available this spring. So I thought maybe you got it early. My apologies for any offense I caused
I don't pay a penny for Ozempic. My insurance covers the entire cost with no deductible. It's cheaper to have me lighter and healthy than it is to have me fat and diabetic with high blood pressure or dead. The $650 is what my pharmacist told me that it cost without insurance. I don't know if that's true and I honestly don't care.
I suspect that the people who are failing on Ozempic expected it to be a miracle drug that suddenly and effortlessly made them skinny. That isn't me. I worked hard to get to where I am and I'm still working hard. I'm the lightest I've been since my late teens at 201 lbs as of 5 minutes ago.
There’s a lot of mistrust with drug makers at the moment, for good reason and this is a great article on the breakdown of costs. They do have a point about recouping the cost of R&D but maybe they should be more transparent about how long it’ll take them to do so. MBAs are very good at pulling levers to make money, they just don’t think about the human element, which is the most important lever.
Two points about R&D costs:
First, they aren't just trying to make up what they spent on this treatment, but others that failed during research/trials. There's a lot of them the general public will never hear about, and pharmas generally don't like to bring attention to their failures. Part of that is many shareholders are morons who don't understand how science works.
Second, the costs can get fuzzier for larger companies who in-house much of the R&D process, since the costs get shared among many programs. Properly attributing spend in that case can be a serious challenge.
All that said, they've clearly seen an opportunity to rake it in with this trendy drug and are charging way more than they need to.
If these were nonprofit companies and all employees were paid at/below market rates I would not complain.
It is the profit and CEO pay that I object to.
Guys our government is broken.
As I read that they charge just 155 bucks in other countries I guess the high price lies in not having a suitable health care system. You can't have both, calling other countries socialists or communists AND having good health care by having the same contracts that we have. Sorry.
Universal Health Care is what Americans should be rioting for. It is THE game changer in QoL and what really separats a first world country from a second world country.
I remember how hard Fox News was pushing it when they could feel it possibly coming. Remember the whole "death panel" nonsense? It was absurd.
They were even saying how the current healthcare system was simpler and direct and better. It was insanity.
Death Panels decide you don’t need treatment!
Ah, much better than the insurance companies doing the same thing. Good thing insurance helps me not only die but also leaves me completely penniless and all my assets given to creditors.
It separates the capitalists from the communists?
$1500. That's how much eight weeks of ozempic costs for me if I had to pay out of pocket.
How much to get people together to steal the recipe and set up a lab?
Bet its less than a five year supply, which is probably just a week or two between a group og interested parties!
There are gray market microlabs that will already make it for 1/3 the cost. Since so many insurance companies deny Ozempic for people who are pre-diabetic (which would keep them from becoming diabetic) and Wegovy for people who are obese and have cholesterol issues (again, can actually help with this) but they are not morbidly obese, people turn to these places.
Doctors say you need it and will help you, but insurance companies tell you “nah”. Yet for some reason they cover it for the endless amounts of yoga Karens who don’t need it at all.
And I'm proposing that drug production could be largely (not entirely - sometimes you need that weird ass ingredient with a supply chain that circles the globe like shibari, or a huge piece of equipment) moved to a local community context. Fuck the companies, cut them out entirely.
Where is Walter White when you need him
Seriously, no kidding but sometimes I think that people are still discovering capitalism
I'm diabetic, and also have a few mental health issues. The doc took me off Ozempic, citing it's side affects of messing with mental health.
Sorry to hear it. What sort of side effects were there?
Doc said risks were reported of adversely affecting PTSD, depression, and suicidal thoughts.
Oh wow. Yeah, definitely a good idea to stop taking it. I'm glad you're still with us and I hope you've found a good solution!
Thanks, I'm doing pretty well. But I don't need a drug with those side effects. I mention this primarily because these side effects appear to be largely unreported, while the drug is being widely marketed for weight loss. People should be aware of the risks.
I totally get it and those side effects absolutely need to be reported, especially if they are not uncommon.
I have a weird allergy to some opioids which results in a sort of psychosis and definitely possible self-harm, but that is a very uncommon effect there. Imagine if it was happening to people all over but no one was talking about it!
Thank you for doing so.
well you know the old adage, the bigger the margin, the better the rape
Guy looks like Bill Gates without hair.
Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos did the Fusion Dance
"Mo-ney Ha!"
So why didn't anyone else start manufacturing it for $5 about 15 years ago then?
Patents most likely.
Interestingly its always libertarian types defending patents; rather than being against it for being government intervention.
In either case patents and copyright need reform for today's economy.
It was only approved very recently. Manufacturing it years ago would have been a waste, because you wouldn't have been able to sell it.
That's the thing.
Developing drugs, from a theoritical cure for something to an actual approved drug, normally takes years and a lot of drugs gets scrapped during this process. You don't just have to prove that the drug is not causing more harm, your also have to prove how effective it is. There a lot of full time employee people involved in everything from developing the actual chemical to executing clinical tests.
I'm not in any way defending the way "big pharma" acts today, but all of this is more complicated than a guy suddenly saying "I'm going to create a drug that cures cancer" and then just does it in 2 years.
So out of the 10 drugs you pour a couple of millions into the development of, just 1 or 2 might make it through and get approved. If you're lucky. So even if it's just costs $5 manufacture that specific drug, the company still have to cover the losses from the other 8-9 that never made it.
Once again, I'm not defending all pharmaceutical companies. I'm just saying that the manufacturing cost of a drug that is approved is far from the actual cost.
If you understand all that, then why did you ask why they didn't manufacture it?
Have you ever heard of rhetorical questions?
And a lot of people in my country are hoarding lots of Ozempic shots. Please remember this is for DIABETICS, and not for everyday weight loss.
In other news water is wet
I honestly don't get why so many people are so upset.
I get it with things like insulin where we know how to make it for years. But a new revolutionary drug? Sure their production cost is low but that doesn't include R&D and just think of how many drugs don't work. That's why when we do find something that works we can't expect it to only pay for itself, it has to make enough buck to basically pay for them as well, because why else even bother?
Most pharma R&D is actually done by the government. Unless they can prove it's an outlier there....
The government funds the first phase of the search. This is very important. But beyond that, the bill is footed by private sector.
A quote from this study:
The NIH is not immune to poison pill studies financed by the industry. Research America is the for-profit health industry with a mask on. It was also physically conducted by at least one member of a political think tank that lobbies for government payouts to corporations, (PPI). Then there's this gem at the end-
Maybe, instead of leaning on opinion pieces written by the industry you should look at actual research done by PHDs.
Like this direct comparison done for 2010-2019 finding industry breaks even with the government at it's most forgiving calculation. And at worst the government is shouldering 90 percent of the costs.
Fair enough. I should have definitely looked at the funding for the study. Thanks for providing a better study.
No idea on the statistics but this does happen. I think the onus is on the government to negotiate for the IP though. Big pharma is going to try to get the best deal they can and most of the time that's accepting tax dollars and then selling the drug at a more conservative markup to taxpayers. If the government contract was restructured to get the actual IP then they could offer another contract for production and get competing offers.
Sure. But who is the government going to negotiate for? The people putting money in their campaigns? Or the people who they've already trapped into voting for them?
Can't argue with you here. I think this is perhaps the biggest issue we face in the United States. Our government is for sale.
I think so too. We can't get any meaningful reform until we figure it out.
low tier bait
Jigglypuff doesn't look very tasty, does it
What the hell happened to Public Funding for Science and shit
That's only for diseases you can't milk a fat profit from like tuberculosis.
Would a publicly funded study into a weight loss drug receive a sufficient share of a government's research budget?
I'm not sure I understand your question but maybe it should
Someone that doesn't understand how much capitalism has done for research.
The scales aren't the same, the public would never allow that sort if risk, its completely impossible for governments to cause that amount of drug breakthroughs
You apparently don't understand how much government-subsidized research has done.
Ever had an MRI? Ever known anyone who had an MRI? Ever known anyone whose life was saved because something was discovered on an MRI?
Thank NASA, not capitalism.
But the public of course is just fine having a little 10 trillion military excursion in the middle east. You don't even need to explain how it will be profitable in that case. Because of how passionately everyone wanted this.
For old people cancer, capitalism is the only possible option.
It's also needed by type 2 diabetics. So I'd say pretty vital.
This is the dumbest thing I've read in a month. It was originally and still is a diabetes drug. Go lick more corporate boots.
I've seen that argument about expensive drugs over and over and over.
And you know what it's an argument in favor of?
Government-subsidized research.
It's not an argument in favor of pricing drugs so high that only the rich can afford them. At all.
And let's not forget that a great deal of the research is already publicly-funded.
I still don't understand how Covid vaccines are suddenly allowed to cost a fuck ton of money. Enough public money was thrown at those things to buy entire nations - why the fuck isn't it owned by the public.
That one is especially ludicrous. It's mitigating a pandemic (or I guess endemic at this point) illness! It should be manufactured at cost.
Exactly. It's an argument for regulation. Also maybe they should spend some of their advertisement budget on R&D instead of convincing patients what they should be on.
R&D already disappears when compared to marketing or executive pay. Corpos whining about profits again
Likely not, no. Novo Nordisk spent $5 Billion on R&D in a year as a company. I can't find consistent numbers on advertising costs, but that looks to be somewhere around $100-200 million over the last 12 months, for this product specifically. The total annual compensation of the entire executive team at Novo Nordisk is about $46 million USD.
When you are overweight, it is not a case of just eating less. Eating less has very different physical and psychological effects for someone who is overweight than for someone who is not.
If you are interested in learning something about this, you can check out the setpoint theory of body weight. In short, the body has a setpoint for which weight it should be. If you are overweight, this setpoint is at a higher weight than if you are not. If your weight gets below the setpoint, your metabolism will slow down and your appetite will go up and the body starts to try and do everything to go back to this higher weight. That is why most people are not able to lose more than 10% of their weight in the long term. Often, when they gain the weight back, they gain back even more than they lost and the setpoint might even go up further. It is a neverending struggle for most people. Medication like Ozempic affect this mechanism so it becomes possible to lose weight.
If you want, you can find a lot of scientific papers about this. There is quite a lot of research on this and the setpoint theory is well accepted within the medical field specialised in dealing with weight problems, I believe.
In addition, Ozempic is not only a fat loss medicine. It is also used by people with diabetes to lower their glucose.
Im not smart in this at all, but i heard on a podcast, which sounds like bullshit but so does your set point thing, that bacteria had a lot of say so with our eating habits. The bacteria in our body that crave sugar influence our want of sugar? Its like a spiraling downwards trend- someone comsumes a lot of sugar- bacteria that thrives on sugar multiplies in our gut- that bacteria affects our body to crave more sugar- they get fed so we stay fat.
At the end of the day, someone can just eat less and fight thr cravings. Theres no way to agrue that eating 5000 calories are healthy. If you're 500 lbs and now need more calories to function then so what. Go without.
There was a study that looked at the children of parents who starved for a portion of their lives. And the children were better off because their body was prepared to fight starvation. No i wont cite it, because that i read about over a decade ago. So my point is, people can just eat less, screw what their body wants or thinks. Eat fucking less. Fast for a week every few months if you're overweight. Youre not gonna die, but you'll lose weight.
Try eating half of what you normally eat for a month and see how easy it is.
Then imagine doing that for the rest of your life.
If it was as easy as you seem to think it is, there wouldn't be such an obesity problem. And there certainly wouldn't be such a big problem with people regaining weight later on.
Also:
Cool, I won't believe you then, and I doubt anyone else will either.
That something sounds like bullshit does not mean that it is bullshit. I mean, I believe we should look at the data and the research. I did hear something about the role of gut bacteria but it was more about issues like depression. Might be interesting to check out further. Thank you.
I am not saying people should not fight their cravings. But the cravings of someone who is obese might be very different from someone who has a normal weight. Like I said, if you get below the setpoint often appetite will go up. Considering that most obese people are not able to lose significant weight in the long term, these cravings seem to be too strong and it seems to make people unable to "just eat less". So, we need a solution for that.
I am not sure whether this is what you are referring to, but I know about this study that says that prenatal exposure to famine in early gestation increases the risk of obesity.
You talk about cravings caused by you dont know while also saying what i heard our gut biome causing that affect sounds like bullshit. Im no expert on anything, but i used to listen to podcast everyday. I believe i learned about our gut biome and the bacteria in it from a licensed diatrician rhonda patrick. Despite the hacking scandle, shes the person who did 23andme.
You act like your set points are something other then a rationale explanation. Im not saying what i have gone through is set in stone, but i personaly went from 300+ lbs down to 190lbs, then back up to 300+lbs when i was let go during covid. Ive been fat, lost it and became fat again. Its 100% eating habits, at least for me, which can be explained by gut boime causing cravings because i could tell the difference of my cravings.
And no that study is not what i was talking about. I did not even have to look at it because you said its the cause obesity
Thanks for the name. I will check out Rhonda Patrick and see what research I can find on the topic. I thought you were calling the different theories bullshit, but maybe I misunderstood you and you only meant to say that they sound like that. If that is the case, I apologize. I got so much negativity just for mentioning the research that I might have responded too harshly.
I am sorry to hear that you are struggling with weight so much. I think obesity has to do with eating habits. However, there is a reason for why you have this eating habits. One reason for that could be gut microbiome.
What often happens is that people just get angry with themselves for eating too much. And that anger might help in the short term to force yourself to eat less, but in the long term it will not work and it will just make you feel bad about yourself. However, if you look at the actual underlying causes, such as gut microbiome or setpoint theory, this might provide the insight needed for long term weight loss without the extent of suffering that most obese people have to endure.
It is the only study I know about this. I checked it out, because I have a lot of people with anorexia in my family as well as some people with eating disorders causing obesity. I thought maybe being anorexic and pregnant is similar for your body as being in famine and pregnant. So, that is why I know about this study.
Firstly, the study i remember that looked at starving people were more about ww2 survivors i belives. There hasnt been a whole lot of mass starvings where people came out alive other than that.
On to your set point thing, no i do kinda believe its bullshit. But thats because i hear your thoughts, and instantly thing its just a side effect of some something i learned about years ago that makes more sense to me.
Also i dont need pity about being over weight, despite being over 300 lbs, i dont look too over weight, im thankfull i spent years i construction toning my body, and some how it not ad bad as i was when i was a teenager. Im not sure why but i dont actually look as fat as what other 300lsb people look. I live with my younger cousin who weighs 30 lbs more then me but looks vastly bigger. But he never lost weight or worked in extreme conditions like i have. So honestly i dont know the reason.
My last point is, you kinda sound like an ai, no offense if you're not, but you come across as very absorbing and completion, like you took in what i said and immediately ran with it. Most people online dont do that. And just in general the way you typed things out just feels ai-y once i had that thought.
I am not an AI. I am not sure how to prove that, but I am not. I am a scientific researcher, but in another field than the medical field. Maybe my scientific background shows in the way I communicate? Also, English is not my native language, so that might be why I sound different as well.
The reason I checked out so much research on obesity (as well as on being underweight) is that many of my family members suffer from eating disorders. I lost my little sister to anorexia a couple of years ago and my mother had it. However, some of my family members are obese as well, also due to eating disorders. I think trying to understand why people eat in a certain way and to help them instead of just judging them, might change things. And for me, scientific work and data is the best way to understand things. Maybe that gives you a bit of understanding where I am coming from and why I am interested in this subject.
If something is the result of research, it cannot just be called bullshit and set aside. It is not just another opinion that you can just decide to disagree with, considering the care that usually has been taken to reduce bias and ensure validity. Of course, research can be wrong and it is important to have a scientific debate. However, such a debate should be based on clear reasoning and arguments and other research results.
I was not pitying you. I was being compassionate. There is a difference between the two. I tried to be kind and understanding. That's all.
Edit: I also wanted to mention that the study I linked refers to a study on women who were pregnant during the famine in WWII in the Netherlands. Maybe that is what you meant.
The set-point theory is junk science propagated by the HAES movement. Human bodies can't escape the laws of physics, if you eat less energy than you expand you'll lose weight unless your body somehow evolved the ability for photosynthesis or nuclear power.
No, it is not junk science. Research about it is published in many serious scientific journals. Just check out Scopus or something. You cannot say that it is junk science just because you do not like the results.
You also seem to not understand it. It does not say that you can escape the law of physics. It also does not say that in my explanation. It says that you energy expenditure goes down if you get below the setpoint. So, eating less becomes less effective. At the same time, you appetite will go up. This makes it very difficult to maintain the weight loss and this is why many people fail to keep the weight off in the long term.
Criticism of any research is possible, of course. However, just saying it is junk and misrepresenting what the theory actually says are not good arguments.
If you disagree, then what is your explanation of why most obese people tend to not keep more than 10% weight off over time without medication or surgery? What scientific evidence is there for that? I would be very interested in hearing about alternative research on this topic.
When you gain weight, once the fat storage cells reach capacity, your body makes more of them. When you go into ketosis, burning stored fat, the cells don't die. They shrink. So once you go off your diet they will happily plump back up again. This is why your weight will yo-yo.
Losing weight and keeping it off should be done through dietary change, regular exercise, and commitment. That's true even if fat cells are physically killed or removed as part of treatment. Anything else yields temporary results or requires a lifelong legal drug habit.
The fat storage cells definitely play a role as well. One of the ways in which the mechanism I discussed works is via leptin, as leptons regulate energy expenditure. Leptin is primarily produced by adipocytes. So, I believe that is where the connection is. This paper says some interesting stuff about it: https://doi.org/10.1242/dmm.008698.
The issue that I was discussing is that most people do not succeed with keeping the weight off. Most obese people do not manage to lose significant weight in the long term as they tend to regain the weight. We need to look at why that is to solve it. The research on setpoints offers at least a partial explanation. However, if you know about research that further explains this, I would be very interested. (Some sources if you are interested: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17469900/, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11684524/, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19175510/)
No being obese is not healthy. It is clearly associated with many health risks. I have no idea why you would infer that I would think it is healthy from what I have said. Obesity is clearly a problem. However, to solve it, I think we should look at the mechanisms behind it and try to understand it. So, that is what I am trying to do.
Saying that something is "just fat people bullshit" is also not a good argument. Maybe we can leave the emotions and especially the anger out of it and just look at the research. You seem angry and I have no idea what I have done to you to make you angry. I just tried to discuss some research on this subject.
Hey there. I'm a fat person, but I'm not healthy. In fact, I'm here at the Mayo Clinic because I haven't eaten any solid food for the last 7 months and have lost 80 pounds since this started. I'm underweight now. I still look fat. I still have a big belly.
Maybe it's more complicated than you think.
It also regulates sugar and can be used as an alternative to insulin in many cases. The fact that it slows down the digestive process to make you feel like you're still full is a side effect compared to the sugar regulation.
That's why people take ozempic.
Also what you said is incredibly stupid.
There would still be a profit incentive in this case even if they charged 1% of what they're asking for. They'd still be making a 50% profit. A margin that would be highly favourable in basically any other industry. The whole point of market competition is to drive down that profit margin and pass the savings on to customers. A 95% markup like here demonstrates that the health industry is completely immune to market forces.
True and I think no one expects any good to cost the same as manufacturing it, but the difference here is 200 times. That is bonkers.
Yes.
Well, yes, but actually no. We enjoy food for a reason, and the availability of all kinds of food today interferes with our bodies and brains, which were tuned to scarcity in ancient times. Most people simply can't eat less; that's why the majority never lose weight or regain it after some time. Meanwhile, health issues caused by being overweight are consistently among the leading causes of death in developed countries. Therefore, this fat loss drug is very important.
This is just ignorant.
Calories in and out is accurate.
That wasn't the point of my post. Could you please read the whole thread before joining instead of picking a single phrase?
Consider not using word "science" anymore, you clearly have no idea what it is.