| Excellent question! This is the picture I'm getting so far: * the observable weight loss seems real based on reports - that's easy to measure, and harder to fabricate like "blaming fats" conspiracies of the past. Unless there is truly massive numbers falsification in all these studies, which i doubt. So that's kind of exciting. * stuff like this article about visceral fat might also be true, so that's also easy to get excited about, and might even be true. Major downsides are transparent and predictable - this is not magic, or willpower replacement for health, because: * if you keep eating garbage, you will still suffer health damage despite losing weight. If I eat nothing but twinkies for a year, and this pill makes me feel full after two twinkies a day, I will lose weight, I will also kill my liver and suffer severe malnutrition - you are right! A less extreme, average American food will also produce health damage while losing weight on this pill. * if you live a bad lifestyle while on this pill, you will still lose weight, but will damage your health exposing yourself to things like diabetes, CVD, etc. * the big unknown for me - curious about that - do people develop tolerance for this pill? and another big one, do they rebound violently (much worse than usual) once they stop taking it after a while? or not. This is easier to cover up and harder to measure. * other more subtle things like is there a link to higher cancer risks over time, etc, but the first two "cons" points are big enough for me already. TLDR: this is a way to look better and soften some effects of obesity, but does not help with continuing health damage that still needs to be addressed in a more traditional way unfortunately. Lack of skepticism is not because the massive downsides are unknown or absent, but because apparently they are less of a concern to users+marketers. |