[tomcar288]

It's good to see more studies come on this but it's not exactly news. Researchers have known for quite some time now that there's an entire constellation of diseases (diabetes, stroke, certain cancers, fatty liver disease, heart disease, etc, etc) known as metabolic syndrome that are all caused by diet and lifestyle.

[toomuchtodo]

Also good that GLP-1s have been found to help people patch the reward center around unhealthy diet demand signals. We know these things are bad, we know will power isn't a solution, and we have a fix we can deploy at scale relatively inexpensively.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41988285 ("HN: GLP-1 for Everything")

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42579445 ("HN: Weight loss drugs seem to be driving down grocery bills")

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5073929 | https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5073929 ("The No-Hunger Games: How GLP-1 Medication Adoption is Changing Consumer Food Purchases")

[bitmasher9]

Saying will power isn’t a solution is insulting to everyone that successfully made lifestyle and diet changes to become healthier without pharmaceutical intervention.

It may not work for everyone all the time, but I know a lot of people that have made these changes.

[hombre_fatal]

This is just an uncharitable / strawman interpretation of what they said. They are concerned with all the people left over once you remove the people that just had to muster up "willpower". And they are concerned for the people who weren't dealt the same hand of traits that us fit people have.

[toomuchtodo]

If one is insulted, they should revisit their mental model and emotional state. There is no gold star for will power because someone lucked out with genetics and brain chemistry/structure. “Be more lucky” is not actionable for the body you are issued.

We can patch bugs in the human, and we should whenever possible and desired by the person. This helps them make their own luck.

[jacobgkau]

You are transferring the problem from the foods industry to the pharmaceutical industry. I hope "one" knows that.

The "bugs" are not in "the human," they're in the food industry. Fixing our food supply would be far better for individuals and society than fighting fire with fire by leaving our food broken and using drugs to work around it.

In the meantime, doing what you can to unbreak your diet without using drugs is still far smarter than relying on an artificial "fix" for the "machine" that is literally you (and can't be tossed and replaced when you find out your "fix" caused other issues, which happens almost every time the pharma industry provides shortcuts for people). Doing it this way also moves your demand as a consumer to the unbroken parts of the food supply, which will help everyone else as food companies are incentivized to cater to that instead of continuing on with what they're doing.

[toomuchtodo]

If this is your belief, then you do not understand the mechanisms by which GLP-1 agonists work. They silence the signals in the brain craving the unhealthy foods in question. You will never win against your brain chemistry.

[SoftTalker]

Pharmaceutical companies would love for you to believe that. They salivate over the idea that they can convince you that you need their products for the rest of your life. They aren't any different from the common street dealer in many ways. They don't really care about your health, only that you keep coming back.

[jacobgkau]

"You will never win against your brain chemistry" is a defeatist way to dismiss taking basically any action, ever. People selling you artificial solutions will, of course, be incentivized to convince you that it's true.

Humans lived for thousands of years (without the widespread diet-related ailments we're seeing epidemics of today) without artificially "fixing" their own brain chemistry. This is not an internal medicine problem, it's an external food supply and societal lifestyle problem.

If you want to say it's too hard for you (you, only) to do what's required to not get sick and you'd rather rely on medicine, fine. But it is actually insulting to pretend like everyone needs a crutch just because you do. The main thing is that the crutch should be a last resort, and "willpower isn't a solution" should not be a common mantra to push the crutch as the first option.

[lazyasciiart]

Their willpower doesn’t appear to have solved the issue on a societal level, and it is not an insult to say that.

[KittenInABox]

By this logic I, a person who has never been at risk of financial insolvency partially due to my lack of consumer addiction/upbringing with financial literacy, should be insulted by someone who says that budgeting isn't a solution to systemic poverty.

[jacobgkau]

No, by this logic, you should be insulted by someone saying paid professional accountants managing all of your money is the only way for society to avoid widespread debt because "most people" haven't managed to bring themselves to do the basic at-home budgeting that you're used to.

[Jtsummers]

> by this logic, you should be insulted by someone saying paid professional accountants managing all of your money is the only way for society

But toomuchtodo didn't write that GLP-1s were the only way to address the issue. So maybe there's no reason to be insulted. Perhaps you could exercise your willpower and not feel insulted by things that didn't happen.

[jacobgkau]

That user did, actually, specifically tell me that "You will never win against your brain chemistry," which is a direct statement that there is no other solution for me than GLP-1s. Do you want to continue defending that position, which is absolutist?

[ericmcer]

That is true but I think emphasizing liquid sugar is particularly important. When I was young I tried to bulk (for sports) several times and ate an obscene amount of carbohydrates and protein, think like 8 hot dogs and half a gallon of milk for lunch... roughly 4k calories a day of carbs/protein/fat.

I never got past 220. I would get terrible heartburn and bloating and be too full to eat enough, 220 seemed to be about the max my body could obtain without severe discomfort. It always made me wonder how people get up into the 300+ range. Liquified sugar seems like the only food that your body can process efficiently enough to get you into those massive weight categories.

[arcticbull]

Just to clarify metabolic syndrome isn't the umbrella term for all of these things.

Metabolic syndrome is when you have 3 or more of: central adiposity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high triglycerides and low HDL.

You can have any of these independently, it becomes metabolic syndrome when you hit the bingo.

[dantodor]

Those are the most obvious and easy to spot signs. Metabolic syndrome is dysfunction at the mitochondrial level.

[arcticbull]

> Metabolic syndrome is dysfunction at the mitochondrial level.

It might or might not be involved. At this point, it's not clear. Obesity and insulin resistance are the most likely proximate causes.

[tasty_freeze]

The study quantifies the effect. The paper doesn't just say "Drinking too much sugar is bad for you."

Say one group drinks six cans of coke a day per person vs another group drink only water. Overall they have similar caloric intake and expenditures. What is the increase in type 2 diabetes for the first group vs the second? Yes, it is not surprising it would be higher, but is it 5%? 10%? 50%? 100%? more?

[interestica]

> It's good to see more studies come on this but it's not exactly news. Researchers have known for quite some time now

A growing body of studies signals consensus - that’s newsworthy. This ties two specific factors together rather than any general metabolic syndrome.

[lithocarpus]

What's new to me is that it's becoming newsworthy, more people are talking about it.

To my current understanding, metabolic syndrome caused by sugar / glucose spikes is by far the biggest root cause of physical health issue in the US. Most people I know personally who are suffering from physical ailments, it's most likely metabolic syndrome at the root of it.

How to shift culture on this? When I'm in civilization in the US I'm constantly confronted with foods I have to turn down. It doesn't have to be that way.

Furthermore, because of what is in my opinion bad science and propaganda, a lot of people still think they need to stay away from saturated fat, which pushes them toward processed high glycemic index foods. Sure, you can eat a low saturated fat and low glycemic diet but it's not so easy. I'm serious it's shocking the number of people suffering from metabolic syndrome / diabetes who have told me they are trying to stay away from saturated fat but are eating crazy amounts of sugar.

I hope this continues to be talked about more and more so the people I love can turn down sugar without feeling like they're radical and countercultural.

Partly I think there's a taboo on talking about health and diet, that would be good to shift. I'm not about fat shaming but diabetes is really just bad, and preventable and reversible, and I'd like for that to be widely agreed on and talked about.

Will also be interesting to see how lawsuits like this play out: https://chat.google.com/dm/wQTk3gAAAAE/WPNwzCxw9sI/WPNwzCxw9...

[Mistletoe]

It's not propaganda. Saturated fat is bad. That's a common internet belief that runs rampant because saturated fat tastes good and it sounds awesome to believe some conspiracy against it.

https://www.heart.org/en/news/2019/10/21/advisory-replacing-...

Most of it always tracks back to Nina Teicholz. I wonder how many people she is sending to the grave?

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

[lithocarpus]

I know it's hotly debated and I don't imagine I could convince you :). This is my opinion.

If I read right, you're saying that an entire food group that people have been eating for eons is simply "bad", specifically, meat, dairy, and eggs, in their unprocessed form. The argument I've seen is that it's better to eat a new kind of food that people have only begun eating in quantity within the last hundred ish years requiring industrial technology. (Specifically, oils extracted from plant material using solvents like hexane.)

I'm open minded but this is a really serious claim and I'd need really solid evidence which I haven't seen, and I've looked. There are a lot of studies; those that I've looked into have too many confounding variables for me to take their conclusions at face value.

I could also see the possibility that saturated fat in someone who already has metabolic syndrome might increase their risk of heart disease, and maybe be considered the proximate cause, in cases where the root cause is the metabolic syndrome caused by sugar in the first place.

There's also the question of there being different kinds of LDL cholesterol and it perhaps actually serving a function in the body that isn't categorically bad, even if in some circumstances the metric correlates with atherosclerosis.