Musk, Kennedy disagree on weight-loss drugs

I dont think any of you should use vaccines on your kids or grandkids. I think that will solve all our problems, eventually.

 

I’m saddled with fewer and fewer doubts that abstaining from wholly unnecessary pharmaceutical interventions would solve SOME problems.

 

The issue is the drug costs money now, and diseases of obesity cost money down the road so health insurance companies are concerned with now. who knows what insurance the diabetic will be on years down the road. It is one of the issues with private insurance, cost incentives are short term not long term.

 

“Obesity” is an arbitrary term and is not a disease.

 

Yes, but the Pharma company that produces it desperately wants to market it as a Weight Loss drug, and for all the usual awful reasons, and to all the usual awful (plastic-surgery woman) people.

 

Your generation thought smoking was healthy and lead paint lasted a long time without needing a touch up.

 

Also: my generation was thin and did not experience a jarring decrease in life expectancy.

 

It's relative. Even with Covid impacts people are living longer than they were.

U.S. Life Expectancy 1950-2024 | MacroTrends

 

Even as we were getting fatter and fatter ?

 

I truly believe a lot of our medical issues are a result of what is put into our food and the feed for the animals we consume.. Look at girls boobs today vs when I was in high school 50+ years ago. We had at most 4 or 5 girls who were bigger than a C Cup. When I was a Sr in high school my 6’4” 225lbs was considered a big boy. Today that is average.

 

I support foods that make woman’s boobs bigger

 

On my high school football team if you weighed 200 pounds you were an offensive lineman. I was a 6-0 145 pound wishbone QB.

But a lot of this is people getting bigger, not necessarily fatter.

 

Personally, these drugs are seriously bad. It allows you to jab yourself while continuing eating badly. Just because you are losing weight doesn't mean you are healthy. You could have all sorts of internal issues that don't show until years later. The only healthy way to lose weight and keep it off is eating whole foods and exercise and sticking with small portions. Pick what works for you and stick with it. I've maintained 155lbs for over 4.5 years on keto and I've reversed pretty much everything including prediabetes and HBP. I know a few people who were like Dez who are on carnivore and have lost and maintained half their body weight and are physically active now.

 

The drugs should certainly be monitored to see if there’s any long term negatives, but short of some major unknown side effect, it definitely would seem to be in everyone’s interests to cover the drug to get obesity rates down. Insurers weighing short term profits vs kicking those “obesity related” costs down to Medicare.

 

I thought this drug did reduce appetites? Theres been articles about lower junk food demand.

Saw a thing awhile back that potato prices were getting hit by lower fast food demand, and Ozempic was cited. I thought that was pretty crazy to cite a drug for lowering the commodity price of potatoes.


https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/19/magazine/ozempic-junk-food.html

 

Other effective strategies for reducing BMI:

Be a POW.

Get deathly ill.

Have a limb amputated.

 

Unless we are talking morbid obesity, a lot of those obesity related costs probably don’t really start kicking in until a person is Medicare age. So they are kicking extra costs to the govt for 65 year olds that (perhaps) could have been healthier in their early “Medicare eligibility” years.

 

No doubt we are getting bigger and heavier, but I don't know that Americans are getting taller. While my gut reaction was to agree with you, the quick results I got actually reflect a small height decrease in recent decades. At least part of that could be attributed to immigration, but there also appear to be other factors at play.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/12/15/why-are-americans-getting-shorter/

Americans are now shorter — especially in these professions

Why are Americans getting shorter?

 

Medicare age is typically when you begin to see BMI tapering off. Until that time, persistent weight-gain is pretty much a biological given and appears to confer health benefits rather than actually causing diseases.

 

Also, I keep reading that American males are getting bald younger.