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44520297 | 7 months ago

Which other self-inflicted medical conditions do we deny medical care for?

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animal_spirits|7 months ago

We prescribe alcoholics with medicine to help them curb their alcohol intake, but if they do not learn the discipline to not drink then they can end up back where they started after getting off the medicine. But I don't think either drugs for alcoholism or obesity should be denied to anyone. However there are other tools to supplement with to help learning discipline.

44520297|7 months ago

>However there are other tools to supplement with to help learning discipline.

The current FDA guidelines support your assertion that GLP1s should be prescribed in addition to other tools to help people change their eating habits.

What the FDA does not prescribe is moralism, which is what “help learning discipline” tends to imply. If you didn’t intend to frame your argument in terms of moralism, you might consider a different word choice.

Group_B|7 months ago

Good point. The main root cause of obesity is too many calories. Usually, obesity and the symptoms / diseases that come with it improve / go away when eating less calories. Does any human technically need medication to eat less calories?

44520297|7 months ago

> Does any human technically need medication to eat less calories?

Chronically obese people, who are prescribed GLP1s to enable them to eat fewer calories. Are you interested in the reasons why people are unable to eat fewer calories without medication? It’s a pretty fascinating problem, one that intersects genetics, environment, and culture.

mikhailt|7 months ago

Yes. Gut microbes has already been shown to have a great impact on how we metabolize by what med we take, what we eat or drink and intake from our environments (micro-plastics, etc).

There is no single main root cause for obesity. We just combine it as one because there isn’t a lot of long term research or funding for it right now. There is a lot of sigma against obesity and people keep blaming other people instead.

Thyroid hormone disorders have been linked to cause weight gains. This can’t be fixed by simply eating less, it can literally do far more damage.

Medications have been linked to cause weight gain as side effects. This wouldn’t do anything to eat less until they stop taking meds and for some, they cannot do that.

Americans’ increasing desire for sweets have increased the sugar content in all of our food including the fruits and vegetables over time. We’ve intentionally bred our healthy stuff to be sweeter. So eating less can make us even more hungrier because we go into sugar crush without realizing it. Changing diets is difficult without us doing all sorts of calculations of finding the right cheap healthy food at the right store and that is you are lucky enough to have any.