This is specifically a study on people with HIV-associated lipohypertrophy, which is associated with accelerated aging. Not clear what this would mean for people generally.
People on ozempic certainly look more like the crypt keeper than a younger version of themselves. You lose all that buccal fat that defines your young adult face.
This isn’t really surprising at all IMO, but it’s nice that it’s been confirmed.
> “The researchers believe semaglutide’s anti-aging properties stem from its effects on fat distribution and metabolic health. Excess fat around organs triggers the release of pro-aging molecules that alter DNA methylation in key aging-related genes. By reducing this harmful fat accumulation and preventing low-grade inflammation - both major drivers of epigenetic aging - semaglutide appears to create a more youthful biological environment.“
In other words, being medically obese ages your body quite a bit, its stresses out your body with inflammation, etc. Taking Ozempic helps people lose weight, which also reduces inflammation. This is sort of like saying we proved rain (usually) increases humidity lol. A very obvious finding.
The article even says “ Randy Seeley from the University of Michigan Medical SchoolView company profile expressed little surprise at the findings” :)
I've read [citation needed] that semaglutide has anti-inflammation effects even when there's no weight loss, i.e. there's another mechanism at play as well.
Yeah this is pretty much a nothingburger. I guess being fat causes biological damage similar to aging, and losing weight (which Ozempic helps with) reverses the process.
I find it fascinating how much a pretty large group of people just hate semaglutides and seemingly need to believe that it's some kind of Faustian bargain. I'm not talking about the people who are cautious or suspicious, that's more than reasonable, but it's clear that it's not cautious optimism in many.
"No free lunch" is a reasonable question to ask when evaluating medication, if it would improve the evolutionary fitness of the majority of people. I think this is behind some of the skepticism. If Ozempic is so great then how come our bodies don't just produce more GLP-1? How come we aren't like chimps, with eternally shredded bodies and cheese grater abs, provided we get the protein to support them?
I would guess that getting fat in times of plenty was a feature and not a bug in the ancestral environment, and that's why we get fat today, which is obvious if you think about it. Still, it means GLP-1 agonists are smacking into quick "is it bullshit?" heuristics for a lot of people.
The second point I haven't seen discussed is that weight loss drugs prior to GLP-1 agonists include cigarettes, which (worst case) give you cancer; stimulants, which cause your heart to fail; parasitic intestinal worms, which can kill you but more importantly are just plain gross; and mitochondrial uncouplers, which set you on fire at a cellular level. That's a long history of miracle weight loss drugs which turn out to have horrible side effects. It's not reasonable to think GLP-1 is bad just because of other drugs with different mechanisms, but it certainly causes some skepticism anyway.
I was kind of scared of these when Ozempic starting picking of steam for weight loss. I was worried that this would be having more negative effects. Turns out, generally speaking, if used with you doctor, these things are pretty safe, especially comparatively to some of the negatives of being overweight.
And then I saw some of the stories on HN about how it's changed peoples lives for the better. And then people in my life started taking it and singing its praises. I'm very bullish on GLP-1s now and I've very excited to see all the lives it improves. I'm not saying this thing is 100% miracle with no downsides, but this seems to be a generally large net positive.
It's a bit hard for me to comprehend how big of an impact this can have for someone since I've been very fortunate to never struggle with my weight, but I'm (slightly embarrassingly) tearing up writing this because of how many people I've seen have huge positive effects on their physical and mental health (due to body image).
Many people (will only speak to America), view being fat as a literal moral failing. Gluttony or overeating are not the sin, but being fat.
(From that perspective:)a miracle cure that allows someone to stop being fat is like an indulgence (in the Roman Catholic sense). It’s a cheat, a shortcut that allows the unworthy to reach a state they do not deserve.
My opinion is to wait long enough to validate there are no long term harms, but beyond that, yeah, adjust the priors, it could be a modern aspirin.
You've got a crowd of people raised in a Calvinist society who think nothing good comes without suffering, you've got people who feel this is a cheat where discipline should win out, and you have a bunch of people who are used to all easy solutions coming with either a bad lottery ticket or externalities on other people/the environment.
They can all agree that they're waiting for the other shoe to drop.
That said, we are at a point where people are overweight enough that getting exercise has its own risks, and taking a medication that allows you to be more active is likely to cancel out some of those downsides. As long as you do both I have no problem with people taking ozempic, mounjaro, etc.
I would prefer if we figured out what other than cultural changes is making everyone have symptoms of inflammatory dysfunctions. There is more than one thing going on. Processed foods, contamination, some microbe that doesn't culture in agar. And it's spreading to more of the world.
The drug companies are very good at making new drugs with high profit potential look better than they are. I'm worried semaglutides are another fen-phen, Vioxx, Quaaludes, Trovafloxacin or OxyContin.
One thing to watch for is effect size: how big of an anti-aging effect does Ozempic confer relative to other good interventions? Were the subjects doing other solid anti-aging interventions like the Fasting Mimicking Diet (FMD)? If not, the 2 interventions might affect the same pathways with the result that if you are doing FMD, you get no additional benefit from Ozempic.
Fen-phen is particularly interesting here because people reported that not only did it help them lose weight, it gave them more willpower and changed their personalities for the better.
Just about every single adult woman in my wife's extended family is on Ozempic. None of them are obese at all. Or diabetic. They are all using it to "lose a few pounds" (we're talking like less than 20 pounds; Yes, as you might expect, there are some unrealistic beauty/success standards in my wife's family). So I think there are a lot of people who are annoyed by that, because of the message it sends to completely healthy-weight girls/young women who don't look like professional super models in a swimsuit.
Since we have young daughters, that aspect of Ozempic really bothers my wife. Though she would have no issue with obese/diabetic people using it to get healthy.
Personally I do think it is a miracle drug and I'm glad people are getting healthy because of it.
There were even people who felt this way about anesthesia too. To survive in that era, they had to believe that suffering was somehow good for healing (or at least good spiritually) and talked about anesthesia as if it were cheating the natural god-given order.
I studied chemistry at university and my master's was in medicinal chemistry.
My main takeaway was that "chemicals = bad" is a better heuristic for a starting point where you then look for exceptions or accept them as the last resort after exhausting other options.
Would you let AI loose on the software of your airplanes or nuclear power plants? Medicine is like a sensible idea that should be ok but is hard to rein in and localise to just the area of effect, we hope that it only makes the change we ask from it but we ultimately can't really say with certainty that it isn't also doing something else
I'm actually generally more surprised that people are so trusting of taking medicines and pop pills like they're candy
I think there's a justifiable fear/dread when things that used to demonstrate virtues no longer do so.
For instance, being in shape used to (usually) demonstrate discipline. Art or music used to demonstrate attention to craft and practice. Knowledge demonstrated time devoted to study.
This isn't to say that the world is worse with these advances (I'd be hopeless without search engines, and I am grateful that people get to live longer and healthier with semaglutide), but I think a little bit of mourning is understandable: what used to be the fruits of hard work are now a dime-a-dozen commodity.
Well, considering that the drug was originally developed not for weight loss but for type 2 diabetes management, it's not terribly radical to be skeptical or outright dismissive of it as some miracle weight loss drug (even if that is a consistent side-effect).
The whole rush to get people on the thing feels like an opportunistic pharma grab (because it is). The outcome of those sorts of things is never in favor of the individual or their well being.
I see a similar hesitancy around anti-alcohol addition treatments like naltrexone. People almost _want_ it to be difficult to quit (or lose weight), like there should be some moral struggle associated with it
I'm not a fan because it's expensive and once you go off of the drug the weight comes back on (at least from what I've read). That's not a trade-off I want to take lightly.
There's also something to be said for gaining the discipline to do it yourself along the way, which may lead to keeping more of the weight off in the long run.
We also don't know what the long term side effects of it will be, if any.
I don't find any of that unreasonable to me. I'm saying this as a type-2 diabetic who could stand to lose a lot of weight.
> find it fascinating how much a pretty large group of people just hate semaglutides and seemingly need to believe that it's some kind of Faustian bargain.
Its just inductive reasoning. Most things are not free, let alone miracles. Nearly everything in life has a cost.
I agree, and I am a consumer of those myself, which did absolute wonders. And of course I will assign vastly more weight to my own experience, than to the opinion of some random guy on the internet who only read about it.
However, we also need to be conscious that this is a very very big business, and given the size of the market, is happy to pour billions into some studies that will demonstrate that it has all the benefits in the world and cures everything. Addressing obesity is a humongous benefit in itself, and helps with all the medical conditions that result from it (which in balance makes most mild side effects irrelevant). I am a lot more skeptical about those dozens of claims that it improves X by Y% (often low single digit). Most medical studies in general are dodgy, show minor benefits on small samples in a massively multivariate environment, which more often than not are statistical noise carefully selected, when the approach don't have outright flaws or fraud.
Any study which uses epigenetic clocks can be discarded. There is to my knowledge no test which produces reliably measurements which don't have big error bars. The only conclusion this study can really make is: Ozempic changes the 'thing' which the epigenetic clock test also measured.
Currently the only people experimenting with it are the underground gray market peptide enthusiasts (you can find them on reddit and elsewhere), but the results are quite intense.
[EDIT] Just to be clear, gray market Retatrutide is illegal, I'm not encouraging you to buy it or do even take GLP1s in general. The point is that we have a preview of anecdata from people (with obviously high risk tolerance) taking this drug.
Why use something which appears to have very similar results to tirzepatide/mounjaro but hasn’t been used by tens of millions on people without obvious issues like tirzep?
My bet is on the reduction in inflammation -- it's a notoriously beneficial positive side effect of GLP1 Receptor Agonists, along with the obvious reduction in weight or HbA1c.
Just a quick check list for better understanding of the placement of the study: Is this the first study of its kind? The only one? Is it medically and scientifically sound and well-documented? Does it apply to people without (HIV-associated) lipohypertrophy? Is the effect temporary, i.e., what happens when drug use is terminated? Does it cure the lipohypertrophy or is this a life-long disease that needs medication? How are TruDiagnostic and Novo Nordisk related to each other either generally or concerning this study?
In my experience it also showed gastroparesis and fecal vomiting over the course of a couple years. Coming off meant the feeling of starvation 24/7 for about 11 months before starting to get better, and 1.5 years off the medication now, I'm still having digestive issues.
Went back to keto (mostly carnivore) in May and a few pounds away from 50# down from my max weight, managed to cut way back on insulin (some days not needing any).
Overall, I wish I'd never heard of Trulicity or Ozempic. I didn't lose weight on them, and the seriously messed me up. The negative effects of coming off are pretty bad on their own on top.
I'm curious how they measured the biological age. My trainer has a scale that measures biological age and it seems very correlated with weight. When I weight less I am biologically younger, and vice versa. Ozempic does a good job at aiding weight loss, so I am wondering if this is a large contributor to the effect they saw.
Generic Semaglutide is already produced on a massive scale throughout the world. However, it is unlawful to import and sell and will remain so until 2032 in the USA.
In other markets, where it is under patent, it is significantly cheaper than the $500/month or more in the US currently. For example in the UK it is roughly $150/month USD privately (i.e. not through the NHS).
In China it will be out of patent within two years.
[+] [-] pitpatagain|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] RataNova|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] leoh|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] dwroberts|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] kjkjadksj|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] lurking_swe|7 months ago|reply
> “The researchers believe semaglutide’s anti-aging properties stem from its effects on fat distribution and metabolic health. Excess fat around organs triggers the release of pro-aging molecules that alter DNA methylation in key aging-related genes. By reducing this harmful fat accumulation and preventing low-grade inflammation - both major drivers of epigenetic aging - semaglutide appears to create a more youthful biological environment.“
In other words, being medically obese ages your body quite a bit, its stresses out your body with inflammation, etc. Taking Ozempic helps people lose weight, which also reduces inflammation. This is sort of like saying we proved rain (usually) increases humidity lol. A very obvious finding.
The article even says “ Randy Seeley from the University of Michigan Medical SchoolView company profile expressed little surprise at the findings” :)
[+] [-] Cpoll|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] torginus|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] some_random|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] strken|7 months ago|reply
I would guess that getting fat in times of plenty was a feature and not a bug in the ancestral environment, and that's why we get fat today, which is obvious if you think about it. Still, it means GLP-1 agonists are smacking into quick "is it bullshit?" heuristics for a lot of people.
The second point I haven't seen discussed is that weight loss drugs prior to GLP-1 agonists include cigarettes, which (worst case) give you cancer; stimulants, which cause your heart to fail; parasitic intestinal worms, which can kill you but more importantly are just plain gross; and mitochondrial uncouplers, which set you on fire at a cellular level. That's a long history of miracle weight loss drugs which turn out to have horrible side effects. It's not reasonable to think GLP-1 is bad just because of other drugs with different mechanisms, but it certainly causes some skepticism anyway.
[+] [-] jjice|7 months ago|reply
And then I saw some of the stories on HN about how it's changed peoples lives for the better. And then people in my life started taking it and singing its praises. I'm very bullish on GLP-1s now and I've very excited to see all the lives it improves. I'm not saying this thing is 100% miracle with no downsides, but this seems to be a generally large net positive.
It's a bit hard for me to comprehend how big of an impact this can have for someone since I've been very fortunate to never struggle with my weight, but I'm (slightly embarrassingly) tearing up writing this because of how many people I've seen have huge positive effects on their physical and mental health (due to body image).
[+] [-] noah_buddy|7 months ago|reply
(From that perspective:)a miracle cure that allows someone to stop being fat is like an indulgence (in the Roman Catholic sense). It’s a cheat, a shortcut that allows the unworthy to reach a state they do not deserve.
My opinion is to wait long enough to validate there are no long term harms, but beyond that, yeah, adjust the priors, it could be a modern aspirin.
[+] [-] hinkley|7 months ago|reply
They can all agree that they're waiting for the other shoe to drop.
That said, we are at a point where people are overweight enough that getting exercise has its own risks, and taking a medication that allows you to be more active is likely to cancel out some of those downsides. As long as you do both I have no problem with people taking ozempic, mounjaro, etc.
I would prefer if we figured out what other than cultural changes is making everyone have symptoms of inflammatory dysfunctions. There is more than one thing going on. Processed foods, contamination, some microbe that doesn't culture in agar. And it's spreading to more of the world.
[+] [-] hollerith|7 months ago|reply
One thing to watch for is effect size: how big of an anti-aging effect does Ozempic confer relative to other good interventions? Were the subjects doing other solid anti-aging interventions like the Fasting Mimicking Diet (FMD)? If not, the 2 interventions might affect the same pathways with the result that if you are doing FMD, you get no additional benefit from Ozempic.
Fen-phen is particularly interesting here because people reported that not only did it help them lose weight, it gave them more willpower and changed their personalities for the better.
[+] [-] Petersipoi|7 months ago|reply
Since we have young daughters, that aspect of Ozempic really bothers my wife. Though she would have no issue with obese/diabetic people using it to get healthy.
Personally I do think it is a miracle drug and I'm glad people are getting healthy because of it.
[+] [-] qgin|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] djtango|7 months ago|reply
My main takeaway was that "chemicals = bad" is a better heuristic for a starting point where you then look for exceptions or accept them as the last resort after exhausting other options.
Would you let AI loose on the software of your airplanes or nuclear power plants? Medicine is like a sensible idea that should be ok but is hard to rein in and localise to just the area of effect, we hope that it only makes the change we ask from it but we ultimately can't really say with certainty that it isn't also doing something else
I'm actually generally more surprised that people are so trusting of taking medicines and pop pills like they're candy
[+] [-] jbentley1|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] gameman144|7 months ago|reply
For instance, being in shape used to (usually) demonstrate discipline. Art or music used to demonstrate attention to craft and practice. Knowledge demonstrated time devoted to study.
This isn't to say that the world is worse with these advances (I'd be hopeless without search engines, and I am grateful that people get to live longer and healthier with semaglutide), but I think a little bit of mourning is understandable: what used to be the fruits of hard work are now a dime-a-dozen commodity.
[+] [-] rglover|7 months ago|reply
The whole rush to get people on the thing feels like an opportunistic pharma grab (because it is). The outcome of those sorts of things is never in favor of the individual or their well being.
[+] [-] anitil|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] godshatter|7 months ago|reply
There's also something to be said for gaining the discipline to do it yourself along the way, which may lead to keeping more of the weight off in the long run.
We also don't know what the long term side effects of it will be, if any.
I don't find any of that unreasonable to me. I'm saying this as a type-2 diabetic who could stand to lose a lot of weight.
[+] [-] aydyn|7 months ago|reply
Its just inductive reasoning. Most things are not free, let alone miracles. Nearly everything in life has a cost.
[+] [-] cm2187|7 months ago|reply
However, we also need to be conscious that this is a very very big business, and given the size of the market, is happy to pour billions into some studies that will demonstrate that it has all the benefits in the world and cures everything. Addressing obesity is a humongous benefit in itself, and helps with all the medical conditions that result from it (which in balance makes most mild side effects irrelevant). I am a lot more skeptical about those dozens of claims that it improves X by Y% (often low single digit). Most medical studies in general are dodgy, show minor benefits on small samples in a massively multivariate environment, which more often than not are statistical noise carefully selected, when the approach don't have outright flaws or fraud.
[+] [-] V__|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] jsbg|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] glp1guide|7 months ago|reply
https://glp1.guide/content/a-new-glp1-retatrutide/
Currently the only people experimenting with it are the underground gray market peptide enthusiasts (you can find them on reddit and elsewhere), but the results are quite intense.
[EDIT] Just to be clear, gray market Retatrutide is illegal, I'm not encouraging you to buy it or do even take GLP1s in general. The point is that we have a preview of anecdata from people (with obviously high risk tolerance) taking this drug.
[+] [-] bethekind|7 months ago|reply
That being said, I'm waiting for oral GLP1 agonists. Injections are a hassle and gray market ones even more so
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] chhxdjsj|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] gavinray|7 months ago|reply
I used 5mg/wk
(Have used Semaglutide, Tirzepatide, and Retatrutide. For Sema/Tirz, I've had both RX and grey market.)
[+] [-] mmmpetrichor|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] RataNova|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] glp1guide|7 months ago|reply
https://glp1.guide/content/semaglutide-vs-tirzepatide-clinic...
My bet is on the reduction in inflammation -- it's a notoriously beneficial positive side effect of GLP1 Receptor Agonists, along with the obvious reduction in weight or HbA1c.
[+] [-] eirikbakke|7 months ago|reply
Best to wait for the final, peer reviewed version of the article.
[+] [-] lysecret|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] charlie0|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] beeforpork|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] wolfi1|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] gcanyon|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] RataNova|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] qiine|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] tracker1|7 months ago|reply
Went back to keto (mostly carnivore) in May and a few pounds away from 50# down from my max weight, managed to cut way back on insulin (some days not needing any).
Overall, I wish I'd never heard of Trulicity or Ozempic. I didn't lose weight on them, and the seriously messed me up. The negative effects of coming off are pretty bad on their own on top.
[+] [-] scrozart|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] koliber|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] chickenzzzzu|7 months ago|reply
I've already lost 12 pounds (6% of my bodyweight) in a week, which is definitely too much, but I was full of salt. I basically pickled myself.
The side effects are quite stark. My stomach feels paralyzed. I became anorexic (again) overnight
[+] [-] thurn|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Someone1234|7 months ago|reply
In other markets, where it is under patent, it is significantly cheaper than the $500/month or more in the US currently. For example in the UK it is roughly $150/month USD privately (i.e. not through the NHS).
In China it will be out of patent within two years.
[+] [-] sonicggg|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] roody15|7 months ago|reply
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9042193/
Maybe related with Ozempic?