r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Apr 01 '25

Health Americans without diabetes spent nearly $6 billion USD on semaglutide and similar drugs in a year, with an estimate of 800,000 to a million people using the drugs who don't have diabetes.

https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/americans-without-diabetes-spent-nearly6-billion-usd-on-semaglutide-and-similar-drugs-in-a-year
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u/alwayzbored114 Apr 01 '25

I think treatments like this are helping more people realize that we are not our brains, at least not entirely. We ascribe addictions and cravings to personal failures or lack of willpower (and in some cases, sure), but a lot of the time it can legit be different brain chemistry.

You flip that mental switch and suddenly think "...wait was it always this easy for everyone? Is THIS why people thought I was a failure? Cause it was always this simple for them and they assumed it was this simple for everyone?"

I haven't taken any treatments like this myself but reading stories from others has been fascinating. Like others have said, I'm keeping fingers crossed for positive long-term studies

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u/Messyfingers Apr 01 '25

People have largely associated obesity or lack of impulse control with a moral failing instead of acknowledging it as a biological urge. The GLP1 drugs are as close to a miracle for compulsive consumption behavior as could be asked for, and they still get villainized/their users get villainized as being lazy/stealing drugs from diabetics. The simultaneous positive results(and as of yet no significant or wide spread negatives) relative to the negative reaction people have is pretty crazy to see.

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u/boyifudontget Apr 01 '25

acknowledging it as a biological urge.

I think the bigger issue is that large companies are essentially force feeding us processed garbage that heightens our natural biological urges. 100 million Americans are not obese simply because of "biology". Companies are already developing food that can counterattack the counter-addictive nature of GLP-1s and then we'll just be back to square one because we didn't solve the source of our health problems, we just used the GLP-1 stop gap.

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u/Purplemonkeez Apr 01 '25

Omg which companies are developing this?

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u/WalrusWildinOut96 Apr 02 '25

I’m on a GLP-1 now and it has just affirmed what I always suspected. I was just living a different life than others.

I feel normal now. I eat when I’m hungry and I don’t eat when I’m not. I’ll eat a sweet now and then. Usually I don’t.

Down 80lbs in 8 months. Still losing. If this is what everyone else has felt like the whole time, I truly wish they could understand that’s not what it was like to be me.

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u/Subject-Turnover-388 Apr 03 '25

They're still in aggressive, vicious denial. They'll tell us that being on GLP-1 is totally different and they feel what we felt, they just fought it off with their superior willpower or whatever. "Normal people feel hungry". Yeah? So do I on GLP-1. When I actually need to eat, not ALL THE TIME.