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What popular product do you think is modern day snakeoil? (lemm.ee)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Any [emphasis added] weight loss pill

Nope. There's one that actually works really well. It's called 2,4-dinitrophenol. It works by fucking up the way that your body makes/uses ATP; instead of being available for cellular respiration, it gets wasted as heat. It's like constantly doing cardio; you're burning tons of calories without doing anything. Users have reported losing up to seven pounds of fat--not water--in a week. The downside is that this heat can lead to hyperthermia if you take too much, and since the half-life is quite long, by the time you start seeing the negative side effects from OD'ing--about a week after you OD--it's way to late, and your brain cooks. Oh, and you're gonna sweat like a watermelon at a Baptist barbecue the whole time.

It was thought that it also caused cataracts, but that seems to have been incorrect.

It's been banned since the 40s, I think, as a diet pill, because people had a tendency to take too much and die. If you know where to look, you can still find it. I wouldn't recommend it for the overwhelming majority of people though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, that's the thing. Weight loss by pill is only possible in a few ways. Diuretics temporarily cause weight loss. The only real options are drugs that decrease your food intake (like the new diabetes drugs), presumably drugs that could interfere with nutrient absorption (not sure if any of those are out there, but it seems like it would be sketchy), or drugs that increase what you burn.

People think that last category could be magic, but burning calories is called burning calories for a reason; it's an oxidation reaction, and it generates heat. There are a few others that also seem to really work, basically all stimulants: nicotine, caffeine, and methamphetamine (which is available by prescription).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Amphetamines both reduce appetite and increase how much energy you expend. Oh, and they're also super addictive. So, yeah, don't use those. I was definitely thinner when I was a smoker, but I had much worse health.