GLP-1 drugs linked to lower death rates in colon cancer patients
Mood
thoughtful
Sentiment
positive
Category
science
Key topics
GLP-1 drugs
colon cancer
medical research
A study found that GLP-1 drugs are associated with lower death rates in colon cancer patients, sparking interest and discussion among the HN community.
Snapshot generated from the HN discussion
Discussion Activity
Very active discussionFirst comment
32m
Peak period
147
Day 1
Avg / period
40
Based on 160 loaded comments
Key moments
- 01Story posted
11/12/2025, 7:50:32 PM
6d ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
11/12/2025, 8:22:38 PM
32m after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
147 comments in Day 1
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03 - 04Latest activity
11/17/2025, 6:02:35 PM
1d ago
Step 04
Generating AI Summary...
Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns
If it's all upside, then I'm happy to be wrong.
[0]: https://www.aao.org/newsroom/news-releases/detail/do-glp-1-d...
Personally, I went from mild background retinopathy to PDR and getting laser treatment in about 3 months. My ophthalmologist (who has an academic background) didn't really know if this diagnosis had the same "quality" of someone who "naturally" progresses to PDR, but some studies say it's transient.
Well, now it's actionable. No magic, just adherence.
I've gained about 15-20 pounds back, but I'm now much healthier overall.
I like how my brain works and I didn't like something affecting or changing that because I couldn't put the fork down. Easy decision for me
I'm not dismissing your overall point. I minimize my use of Adderall for that very reason.
Also, isn't the dose used to treat obesity 3 times higher than the dose used over those 20 years to treat diabetes?
Without it I'd die sooner anyway.
Having that on a repeat loop is no fun. Getting rid of it is worth all of the mild side effects and cost.
That's not what evolution is, at all
Getting people to eat more broccoli is almost entirely upside. Sure a handful of people will be allergic or whatever, but on a population level some interventions are just one positive after another, and there's no reason it has to be a deal made with the devil.
It really depends on the person, though. They worked for me for a while and don't work now, but I'm a small minority, from what I've heard from people. When they worked, they were great.
It does make me choose more dense meals though since I know I can't eat that much due to delayed gastric emptying. But I have to budget some room for prunes to counteract the constipation. It definitely makes you think about what you eat.
Usually you don't get a free lunch with such a compound.
Healthy, non-obese individuals likely aren't seeing these "benefits"... But I'm not a doctor, I just pretend to be one on the Internet.
(my partner is on a GLP-1, and lost ~25 lbs in 3 months)
Many of us wish we didn't have to drive a car. Many of us also wish we didn't live in a world where hyperprocessed foods weren't the norm
Coincidentally also a factor of why many Americans take GLP-1 frugs
Up until the end of WWII, automobile ownership was relatively limited. It was just beginning to accelerate at the beginning of the war (in the US), but rationing and war-time defence manufacturing curbed that trend, and sustained rates of alternative transport, particularly rail.
Post-war, there was a mass-consumer blitz, much of it revolving around automobiles, and changes such as commuter suburbs (based around automobiles), superhighways, self-service grocery stores, shopping malls, and strip-mall based retail development began, all trends which evolved over the next 50+ years.
In the 1970s and 1980s, it was quite common for children to walk or ride bikes to school, or take a school bus (which involved walking several blocks to a nearby stop). Since the late 1990s, far more seem to be ferried in private cars, usually by parents, who spend a half-hour or more in pick-up lines. It's not uncommon for children walking along neighbourhood streets to be reported (and collected) by authorities by concern for their safety, and their parents subject to investigation or worse. Suburban, and even urban development patterns have been to ever-lower-density and far more bike- and pedstrian-unfriendly modes.
Recreational, occupational, educational, and other transport and activity patterns are largely away from self-powered movement (walking, cycling, etc.) and toward motorised options (sometimes including e-bikes, electric scooters, or equivalents, though most often automobiles).
Societal change and consequent impacts take time and have long lags.
We know there are downsides. They’re just irrelevant compared to being obese. (Or alcoholic. Or, potentially, overweight.)
It might be a vitamin, where there literally aren’t any downsides. I’m sceptical of that. But to the degree there is mass cognitive bias in respect of GLP-1s, it’s against them. (I suspect these are sour grapes due to the drugs being unreachable for many.)
My frank concern is we’re separating into a social media addicted, unvaccinated and obese population on one hand and a wealthy, insured, disease free and fit one on the other. Those are dangerous class and physical divides to risk becoming heritable (socially, not genetically).
My hope is the "waiting for the other shoe to drop" folks are just expressing sour grapes.
If it runs deeper and merges with the anti-vaxers, we've got a behavioural problem fuelling a class divide. That is my fear.
My opinion has shifted over the years. At first I also thought it was largely just sour grapes re: accessibility and fear of the unknown, but now I’m thinking that a large number of people are going to be so far deep into anti-GLP opinions and hot takes they can’t backtrack out of it. Much like political or social beliefs you make into your identity. Too embarrassing to admit you might be wrong.
I know you’re alluding to the same thing, it’s just interesting to me someone else in the world seems to share these thoughts. I also think it may really delineate a multi-generational class divide that is hard to break.
Or all the folks on GLP-1s will develop some rare form of cancer and die early leaving the world to the so-called haters.
That said, it's probably certain enough for me to be open enough to using them now, if my doctor recommends it.
Also It causes constipation apparently, which for most of them is not that much of an issue, but given that I've IBS-C, I'm happy to not have to take it.I have suffered almost the entire gamut of side effects from the beginning until I tried split dosing twice a week, and even then there’s still the occasional instance of me learning that I should not have eaten that and the following 9 hours are going to revolve around stomach pain.
My partner’s journey on the other hand has been smooth sailing the entire time.
YMMV, do your own research but definitely double check any search results with your doctor first… lots of urban myths going around.
I do recommend it though, I am the healthiest I’ve been in literally 10 years.
While it might mean the incident rare of some things goes up, those that it reduces are far more impactful and where far more likely to have mortality issues. Sort of like how Chemotherapy is poisonous but potential has better long term odds, only chemo is far more extreme than GPL1.
Time will tell but so far it is looking kind of good with a few lesser issues.
Which is ironic because someone at Microsoft once called the GPL "cancer".
That said, the negative side effects look to be incredibly rare and manageable (including via stopping treatment) -- and the positives are quite tremendous.
It's not a magic drug, but it is the first of it's kind with such a skew to the positive on side effects.
It actually is a magic drug. The same way ultra-palatable food is also not natural.
Well, read up the testimony of those who stopped taking it for adverse effects, such as nonexistent intestinal transit and -yuck- sulfur burps.
Only on week 3 but it's been a rollercoaster. It seems to have quite a broad spectrum of effects. I'm still not sure I'll be able to stay on it but losing 10 pounds is a nice counterpoint to the side-effects.
Antibiotics and vaccines may not be completely free lunches, but they're very good at what they do.
When the side effects are better understood I suspect for the average person, eating less would be a net benefit to their overall health - _even if they don't lose any weight_.
L-tryptophan > Indole > Raises GLP-1
Your body produces GLP-1, but it lives in the blood for like minutes. The innovation was finding a chemical that tickles the same receptors but survives in the body for days at a time.
lots of people will miss out on benefits, like oh preventing death
our drug system is weird
It's not people couldn't also: Diet, exercise, choose veggies, eat more fiber, etc
Your closing remark is overly simplistic and offers a contradiction: if those things would work for these obese people, they wouldn't need GLPs.
This is why the efficacy of every single contraceptive method isn’t way higher than it is. Lots of them should work almost perfectly… but the harder they are to use correctly, the less effective they in-fact are.
But saying the patent owners shouldn't be allowed to reap the benefits of their investment is ridiculous, especially when it's completely possible to lose weight in other ways. 6 years isn't that long to wait anyway.
GLP-1 has been demonstrated to even cure some types of long-covid in some people in some cases
and various other diseases
but it's priced way out of reach even for micro-doses until it becomes generic
so all those cases suffer until 2030, if they make it that far, five years is a long time
Is it ethical for me to pay someone to murder you? Does it matter if it costs me a large amount of money or not?
I would like to know how far they take that position.
If we take away investor returns now, why would they ever pursue developing similarly effective drugs in the future?
This is why states are the main producers of knowledge and funding most of the interesting research.
Similar to how doctors save lives and earn a paycheck. We could stop paying doctors, enslave them to work 18 hours 7 days a week so more people get medical care. On top of being obviously evil and wrong, it would also be counterproductive, because then nobody would become a doctor.
Put simply, drugs cost money because money is how we direct resources as a society. There is not a cheat code where we can simply make the drugs free and still expect resources to magically appear and manifest the drugs. The drugs exist because we pay for them.
I share the feeling that it’s awful that people are blocked from access to these lifesaving drugs by money. But simply eliminating patent protection is not a workable solution. It needs to be accompanied by a replacement mechanism to incentivize drug development. For example, government gives out massive prizes to the drug developer but there is no patent protection.
If it's $1000 per month cost per person when it's the name brand, how many people are on it? At this point just the diabetics and people with really good insurance?
Wouldn't they make a hell of a lot more money selling it for $100 during their protected period to 1000x the people.
Or we could just move to a sane economic system where we don't have to beg the rich/reward people for having money
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221112471...
> Indole increased GLP-1 release during short exposures, but it reduced secretion over longer periods.
you'd never touch a compounded pharmacy product ever again
people have died from contamination
Are you referring to the fact that the FDA does not inspect all facilities because they have limited resources? This applies to pharmaceutical companies as much as it does to compounders. If you think the FDA posts inspectors at every pharmaceutical company in India, you’d be wrong.
Clearly, there's an entire spectrum of tradeoffs between safety/shadiness, availability and price. I think that's a good thing.
I’ve never been extremely overweight but I hit a point where I had 30 pounds to lose, despite my height, and I can’t deal with the hunger amidst all my other life stresses.
Worst comes to worst I could go compounding for about $200/mo from what I've seen.
Also, a lot of people are still getting compounded GLP1, to the chagrin of Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk.
Separately, 2026 is about to completely change the pricing of this stuff, not even taking into account the Trump administration's recent efforts. The price of injected GLP1 is going to implode due to patents lapsing in Canada and other places -- and for the pill forms that come out soon it looks like the Trump administration is keen on keeping prices for that low as well.
(This refers to the U.S. Some other countries have more generics available.)
Given it’s an observational study, I would bet on the latter. It’s really hard to know you’ve controlled for all confounding factors, and there’s a strong null hypothesis because we know that losing weight can have huge and wide-ranging health benefits.
There’s growing evidence of cardioprotective effects independent of weight loss.
Eg https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
> The cardioprotective effects of semaglutide were independent of baseline adiposity and weight loss and had only a small association with waist circumference, suggesting some mechanisms for benefit beyond adiposity reduction.
https://www.kidneyfund.org/treatments/medicines-kidney-disea...
I'm a big fan of intermittent and water fasting. Have seen things in my blood work that doctors would require me on meds to reverse. Outside of that, I can't speak to the positive impacts on my mood, and general ability to focus.
The simplest solution to a lot of problems is consuming less with the assumption that, most of us (maybe not you), have a lot of spare energy sitting around.
A lie that we don't unlearn as we grow up is we "require" three meals a day. This is true for children who need obscene amounts of energy to grow, but, not for us desk-bound adults.
In the end, giving the body a break to heal by fasting or just consuming significantly less is going to leave more resources for the body energy to deal with other things.
Obviously a healthy lifestyle is good. And this includes not eating over your requirements. But sometimes there is actually something wrong. And in these cases, first trying out to just eat healthy can worsen the situation by delaying proper treatment. And proper treatment does equal a bunch of pharmaceutical drugs.
> The simplest solution to a lot of problems is consuming less with the assumption that, most of us (maybe not you), have a lot of spare energy sitting around.
as energy-woo / thanks-I’m-cured material.
You can weasel your way around criticism by calling it “a general and fairly anodyne opinion about what might be a solution to a problem some people have,” but consider -
It does make sense that someone who’s struggled with a chronic condition would be tired and embittered by the endless snake oil evangelizing they’ve had to endure, on top of already struggling with their health.
(Not that fasting doesn’t work for some people, as you say! it’s more the grandiose claim that it’s “The simplest solution to a lot of problems” coupled with some vague anecdote about blood work and knowing better than doctors that waves a red flag)
He had a patient with metabolic markers that were not improving and they had exhausted all the typical avenues. Presumably they were things like weight loss.
They put the patient on GLP-1 but injected into the thighs (or butt, I don't recall) for the metabolic benefits without the hunger blunting effects.
It seems like GLP1, even in skinny patients (implied by Attia in this particular case), has metabolic benefits.
The longevity community seems to be hinting that there may be geroprotective aspects of GLp1 as well, so we may be looking at the benefits beyond weight loss for metabolism.
Don't listen to these YouTubers about health and fitness, most of them are clueless
He really shouldn't be lumped in with the general "health and fitness Youtubers".
Usually this type of anecdata becomes the basis of legitimate, controlled studies and over time can inform and/or adjust.
It would be premature to simply write off all influencers or limiting to only accept the medical profession as the immutable truth.
The reality tends to exist somewhere in the middle, outside of a formal proof.
I've listened to many health influencers and among the legitimate and balanced tend to be Rhonda Patrick and Peter Attia.
Attia provides guidelines for how to think about items, but usually it's the fan base that tends to sully the messaging as the base tends to be far more polarized and dogmatic over bits.
It is interesting to see that there is another poster confirming a slightly different effect though. Regardless of things being "systemic", just understanding that fluids dynamics are complex, I imagine diffusion of a systemic molecule like GLp1 could possibly be variable? Or perhaps there is a localized tissue fatigue?
Many potential options do exist to propose as hypothesis.
Slower absorption in the thigh may blunt the immediate peak dosing and the acute hunger effects.
As always, the small details matter. I'd guess that pharmacology also has their own thundering herd problem with the dosing of certain drugs.
One of the interesting bits about pharmacology seems to not be the active molecule as much as the innovations in delivery mechanism.
> They put the patient on GLP-1 but injected into the thighs (or butt, I don't recall) for the metabolic benefits without the hunger blunting effects.
Thanks for the dumbest thing I've read all dayThere's no chance it has anything to do with the last few million years of our evolution. It has no benefit or relevance now.
Sources?
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasting
- https://zerolongevity.com/blog/the-history-of-fasting/It's not so much about how often you eat but what and how much. Generally speaking, of course, I can't speak for any benefits of intermittent fasting (assuming equal daily calorie / macronutrient intake) because I'm uneducated in that regard. But TL;DR, I will agree that desk jockeys will need less calories than people with a more active job or lifestyle, and people need to adjust their lifestyle accordingly else they'll gain weight.
42 more comments available on Hacker News
Want the full context?
Jump to the original sources
Read the primary article or dive into the live Hacker News thread when you're ready.