An analogy...people who don't feel pain tend to damage their body. This is mysterious if you think "well, they are not blind, they have free will and the ability to control their body, so why do they let themselves be damaged". But isn't that obviously silly? Pain is very important feedback and if you don't feel it is a disability that you are not at fault for.
Everybody who is naturally not overweight knows that they don't have to rigorously monitor their food intake, because they have an internal thermostat that does it for them. They just eat when they are hungry and stop when they are full.
Some drugs affect that thermostat, and some people have a naturally defective thermostat. It is very very difficult to fight it because the imbalance is very small and the intensity of the output is very high.
The thing that annoys me is, given that I have never been obese, and I assume you have never been obese, we both know from personal experience that people without weight problems do not exert effort to control it. So how can you blame those who need to for being unable? We both know better without needing the least empathy or experience of being obese.
This is an appalling comment that shows you have little knowledge or interest in physiology, and contempt for people who develop obesity as a symptom or a side-effect of medication for serious illness.
A school-friend of mine, who had been an elite athlete during high school and was as healthy and fit as anybody you'd find, developed schizophrenia during his twenties and needed to be put on strong anti-psychotic medication, which caused dramatic weight gain.
He's continued to need various medications for schizophrenia and anxiety ever since, and despite relentless efforts to keep his weight down with the same kind of exercise and diet that kept him in good shape when he was younger, cannot return to an ideal weight.
The reason for this is to do with the way neurotransmitters and hormones alter metabolism, and it's straightforward to understand with a little research.
The question "How do antidepressants create matter from thin air?" amounts to trolling and doesn't belong on HN in my opinion.
"This is an appalling comment that shows you have little knowledge or interest in physiology, and contempt for people who develop obesity as a symptom or a side-effect of medication for serious illness."
I would however, further suggest that not only should we have sympathy for people who have obesity from medication, but those who have obesity without it.
If you take a drug and you perceive God as a result, it is logical to infer that people who perceive God without drugs may be also experiencing something that results from similar brain chemistry.
Yep, that's what I intended to convey; sorry if that wasn't clear.
Sometimes it's a side-effect of a drug. Sometimes it's a symptom of other issues in the body/mind.
My point is that people who are obese (to an extent that causes issues like sleep apnoea or other complications) are not that way because they simply choose to be that way, or because they "just eat too much".
People who can easily lose the weight have already done so. Everyone else is stuck with it, for one or more of any number of complex reasons, and outside observers are in no position to pass judgment.
Don’t be intentionally obtuse. Depression is a bug in the operating system of the mind that impacts everything from motivation to hunger. Pretty hard to lose weight when just getting up in the morning is a feat of willpower and cheap, shitty food is a slightly brighter shade of grey in the dark dull shade of grey that a clinical depression sufferer has as their entire life.
Ever tried debugging a program on a machine with bad RAM? It’s kinda like that.
My point was that regardless of the nature of depression and how well drugs work or don't work, it's well known that psychotropic drugs lead to weight gain and diabetes.
People have an inbuilt homeostatic feedback system which can be naturally out of whack or it can be modified by drugs, and blaming them for not being able to compensate is senseless.
Also, the fact that it can be modified by drugs proves to me that weight gain should not be presumed to be a personal failing. The person who has weight gain didn't become a different person because they took pills.
It's analogous to having a religious experience through electrical brain stimulation - it should make you realize that having such experience is not to your personal credit or detriment.
It so happens that antidepressants cause people to gain weight frequently.