Ripping off a post I just saw in the Isaac Arthur subreddit. Imagining we work out the technical ability. Examples they suggested were:

  • No periods
  • No balding
  • No nausea
  • No body odor
  • Resistance to obesity and muscle wasting
  • gibmiser@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Manual/deliberate sperm/egg production.

    Manual/deliberate control over fat creation and storage.

    • roguetrick@kbin.social
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      6 months ago

      Manual/deliberate control over fat creation and storage.

      Monkey’s paw on this one is that you’d end up having some pretty fantastic explosive diarrhea as the bacteria chow down on your energy loaded waste.

      • theneverfox@pawb.social
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        6 months ago

        Nah, that’s just with stuff like alli. What your guts absorb goes into your blood stream, you’d piss it out if your liver doesn’t process it into fat… For reasons we don’t fully understand, our gut microbiome stays in our gut.

        If you mess with absorption, that happens… If you mess with the fat creation pathways, you just pee out sugars that would’ve been turned into fat

        • roguetrick@kbin.social
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          6 months ago

          Only for half of protein and carbohydrates that can go into the gluconeogenesis pathway. That’ll increase uti incidence, shred your kidneys with proteinurea, and lead to ketoacidosis when you’re dealing with the other half of the proteins and all the other lipids, which before it kills you will allow you to excrete that waste from you lungs while you smell like you’ve been huffing nail polish remover. I think the out the butt option is generally preferable.

          • theneverfox@pawb.social
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            6 months ago

            Source? Garcinia Cambodia seems like an all around win, but I’m willing to do some serious reading on the subject… The effects are relatively small but statistically significant in clinical trials with almost no side effects, and I recommend it left and right.

            I’ve certainly never smelled like acetone (I’m extremely sensitive to smells) but you seem like you have a cohesive opinion on the topic, I feel like we might both be right and there might be a learning opportunity here

            And if I am making a trade off with my health, I’d like to know

            • roguetrick@kbin.social
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              6 months ago

              It’s all about degree. Essentially what I’m talking about is severe dysregulation of lipid/protein metabolism that is generally only seen in type 1 diabetics, but it’s the natural extension of extreme lipid and protein metabolism. I’m not familiar with that supplement, however.

              As far as you watching yourself for it, don’t worry, you’d notice being acidotic. I’ve seen it plenty of times at the hospital and you’d be huffing and puffing the acid off with terrible stomach pain and be generally having a bad day. While that supplement is associated with urine acetone increases, it’s not quite the degree that I’m taking about.

              Essentially, inhibiting fat production and storage and eliminating it result in very different effects. Insulin, by the way, is a very important mediator in fat production and storage. It’s why so many new diagnosis type 1 diabetic children are often underweight.

              • theneverfox@pawb.social
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                6 months ago

                So… I’m confused. Inhibition of turning sugars to fat in your liver is very different from diabetes. In my understanding, that’s absorption of sugar into your cells

                Is there a weight loss drug out there that mimics diabetes?

                • roguetrick@kbin.social
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                  6 months ago

                  That’s a complicated question, because yes there are weight loss drugs that mimic certain aspects of diabetes, but through different mechanisms of action. A good example is a SGLT2 inhibitor medication, which explicitly creates glycosuria in a non-diabetic person, which is kind of a defining feature of diabetes mellitus. While that’s a generally very effective drug and should be used more for obesity control, it will also increase incidence of UTI and (due to a loss of sugar and thus forcing metabolism of fats/proteins) ketoacidosis.

                  The insulin/glucagon relationship is why diabetic ketoacidosis only shows up in type 1 diabetics and not type 2 (they get what’s called hyperosmolar hyperglycemic state), and is an important part of liver fat production. Ketoacidosis is generally associated with that but is also present in starvation and alcoholics that don’t eat actual food.

                  The greater point I was making wasn’t about carbohydrates turning into fats. It’s that most fats and about half of proteins cannot be turned into carbohydrates. They must be metabolized into ketones and then acetone. If you absorb them and cannot store them like in the OP’s hypothetical, you’ll end up having to immediately metabolize them and will end up with ketoacidosis.

    • fossphi@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      Manual/deliberate sperm/egg production.

      I’m not an evolutionary biology expert, but my armchair thought process says that this trait might not survive the evolutionary pressure. The burden of child rearing is quite high (specially these days).

      • gibmiser@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Oh totally. Absolutely would decimate the human population on earth. And that wouldn’t be a bad thing if it meant people only had kids they could actually take care of.