Significant, sustained weight loss can prevent or reduce the effects of conditions known to increase the likelihood or hasten the onset of Alzheimer's, like diabetes and high blood pressure.

This is anecdotal, I don't have proof but it's something I think is somewhat related. Is that obesity and nuerodegenerative diseases are somewhat related. So that's a guess as to why some people might have though a weight loss drug would potentially be related in some way with alzheimers.

This could just be false though, I can't recall where I heard this information. So do some searching before quoting me.

Ozempic is a diabetes drug, and there's a hypothesis that Alzheimer's is really a form of diabetes.

I’m one of those people who have a nonspecific disorder. I get plenty of exercise both aerobic and strength training. It helps with maybe 30% of my pain.

People who play armchair doctor only make things worse for those of us who are actually disabled.

> Notice the absurd number of young, frail people with canes and masks.

I don't notice them. Do you have numbers to back this up?

> that would be solved if they started an aerobic and strength training regimen.

Source?

> Notice the absurd number of young, frail people with canes and masks.

I don't notice an absurd number of young, frail people or young people with canes. There are a larger number of people of all ages masking than was the case pre-pandemic (especially outside of the ethnic groups where precautionary masking was common pre-pandemic) but...I don't think that's particularly a sign of changes in health status as it is of changes in perception of external environmental conditions and associated health risks.

Generally this is the answer when there's an announcement like this. Some early paper or analysis showed some (often weak but potentially very interesting) correlation between $new_drug and $scary_disease/$scary_disorder. Doctors and scientists go off and study that in more depth with better controls or more data points and we learn a little more about the world, if you miss the initial paper(s) the follow up can seem a little random.

I don't think there's a confirmed mechanism (or even whether the fact that it does prevent dementia is a confirmed fact).

But you could speculate that obesity -> cardiovascular issues -> neurological damage, and that could explain things.

We don't know the "how" in a surprising number of medicines.

We unfortunate know very little about how dementia / Alzheimer's develop in the first place.

This new study that did not find a causal link was part of the attempt to find out how. The original study was more of an observation than a deep dive.

You could think of it similar to a study that shows something like "People who don't watch network TV have fewer strokes", which could be an interesting correlation, but the causal effect might be something more like "people who are more health conscious tend to avoid sitting down for extended waking periods" which ultimately has nothing to do with TV.