All these weight loss drugs... surely we are heading towards disaster?

[shellswirl]

So as we all know there are various weight loss drugs that have become very popular in recent months.

It seems like the whole of Hollywood is using it.

Even regular people are spending huge amounts of money on it from online pharmacies.

I get that these drugs might be useful for certain people with real medical conditions, but really a lot of people are using it as a quick fix to be thin.

With no consideration to side effects or future health. And without thinking about what happens when you stop it?

Surely the best way to lose weight involves no drugs. No fad diets. But exercising more, moving more, eating a balanced diet. Retraining your brain and finding food and exercise you enjoy.

I say this as an overweight person too! Surely there are other ways.

If every other person is taking these drugs won't there be a huge pool of people to monitor side effects etc?

Aibu to say the whole thing makes me feel very uneasy.

Except I'm not.
Lots of people refuse, and not because they're insane.

It doesn't actually matter what explanation we give as to why they don't work. They just don't. Humans gonna human. Public health advice and policy that ignores the reality of human behaviour doesn't ever achieve much.

You're allowed to think it's because all the people who don't adhere to the behaviour and dietary models you advocate are lazy, or whatever criticism you feel like levelling. Knock yourself out. But that doesn't change any of the fundamentals here.

You're right, reliance on pharmaceutical companies is a potential problem. That in itself doesn't mean a viable alternative exists. Even if we wish there was.

Btw medications do not get more expensive over time. The opposite happens as patents expire and competition increases. Statins were expensive when launched but have plummeted & now cost the NHS less than £2 a month per person. https://www.bhf.org.uk/for-professionals/healthcare-professionals/blog/statins-10-facts-you-might-not-know

Ok, so how are you going to convince the entire population of obese people to make that lifestyle change? Because it hasn’t happened so far.

Thanks. I did a quick reread of your posts. I am stunned to learn you were only at 30 or so BMI when you went on these injections, and are now 25 BMI. It seems to me an astonishing risk to take for that level of weightloss - which is readily achievable with plain dietary measures - and are planning to potentially stay on them longterm. It is certainly not a risk I would be willing to take.

Perhaps, rather than taking spiky little digs at me, you could share what you have learned from the research papers you have read.

I'm not astonished at all. I respect the honesty of the ones on the thread who've spelled out why.

Thinness often has social cache, and some thin people benefit from that. Naturally, there will be those amongst them who won't want to lose that respective advantage.

We also have associated a looooooot of moral stuff around food and eating. The idea that being thin is a reward for virtue. Again, Ozempic etc completely shred that. It doesn't surprise me at all that there are some people who don't like deep seated ideas they hold being challenged.

😂I'm not jealous at all. Jealous of what? Being a guinea pig? Putting fuck knows what in my body? Getting cancer and whatever else we don't know about yet?

Yeah, ok then.

Thinness often has social cache, and some thin people benefit from that. Naturally, there will be those amongst them who won't want to lose that respective advantage.

Why on earth would anyone assume you know the weight or weight histories of people posting on a MN thread?

So why don't you do that?

There is ZERO evidence that GLP-1 agonists like semaglutide cause cancer in humans and a lot of recent evidence that they don’t increase the risk at all. A small study recently indicated that semaglutide may even increase the number of killer T cells that fight cancer. However there is a huge body of evidence that overweight & obesity significantly raises the risk of many cancers, including breast cancer. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37531876/

Actually, there are people on this thread who've told us they're thin. Some of them have given detailed explanations as to how that affects their thinking on the issue. I'm referring to them.

I suppose they could be morbidly obese and bullshitting, but I don't see any reason to assume that.

The pack warnings about thyroid cancer relate to studies on rats btw. Rats have very different thyroids to humans.

But this medication means that I do make the healthy choices, I don't put Kit Kats or mars bars in the trolley anymore and certainly no oven pizzas or ready meals are waiting for me at night.
The medication doesn't make you lose weight, you still have to do all the hard work. It is a tool to make that hard work easier.
As someone who is clearly struggling with making healthy choices and who has extra weight themselves and that can't maintain a healthy weight, I don't really understand your position. There is no glory in struggling to do something when there is help at hand.

@WoshPank thinness also helps in business particularly in fashion and beauty.
I am one of maybe six larger C-Suite level executives in my industry . I am older now so strangely enough I can be bigger but god help you if you apply for a job in these industries. You will need to be twice as smart and put up with the horrible names. I've been called a fat c**t and The Fat Controller.
I do feel for slim women who have so much pressure to be even thinner, ditto actors etc. I have friends who haven't eaten pudding for decades, their DH won't allow it. They'd be pushing up the patio by now.

I absolutely agree.... being thin is seen by so many as a moral accomplishment. You are fundamentally a better, more virtuous person. It's just utter nonsense. Like a pp said, if they were just a greedy person then the medication wouldn't work.

The thing is I believe that there are people for whom food does not particularly interest them. They get hungry....they eat. They don't think about it until they're hungry again. They cannot comprehend that not everyone's brains are working like that therefore anyone overweight must be an utterly gluttonous pig.

If you're buying it privately from some dodgy online pharmacy you're not buying MJ. It's only available online on prescription from a doctor - I highly doubt any reputable doctor is risking their license. So if it's bought from a dodgy supplier or it's prescribed when you don't meet the requirements it's highly unlikely you're getting the regulated drug.
If your anger is towards people who are buying drugs off Facebook, that's not about MJ that's about naivety and scammers taking advantage of people ...

Yes, it seems some people on here think that on this medication you carry on eating exactly as you did before but lose weight. You don’t. You lose weight by eating less. The medication just helps you to eat less.

Oh yeah definitely, there are loads of contexts where thinness advantages the people who possess it.

There are times and societies where its worked the other way too, I'm not picking on thin people specifically. The Leblouh in Mauritania for example. Body size and shape is a thing that is sometimes used to signal certain things in humans. In any situation where someone has the more prestigious body shape and size, especially if they've had to work at it, there's an incentive for some of them not to be happy if it suddenly becomes more widely and easily achievable.

GPs would probably love to prescribe these medications to more of their patients but unfortunately the NHS (like all subsidised health services) is rationing them for cost reasons. As the price falls and the full extent of the benefits become clear, they will undoubtedly be easier to access. In the meantime people are paying out of their own pocket, as they do for eg gym memberships, to improve their own health and wellbeing, which strikes me as wholly admirable.

That’s a weight loss of about 4 stone and >20% weight loss. It is also usage within the approved label - I have one of the qualifying comorbitities, so actually would have qualified at a lower bmi.

on what basis do you dispute the MHRA, EMA, and FDA guidelines for use?

happy to answer any specific questions if you have them and I know the answers - have tried to provide a synopsis of my take on the data, but if there’s any point you don’t understand then happy to expand upon it.

What you’re putting into your body is a hormone that bodies already produce, in varying amounts.

Well, it's an analogue of that hormone

Yes and no. It is a synthetic hormone naturally found in the body, but only within the pancreas. Using it systemically, as is the case when these medications, is a very different thing to what this hormone does naturally. No one really knows why it works for either diabetes or weight loss (or the myriad of other conditions being studies), but then we don’t fully understand how paracetamol works either.

I do believe that these drugs have been sufficiently evaluated to be deemed safe and effective for their approved use, but that’s down to the research, not because it is based on a naturally occurring hormone.

Why on earth would that happen? You lose weight because you eat less, same as if you did it without the meds.

Yeah but what does the wording ACTUALLY say? "It is not known..."

Why is it a black box warning?