What do we REALLY think about the weight loss jabs?

[Newbabynewhouse]

I've put this on AIBU rather than weight loss jab because I want a neutral audience rather than people who are all using the jab.
What are peoples thoughts on the jab? I'd love to hear from someone educated in the medical field about whether these are actually safe for people without diabetes.
I'm obese and I have lost a stone so far by dieting although it's taking me a long time! I know if I keep trying hard I can lose what I need to. Lots of people I know have started dropping weight from using the jabs and I am tempted however, can't shake a feeling that there's something not quite right.
What I mean by this is... these jabs have been around for years for diabetic people, so why have they only just been 'released' to people despite obesity effecting the NHS for years?
I know a woman who fainted in work the other day with gallbladder issues, she's on the jab.
Also, I'm going to sound a little conspiracy theorist now, but, isn't it odd these jabs became popular straight after people starting refusing to have more covid jabs..?.. I'd love to hear from people with a bit of background info or medical professionals to tell me whether I'm overthinking or if I'm onto something?

I mean we know why. That's how the drugs work - they give people more of the hormone that regulates appetite and helps them live in an exceptionally obesogenic environment. The only thing that is going to prevent obesity is something completely draconian like a ban on the sale of any foodstuffs that are not raw ingredients. For the vast majority of people, "personal responsibility" is just not going to be sufficient in an environment where there are so many counter factors plus their monkey brains telling us to "better eat that now - could be a hard winter".

Yes consistently rude. Here's the clue, and of course it hasn't just been to them.
This poster has been posting nonsense, as if drunk, stoned, or on pills.
People with a robust point of debate don't need to use playground retorts. It doesn't exactly encourage anyone to take any notice.

@AllJoyAndNoFun

“The only thing that is going to prevent obesity is something completely draconian like a ban on the sale of any foodstuffs that are not raw ingredients.”

I disagree, for me anyway. Most of my food is from whole ingredients but I can eat huge amounts because it’s so damn tasty (I can cook and am inventive too). Still calories which if you don’t have that I’m full signal can be overeaten as much as crap good can be.

The bit that's totalitarian is your sentence 'stop offering more food than anyone could ever possibly need'. The level of state overreach that would be required to prevent people from having access to loads more calories than they need goes well beyond simply better regulation of food industry practices and processed stuff. It's not happening.

Humans in cold climates often do/did quite a lot of shivering when they were poor, yes. Better heating means those of us who live in cold climates need less energy to keep warm than we did during periods when our societies fed us all three meals a day and didn't have high obesity rates. This is not controversial.

In terms of appointments, obesity for a lot of people isn't likely to be immediately life threatening, but does obviously elevate the risk for a lot of conditions that will kill you earlier. So there are lots of people taking WLIs whilst meeting prescription criteria who don't currently use HCP provider capacity to have regular appointments, but would do if people who want more checks for WLIs get their way. Because extra checks don't automatically and immediately create more HCPs, those HCPs would have to come from somewhere and in some cases that would be the NHS.

It's fine to feel uncomfortable with the possibility of remote appointments and self-monitoring causing problems, but anyone who's going as far as suggesting changes does need to tell us why WLIs need this greater level of scrutiny and why it's better for what are sometimes zero sum resources to be allocated there. That part is invariably missing.

The fact that 30% of UK adults are obese is not evidence that 30% of UK adults have a metabolic disorder of satiety, no. Of course some will, and some will have caused a leptin insensitivity due to fat gain.

But if you do believe that obesity is a metabolic disorder beyond people’s individual control, surely you’d want children to be medicated to prevent it? If most of society applauds medical science and wants medication, why do you have a problem with that?

Yes, no-one is talking about taking your drugs away from you, stop panicking. I’m hoping to have a rational discussion about the wider effects of these drugs and what they mean for all of us, whether we use them or not. You seem unable to do that without dismissing my differing opinion as ‘religious’ or some other thing.

Your first three sentences seem to contradict each other - we know the drugs work by hormonally regulating appetite, and then the only thing to prevent obesity is a ban on certain foodstuffs being sold.

The big thing that is helping prevent obesity is the WLI giving people what they need to control their eating themselves. I don't need any foodstuff banning any more. I can have chocolate and biscuits in the house and not be tempted.

But at society level it would make a massive difference - if there were no "ready to eat" foods bar what occurs naturally (bananas), the population would be thinner. It would be almost impossible to eat on the go cheaply without prep/ forethought. It would hugely reduce snacking. There are not that many passionate/ talented cooks and people who would think "oh I want a cookie- I'll make some" whereas if you can just go to the shop 2 mins away you can get your hands on a whole packet for pennies.

You're the exception that proves the rule, just like the "just practice willpower" people are the outliers re personal responsibility- there are people who despite low levels of GLPs maintain a healthy weight by just being ultra self disciplined, but that's unusual.

It's kind of academic anyway as my proposal would never ever happen in a million years. It would be legislatively impossible and totally kill what's left of the high street- instead of coffee shops and vape shops it would literally just be a line of vape shops :-)

I don’t think I’ve said anywhere that people should be prevented from accessing food. But in case that somehow got lost, let me spell
it out. Governments should regulate food manufacturers better, so that UPFs cease to be the norm. That is not totalitarian, protecting citizens health and safety is the first job of government. UPFs present a huge health risk.

You seem very stuck on this idea of shivering as a way to lose weight. I don’t know how else to say it, but it’s just not true. If it were, Canada, the US and Scotland wouldn’t have the obesity rates they do, would they? Better hearing only matters if people never go outside - and that’s the thing that has a much bigger impact. Poorer people would not be, on average, fatter than wealthier people - or is it that they have really good heating too?

I don’t think I’ve said anyone ‘needs’ a face to face appointment. And I don’t think these drugs necessarily need more scrutiny than others. However they are relatively new and even from the thread there seems to be a mix of understanding of the potential for side effects. That’s for people to decide on their own of course, but it does also have the potential to be very costly to the rest of us - like the cost of smoking, alcohol use and obesity. I’m certainly not advocating for resources to be reallocated to WLIs, if anything I’d advocate for reallocation to prevention.

Are you still upset I quoted this and mentioned it was ironic?

However when it is discussed with a lot of misinformation, people are bound to come in with some facts.

This thread is full, if you actually read it, of people on WLI who are posting incorrect "facts," incorrectly correcting correct facts, refusing to accept the actualities, for example, arguing until they are blue in the face that gallbladder disease is not in any way related to WLI beyond the losing weight fast bit, or that pancreatitis is in any way related to using WLI. These are established facts.

Yes, thats how the drugs work. The pp is suggesting that obese people are all lacking that hormone, which I don’t believe evidence shows.

You have a pretty dim view of humanity if you think the only way to prevent obesity is to drug us all. 60% of people in the UK are not obese, and that figure is higher in 120 or so countries. Do those people not have monkey brains? But if you do think that, you presumably agree that we should pre-emptively drug everyone, before they become obese?

Again, you wrote 'stop offering more food than anyone could ever possibly need'. That couldn't possibly happen without massive state control and would be vastly unpopular. If you only mean that we should regulate better, that's fine and I'm not opposed to it, but it most certainly would still mean societies where populations were being constantly offered more food than they needed. That isn't going anywhere.

On the shivering point, I haven't mentioned it as a way to lose weight so this might be where your confusion lies. The reason cold weather is relevant is because, as I mentioned a few posts ago, some people think the fact that in the mid 20th century some wealthy societies had enough resources to feed everyone whilst not having much obesity means it's something that must be possible now. But part of this was people needing more calories to keep warm than they do with better heating systems. So this is a point about the past, not obesity now, once that particular calorie burning need reduced. There aren't any examples of societies that had high obesity rates and then went backwards in widespread heating access.

If you aren't one of the people advocating for compulsory face to face appointments for WLI monitoring, you're not one of the cohort being discussed. A poster upthread was.

Lastly, if we're speculating about potential for WLIs meaning cost to wider society even for those who aren't obese, we must also ensure we mention the potential for them to benefit wider society too.

This thread got a bit silly.

The genie is out the bottle, weight loss drugs are here to stay, they will become easier to get, not harder, cheaper to buy not more expensive, we will not move to a nanny state where food is controlled, and the sheer safety record of the drugs as well as the huge amount of health benefits have proven we don’t need doctors appts in the main.

its done, best folks get comfortable with the fact we have this choice, no one has to take them, but for the millions and millions who do wish to, it’s nothing short of wonderful. It’s a huge advancement in medical science. One of the most important in decades due to the fact obesity is the biggest killer in society and of course the drugs bring many other health benefits, from reduced cancers on.

it is clear to see the people who are taking issue, and it’s a tiny amount of repeat posters, don’t mention the severe health implications of obesity whilst screeching erroneously about gall bladders, they don’t reference the risk of gall stones due to obesity or weight loss. They don’t mention the fact obesity causes 11 different cancers, or the cost to health care systems. There is no balanced discussion, it’s simply stop prescribing or make them harder to get, instead they recommend spending billions on wasting doctors time or a nanny state to control the populations food intake, that’s how desperate they are not to see people slim and healthy , I assume as they struggle.

these drugs are global, not just the uk. And for the poster who bizzarely claimed rhe WHO recommend the drugs to profiteer, I have no words.

there was no such thing as ‘food noise’ in the 40s/50s. People were generally slim as did manual work and ate home cooked food. Obesity was rarely a medical issue.

My late grandparents would be most confused if they were here now to see people injecting themselves to stop being obese.
Sadly our country is a breeding ground for addiction, whether it be junk food, drugs, vapes, too much plastic surgery. None of which do our inside or outside any good.

The pp is suggesting that obese people are all lacking that hormone, which I don’t believe evidence shows

And what increases that hormone in the gut, anyway? Fruit and vegetables,whole grains, and so on - ie, fibre. People laugh at the idea of changing their diet to include a larger amount of fibrous natural food, while claiming the WLI are helping to "train them how to eat" or somesuch.

Yes of course the world was different in the 40s and 50s, less cars, more manual labour, no computers, less imports. 😂

Yes, it’s the third or so time I’ve referred specifically to food quality so I thought it was clear, but have clarified for you now.

I’m not confused, I just find it irrelevant to talk about heating as a reason for a rise in obesity. The population was perfectly well fed in the 1960s, arguably eating foods we’d now consider quite unhealthy like dripping, lots of potatoes and fatty cuts of meat. If you want to take lessons from the past then look at the lack of processed food, more time spent outdoors and a less developed sense of individualism.

If you acknowledge I’m not someone who has suggested f2f be compulsory why on earth do you keep saying to me?

Again, there is a huge benefit to society of fewer people being obese, but that benefit could we even better if we prevent obesity, rather than just treat it.

Of course it’s different, but doesn’t mean we can’t adapt the old fashioned values/common sense of eating well and moving of our arses.

Not sure what's so totes hilaire here.

People ate for the very most part home-cooked foods, their diets weren't full of UltraProcessed Frankenfoods, or "edible food substances", and they generally ate three meals a day and few snacks. They certainly weren't walking down the street slurping on a giant smoothie or munching a fast food burger, or getting food high in salt and fat cooked by somebody else delivered to their door daily.

Exactly. For sure some people have metabolic disorders, and for those who have developed metabolic disorders as a result of obesity it’s difficult to change. I do understand why people prefer WLIs over the very slow, boring and difficult process of unravelling a bad diet/lifestyle. But this idea that it’s biologically impossible without WLIs and we should all be absolved of personal responsibility or free of the consequences of our decisions is wild.

I am a couple of stone overweight (about 12 stone) and I took Wegovy for a few months last year. It worked but made me feel rough and it didn’t change my eating habits. I chose to come off and the weight came back off. I am trying hard to be done with yo-yo dieting and trying just to eat well and move more.

I think the jabs 100% are really good. If I was morbidly obese I would rather be thinner, be able to walk, run, do things with my kids etc. Feeling a bit shit would be worth it. I know I’m only a stone or so away from not feeling huge and I think I can do that myself.

Ok this shows such a lack of knowledge on obesity you should be embarssed to even be part of this conversation and have shown yourself up,

obesity is not in the main due to greed and poor diet as you imagine. Slurping smoothies, eating fatty burgers etc.

go and educate yourself.

That’s an idea only you have put forward, not one poster has said such a thing.

Obesity is terrible for health of course, and it should be prevented. WLIs are part of the solution to obesity. But those health problems affect children and adults who cannot access WLIs, or can’t use them for medical reasons, or for whom they don’t work. I don’t understand why you’re so disinterested in preventing obesity, and so keen for people to just become obese, have all the problems that causes and then take drugs for the rest of their lives. Do you think the same about other drugs? Shall we legalise heroin because, if it gets out of control we can pop people on methadone?

What the fuck!

People's diets, as a whole, have changed massively since the 50s. The largest change is fast food, and the most recent change is the dropping of the societal frowning upon of eating in the street (on the buses, on the trains, at the office desk, in the car, and eating effectively 18 hours a day).

Some people can eat like that and not gain weight (but lose health anyway). I said nothing about that being the only cause of obesity. I gain weight with a few extra teaspoons a day of olive oil. But eating UPFs and fast foods, and foods which were occasional foods only for decades after the 50s, is a major reason why socially, worldwide, as a whole, there is an obesity epidemic.