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?

Surely there is an increased risk of bowel cancer if you slow down digestion?

Not sure re bowel cancer, but definite risk of SIBO, which is not fun.

It'd be a lot easier just to ban unhealthy foods or tax them out of existence.

The face you’re a parent and think that Covid vaccines are being snuck into mounjaro is terrifying

I think using the jabs is cheating. I know that is irrational but that’s what I think. I’m obese myself but have history of ED so shouldn’t take them anyway.

@Lastpushtothesummit if it’s irrational is there a thought process behind it even if that’s flawed, or is it just an emotional reaction to the idea? The cheating idea fascinates me as to how people get to that conclusion. Do you have a feeling for who is being cheated out of what? What’s the competition or contest that people are cheating at?

Really not sure what the thought process is. I feel like I will be the only obese person left soon and even if I managed to lose weight myself (unlikely) it wouldn’t be noteworthy because people on the jabs are losing huge amounts with no effort.
I binge even when I’m not hungry so I doubt the jabs would work for me anyway.

I’m happy that people have managed to get relief from such a variety of difficult and poorly understood health conditions from these jabs.

I’d be delighted to take a weekly injection that was proven to safely solve an intractable problem that was having a huge negative impact on my quality of life and life expectancy. 🤷‍♀️

Imagine if there was a low risk medication that could reliably do for treatment resistant depression or addiction or fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue what the jabs have done for diabetes and obesity. Don’t you imagine people would snap it up?

I also reckon people wouldn’t be looked down on for having an injection that helped them recover from something like chronic fatigue; they wouldn’t be told they were cheating, and that recovery only counts if you just decide not to be so fucking tired all the time and make it happen through sheer grit.

And if Mounjaro jabs secretly contain Covid vaccines which in turn contain microchips that lodge in our brains turning us into a drone army for the illuminati, then I guess it was meant to be, and there is no use fighting fate.

Kindly, that's exactly what the jabs have achieved for me - an ability to not eat when I'm not hungry, as well as stopping all urge to overeat dead in the water.
Maybe it's cheating, in that I haven't 'suffered' very much losing weight on WLIs, I haven't spent my days feeling starving and craving chocolate, pastry and chips, then caving and binging, and regaining all the weight again. But possibly I was already at a disadvantage to those people who could resist those cravings, and stay slim, so maybe WLI just levels the playing the field.

I became overweight in pregnancy not because of eating "unhealthy food".

Well they certainly shine a light on how the overweight crew used to tell us being fat was just part of some mysterious special physical reality where they were gaining weight while doing everything right...

I dont think its a good idea to be injecting your body when you could just be exercising willpower and I suspect we will see health problems arise from this that we haven't had time to witness yet.
I also think on an existential level its peak late capitalism and somehow gross in its unashamed excess

I took the plunge in May.

I've gone from 19 stone 6, to 15 stone 10. Everything has improved, from my PCOS to my asthma.

Started off terrified to go past 2.5 mg, and am about to start 10 mg.

Every single drug has side effect warnings, ibuprofen 'could' kill you. If you are severely obese then that has far more side consequences and effects.

We can all diet (over and over again) and lose a stone or two. But for me it would always inevitably come to a stop far short of my goal.

Mounjaro has helped me feel full and satisfied (long before being so physically full it hurt and I felt sick) for the first time in my life. I still feel hunger as usual.

Are you using ozempic or Mounjaro? Well done !

Mounjaro works by mimicking specific chemicals that are less active or less effective in some people. If that's not fair on some people who lost weight without them, do you feel the same about other drugs? I am lactose intolerant - is it unfair if I take lactase tablets to be able to eat dairy when I'm out, because my body doesn't make enough of the right enzyme? Is that unfair because I should just ride it out (and accept the need to run to the nearest loo asap)?

Nobody is offended at this being discussed. However when it is discussed with a lot of misinformation, people are bound to come in with some facts. The science is very clear in the case of WLI, and a lot of takers have had to do a lot of research and become very knowledgeable about the subject.

As someone who had it prescribed by an endocrinologist, I can tell you what he said. I was only just in pre diabetic stage, but my insulin levels were crazy, as was my blood pressure and cholesterol.

Those issues resolved very quickly. The next time I saw him he was saying that even when I've lost a decent amount of weight he would recommend staying on a minimum dose long term as there are new papers being published every month on their posting impact on -
Heart disease
Auto immune symptoms
Strength, muscle mass etc in older age
Osteoporosis

All things that are impacting me already at 55.

There will always be people who see weight gain as a moral failing. I also think that says more about them and their inability to imagine anything that they haven't experienced themselves. It's a real condition, but for some it makes them feel superior rather than recognising they're missing an attribute.

I know that my ghrelin and.. the other hormone? which impacts satiety and hunger were tested as "completely buggered" , and that's why he went to glp1 so fast. All my hormones are impacted by Auto immune issues, the ghrelin, all my female hormones and testosterone flatlined into a menopause that took 6 months from beginning to end, and I was given replacement hormones to deal with that. Same with thyroid and parathyroid. Why would I not accept other help to deal with metabolic symptoms of tanking hormones?

Anyway, I'm very lucky that I have a consultant, that he has time for this stuff, and that recognises the quality of life issues as well as the long term repercussions.

The OPs reference to vaccinations is moronic, but at least confirmed that they know absolutely nothing about how medicine works, and therefore might be up for a little real life anecdote.

BTW, I've never taken any of these in the doses suggested. At the moment I'm taking half the starter dose of MJ, and still losing weight, although slowly. All the awful side effects I've heard of in friends have correlated with starting too high, or increasing the dose because it's week 4, not because the previous dose has stopped working.

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?

There isn't some hidden history of long term use of these drugs by diabetics and then a sudden springing of them on society as a weight loss solution. They were developed to help diabetic and approved for that ~9 years ago in the US. Weight loss was not their intended use but it was obviously noticed in trials. However, to have it approved for use for weight loss the drug companies had to develop completely separate trials that met the ethical and scientific requirements for weight loss drugs. This meant new, longer trials and more participants (the FDA requires longer term studies to show a drug works for weight loss than for many other clinical benefits due to the history of weight loss benefits being temporary).

In the US Drs prescribed off label for a few years before weight loss approval came through, but it was rarely approved by insurance so it was initially limited and it took time for doctors to be comfortable prescribing it until weight loss approval came through. And the NHS needed to see trial results before it would approve

FDA approval for weight loss came through in 2021 and NHS approved it in 2023.

The NHS took a while to roll out their use for weight loss because supply was insufficient to meet demand and they wanted to ensure diabetic people who needed it had access first. Once that ramped up they started approving more.

It's not a conspiracy, it's just the way drug approval systems work to ensure safety.

Actually @Whynottryagain was mistaken to say this. WLI exist to target the cause rather than the symptom. The cause in so many cases of obesity is as I just said in reply to another post, that Mounjaro in particular works by mimicking specific chemicals that are frequently less active or less effective in certain individuals. These chemicals are what tell people they're full, or stop them thinking constantly about food. MJ deals directly with that in people who don't have normal levels of these chemicals.

I highly recommend a book by Johann Hari called Magic Pill if you want to learn more about these drugs. The author did extensive research and also used them himself.

Also, my opinion from personal experience is that these drugs are life changing. I don’t think there’s any moral failure in not suffering to lose weight. Food, hunger, metabolism etc is different for everyone. Do what works for you.

Thank you, I am on Mounjaro.

Re: the 'cheating' accusations.

Who exactly was I competing with, and who am I cheating victory from?

Like most obese people I felt I was doing everything right.

I didn't eat a ton of junk food or desserts, I ate homecooked healthy meals. But unless I weighed every gram, then I would end up eating portions that were far too big. I would also have 'healthy' snacks, like nuts and dark chocolate. And they are healthy, but very easy to overeat.

I had no idea before mounjaro, but what I thought was the feeling of being full and satisfied was not. I was constantly flitting between intense hunger and so physically full it hurt and I felt sick. Those were my only two modes.

The first time I put down my fork, despite still really enjoying the taste of my dinner, because a quiet sense of 'that's enough' settled over me, I nearly fell out of my chair! I had never felt that before in my life.

I was so confused, because I could feel that physically I could continue eating!

I am not on the jab
However, some of the drugs have been around for years, used in the treatment of diabetes . People suddenly have an issue with these drugs and their side effects when their best mate , sister, colleague , enemy starts losing weight . I wonder why that is ?

Why is it cheating ?

I’m in the healthy BMI range, exercise a lot, eat a home cooked healthy diet and rarely eat UPFs but have battled all my life to stay a reasonably healthy weight. I now realise I have raging food noise and assume it is because my GLP-1 levels are out of kilter.

I have started taking MJ after debating with myself for a long time and the change has blown my mind. I am not intending to lose weight, I just want to stop the mental exhaustion of food noise. I don’t think people who have normal GLP1s realise what this is like.

I look on it like HRT. I could battle through and ‘cope’ with hot flushes and suicidal mood swings or cheat, as some people would say, and use available medication to correct a hormonal imbalance.

I see a patient with diabetes having weekly ozempic. He was morbidly obese and now is not. The ozempic was prescribed for diabetes control. Getting his weight under control was a great side-effect.

Cheating what though? Yourself?

I don't particularly care what others want to do with their bodies and i don't think it's "cheating" I do think that some people with eating disorders and just swapping for another eating disorder and making themselves equally ill in a different way. But my only frame of reference for that is my mum. Who has made herself ill. Then stopped using it. Then because she started wanting to eat again has lied about her weigh to get back on it when she really shouldn't.

Eating is an addiction for some, it seems that addiction has just been transferred to an expensive drug. People often don't cure their addictions, just transfer it to something else I suppose. Obesity is about alot more than eating too much. Just like you can't fix homelessness by giving someone somewhere to live. People need actual support to change.