Death linked to Mounjaro

[suki1964]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz6jg6nw2zeo

I am in no way knocking anyone who is using these drugs, seriously if I could use them I would. However Im throwing this up here because these drugs have only been tested and deemed safe on a small study - those who's BMI is above 30.

I saw a (previously believed to be) sensible single parent Dad I know recommending someone lie about their stats as they'd been refused it. Only 1st overweight.
He himself just filled in a firm.
I know a woman using it who has severe thyroid problems (is on thyroxin) and gastric issues. She's lost weight and looks very ill.

The fallout in years to come worries me a lot.

@StMarie4me you can take WLD with an underactive thyroid not over active.
I take a very high dose of Levothyroxine.
I am under the care of a consultant but still have to pay as I'm not diabetic.
As I have said up thread Semiglutinade has been used for twenty years. Clinical data since 2019 shows 23 fatalities where it could have been a factor.

If it was totally safe I for one would be absolutely fine with the “money trap” part. I think that’s pretty irrelevant when discussing safety, especially as the NHS are now starting to roll it out.

You’ll find that overweight people/obese people are the most educated when it comes to diet etc because they’ve spent their whole life obsessing and educating themselves.

My point re anorexia was whether or not you’d tell them to just exercise will power and self control?

Imagine saying “just eat more, educate yourself, move less” and dismissing them.

It is really bizarre isn't it. Is it because "we" distance ourselves from drug addicts/alcoholics and think that couldn't be us ?

I do agree though, there is a value judgment over weight. But also on here people hate anyone doing better or succeeding. Like the money and budget threads. It's something within ourselves isn't it that is triggered, it's not actually about the other person. It's such a fascinating study! Yet on other threads, posters are falling over themselves to say they don't judge people on any matters and never have a mean thought!

I doubt you’re worried. You’re probably excited and hopeful for the day you can say ‘I told you so.’

Once it takes hold, yes.

But it doesn’t just start by itself.

It seems on here like an awful lot of overweight people on WLI are determined to see others as being judgemental and moralistic about weight -- and as wanting to 'deny them' drugs out of a kind of puritanism or resentment.

That mindset makes me think that online conversations among WLI users (or would-be users) have developed a sort of in-group defensive thinking where everyone reassures everyone else by doubling down on a very exaggerated and unnuanced worldview, a form of thinking that frees posters from having to deal with difficult questions. It is just one more instance of the way in which online talk creates polarisation and a sense of victimhood on so many different issues.

I don't see any evidence of a moralistic attitude to weight on MN. Right across MN there has always been masses of evidence of people adopting an understanding and supportive attitude towards weight. I think posters who resent criticisms of WLI have to do quite a lot of work, in most cases, to 'construct' imagined hostility on the bases of comments they don't like.

It isn't judgemental or moralistic or uncompassionate to be concerned about the current prescribing model for these injections. People reach a BMI of 30 or more for all sorts of different reasons (including psychological and social reasons) - only some of them do so because of underlying metabolic issues that need pharmaceutical intervention . And yet this prescribing model makes a certain weight threshold the sole criterion for prescription -- and doesn't even provide failsafe methods of ensuring no-one gets the drugs without meeting this one criterion.

Isn't it more compassionate, rather than less, to feel concern for the apparently many people who are on this drug without proper professional interrogation of whether it is the right sort of help? As so often happens, the private sector is making a buck out of the collapse of NHS services (in this case, the inability of the NHS to provide proper, readily available, weight loss support). Why, in this particular case, are concerns about a lack of proper professional support and oversight - about the conversion of patients into consumers - presented as hostility towards the patients/consumers?

The only reason I can see for misrepresenting criticisms of the WLI explosion is that many users of WLI (who don't squarely meet what conscientious medical researchers would see as the appropriate criteria for using them) feel frightened and unsure about what they are doing, and have to defend themselves against that fear by misrepresenting any concerns

Isn’t it offensive to liken being fat with race, ability or sexuality?

I think people are debating two slightly different issues here:

1. Once you are obese, it is indeed incredibly difficult to solve that.
2. Becoming obese in the first place.

Just to add, one of the features of anorexia nervosa is that sufferers are often extremely hostile to anyone who tries to draw them away from a disorder that is, on some level, extremely gratifying for them and gives them an illusion of power, control, superiority

WLI in effect makes the seductive features of anorexia available to a wider range of people - and so it isn't surprising that (in some users) it generates the same defensive hostility towards anyone expressing concern

There’s been quite lengthy posts detailing how someone becomes obese.

It’s really not that simple. The same as it’s not that simple why I can have a glass of wine on occasion, not touch it for months and don’t drink more than 3 or 4 glasses of wine a year and quite a few of my family members are alcoholics and can’t just have a glass of wine.

I put “mounjaro” into a twitter search last night. What came up only worries me further. Within a few minutes I had found:

• a clearly anorexic girl injecting a very thin tummy saying she was a bmi 19 currently and wanted to be be bmi 12. She had been documenting her food and told another anorexic that she had lied about her weight to obtain the drugs.
• and emergency room doctor that had concerns about what he was seeing come through at work related to these drugs
• several people that do not fit the bmi criteria injecting
• mostly stories of people saying the side effects are hideous…mainly nausea

Because the concerns about a lack of 'proper professional support and oversight' have at the heart of it a belief that 'eat less, move more' is still the valid answer for a majority of obese people.

There is a current that runs through these threads that seems to completely ignore the fact that 'eat less, move more' HAS NOT WORKED. It hasn't worked in any society struggling with an obesity epidemic, despite the message being doubled down on over time. The question is not 'why are people resorting to WLI when they could lose weight by simply changing their diet and exercise habits?' - the question is 'do WLI do anything to change the ability of obese people to lose weight and maintain it over the very long term?'.

On that front, it is looking as though like most other methods of weight loss, WLI do not particularly increase the likelihood of maintaining weight loss, unless they are continued in some sort of reduced maintenance dose. Other people on this thread have already talked about the fact that obesity specialists consider that the medication should be considered in the same vein as other medications prescribed long-term for chronic conditions such as heightened blood pressure.

This brings us to the core belief that it is evident many detractors on this thread therefore seem to hold, which is that the inability to maintain weight loss over the very long term is down to an inherent failing in the fat person themselves. That the millions of obese people in this country are a bit stupid, or weak, or just basically... greedy. That if only they could control themselves they wouldn't be fat.

The problem is that current scientific thinking is that this isn't the case. Which is why obesity specialists are considering this drug to be a gamechanger in that it is treating something which is a chronic condition.

I think it would help the detractors on this thread to try to have some compassion and respect for those of us who are taking this medication - we're not stupid, or weak, or ill-educated, or unwitting shills of big pharma.

That's interesting @Froggerz because in all my researching about Mounjaro I've not come across those aspects. It's almost as though you are looking specifically for negative stories.

I haven't seen any info in the public domain to explain why 2 small tirzepatide doses were contributory in the death of McGowan.

I wonder if she had taken ordinary doses of ibuprofen or paracetamol if they also would have been listed as contributory. They are also potentially bad for internal organs.

Of course you 'found' them. We see what we want to see and find what we're looking for. I'll bet there were positive search results but those weren't news-worthy enough to run and post about.

Incidentally when I search Mounjaro on places like Facebook or Reddit, I see groups of people in their thousands who're either taking or considering taking Mounjaro where most people are encouraging others to use it according to the guidelines, tell off those who don't meet the criteria but wonder if they could lie or wiggle the truth somehow, and encourage proper diet and exercise while supporting each other. I've seen a few GPs who're taking it and say their colleagues are taking it also with positive results, exclaiming it as something potentially revolutionary.

I don't seem to find or notice the fringe groups or random idiots that exist in every facet of life who're doing god-knows-what to themselves. I wouldn't even know where or how to find them but I'm sure some do. As I said, we find what we search for.

@85reasons I literally typed it in to twitter. Sorted by "top" and these came up...

If I sort by "recent" it's mainly people chatting about the nurse that died

@lljkk of course they would. Say she had stomach issues/bleeding from ulcers and was a regular ibuprofen user they may have listed that as contributing factor

Are you questioning the experts and doctors that produced this report?

The defensiveness on this post is insane! It's like a cult

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-comments-on-the-risks-and-benefits-of-tirzepatide-following-following-the-death-of-susan-mcgowan/?fbclid=IwY2xjawGcBw9leHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHT6-mMpVVv_ynDUPqRz5lx2m7caHFE1XnhRD_Rk3MCPQ2DEupcKDcTC-Uw_aem_LpHbVvIoDxz-5zZXrYagBg

People have described obese people as uneducated, lacking will power, denied its considered a disease, expressed a feeling of moral superiority over them because THEY haven’t suffered with obesity. Thats what people are upset about, those capable of having a sensible discussion of risk vs benefit have not been criticised on this thread or “doubled down” on.

My thoughts are that a lot of the naysayers have vested interest in keeping obese people fat. WW have already adapted their plans to include those taking GP1 medicine. They will lose out on their sales of upf low fat products. Here in the UK we are directed to low sugar but artifical sweeteners.
My type 1 diabetic mother died of bowel cancer. She'd spent a lifetime on quack diets. When I asked her consultant if it was heriddrary he said no but never use sorbital. She was riddled with it. Would Semiglutinade have helped her? Perhaps. I would have paid any amount to have saved her. She was not an early diabetic. Most people who are obese become one. Don't wish that on anyone.

The ED doctor had a diabetic patient who came in with DKA as they had stopped their insulin. It was nothing to do with Mounjaro as a medication. The patient was unclear as to what their diabetes treatment was and stopped insulin when they shouldn't

The person who fraudulently obtained it to lower an already healthy BMI is just that, a fraud. People try to obtain other prescription meds fraudulently too, I've had many fraudulent attempts wanting opiates and benzodiazepines, to name a couple.

I bet you're REALLY WORRIED about that too

Not

We all see you with your faux concern and scientific and medical ignorance

The defensiveness on this post is insane! It's like a cult

Oh give over and stop being so hyperbolic. You've been known to make a few misleading comments on this thread to make a point anyway. Soon that word will lose its value from the ignorant lot flinging it around whenever they want to stick the knife in for effect.

@ReadWithScepticism I squarely meet the criteria for using Mounjaro. I still do, even though I've lost 5st. I'm not afraid or unsure about using Mounjaro, I'm thrilled and confident about it. It's been an absolute game changer for me.