Why are some people so angry about people lying to get MJ?

[Roxietrees]

The only conclusion I can come to is pure jealousy. They don’t want overweight people (with bmi 25-29) getting slim, they want to be the only ones who get to be slim and hot. Less competition that way.
I’ve seen some ridiculous statements on here, one to someone with a bmi of 29.8 who lied to get it - someone said they were “unbelievably stupid and irresponsible” and “putting their life at risk”….how can they possibly be putting their life at risk anymore than someone with a bmi of 30?! Cos being 0.2 lighter suddenly makes the medication dangerous 🤣
Should people with a bmi of 28 binge eat to put on enough weight to make them eligible? Isn’t that far more dangerous?
If the meds really were that dangerous to slimmer people there is no way you’d be able to get them by submitting a few photos and self-reporting your weight online.
I actually do meet the criteria but I have plenty of friends on it who don’t and I have zero judgement. Some of them have been overweight their whole lives and are unable to shift that 2-3 stone. Why should they have to stay overweight when an obese person can easily get down to a bmi of 19 with injections? I suspect that if you weren’t allowed to use them after your bmi got down to 30 all the righteous, judgmental people on them would start fudging their own numbers on the scales.
It just feels like a bit of an attitude amongst some people of “this is our thing and we don’t want you to have it”….disguised as concern about the health impacts…which is so obviously bullshit. Why aren’t the same people ranting about how easy it is for alcoholics to get alcohol? Or why aren’t they focusing on young anorexic people obtaining MJ (which is happening and is genuinely concerning)? It’s just so obviously jealousy. They’ll be available to people with bmi 25+ soon anyway

I think a lot of people get some self esteem by looking down on ‘fat lazy people who should just stop stuffing food into their gobs and go for a walk’. So the audacity of those people to take something to help them lose weight is appalling to them because it threatens their sense of self.

I wasn’t going to take wli but someone said it would be like when I went on nicotine patches when I quit smoking. Yes I could’ve gone cold turkey but I would’ve found it so hard and a bad day comes along and willpower alone goes out the window. I’ve been trying to diet and succeeding then failing for over 30 years and this is the first time I’m not chewing my arm off.

I’m not sure about the fear of side effects, the packaging is quite clear and they’re a lot milder than the detailed side effects of covid jabs I was forced to get in 2021. I would expect if 100,000s to millions of people are taking them there will be stories in the news but that doesn’t mean they’re dangerous for the majority.

Personally I’ve never had the ‘unable to eat’ level of suppression, so I could easily eat more than I do now without feeling overly full so I think to an extent it depends on how you are affected by the medication.

Doe me it’s always just been that it better enables me to to stop being starving ALL THE TIME, now when I start feeling hungry an hour or so before dinner, I can look at the clock, see that I’ll be eating soon and set the thought aside whereas before I would be consumed by my hunger, rumbling stomach, watering mouth and unable to think about anything else.

If I were struggling to eat a whole meal then I’d try a couple of things

1 - reduce dose
2 - re-introduce some of the foods I’ve cut out to ensure what I am eating is higher calorie, I have cut out all carbs except berries and green veg, no pasta, rice, potatoes, bread etc. so adding a portion of carbs into my diet would increase calories enough without increasing portion size. I’d have to be checking my sugar levels though to make sure they weren’t going too high (T2 diabetes). If they were then I’d increase nut butter, olive oil, avocado, seeds etc

My take on people “lying” to get a prescription is based purely on my professional life.

In my role as a Registered Nurse I have been involved in holding telephone consultations with patients to determine suitability for treatments with medications and then passing my recommendations on to Medics. I have had occasions where patients have lied and been caught out so undoubtedly have had patients who have lied and been given “inappropriate” treatment.

No matter what safety checks are available there are always people who will find a way to access what they want regardless of any criteria they may or may not meet. That’s human nature and to a degree I accept that.

What I don’t accept is that a prescriber is put in a position where they have signed off a treatment in good faith, recommended by a nurse or whoever based on information a patient has provided. That feels unfair to me and certainly not a position I would want to put anyone in.

I think it’s quite easy to forget that it’s not a little AI robot issuing prescriptions it’s a real life professional person and how dare anyone put their registration at risk! If I was a nurse prescriber I’m not sure how much faith I would have in any virtual prescribing system, I’d want to see everyone face to face !

I know loads of people on it and I used to use one of the equivalents myself about 5 years ago but didnt get on with it.

No one I know gets it from the NHS and everyone on forums like this, gets it from private companies.

Thank you. No idea where you’d start with finding a private company though, I’d better do a bit more googling!

They're all over the place!??

Boots, Superdrug, Medxpress, Pharmacy2u

Tons of them

They're just private pharmacies and doctors. Just because its private it doesnt mean that you can get any old medication for any old thing, it still has to be prescribed legally within the parameters of the regulations.

The 'private companies' include Boots, Asda etc - nothing sinister, although those are two of the most expensive. They're just online pharmacies.
Monj.co.uk has a very comprehensive list of UK providers, with price comparisons.

Aha, things have obviously moved on a fair bit since I last looked it up! Then it was pretty much just a big nope.

Thank you :)

Ok thanks, this is helpful. So it is you still have to plan and be mindful; it’s just MJ actually allows you to do that without feeling like your going to die of hunger.

So it’s just removing urgency and you still have to make the right choices. It doesn’t automatically make you fuller, or dislike sugar for example.

Thank you. Goodluck with it. It sounds an amazing drug and if they bought one out for smoking I would first in line. Happy you have this now 😊

Hi isn’t it best to stay on hrt anyway due to risks of no estrogen? Osteoporosis etc

I worry about the breast and endometrial cancer risk.

From WLI? How much higher is the risk than the increased risk from being obese? I know post menopause obesity doubles your risk of getting breast cancer.

No, from HRT. There is no such risk from WLI, which has been fantastic for me.

Ultimately with all drugs as they are rolled out to a large user group more side effects become apparent. Mounjaro is slightly different to its predecessors and has only been licenced for a couple of years. It was developed for type 2 diabetes, not weight loss, so those side effects were always measured against the benefits of lowering blood sugar and the other serious health issues associated with diabetes. Many of those effects are also an issue with obesity but not necessarily with being a few pounds overweight.

As yet we don’t know what longterm side effects may result from these drugs, hopefully more benefits. Also we don’t know whether they remain effective over a long period. One thing that is already known is that when you stop using them the weight goes back on. This is likely to be a direct result of the appetite suppression disappearing.

The one issue that may well be their downfall is that if something does go wrong patients will start to sue. Their only recourse is with the prescribing doctor. With private pharmacy procurement the pharmacies may struggle to recruit doctors willing to put their careers on the line and it may become too expensive to indemnify yourself to prescribe the drugs.

There’s one certainty though, the pharmaceutical company currently with the patent for this drug is laughing all the way to the bank. You are unlikely to see the drug prescribed on the NHS for anyone with a BMI of under 30-35 until it comes off patent, which will be in 2036 or possibly as late as 2039.

Until then the company will be able to charge whatever it wants. It’s an expensive drug particularly when for most who are not obese there is a much cheaper alternative.

I have no problem with people paying privately as long as they understand the risks. But if cases of people seeking emergency treatment while using it continue to rise then there may be a revision of the prescribing criteria.

Alcohol is another risk factor. But the biggest risk factor is just being a woman who produces oestrogen and progesterone. I know plenty of women with a healthy BMI who have developed breast cancer. And are shocked that despite following all the advice they still end up with it. In fact when I was diagnosed I don’t remember any obese ladies attending the diagnostic clinic. I was overweight but not to the point where I was advised to lose weight after treatment.
I did put on weight due to the treatment but I’ve now successfully lost it and I’m now a few pounds lighter than when I was diagnosed. I have another stone to lose which is coming off slowly. I have embraced the fact that post meno I just need less food.

Weight loss jabs have been licensed in the US since 2017 so 8 years not a few. I’m sure anyone taking any medication knows the risk, so why are fat loss jabs any different?

It seems to be a feature of human psychology that we react very strongly to ‘cheating’ of any sort. Maybe because as humans evolved as a cooperative, social species we needed to be able to trust those that we relied on for our own survival. It’s been suggested that this is why, for example, we react so strongly against ‘benefit cheats’ (who often aren’t exactly wealthy as a result) but are perfectly happy with the extraordinary levels of inequality between rich and poor in the world.

It’s the cheating that triggers us, we really hate it.

Cheating who or what?

Tiresome

When I quit smoking using patches (that I paid for myself) was I cheating? I don’t recall anyone having a negative reaction to me doing that?

Mn is usually full of people bemoaning how much obese people cost the nhs so I feel like it’s people’s conscious or unconscious issues around fatness rather than something overweight people are doing or not doing that is the issue.

I suppose ‘cheating’ in this case really means ‘doing it the easy way’ which many people dislike
especially if they themselves have done it the hard way. But that’s life!

I think people percieve taking the injections as ‘easy’, and don’t realise that it still involves willpower and good decision making. Eg I am an emotional eater, I mostly don’t eat because I am hungry, but because I want the food as it makes me feel less sad. So for me, I don’t think the drugs would work, as the ‘food noise’ is more linked to my emotions. I could be wrong, but I strongly suspect not. If I wanted help with healthy eating I would go for hypnotherapy. I probably should as I definitely make poor food choices, but fuck it, my Parkinson’s isn’t goi g away, and if I want the chocolate I’m going g to have the chocolate!

People don't look down on women who use HRT, even though it has side effects including increasing rates of breast cancer, because they understand that the effects of menopause can be difficult to live with. The menopause symptoms like hot flushes are however not life-threatening/morbidity-causing in themselves. Obesity is a life-threatening and very morbidity-causing condition, yet people look down on people taking (very safe and used over many years) medication for this? Why is that?

Yes, higher estrogen levels are the biggest risk factor specifically for estrogen driven breast cancer. The reason obesity is a risk for this type of breast cancer is the more fat you store, especially in post menopausal women, the more estrogen you have as fat tissue produces estrogen so obese women have more estrogen.

I have lost significant weight and can tell my estrogen levels have plummeted as two years post menopause my symptoms have all returned due to the reduction in estrogen, they are so bad I have had to start HRT.

You might find it would work for you. My big problem was snacking on sweet food and Mounjaro has turned down the dial for me. I still enjoy chocolate but the odd bit because it's nice, rather than having that burning urgency to binge loads of it. As you said 'if I want the chocolate...', but what I've found is I no longer want the chocolate in the same way.
Rather than 'cheating', to me it's more leveling the playing field. It's helped me to make the healthy choices I could always manage on a diet but without my brain constantly trying to sabotage, plus I'm not feeling faint because my blood sugars are all over the place. That helps with sustained loss and hopefully maintained loss when I reach my goal.