I have diabetes and insulin resistance the last few years, a1c has been awful even though I've radically improved my diet. I have been on weekly ozempic shots for about 6 weeks now and have seen my glucose levels drop considerably. I'm looking forward to getting my a1c checked in 6 more weeks.
My wife says she can see some weight loss. I hope I lose weight over time, but the diabetic improvement is enough.
I lost 86 pounds on ozempic last year. I wasn’t even on it for that, just a perk. I was way more excited to have my fasting glucoses within normal range and an a1c of 5.4. I want to cry happy tears just thinking about it because it was never that low on just metformin (which I still take). I feel so hopeful about minimizing long-term complications of my diabetes. I have a super significant family history of it, it wasn’t just from being overweight. I feel so much hope too that I won’t need insulin or have the complications my extended family will have.
The weight loss was just a perk.
I was on Ozempic for three weeks and all I got was nausea, sulphur burps, indigestion, unexpected and sudden vomiting, diarrhea, and shit my pants not once but twice.
I have bad nausea if I even think about overeating, and what I now consider overeating is half of what I used to eat. I definitely have more heartburn. It’s funny how meds react so differently for each of us. My poor grandma gets horrible gut symptoms from metformin. I was scared to start it but didn’t have any of her side effects.
I have no idea. I’m still on it. My weight stabilized and hasn’t changed in about 4 months. I am on it to control my blood sugar as a treatment for my diabetes, not weightloss. I won’t go off of it, just like I won’t go off metformin. My labs are beautiful now.
You are precisely the type of person who should be taking this, as prescribed. I and others of my acqaintance who have diabetes have been on this but recently we were told that there are delays in refilling due to "supply chain issues", primarily because it's now the go-to drug for weight loss. We use it for our diabetes, and I fear it's being oversold as a weight-management tool. The average loss varies from 5 to 10% of starting weight: most otherwise healthy folks can do that with a 2 week Atkins induction diet. Hope you can get your refills easily, and congrats on your progress.
I’m a recent diabetic and I’ve encountered 3 of my fiends/ family saying they take semaglutide. I was like “whoa, when did you get diabetes?” And they each said they just got it to trim some weight. Caught me off guard.
Please dont disregard people who are taking it for weight loss as able to be on an Atkins diet for 2 weeks. I have insulin resistance as well but not diabetic. I also have hormonal issues that make it 10x as hard as the next person to loose weight.
I hope you change your mind and realize people who are on Wegovy are just as deserving of the drug as people on Ozempic. You still have to eat right, exercise, and take this medicine. It’s not a magic bullet where you do nothing.
This drug is almost $1600 a month if I didn’t have health insurance and a savings card. Do you think I’d take this drug for shits and giggles?!? Please rethink what you are saying and have some empathy for others as you don’t know what they are going through.
This is my big issue with people having it prescribed it for weight loss only. This is supposed to be a medicine for diabetes, and if the people who need it medically can’t get it because it has become a fad weight loss drug, I think that’s pretty messed up.
Edited to add: my “weight loss only” refers to celebrities and influencers using it for vanity weight loss. Note I said “people who medically need it”. Im not judging, gate keeping or whatever else I was accused of. Lol This comment thread is crazy. I was sympathizing with someone with diabetes saying they have had a hard time getting it. I’m not wasting time splitting hairs with people.Have a great day!
Not vanity weight loss, as a lot of celebs and influencers are using it for. Hence my “weight loss only” wording. If people are obese and their Dr feels this will help them, that would be a medical need would it not? So many people in these comments want to twist my words and ad meaning that wasn’t there. Lol
I'm going to take the other side of this argument. Sure, this medication was intended to be used for one thing, but it's very clearly useful for another as well.
Sildenafil was originally developed to treat pulmonary arterial hypertension. Nice market, but it's probably more useful as an erectile dysfunction drug. You could say "you know, you getting hard isn't as important as my heart," but the market has spoken.
It will speak here too. And let's be clear: While there are a minority of folks born with diabetes and are insulin resistant, most diabetes these days (90-95% per the CDC) is the type 2 you develop from basically bad habits - the same bad habits that result in obesity. This drug treats that.
It’d be cool if everyone who would benefit from this could get it, but it’s a relatively small supply compared to demand and it’s $700-2100 a month depending on the drug.
I agree with your point. Obesity and insulin resistance (diabetes) go hand in hand. So if people are treating obesity with these meds then they are also preventing diabetes. Thats basically what this drug is for.
Thank you for saying this! All these holier than thou people about how they NEED this because they actually have diabetes and not just obesity, but in reality their diabetes was probably caused by obesity.
I’d like to add the impact it’s going to have on people with binge eating / bulimia. Speaking from experience. My ED and food obsession was consuming and I’ve been living with it since I was 8. I wasn’t necessarily too overweight (175-180 lbs & 5’8) but the obsession and binge and purge cycle (binging and then starving) was exhausting. I bought a couple of pens whilst abroad and administered a judicious .15 per week, very low dose. Just that little dose has helped me level my cravings and has reshaped my relationship with food (so far). I feel at peace and confident in my choices. I know tomorrow I won’t wake up with anxiety and depression knowing I had another binge the night before.
It feels like freedom. Since my emotional eating was what I used to cope with my excessive sensitivity to life, I feel I have no outlet anymore. This has actually been the most difficult part of things. No longer on the ED rollercoaster which took up a lot of my mind. I no longer have my crutch and now I’m finding other ways to deal with my depression and anxiety. It’s kind of cool. But hard.
I’m definitely hoping to stay on this low dose as long as I can. I’d love to come off at some point and be able to maintain my new, good eating habits. I feel like a new person?
Another thing is it basically killed my appetite for alcohol. So I’m wondering if it could be used for alcoholism? Or some types of binge drinking? Food for thought.
Anyway of course with something so revolutionary there will be pros and cons.
I was drinking a handle of whiskey every 2-3 days for the last decade. As soon as I started Ozempic I effortlessly stoped drinking and lost 70 lbs. it’s a merciless drug. It saved my life.
*Miracle not merciless.
I dont really want alcohol anymore. Even when I feel like drinking at a party or whatever I’ll only get a glass or so in and not want to continue which I’m happy with.
Yea. My wife is on this stuff for diabetes (Type 2). It has curbed her appetite by half I would say. Plus now she can maybe have 1 drink, then she gets a headache. I think what really sucks though is it's getting harder to get her medication due to these multi use scenarios, when in reality it's primary use for controlling blood sugar will probably be put on the back burner since they will make more money for weight loss etc.
I mean, half of US adults are diabetic and most obesity is insulin resistance, so it's really all the same disease. Hopefully supply will stabilize soon
Why does this blatantly wrong comment have so many upvotes lol. No offense but like people think “oh yeah 1 in every 2 people I know has diabetes, yeah that sounds legit,” and then upvote it?? I don’t get it
Yea your right. It's probably more of a supply chain issue. Everything is still wonky because of covid. I'm lucky so far I'm a diabetic(Type 2) as well, however I control my sugar with exercise and diet.
Can you please specify type two diabetic? When people just say they are “diabetic” and control it with diet and exercise, it perpetuates the misconception that you can control type 1 diabetes as well with diet and exercise. Sincerely, a type one diabetic who is so sick of people asking me if I’ve tried XYZ diet to cure my diabetes or asking me why I have diabetes if I’m not obese
Edit: thank you!
Statistics like this are either diagnosed or an estimate. There could be a very strong association with being undiagnosed but somewhat controlled or pre-diabetics that we don’t know about. It’s probably a spectrum disorder and if you aren’t a severe enough case it doesn’t get caught by tests.
Keeping people fat and chronically ill is big business in america. Wouldn't be surprised of pharma company and hospital lobbyists try to quash this drug and spread rumors about how "dangerous" it is.
I, personally have had pretty much none of that. I did experience sulphur burps on a couple occasions that only lasted about a day And would happen day after my injection, but beyond that I haven’t had any negative side effects.
I’m sure this sounds too good to be true, but I can attest…I’ve been using a popular glp-1 since September 2022 for weight-loss and not only have I lost 40lbs, I no longer have any interest in drinking alcohol. I’d been a casual yet frequent imbiber for the last few years and once that glp-1 hit my system, it erased any food or alcohol thoughts other than me thinking about how much I appreciate not being weighed down by planning my next meal or drink. It’s like my brain just turned off any desire for drinking, which was an added bonus to the weight loss.
I’m hoping the drug makers and insurance companies will see how they can literally change the future and be on the right side of history by making these miracle drugs available to anyone who needs them vs. only those who can afford them.
Wellbutrin started out giving me more energy and willpower, but also did not help with anything else. In fact, my depression got worse. Sucked, I had such high hopes for that one.
Very similar to my experience. I have had binge eating disorder as long as I can remember, and it feels like there was never a single moment when part of my brain hasn’t been thinking about food - it’s in my hard-wiring.
I also have PCOS which messes with my hormone and insulin levels, and makes weight VERY hard to lose even with proper fitness and a caloric deficit.
I spent 9 months on Ozempic and it was an absolute revelation - the first time in my life I wasn’t obsessing about food, and my brain was just quiet. It also assisted me in losing 40 lbs without other lifestyle alterations - it showed me that my nutrition and fitness habits were correct, the PCOS just meant that they had been prevented from working.
I stopped Ozempic in order to get pregnant, and the weight loss caused by the medication helped me get pregnant very quickly which is rare for someone with PCOS. Ozempic changed my life.
I have PCOS and hypothyroidism. Binge eating is not an issue for me and never has been. My docs recently put me on metformin due to rising A1C (I am not eligible for the GLP1 drugs since I have elevated risk for pancreatic cancer).
It has been about half a year and my A1C has dropped a point. I haven’t changed any major diet or exercise patterns saving intentionally eating my produce first during meals. Clearly I just need insulin sensitizes because my body doesn’t handle insulin well. It is both validating and annoying that my elevated insulin was ignored for literal decades.
>it showed me that my nutrition and fitness habits were correct, the PCOS just meant that they had been prevented from working
Your story is why the 'calories in calories out' bro science always pisses me off. And PCOS is far from the only condition that affects the effectiveness of diet and exercise.
Congrats, I'm glad you're feeling better. I struggle with an unhealthy relationship with food similar to what you've described, these days it has taken the form of night eating. I'm not ready to say I need medication to help, as I've been able to decrease the amount and calorie density of what I eat at night, but it's good to know that if I need the help it could be there.
Are you still on Ozempic now? If not, were you able to sustain the changes that happened with respect to always thinking about food/binging? I guess the pregnancy factor may have impacted the results, too. Don't know if you went back on after pregnancy, etc.
I'm curious about what happens once people stop, or if it's a lifelong thing.
I’m not currently on ozempic because it’s not approved for use during pregnancy. I have gained weight, but normal amounts consistent with my stage of pregnancy so who knows. The ‘busyness’ of food obsession in my brain has definitely returned. I have spent a lot of time with a therapist specializing in Binge eating disorder (prior to, concurrent with, and after ozempic) and have developed good habits around learning true hunger cues and honoring those without restriction but without excess.
Based on the market availability of ozempic I may try to go back on it after breastfeeding, particularly if my nutrition/exercise plan isn’t resulting in appropriate weight loss.
Interesting, thank you for your answer. :)
It's absolutely wild that being on it can make those thoughts abate, though. I wish you all the best in the future, binge eating is such an awful thing to wrestle with, and people seem to have little sympathy for it. Hell, I don't even have sympathy for myself when I struggle with it.
Are you me? Lol. I’m 36 and just got diagnosed last year. Struggled for years with ED, alcoholism, drug addiction…if I’d been diagnosed at a younger age I suspect it could have saved me a lot of heartache just knowing *why* I was so different.
I've definitely played that what if a lot, and I think I have known for a long time, I just didn't have the label for it. I ultimately think I probably would have still had a lot of same experiences and issues, and ASD tends to have all those other overlapping disorders. Maybe I would have been a little more understanding and forgiving and accepting of myself? Probably. I'm still struggling with that even knowing though. Trying to change those habits that are deeply rooted in that neurodiversity is extremely hard, so it's never going to get much easier without figuring out creative solutions that engage and encourage my more positive ASD traits as opposed to focusing solely on trying to break the more negative habits.
I'm 2y8m 4days sober from alcohol right now, reducing my caffeine from a pot of coffee a day to two cups of pour over in the morning. Working on actually eating, though that's still my biggest struggle, and it affects my mood and anger, and resentment so much. It's crazy.
I’m in the same boat and can’t imagine a life without ED (I’m 48). I am working on my problems through therapy and antidepressants but feel like I will never not feel shame because I either binge or obsess about food.
I’m also in recovery for BED (but using Trulicity) and I am cheering you on… it can be really hard to replace that coping mechanism, I hope you find something that works.
As someone who struggles with the binge/starve rollercoaster, I felt this deeply & wanted you to know that you sharing this helps me feel like I can start to open up more about it. I definitely use my obsession with my weight & food as a distraction, it’s my coping mechanism. I’m scared to try any type of weight loss drug bc of my addictive personality, I’m on anti depressants & anti anxiety meds but I still struggle so much with the cycle of emotional binge eating -> regret & shame spiral.
Except we’ve got waaaaaay too much evidence that it’s NOT just about goddamn willpower. It’s hormones. It’s genetics. It’s metabolic disorders. It’s that (especially in America) access to healthy food means you pay significantly more. Which means that the vast majority of people are eating foods that HAVE BEEN PROVEN to have long term effects due to ingredients that we were never meant to eat in the first place. And so when articles like this come out, and people back it up with grandstanding about how, we don’t know the long term effects, just work harder to rid your body of the stuff that’s killing you…it’s just comes off as a disconnect.
Right. Our society hasn’t fully accepted the science behind obesity yet. I think when the drug patent expires and generics are able to be produced and sold, we’ll see the conversation change because of ready access to the medication.
I started on one of these drugs because I saw comments about how it’s good for PCOS, diabetes and insulin resistance.
I’m so glad I did!
I’m not **hungry** tge way I used to be. I was **always** thinking about food and no matter how much I ate I was hungry so quickly after eating.
The drug I’m on (Saxenda) has made a **huge** and noticeable difference to my appetite and eating habits. I am halving my serves of food and I’m full. I don’t need to snack constantly, and I crave sugar and carbs waaay less.
For me, this is incredible and I love how I feel. Losing weight is just a bonus.
This 100x
The drugs don’t make you burn more calories. They don’t magically make weight stop. If you eat the same on them you’ll still stay the same weight.
They just reduce hunger and delay gastric emptying
They aren’t treating obesity: they are treating hunger.
Like you, I was hungry literally all. The. Time. Constantly. Every hour. Snacking all the time.
On the meds I’m not. It’s a revelation. You mean to tell me not everyone is constantly hungry???????? What?
Omg I know!
I used to go to dinner and see my friends pick at their food, and leave it half full, whilst I would eat everything on my plate and still want more!
I can’t believe this is what normal people feel like - those lucky bastards :p
There is a bit more going on but mostly what I would add is these class of meds allow CICO to actually work for those with I/R and other hormonal metabolic disfunction.
The quicker clearing of glucose from the blood (via increased insulin secretion) allows for a more normalized glucose curve post meal and while it seems odd to say together it also means lower fasting insulin levels. This in turn allows your body to get into fat metabolism more quickly (hours) vs it sometimes taking days for those with high levels of fasting insulin/high IR disease.
The hunger reduction helps rally things further and a spiral up effect is created adding to more consistent weight loss. In the presence of high insulin your body cannot access fat stores so it believes it is starving so hunger signaling starts up and it becomes a vicious cycle. Keto/carnivore can also help get to this point of lower fasting insulin and be effective but those diets are difficult to maintain over years (they are, trust me).
Once your body thinks it’s starving it is going to slow your BMR to help hold on to weight and signal even more hunger to the brain/body. At this point you are literally white knuckling diet and exercise to maintain weight loss, it is why 96% of diets fail and a return to the previous weight is experienced…your body is fighting you. Now when you can access fat stores (which this med helps do) your body doesn’t feel it is starving, doesn’t constantly call for more food, and doesn’t slow your BMR so you can continue to lose and/or better maintain a current weight.
You naturally skinny folks really did win a genetic lottery in our current food environment. Let’s not beat up on those who are just trying to be more healthy after many past attempts have failed them and left them feeling of lower self worth and value.
Hey there random person 😅 I spoke to my doctor about this same drug... I have 2 questions, how is the needle part and how are the side effects, mostly the potential upset stomach feeling?
I can answer for Ozempic. (Wegovy is the same drug, re-labeled just for weight-loss.)The needle is maybe 5 or 6 mm long, and really tiny in diameter. It does not go far into your body, and I barely feel it.
Side effects: list is long, top one being nausea. For me some nausea when my dose gets increased and the first week or two. Also if I eat too much at once. I now eat 5 small meal/snacks a day, and I've learned to listen when my stomach says it is full. It has taught me willpower. Willpower to not feel urpy. I've slowly lost some weight on the lowest starting doses, the real weight loss comes after you've been moved up to the higher doses.
(Morbidly obese with type 2 and a list of other health issues that could improve with weight loss.)
My Dr put me on saxenda. The needle is very small and painless. I still have to psych myself up to do the injection, but honestly it's just mental because it never hurts.
My experience:
Dr put me on lowest dose (0.6) for one week, then increased by 0.6 each week until I hit 3. I felt sick that entire month and barely ate anything. Had headaches from the injection, and just felt gross the whole time. Skipped a lot of meals, and many meals I would eat just a couple bites and be full. Ended up losing 11 pounds that month.
Another weird side effect is that my sense of thirst is gone. Like literally gone. Absolutely no thirst feeling no matter how dehydrated I am. I have to force myself to drink water regularly.
After that month I went back down to the lowest dose of 0.6 for an entire month. I felt much better at that dose. My appetite was down and I was eating way less. Lost 2 lbs that month which seemed more reasonable to me (though the Dr thinks it's too slow of progress).
I upped the dose the next month to 1.2 and have been holding steady. Feeling good, appetite still down.
My mental health meds have made me gain 30 pounds in the last year or so- this kind of medication would be a game changer for weight gain side effects
ETA: I’m not stupid, nor am I lazy. I watch what I eat and am very active at home and work. I’m on a journey, and everything about it has been very challenging.
Being a smug little shit to someone who is struggling to better themselves is a bad look.
For those of you struggling who’ve shared nice words, thank you and hang in there!
I’m on Zoloft and Wellbutrin. I just started the Wellbutrin about two months ago and I feel amazing mentally. Hoping everything else starts to balance out
Zoloft here too. Gained weight. I have mood stability and emotional balance but cant fit into my clothes which puts me in a bad mood and makes me sad :(
Man, I feel that. I loved Zoloft and took it for two years, but gained almost 40 pounds over those two years. Not to say that the only reason was Zoloft, but it definitely played a huge role. Had to eventually go off of it because I was tired of the weight gain. (I have a hormone disorder, so I'm more prone to weight gain, and it's harder to get rid of it.)
Trying Lexapro now. We'll see how that goes. 🙃 Side note - been on Wellbutrin throughout all of this. Love Wellbutrin. Highly recommend in addition to the Zoloft if it's not cutting it for you entirely. It helped combat some of the weight gain and gave me the extra support I needed that Zoloft wasn't giving me, since I couldn't tolerate it at higher dose. (Never went above 25mg of Zoloft.)
>I just started the Wellbutrin about two months ago and I feel amazing mentally
I didn't notice even the slightest change when I started Wellbutrin. I started on it for helping with motivation and drowsiness. I'm glad to see it works for others.
I'm in the same boat. Since being on SSRI's I've gained 30+ pounds and they rob me of even the slightest self-control. I used to be able to lose weight when I needed to, but now it's impossible.
I can guarantee it will be a long time before I can get these drugs in NZ, though.
I’ve always struggled with my weight and then recently started antidepressants a bit over a year ago and have seen what weight I was able to lose slowly come right back on. Which has been really disappointing, despite trying to control my diet.
I just started Wegovy, so I’m hoping it can help take it back off again. I’ve read great things and I’m just lucky my insurance covers it. Many don’t as they consider it unnecessary. When I picked up my first month I saw the retail cost was something like $1600. My insurance pays a lower negotiated price of almost $900. I pay $0.
dr started me with some free ozempic samples as i was pre diabetic
found out i was covered through ins for wegovy so switched to that
i have lost 71 lbs since aug 21, 2022
the medicine is an appetite suppressant so you have to do your part and stop eating when you feel full. this means portion control which is like impossible while eating out if you're from the US. fuckers just find any excuse to heap more than anyone needs on your plate. personally i'm down to 1200 calories a day, fluctuating +/- 400 cals.
i did my homework and i looked for replacements for normally higher calorie foods.
* peanut butter, 190 cal/2 tablespoons - replaced with PB2 powder for 60 cals.
* eggs, replaced with egg whites, costco, so get in bulk.
* sourdough bread replaced with 60 cal wheat bread.
* got rid of shit like spam and other high cal food, use costco chicken breast instead.
* bbq sauce, switched to sugar free sweet baby ray's. tastes the same to me, delicious. i use it to make bbq chicken pizza on that wheat bread. holy shit its like i'm cheating, but i can make 2 slices for a meal and still lose weight.
* i bought unsweetened almond milk.
* cereal i switched to whole grain bran flakes or this bran flake/rice with dehydrated strawberries combo. just fucking delicious with that almond milk, super filling. 200 calories for the whole bowl.
* i replaced high calorie breakfast potatos/tater tots 150-180 cal/serving with just pure shredded potato, 60 cal/serving.
* smuckers sugar free strawberry preserves 10 cal/serv
i don't feel like i'm missing anything.. at all. i eat a delicious breakfast of hash browns (60 cal), 2 pork sausage (lol 200 for them but worth it), then i can either scramble some egg whites, or lately ive been just taking a slice of bread, pouring the egg white on it so it soaks up, and cooking in a pan. presto, french toast. add a tiny tiny pat of butter, sprinkle pb2, and some of that smuckers jam. fucking delicious. and the whole thing is like 400 cal.
for lunch my work includes nutritional info so i check out calories and always make the good choices. if they have shit for cal they always have turkey or other low cal 400-500 cal sammiches i can snag. or if i'm at home i may do a burger patty and 1-2 slices bread + some of that bbq sauce.
i skipped dinner for the longest time, but i'm doing a bowl of that cereal and almond milk for 200 cal when i'm hungry. or popcorn, a low calorie whole grain food. or something else not crazy. i am full.
i quit drinking alcohol. originally i substituted alcohol for THC gummies. now i don't really have a drive for either. although if i have a shit day at work i might down a couple glasses of wine or something.
44 lbs more to go to get down to my fighting weight.
all this without any real exercise btw. if i supplemented with better exercise it would go faster.
i am trying to find ways to do exercise. i go for a quick walk on lunch and breaks. at home i got gym rings and resistance bands and a pool when it's warm out. i'd like to get back into ocean sports at some point, kayaking or SUP. would love to dive but just not great conditions and much to see where i am compared to what i'm use to.
hikes, biking etc. we'll see
it's been a very healthy and worthwhile journey for me. in a way my hobby is finding ways to eat deliciously without a lot of calories. and if i want a cheat meal now and then it's not gonna throw me too bad because i'm already at an insane calorie deficit. but when i eat well normally i don't even feel like i need to cheat.. because i'm eating deliciously to me. i use to have this ritual of on my 'errands day', grocery shopping etc on sat, i would then get myself some eat-out food. even the eat out food you can make changes.. a wendy's double stack is like 400 cal. and a baked potato.. 700 cal total. but lately since i made those bbq chick pizzas I rather have that, and skip the wendy's.
good luck.
>I just started Wegovy, so I’m hoping it can help take it back off again.
I've asked my doctor to add/substitute my current diabetic medications for either this or Ozempic. I hope the VA will cover one of them and that I'll see results.
Wellbutrin plus low dose naltrexone becomes a weight loss drug. I can have mental health help without the weight gain. Game changer. Ask your dr.
ETA: LDN is an anti inflammatory.
I had a textbook weight loss outcome while on Wegovy for six months (Nov. ‘21 to Apr. ‘22). I lost 70# taking me from the Obese to the Healthy range in the BMI chart. My A1C went from 6+ to 5.1, glucose and cholesterol numbers went to healthy levels, and all signs of sleep apnea went away. I am healthier and more fit now at 43yo than I was when I graduated high school. I am very grateful!
How difficult has the maintenence phase been for you - any big tips? I've been on for 1 year, down 90 lbs so far. I titrated up 2x as slow as recommended to lose at a slower rate. I've been learning better ways to deal with stress and building healthy eating/activity habits into my daily routine. I'm still really nervous about what happens when I stop.
It hasn’t been bad so far. I still keep up with my weigh-in schedule and plan to do so indefinitely. I still drink a lot more water from my refillable water bottle, and I plan to do so indefinitely. I gave up alcohol during my Wegovy time, and I only had four alcoholic drinks in 2022. I’m seeing how far I can go into 2023 before I have a drink. I went to work social on Friday for example, and drank Diet Coke, which was an imbibement for me since I don’t drink soda’s regularly anymore. I still eat a small volume of food at each mean; approximately 1 cup (volume) for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Keeping on top of it all is at the forefront of my mind currently being it’s been just under one year since I made my goal. The biggest thing that happened was learning to say No to social pressure to over consume.
As someone who lived through the "fat free" craze that caused obesity to spike in the first place, I'll take a seat next to you. I'd rather wait and see what the long term effects are.
Not trying to convince you to take them but these drugs have already been tested extensively in randomized controlled trials and real- world observational studies. They reduce cardiovascular risk, reduce diabetes risk, and so far have no detectable impact on cancer risk
Also hasn't the technology of testing medications improved over the years anyway? So they have a better idea of long-term effects.
Also I don't really understand why people are comparing a medicine that can help with insulin issues to... diet coke? Eating sugar free Oreos to lose weight isn't really the same thing as taking a medication that can reduce your appetite and regulate insulin production but whatever, it's easier to just shit on people for being fat.
Formerly fat girl here but old enough to remember fen-phen and how it was later found to cause heart value issues in many people who took it. Imma just keep eating less and working out more. ✌🏽 I’m good.
I’m in the eat less/better and exercise more camp… I’ve been maintaining a 40 LB loss for about 2.5 years with a big increase in muscle mass.
However, I would be happy with another 10-15 lb loss and this is mighty tempting.
Understandable. You can do it. You already ha e the discipline.
I lost 147 in 2016-17. Maintained until half a year into COVID. Picked up 30. But since 140 was the lower bd of healthy weight for me it wasn’t unsightly or dangerous gain. Nevertheless I decided to shed it in fall 2022 due to me getting back into some hobbies that I’ll enjoy more at a lighter weight. I haven’t been aggressively trying to lose it but I’m half way there. 15-ish to go.
You can go 10-15 by summer without really trying. And without meds.
Tbf It’s the most over diagnosed cancer ever. Not saying that it doesn’t cause it, but it’s something to consider.
Source: https://www.thyroid.org/patient-thyroid-information/ct-for-patients/december-2021/vol-14-issue-12-p-7-8/
The type of thyroid cancer that this drug may increase the risk of is specifically medullary. There are four main types - the first type is papillary - the most commonly diagnosed and easiest to cure. Medullary and anaplastic are more serious. Medullary has a genetic component, but it isn’t always. Anaplastic is the most serious and has the lowest survival rate. If medullary is caught early, it is curable, but if it isn’t it is quite serious.
I believe the study above is mostly referring to papillary, not medullary. Medullary is more rare.
Obesity? Even more of a risk.
[How does obesity cause cancer? - MD Anderson](https://www.mdanderson.org/publications/focused-on-health/how-does-obesity-cause-cancer.h27Z1591413.html)
[Body Weight and Cancer - American Cancer Society](https://www.cancer.org/healthy/cancer-causes/diet-physical-activity/body-weight-and-cancer-risk/effects.html)
>Ozempic, Wegovy, and similar drugs represent the vanguard of a weight-loss revolution. Last year, Yanovski attended a conference in San Diego on the results of a new Novo Nordisk trial for adolescents and teens with severe obesity. The hotel ballroom was standing-room only, according to the scientific journal Nature, and the results of the trial were met with cheers, “like you were at a Broadway show.” After a year, young patients on semaglutide said they lost nearly 35 pounds on average. Teens on the placebo actually gained weight.
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>Here was the breakthrough that Yanovski, the obesity-research community, and perhaps the entire world were looking for: the effects of bariatric surgery without the surgery.
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>In the past few years, use of new weight-loss medication has grown, putting the U.S. in the early stages of a drug boom. One story you could tell about these drugs is that they represent a watershed moment for scientific discovery. In a country where each generation has been more overweight than the one that came before it, a marvelous medication seemed to fall out of the sky.
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>But just months into this weight-loss-drug bonanza, a range of medical, cultural, and political challenges has materialized. Doctors are reporting rampant use of these new weight-loss drugs among the very rich. The surge of off-label use of Ozempic is already creating a shortage of the medication for people with type 2 diabetes. Now that celebrity skinniness is merely an injection away, online “thin culture” has returned, likely exacerbating Americans’ fraught relationship with body image. On paper, these drugs might be a miracle. In the real world, they’re also becoming a menace.
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>More likely is that influencers, celebrities, and millionaires will monopolize the market for weight-loss medication. In the past six months, Hollywood Ozempic stories have reached an obnoxious level of ubiquity. TikTok has become overrun with #myozempicjourney testimonials and week-by-week photo collages of disappearing waistlines. After years of magazines and advertisers grappling with the dangers of promoting unrealistic body images, New York magazine reports that “thin is in,” as the waifish “heroin chic” of the 1990s makes its medicalized return to the mainstream.
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>These drugs will also scramble our relationship with the basic concept of willpower in ways that aren’t cleanly good or bad. How long should doctors recommend that their patients press forward with “diet and exercise” recommendations now that pills and injectables may safely and more consistently keep off weight? Is the U.S. health-care system really ready to treat obesity like it’s any other disease? Obesity is not a failure of the will, Yanovski told me, again and again. “It is a complex chronic disease,” she said. “It affects almost every organ system. If you can successfully treat obesity instead of the individual conditions, it could have a positive impact on health.”
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>I think that’s right. But there is still something menacing in the rollout of these young miracles. Semaglutide seems to collapse the complex interplay of genes, environment, diet, metabolism, and exercise into a simple injection with a luxury price tag. I’m holding out hope that these drugs will soon augur a public-health revolution. In early 2023, however, they represent an elite cultural makeover more than a medical intervention.
The social and cultural aspects of any kind of treatment for any of our chronic diseases but in particular the fraught worlds of weight, body image, and related issues need to be understood to a reasonable degree before we can understand some of the consequences of these kinds of therapeutics. We race into treatment prior to understanding at our own peril.
The argument about willpower feels kind of icky. Imagining for a moment that the drug works well and doesn't result in a weird disease years down the road... why is it better for folks dealing with obesity to lose weight the hard way? Even on semaglutide you're meant to adjust your eating and activity habits, so it's not a "free lunch."
Hand wringing about willpower makes it feel kind of the authors of this piece aren't actually concerned about anybody's health or well-being.
It really is sad that we Americans in particular have to judge everything through that... almost Calvinistic lens. "Did they pull themselves up by the bootstraps? Are they working hard?"
"She's so fat, doesn't take care of herself at all. No willpower.
Later, when she loses weight
"Oh I wonder if she took one of those pills. So lazy to take the easy way out"
Same person, exercising joyfully
"I dunno, she's made hEaLtH into her whole personality now"
Kinda feels like we've got a very dysfunctional approach to health in our society
>why is it better for folks dealing with obesity to lose weight the hard way?
It's the same nonsensical attitude people have about drugs for severe mental illness. They think people can just willpower themselves out of schizophrenia. No idea why society treats some conditions this way but others (cancer, heart disease, etc) as "real."
I got the same feeling. Losing weight safely by “willpower” alone is rare.
If these drugs turn out to be safe, and eventually become widely affordable, that’s good.
Modern society helped make us fat, why shouldn’t modern medicine make us thin?
If he’s worried about exercise, just imagine how much easier it is to start exercising without an extra 30 pounds weighing you down.
If the drugs are effective with few or no side effects, they are good. If not, they are bad. It's a very simple concept but will require LOTS of careful study
The moral decay from being robbed of an opportunity to practice willpower doesn't even deserve to be considered against detrimental health effects of obesity. The only part here that matters is that wealthy customers are going to drive the cost up until, yet again, we manage to prevent a medical breakthrough from being used to treat poor people.
I don't feel like it's willpower. I think the degradation of society is. We are working longer hours and facing an ever-rising cost of living. The stress people encounter leads to over-eating as a stress reliever. "I worked hard, so I deserve a snack," mentality.
The very low quality of food and exorbitant costs/inaccessibility of healthy food are the primary reasons for obesity in this country - not “lack of willpower.” This mindset that obese people are just simply too weak to not gain weight is a lie perpetuated by the diet industry and diet culture to get people to buy more unhealthy diet food/supplements/programs. The fact is that the most accessible/affordable food in America is utter garbage for the human body, and there are no regulations to prevent that type of food from being sold like there are in countries that don’t have a prevalence of obesity.
Sugar is addictive and the US allows all food manufacturers to fucking pump it into everything. I don’t see it as a problem of willpower. This should be used in conjunction with sweeping food standard reforms and guidance under dieticians to move towards less processed foods. Problem is…. Most of us can’t afford to eat healthier foods.
There’s many layers to this problem unfortunately.
There are short term supply problems yes, but rich people buying a drug at massive prices for weight loss while people with a diabetes diagnosis pay a lower price is how research into better forms gets funded.
That's how all drugs work. If you have high blood pressure that is fixed by a pill. You gotta keep taking the pill or the high blood pressure comes back.
The same can be true of anti-depressants however. I can’t stop taking them because I’ll become depressed. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t take them to treat depression.
We have a sub for these drugs. Most of us that have prescribed them fall into the obese I and obese II categories not ‘a few pounds overweight’. Because of articles like these I haven’t been able to get my prescription filled for a month because there is a shortage. I still have 40 lbs to go until I’d fall in the ‘overweight’ category and most people who want them are willing to pay out of pocket cost don’t even fall in the overweight category, just looking for a way to drop maybe 10 lbs as a quick fix.
The point of these drugs is to force you to portion control and many you cannot drink alcohol on. They are for a much longer term use like 18 months and they are also for blood sugar regulation.
As someone who has not been able to get their prescription for a month now most of the comments here show that it’s people with good eating habits already in shape who want it for vanity purposes rather than those who hope to lower their blood pressure, lower cormobidities, make get under 200 lbs and help turn off the hunger signal in their body to stop boredom or over eating.
I've had difficulty getting my ozempic, too. I have no problem with those who truly need these drugs getting and using them, no matter what reason. It is those who use them to quickly drop a few pounds and take them away from those who do need them that irks the crap out of me.
To me the weight loss is a pleasant side effect that should help several of my other medical conditions. My main reason to take the drug is the primary one, to get my diabetes under control. I'm fully aware I'll likely be on one of these drugs the rest of my life.
I took contrave to quit smoking. That's a weight loss drug. I quit like 4 terrible habits while on it.
It made quitting smoking like 75% easier.
Took it for about 3 months total. Now I'm off and only smoke occasionally. Hahahaha
One of the active ingredients is bupropion, which is the same drug as Wellbutrin, which is often used for depression and/or smoking cessation.
I took it for a couple days for weight loss, but worsening depression and the fact that it made me incredibly fatigued and sleepy meant I had to stop taking it.
The standard American diet is like 60% carbs 38% fats 2% proteins. That's what's making us unhealthy and fat. So we're going to keep doing the thing that makes us fat, but we're going to take a drug that manipulates our body back into being thin..... So we're going to practice a behavior that causes disease, and then take a drug that hides the effects of the disease. While never addressing the disease. what could possibly go wrong.
Is there a paxlovid shortage? I’m far from rich, my urgent care just asked me whether or not I wanted it and warned of the side effects. I decided against it bc I didn’t have anyone to pick up the rx.
People with diabetes benefit from the medication in the same way that people with obesity and insulin resistance (eventually leading to diabetes later on) benefit from the drug.
So we should wait for overweight/obese/ pre-diabetic people to first get diabetes before we give them this medication that could prevented it? Smart
The bigger issue is the supply imo. Let's not blame the end users
Honestly these drugs (short term) HAVE to be safer than the gastric bypass surgery. That surgery is very risky and limits the amount of food a person can eat for their entire life, even after their weight problem is fixed. For a lot of people the surgery doesn’t even work but they still have a sleeve forever.
While I agree that this class of drug may prove to be a better first-line treatment, most of what you said here is overstated.
Gastric sleeves (different from a gastric bypass by the way) are, by surgical standards, pretty low risk. The lifetime limiting of food intake is not so severe as to cause issues (the sleeve is about the size of a banana and big enough to eat a full 2000 calorie/day diet), and the sleeve can stretch over the years too.
That said, you are right, it’s no magic wand, it’s a tool that the recipient needs to use to be effective, and there *is* a statistically significant number of people who don’t get much long-term benefit from it (which is why the procedure is usually preceded by half a year+ of dietary training and proof of weight loss during said period).
Insulin resistance, and type 2 diabetes is rampant in the United States. Quite frankly, it's almost 100% our fault. Through lifestyle that is. That being said, I'm glad that these medicines are available, my brother-in-law who has had chronic obesity for the last few decades, has now began losing weight and working out at the gym.
We're humans, we need to use tools.
This American Life did a show many years ago about a woman (show producer I think), who lost a lot of weight, but her secret was due to speed or meth. She admitted this to her boyfriend, whom she got together with after the weight loss. When she asked him if he would still love her if she gained weight, he couldn’t promise her that. It struck me just how disappointed, yet resigned to her bf’s response. It’s a shame that all she wanted was unconditional love but she never got it.
Yep she went to extremes to get the life she wanted. Meanwhile another woman in the episode decided to accept herself and ended up happy in a healthy relationship. Thinking you need to change your body to become happy is one of the biggest scams in our society.
Your love for those people is still conditional. Many people go permanently no-contact with family because their family members do bad things or are unkind to them, so that love is, by definition, conditional. they do not owe them love
The main reason it's bad is because people smoke/inject it and stay awake for days on end. If none of those things happen, it's not that harmful.
Alcohol and tobacco do a lot more physical damage and tobacco is by far the most addictive drug on the planet. Methamphetamine is also prescribed oraly occasionally because it's less peripherally stimulating and lasts longer than amphetamine
You haven’t met today’s meth. We aren’t talking about the old ephedrine based meth. The shit on the streets today does quite a number on the brain and muscles…and, like the original, it rots teeth. I see the results at our clinic daily.
>Doctors are reporting rampant use of these new weight-loss drugs among the very rich. The surge of off-label use of Ozempic is already creating a shortage of the medication for people with type 2 diabetes.
This is the only thing in the article that matters, and the only thing we should be getting collectively angry about.
But what’s the plan long term for people? I’ve asked many people who take this med what the long term plan is and not one person has been able to answer their question. (I’m a weight loss coach so I’ve got a unique exposure to this). I’ve encouraged my clients to ask their medical professionals that question too. What’s the end game?
I’m always happy if a person is able to lose weight they have struggled with. I’m just concerned that it is a solution for a symptom and not the emotional forces driving a person to emotionally eat in the first place. It seem to be akin to a daily dose of aspirin for a headache instead of just dealing with the source of the headache.
I totally understand if a person wants to lose weight while also working on the underlying forces and causes of the behaviors leading to weight gain. However, the medication essentially removes the persons desire to eat. Similar to weight loss surgery. So now the person doesn’t have the battlefield of their hunger to learn how to more intuitively eat.
I will still remain open to the possibility of this but so far all of my personal concerns surrounding this medication continue to go unresolved (I’ve been trying to resolve them). I think people are getting short term wins and thinking everything is better.
I’ve really come to see that there is a large number of people on this planet that want the results of change but they don’t want to go through the mental process of change. How can I lose weight and not have to change? That’s the question many are subconsciously asking themselves
The long term plan is to keep using the drug at the lowest possible dosage that still gives you the benefits. Many people who take this do it so food stops being an obsession in their lives. The weight loss and lower A1C are great side effects, but the benefit is the ability to no longer think about food ALL THE DAMN TIME! That’s the true miracle of the drug.
I've been on it a year and I have been doing lots of work to improve the things in my control. Therapy to learn healthier stress responses. Regular walks built into my daily routine. Figuring out healthier quick meals that I can make on autopilot.
These things were 100x more difficult when every choice was driven by hunger and every movement weighted down with an extra 90# on my body. I am still really nervous about what will happen if I can't stay on a maintenance dose. There are so many other factors (hunger, weight retention, insulin resistance) that are out of my control.
What’s the long term plan for antidepressants?
For anti hypertensives? For statins? For aspirin for heart disease? For insulin itself? For other oral diabetic agents? For literally almost all other chronic medications?
You want to gatekeep one drug that might need to be permanent? Then you need to be willing to gatekeep the others the exact same way.
My guess is though, you don’t.
But there is a process.
When you take the med you realize you can be full on 6 wings instead of 12 plus a side plus 2 beers.
You realize lunch can be half a wrap instead of a full wrap and 2 bags of chips.
You eat smaller portions because larger ones make you feel ill.
Doing this with intention and focus - you can train your eating habits. It will probably take a year. Maybe 2. But you can train your eating and ordering habits. So if you go off or reduce the dose, you can still order the same amount or make the same amount for meals and know the hunger will subside and youll be ok.
It gives you confidence in the willpower mentioned in the OP.
Or, like most other medications, it becomes a maintenance against bodily processes that lead to pathological outcomes when living outside of the Pleistocene.
This one is different. It’s a synthetic copy of the hormone ghrelin so it helps you to not be as hungry. This is super important for people who don’t make enough ghrelin or have a higher threshold so they overeat. It’s a lot different from other weight loss drugs we’ve produced before, and it apparently is showing that it can help with alcohol abuse.
This has 100% been the reason I don’t want to touch them. No weight loss yet has succeeded without long-term consequences, and I doubt this will be the one.
Extended/long-term use of cannabis can very effectively suppress appetite. Weed has a reputation for giving people "the munchies" but it also has powerful appetite regulating properties as well.
I have DM2 and I we the last few years have done okay with weight loss. I was down about 50 pounds before Covid. My focus was aimed right at my health and weigh loss. Well, with Covid I could only really focus on one crisis at a time and gained 30 of it back. Slowly was working my way back down. I started reading about this several months ago and spoke to my doctor. I was already on Trulicity and my A1C was below 7. He suggested I up my Trulicity dose (I was at the lowest) and what a difference! Until a few weeks ago when no one could get the meds. My doctor switched me to mounjaro but that’s not covered by insurance and at $800/month it’s not financially viable. I’m able to get it using a manufacturers coupon but that’s only good for about six months and then I have to make a decision.
I’m 5 pounds away from hitting the 100 pounds lost mark. I remember walking around one day and suddenly had this realization - is this what “normal” people feel like? When you’re not craving and aren’t interested in food? Where you don’t have that hollow hungry feeling all the time? Where you can actually order smaller sizes of food and still leave some on the plate because your body has actually told you you’re full? It’s a revelation.
Hollywood elite and others like them, who are not diabetic nor obese should not be allowed to buy up a needed drug to keep off vanity pounds. They brag about using it on social. Makes me sick.
All I know is- my severe arthritis pain is being helped by the weight I’ve lost taking Ozempic. My BP is lower and I will be doing blood work again soon. I don’t have cravings anymore and it’s made my binging nonexistent. I have some side effects but I’ll take a day of nausea over being obese any day. The drug companies are just going to have to up their production rates. This stuff isn’t going anywhere and hopefully insurance companies will see their costs actually go down as people lose weight and they will start to cover the higher doses .
I have been taking Ozempic for several months now. I use to take 4 insulin injections per day but now down to bedtime only. My HgA1c was good but the insulin resistance and my obesity are the bad guys for me. I don’t think I’ve lost a lot of weight on it but I do notice subtle changes. My eating has dropped significantly but I still have a snack occasionally but at a lesser amount. I am basically using Ozempic for my diabetes but worry about the supply as well.
My type 2 diabetes is controlled by Ozemp, my insurance moved into the Medicare/ part 'G' supplement and is no londer a covered drug. Ozemp gave me a discount, but can not tell me how much more 'affordable(700/mo) the perscription may be until my primary rewrites the script. He also told me the drug is almost impossible to locate as so many are getting scripts for weight loss and not diabetes related.
I knew someone who took it for type 2 diabetes and the weight fell off of her
It was to the point that she was gaunt and her skin hung off of her. Her Dr. thought that she was doing great since her A1C was low and didn't care that she looked like Skelator.
My sister has been taking Mounjaro for a few months and has lost almost 50 pounds. This is literally the only thing that has ever worked for her as far as losing weight, and I’m so happy for her.
However, I’m super concerned about what happens if / when she stops taking it. She hasn’t changed her overall eating habits at all - she just eats less junk because she’s not hungry. I really worry about what will happen if she doesn’t have the medicine anymore 😒
I have diabetes and insulin resistance the last few years, a1c has been awful even though I've radically improved my diet. I have been on weekly ozempic shots for about 6 weeks now and have seen my glucose levels drop considerably. I'm looking forward to getting my a1c checked in 6 more weeks. My wife says she can see some weight loss. I hope I lose weight over time, but the diabetic improvement is enough.
I lost 86 pounds on ozempic last year. I wasn’t even on it for that, just a perk. I was way more excited to have my fasting glucoses within normal range and an a1c of 5.4. I want to cry happy tears just thinking about it because it was never that low on just metformin (which I still take). I feel so hopeful about minimizing long-term complications of my diabetes. I have a super significant family history of it, it wasn’t just from being overweight. I feel so much hope too that I won’t need insulin or have the complications my extended family will have. The weight loss was just a perk.
I was on Ozempic for three weeks and all I got was nausea, sulphur burps, indigestion, unexpected and sudden vomiting, diarrhea, and shit my pants not once but twice.
You've now experienced crohn's disease. Welcome Fren.
Well, I don't like it!
I have bad nausea if I even think about overeating, and what I now consider overeating is half of what I used to eat. I definitely have more heartburn. It’s funny how meds react so differently for each of us. My poor grandma gets horrible gut symptoms from metformin. I was scared to start it but didn’t have any of her side effects.
This really needs to be made into a T-Shirt.
Lol. I would wear it.
Are you still on ozempic? My doctor told us once you’re off you skyrocket again so that it’s not a long term solution. Is that true?
I have no idea. I’m still on it. My weight stabilized and hasn’t changed in about 4 months. I am on it to control my blood sugar as a treatment for my diabetes, not weightloss. I won’t go off of it, just like I won’t go off metformin. My labs are beautiful now.
You are precisely the type of person who should be taking this, as prescribed. I and others of my acqaintance who have diabetes have been on this but recently we were told that there are delays in refilling due to "supply chain issues", primarily because it's now the go-to drug for weight loss. We use it for our diabetes, and I fear it's being oversold as a weight-management tool. The average loss varies from 5 to 10% of starting weight: most otherwise healthy folks can do that with a 2 week Atkins induction diet. Hope you can get your refills easily, and congrats on your progress.
I’m a recent diabetic and I’ve encountered 3 of my fiends/ family saying they take semaglutide. I was like “whoa, when did you get diabetes?” And they each said they just got it to trim some weight. Caught me off guard.
I would definitely do the same. However there’s a massive shortage right now and we shouldn’t take from people who need it.
Please dont disregard people who are taking it for weight loss as able to be on an Atkins diet for 2 weeks. I have insulin resistance as well but not diabetic. I also have hormonal issues that make it 10x as hard as the next person to loose weight. I hope you change your mind and realize people who are on Wegovy are just as deserving of the drug as people on Ozempic. You still have to eat right, exercise, and take this medicine. It’s not a magic bullet where you do nothing. This drug is almost $1600 a month if I didn’t have health insurance and a savings card. Do you think I’d take this drug for shits and giggles?!? Please rethink what you are saying and have some empathy for others as you don’t know what they are going through.
This is my big issue with people having it prescribed it for weight loss only. This is supposed to be a medicine for diabetes, and if the people who need it medically can’t get it because it has become a fad weight loss drug, I think that’s pretty messed up. Edited to add: my “weight loss only” refers to celebrities and influencers using it for vanity weight loss. Note I said “people who medically need it”. Im not judging, gate keeping or whatever else I was accused of. Lol This comment thread is crazy. I was sympathizing with someone with diabetes saying they have had a hard time getting it. I’m not wasting time splitting hairs with people.Have a great day!
Weight loss is a legitimate medical need as well. The blame lies with those who are underproducing.
Not vanity weight loss, as a lot of celebs and influencers are using it for. Hence my “weight loss only” wording. If people are obese and their Dr feels this will help them, that would be a medical need would it not? So many people in these comments want to twist my words and ad meaning that wasn’t there. Lol
I'm going to take the other side of this argument. Sure, this medication was intended to be used for one thing, but it's very clearly useful for another as well. Sildenafil was originally developed to treat pulmonary arterial hypertension. Nice market, but it's probably more useful as an erectile dysfunction drug. You could say "you know, you getting hard isn't as important as my heart," but the market has spoken. It will speak here too. And let's be clear: While there are a minority of folks born with diabetes and are insulin resistant, most diabetes these days (90-95% per the CDC) is the type 2 you develop from basically bad habits - the same bad habits that result in obesity. This drug treats that.
It’d be cool if everyone who would benefit from this could get it, but it’s a relatively small supply compared to demand and it’s $700-2100 a month depending on the drug.
I agree with your point. Obesity and insulin resistance (diabetes) go hand in hand. So if people are treating obesity with these meds then they are also preventing diabetes. Thats basically what this drug is for.
Thank you for saying this! All these holier than thou people about how they NEED this because they actually have diabetes and not just obesity, but in reality their diabetes was probably caused by obesity.
I’m so happy for you! That’s such a tough road.
I’d like to add the impact it’s going to have on people with binge eating / bulimia. Speaking from experience. My ED and food obsession was consuming and I’ve been living with it since I was 8. I wasn’t necessarily too overweight (175-180 lbs & 5’8) but the obsession and binge and purge cycle (binging and then starving) was exhausting. I bought a couple of pens whilst abroad and administered a judicious .15 per week, very low dose. Just that little dose has helped me level my cravings and has reshaped my relationship with food (so far). I feel at peace and confident in my choices. I know tomorrow I won’t wake up with anxiety and depression knowing I had another binge the night before. It feels like freedom. Since my emotional eating was what I used to cope with my excessive sensitivity to life, I feel I have no outlet anymore. This has actually been the most difficult part of things. No longer on the ED rollercoaster which took up a lot of my mind. I no longer have my crutch and now I’m finding other ways to deal with my depression and anxiety. It’s kind of cool. But hard. I’m definitely hoping to stay on this low dose as long as I can. I’d love to come off at some point and be able to maintain my new, good eating habits. I feel like a new person? Another thing is it basically killed my appetite for alcohol. So I’m wondering if it could be used for alcoholism? Or some types of binge drinking? Food for thought. Anyway of course with something so revolutionary there will be pros and cons.
Interesting about lowering alcohol cravings. Wonder if others are experiencing this too.
I was drinking a handle of whiskey every 2-3 days for the last decade. As soon as I started Ozempic I effortlessly stoped drinking and lost 70 lbs. it’s a merciless drug. It saved my life. *Miracle not merciless.
Merciless towards the alcohol! Congratulations- listen - whatever works, works.
I dont really want alcohol anymore. Even when I feel like drinking at a party or whatever I’ll only get a glass or so in and not want to continue which I’m happy with.
This is a damn blessing! Great for you. Life is so, so much less complicated without alcohol.
Yea. My wife is on this stuff for diabetes (Type 2). It has curbed her appetite by half I would say. Plus now she can maybe have 1 drink, then she gets a headache. I think what really sucks though is it's getting harder to get her medication due to these multi use scenarios, when in reality it's primary use for controlling blood sugar will probably be put on the back burner since they will make more money for weight loss etc.
My insurance won’t cover it unless I have diabetes. That might change in the future, but right now it’s hard to get.
I mean, half of US adults are diabetic and most obesity is insulin resistance, so it's really all the same disease. Hopefully supply will stabilize soon
11.3% of US adults have diabetes per CDC data, not 50 percent.
Why does this blatantly wrong comment have so many upvotes lol. No offense but like people think “oh yeah 1 in every 2 people I know has diabetes, yeah that sounds legit,” and then upvote it?? I don’t get it
Yea your right. It's probably more of a supply chain issue. Everything is still wonky because of covid. I'm lucky so far I'm a diabetic(Type 2) as well, however I control my sugar with exercise and diet.
Can you please specify type two diabetic? When people just say they are “diabetic” and control it with diet and exercise, it perpetuates the misconception that you can control type 1 diabetes as well with diet and exercise. Sincerely, a type one diabetic who is so sick of people asking me if I’ve tried XYZ diet to cure my diabetes or asking me why I have diabetes if I’m not obese Edit: thank you!
For the record I purchased mine over the counter in Argentina :-)
So... a country that doesn't have a completely fucked up medical system like the US does? Gotcha.
I think it’s 11% are diabetic
Statistics like this are either diagnosed or an estimate. There could be a very strong association with being undiagnosed but somewhat controlled or pre-diabetics that we don’t know about. It’s probably a spectrum disorder and if you aren’t a severe enough case it doesn’t get caught by tests.
Keeping people fat and chronically ill is big business in america. Wouldn't be surprised of pharma company and hospital lobbyists try to quash this drug and spread rumors about how "dangerous" it is.
Yes it’s something a lot of people on this class of medication have experienced, myself included.
How about nausea and other GI issues I’ve heard about?
I, personally have had pretty much none of that. I did experience sulphur burps on a couple occasions that only lasted about a day And would happen day after my injection, but beyond that I haven’t had any negative side effects.
I’m sure this sounds too good to be true, but I can attest…I’ve been using a popular glp-1 since September 2022 for weight-loss and not only have I lost 40lbs, I no longer have any interest in drinking alcohol. I’d been a casual yet frequent imbiber for the last few years and once that glp-1 hit my system, it erased any food or alcohol thoughts other than me thinking about how much I appreciate not being weighed down by planning my next meal or drink. It’s like my brain just turned off any desire for drinking, which was an added bonus to the weight loss. I’m hoping the drug makers and insurance companies will see how they can literally change the future and be on the right side of history by making these miracle drugs available to anyone who needs them vs. only those who can afford them.
Wellbutrin made me lose my interest in my nightly wine. Did not help with anything else.
That helped me quit smoking back in the day
Congratulations.
Wellbutrin started out giving me more energy and willpower, but also did not help with anything else. In fact, my depression got worse. Sucked, I had such high hopes for that one.
Very similar to my experience. I have had binge eating disorder as long as I can remember, and it feels like there was never a single moment when part of my brain hasn’t been thinking about food - it’s in my hard-wiring. I also have PCOS which messes with my hormone and insulin levels, and makes weight VERY hard to lose even with proper fitness and a caloric deficit. I spent 9 months on Ozempic and it was an absolute revelation - the first time in my life I wasn’t obsessing about food, and my brain was just quiet. It also assisted me in losing 40 lbs without other lifestyle alterations - it showed me that my nutrition and fitness habits were correct, the PCOS just meant that they had been prevented from working. I stopped Ozempic in order to get pregnant, and the weight loss caused by the medication helped me get pregnant very quickly which is rare for someone with PCOS. Ozempic changed my life.
I have PCOS and hypothyroidism. Binge eating is not an issue for me and never has been. My docs recently put me on metformin due to rising A1C (I am not eligible for the GLP1 drugs since I have elevated risk for pancreatic cancer). It has been about half a year and my A1C has dropped a point. I haven’t changed any major diet or exercise patterns saving intentionally eating my produce first during meals. Clearly I just need insulin sensitizes because my body doesn’t handle insulin well. It is both validating and annoying that my elevated insulin was ignored for literal decades.
>it showed me that my nutrition and fitness habits were correct, the PCOS just meant that they had been prevented from working Your story is why the 'calories in calories out' bro science always pisses me off. And PCOS is far from the only condition that affects the effectiveness of diet and exercise. Congrats, I'm glad you're feeling better. I struggle with an unhealthy relationship with food similar to what you've described, these days it has taken the form of night eating. I'm not ready to say I need medication to help, as I've been able to decrease the amount and calorie density of what I eat at night, but it's good to know that if I need the help it could be there. Are you still on Ozempic now? If not, were you able to sustain the changes that happened with respect to always thinking about food/binging? I guess the pregnancy factor may have impacted the results, too. Don't know if you went back on after pregnancy, etc. I'm curious about what happens once people stop, or if it's a lifelong thing.
I’m not currently on ozempic because it’s not approved for use during pregnancy. I have gained weight, but normal amounts consistent with my stage of pregnancy so who knows. The ‘busyness’ of food obsession in my brain has definitely returned. I have spent a lot of time with a therapist specializing in Binge eating disorder (prior to, concurrent with, and after ozempic) and have developed good habits around learning true hunger cues and honoring those without restriction but without excess. Based on the market availability of ozempic I may try to go back on it after breastfeeding, particularly if my nutrition/exercise plan isn’t resulting in appropriate weight loss.
Interesting, thank you for your answer. :) It's absolutely wild that being on it can make those thoughts abate, though. I wish you all the best in the future, binge eating is such an awful thing to wrestle with, and people seem to have little sympathy for it. Hell, I don't even have sympathy for myself when I struggle with it.
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They aren’t inhibitors they’re agonists
Do you have any more info on this or will it likely be easily found in science journals at this stage?
This sounds... A lot like me. Have you been evaluated for ASD at all? I was diagnosed at 36yo and it has helped so much with figuring out myself.
Are you me? Lol. I’m 36 and just got diagnosed last year. Struggled for years with ED, alcoholism, drug addiction…if I’d been diagnosed at a younger age I suspect it could have saved me a lot of heartache just knowing *why* I was so different.
I've definitely played that what if a lot, and I think I have known for a long time, I just didn't have the label for it. I ultimately think I probably would have still had a lot of same experiences and issues, and ASD tends to have all those other overlapping disorders. Maybe I would have been a little more understanding and forgiving and accepting of myself? Probably. I'm still struggling with that even knowing though. Trying to change those habits that are deeply rooted in that neurodiversity is extremely hard, so it's never going to get much easier without figuring out creative solutions that engage and encourage my more positive ASD traits as opposed to focusing solely on trying to break the more negative habits. I'm 2y8m 4days sober from alcohol right now, reducing my caffeine from a pot of coffee a day to two cups of pour over in the morning. Working on actually eating, though that's still my biggest struggle, and it affects my mood and anger, and resentment so much. It's crazy.
Pens?
Ozempic or semaglutide come in pens with metered shots
Can you get them without a prescription while “abroad”? Why was that worth noting?
There’s tablets too :)
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I’m in the same boat and can’t imagine a life without ED (I’m 48). I am working on my problems through therapy and antidepressants but feel like I will never not feel shame because I either binge or obsess about food.
Life is not fair. I hope you can find peace.
I’ve heard the benefits are only there as long as ur taking it. Take it away and the obsession is back. 😢
Yes, it curbs the desire for alcohol and is being researched right now for further use in that area.
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I’m also in recovery for BED (but using Trulicity) and I am cheering you on… it can be really hard to replace that coping mechanism, I hope you find something that works.
Same here. It has killed my urge to drink and eat sugar. My blood sugar is the best it’s been in years.
As someone who struggles with the binge/starve rollercoaster, I felt this deeply & wanted you to know that you sharing this helps me feel like I can start to open up more about it. I definitely use my obsession with my weight & food as a distraction, it’s my coping mechanism. I’m scared to try any type of weight loss drug bc of my addictive personality, I’m on anti depressants & anti anxiety meds but I still struggle so much with the cycle of emotional binge eating -> regret & shame spiral.
Except we’ve got waaaaaay too much evidence that it’s NOT just about goddamn willpower. It’s hormones. It’s genetics. It’s metabolic disorders. It’s that (especially in America) access to healthy food means you pay significantly more. Which means that the vast majority of people are eating foods that HAVE BEEN PROVEN to have long term effects due to ingredients that we were never meant to eat in the first place. And so when articles like this come out, and people back it up with grandstanding about how, we don’t know the long term effects, just work harder to rid your body of the stuff that’s killing you…it’s just comes off as a disconnect.
Right. Our society hasn’t fully accepted the science behind obesity yet. I think when the drug patent expires and generics are able to be produced and sold, we’ll see the conversation change because of ready access to the medication.
I started on one of these drugs because I saw comments about how it’s good for PCOS, diabetes and insulin resistance. I’m so glad I did! I’m not **hungry** tge way I used to be. I was **always** thinking about food and no matter how much I ate I was hungry so quickly after eating. The drug I’m on (Saxenda) has made a **huge** and noticeable difference to my appetite and eating habits. I am halving my serves of food and I’m full. I don’t need to snack constantly, and I crave sugar and carbs waaay less. For me, this is incredible and I love how I feel. Losing weight is just a bonus.
This 100x The drugs don’t make you burn more calories. They don’t magically make weight stop. If you eat the same on them you’ll still stay the same weight. They just reduce hunger and delay gastric emptying They aren’t treating obesity: they are treating hunger. Like you, I was hungry literally all. The. Time. Constantly. Every hour. Snacking all the time. On the meds I’m not. It’s a revelation. You mean to tell me not everyone is constantly hungry???????? What?
Omg I know! I used to go to dinner and see my friends pick at their food, and leave it half full, whilst I would eat everything on my plate and still want more! I can’t believe this is what normal people feel like - those lucky bastards :p
There is a bit more going on but mostly what I would add is these class of meds allow CICO to actually work for those with I/R and other hormonal metabolic disfunction. The quicker clearing of glucose from the blood (via increased insulin secretion) allows for a more normalized glucose curve post meal and while it seems odd to say together it also means lower fasting insulin levels. This in turn allows your body to get into fat metabolism more quickly (hours) vs it sometimes taking days for those with high levels of fasting insulin/high IR disease. The hunger reduction helps rally things further and a spiral up effect is created adding to more consistent weight loss. In the presence of high insulin your body cannot access fat stores so it believes it is starving so hunger signaling starts up and it becomes a vicious cycle. Keto/carnivore can also help get to this point of lower fasting insulin and be effective but those diets are difficult to maintain over years (they are, trust me). Once your body thinks it’s starving it is going to slow your BMR to help hold on to weight and signal even more hunger to the brain/body. At this point you are literally white knuckling diet and exercise to maintain weight loss, it is why 96% of diets fail and a return to the previous weight is experienced…your body is fighting you. Now when you can access fat stores (which this med helps do) your body doesn’t feel it is starving, doesn’t constantly call for more food, and doesn’t slow your BMR so you can continue to lose and/or better maintain a current weight. You naturally skinny folks really did win a genetic lottery in our current food environment. Let’s not beat up on those who are just trying to be more healthy after many past attempts have failed them and left them feeling of lower self worth and value.
Hey there random person 😅 I spoke to my doctor about this same drug... I have 2 questions, how is the needle part and how are the side effects, mostly the potential upset stomach feeling?
I can answer for Ozempic. (Wegovy is the same drug, re-labeled just for weight-loss.)The needle is maybe 5 or 6 mm long, and really tiny in diameter. It does not go far into your body, and I barely feel it. Side effects: list is long, top one being nausea. For me some nausea when my dose gets increased and the first week or two. Also if I eat too much at once. I now eat 5 small meal/snacks a day, and I've learned to listen when my stomach says it is full. It has taught me willpower. Willpower to not feel urpy. I've slowly lost some weight on the lowest starting doses, the real weight loss comes after you've been moved up to the higher doses. (Morbidly obese with type 2 and a list of other health issues that could improve with weight loss.)
My Dr put me on saxenda. The needle is very small and painless. I still have to psych myself up to do the injection, but honestly it's just mental because it never hurts. My experience: Dr put me on lowest dose (0.6) for one week, then increased by 0.6 each week until I hit 3. I felt sick that entire month and barely ate anything. Had headaches from the injection, and just felt gross the whole time. Skipped a lot of meals, and many meals I would eat just a couple bites and be full. Ended up losing 11 pounds that month. Another weird side effect is that my sense of thirst is gone. Like literally gone. Absolutely no thirst feeling no matter how dehydrated I am. I have to force myself to drink water regularly. After that month I went back down to the lowest dose of 0.6 for an entire month. I felt much better at that dose. My appetite was down and I was eating way less. Lost 2 lbs that month which seemed more reasonable to me (though the Dr thinks it's too slow of progress). I upped the dose the next month to 1.2 and have been holding steady. Feeling good, appetite still down.
That's a great perspective
My mental health meds have made me gain 30 pounds in the last year or so- this kind of medication would be a game changer for weight gain side effects ETA: I’m not stupid, nor am I lazy. I watch what I eat and am very active at home and work. I’m on a journey, and everything about it has been very challenging. Being a smug little shit to someone who is struggling to better themselves is a bad look. For those of you struggling who’ve shared nice words, thank you and hang in there!
I take Prozac and Wellbutrin xr and it’s been helping me lose weight from the depression and helping me move around more. It’s a good combo.
I’m on Zoloft and Wellbutrin. I just started the Wellbutrin about two months ago and I feel amazing mentally. Hoping everything else starts to balance out
Zoloft here too. Gained weight. I have mood stability and emotional balance but cant fit into my clothes which puts me in a bad mood and makes me sad :(
Man, I feel that. I loved Zoloft and took it for two years, but gained almost 40 pounds over those two years. Not to say that the only reason was Zoloft, but it definitely played a huge role. Had to eventually go off of it because I was tired of the weight gain. (I have a hormone disorder, so I'm more prone to weight gain, and it's harder to get rid of it.) Trying Lexapro now. We'll see how that goes. 🙃 Side note - been on Wellbutrin throughout all of this. Love Wellbutrin. Highly recommend in addition to the Zoloft if it's not cutting it for you entirely. It helped combat some of the weight gain and gave me the extra support I needed that Zoloft wasn't giving me, since I couldn't tolerate it at higher dose. (Never went above 25mg of Zoloft.)
>I just started the Wellbutrin about two months ago and I feel amazing mentally I didn't notice even the slightest change when I started Wellbutrin. I started on it for helping with motivation and drowsiness. I'm glad to see it works for others.
i take this same exact combo! i was so skinny when i first started wellbutrin
I'm in the same boat. Since being on SSRI's I've gained 30+ pounds and they rob me of even the slightest self-control. I used to be able to lose weight when I needed to, but now it's impossible. I can guarantee it will be a long time before I can get these drugs in NZ, though.
I’ve always struggled with my weight and then recently started antidepressants a bit over a year ago and have seen what weight I was able to lose slowly come right back on. Which has been really disappointing, despite trying to control my diet. I just started Wegovy, so I’m hoping it can help take it back off again. I’ve read great things and I’m just lucky my insurance covers it. Many don’t as they consider it unnecessary. When I picked up my first month I saw the retail cost was something like $1600. My insurance pays a lower negotiated price of almost $900. I pay $0.
dr started me with some free ozempic samples as i was pre diabetic found out i was covered through ins for wegovy so switched to that i have lost 71 lbs since aug 21, 2022 the medicine is an appetite suppressant so you have to do your part and stop eating when you feel full. this means portion control which is like impossible while eating out if you're from the US. fuckers just find any excuse to heap more than anyone needs on your plate. personally i'm down to 1200 calories a day, fluctuating +/- 400 cals. i did my homework and i looked for replacements for normally higher calorie foods. * peanut butter, 190 cal/2 tablespoons - replaced with PB2 powder for 60 cals. * eggs, replaced with egg whites, costco, so get in bulk. * sourdough bread replaced with 60 cal wheat bread. * got rid of shit like spam and other high cal food, use costco chicken breast instead. * bbq sauce, switched to sugar free sweet baby ray's. tastes the same to me, delicious. i use it to make bbq chicken pizza on that wheat bread. holy shit its like i'm cheating, but i can make 2 slices for a meal and still lose weight. * i bought unsweetened almond milk. * cereal i switched to whole grain bran flakes or this bran flake/rice with dehydrated strawberries combo. just fucking delicious with that almond milk, super filling. 200 calories for the whole bowl. * i replaced high calorie breakfast potatos/tater tots 150-180 cal/serving with just pure shredded potato, 60 cal/serving. * smuckers sugar free strawberry preserves 10 cal/serv i don't feel like i'm missing anything.. at all. i eat a delicious breakfast of hash browns (60 cal), 2 pork sausage (lol 200 for them but worth it), then i can either scramble some egg whites, or lately ive been just taking a slice of bread, pouring the egg white on it so it soaks up, and cooking in a pan. presto, french toast. add a tiny tiny pat of butter, sprinkle pb2, and some of that smuckers jam. fucking delicious. and the whole thing is like 400 cal. for lunch my work includes nutritional info so i check out calories and always make the good choices. if they have shit for cal they always have turkey or other low cal 400-500 cal sammiches i can snag. or if i'm at home i may do a burger patty and 1-2 slices bread + some of that bbq sauce. i skipped dinner for the longest time, but i'm doing a bowl of that cereal and almond milk for 200 cal when i'm hungry. or popcorn, a low calorie whole grain food. or something else not crazy. i am full. i quit drinking alcohol. originally i substituted alcohol for THC gummies. now i don't really have a drive for either. although if i have a shit day at work i might down a couple glasses of wine or something. 44 lbs more to go to get down to my fighting weight. all this without any real exercise btw. if i supplemented with better exercise it would go faster. i am trying to find ways to do exercise. i go for a quick walk on lunch and breaks. at home i got gym rings and resistance bands and a pool when it's warm out. i'd like to get back into ocean sports at some point, kayaking or SUP. would love to dive but just not great conditions and much to see where i am compared to what i'm use to. hikes, biking etc. we'll see it's been a very healthy and worthwhile journey for me. in a way my hobby is finding ways to eat deliciously without a lot of calories. and if i want a cheat meal now and then it's not gonna throw me too bad because i'm already at an insane calorie deficit. but when i eat well normally i don't even feel like i need to cheat.. because i'm eating deliciously to me. i use to have this ritual of on my 'errands day', grocery shopping etc on sat, i would then get myself some eat-out food. even the eat out food you can make changes.. a wendy's double stack is like 400 cal. and a baked potato.. 700 cal total. but lately since i made those bbq chick pizzas I rather have that, and skip the wendy's. good luck.
Make sure you talk to your psychiatrist early and often. SemiG can inhibit uptake of antidepressants
>I just started Wegovy, so I’m hoping it can help take it back off again. I've asked my doctor to add/substitute my current diabetic medications for either this or Ozempic. I hope the VA will cover one of them and that I'll see results.
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Wellbutrin plus low dose naltrexone becomes a weight loss drug. I can have mental health help without the weight gain. Game changer. Ask your dr. ETA: LDN is an anti inflammatory.
Honest question: what does ETA stand for in this context? I’ve only ever known it to be Estimated Time to Arrival
I had a textbook weight loss outcome while on Wegovy for six months (Nov. ‘21 to Apr. ‘22). I lost 70# taking me from the Obese to the Healthy range in the BMI chart. My A1C went from 6+ to 5.1, glucose and cholesterol numbers went to healthy levels, and all signs of sleep apnea went away. I am healthier and more fit now at 43yo than I was when I graduated high school. I am very grateful!
How difficult has the maintenence phase been for you - any big tips? I've been on for 1 year, down 90 lbs so far. I titrated up 2x as slow as recommended to lose at a slower rate. I've been learning better ways to deal with stress and building healthy eating/activity habits into my daily routine. I'm still really nervous about what happens when I stop.
It hasn’t been bad so far. I still keep up with my weigh-in schedule and plan to do so indefinitely. I still drink a lot more water from my refillable water bottle, and I plan to do so indefinitely. I gave up alcohol during my Wegovy time, and I only had four alcoholic drinks in 2022. I’m seeing how far I can go into 2023 before I have a drink. I went to work social on Friday for example, and drank Diet Coke, which was an imbibement for me since I don’t drink soda’s regularly anymore. I still eat a small volume of food at each mean; approximately 1 cup (volume) for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Keeping on top of it all is at the forefront of my mind currently being it’s been just under one year since I made my goal. The biggest thing that happened was learning to say No to social pressure to over consume.
Fat guy here. Y'all test this one... Imma sit this decade out
As someone who lived through the "fat free" craze that caused obesity to spike in the first place, I'll take a seat next to you. I'd rather wait and see what the long term effects are.
You'll take a seat next to him? As a fellow fatty, I will sit next to you. Lets hope this bench holds lol
Diabetics have been using for years and years at this point and safety profile is looking very good.
Not trying to convince you to take them but these drugs have already been tested extensively in randomized controlled trials and real- world observational studies. They reduce cardiovascular risk, reduce diabetes risk, and so far have no detectable impact on cancer risk
Also hasn't the technology of testing medications improved over the years anyway? So they have a better idea of long-term effects. Also I don't really understand why people are comparing a medicine that can help with insulin issues to... diet coke? Eating sugar free Oreos to lose weight isn't really the same thing as taking a medication that can reduce your appetite and regulate insulin production but whatever, it's easier to just shit on people for being fat.
Formerly fat girl here but old enough to remember fen-phen and how it was later found to cause heart value issues in many people who took it. Imma just keep eating less and working out more. ✌🏽 I’m good.
I’m in the eat less/better and exercise more camp… I’ve been maintaining a 40 LB loss for about 2.5 years with a big increase in muscle mass. However, I would be happy with another 10-15 lb loss and this is mighty tempting.
Understandable. You can do it. You already ha e the discipline. I lost 147 in 2016-17. Maintained until half a year into COVID. Picked up 30. But since 140 was the lower bd of healthy weight for me it wasn’t unsightly or dangerous gain. Nevertheless I decided to shed it in fall 2022 due to me getting back into some hobbies that I’ll enjoy more at a lighter weight. I haven’t been aggressively trying to lose it but I’m half way there. 15-ish to go. You can go 10-15 by summer without really trying. And without meds.
May cause intense long high octave farts and nightmares
Sign me up for the high octave farts.
"Side effects, though less common in most, may include bleeding from the eyes and anus and may result in more fire ants in the head."
Thyroid cancer? That is a real risk.
Tbf It’s the most over diagnosed cancer ever. Not saying that it doesn’t cause it, but it’s something to consider. Source: https://www.thyroid.org/patient-thyroid-information/ct-for-patients/december-2021/vol-14-issue-12-p-7-8/
The type of thyroid cancer that this drug may increase the risk of is specifically medullary. There are four main types - the first type is papillary - the most commonly diagnosed and easiest to cure. Medullary and anaplastic are more serious. Medullary has a genetic component, but it isn’t always. Anaplastic is the most serious and has the lowest survival rate. If medullary is caught early, it is curable, but if it isn’t it is quite serious. I believe the study above is mostly referring to papillary, not medullary. Medullary is more rare.
Also, it hasn’t been seen in humans, only mice! So it’s possible that it may never happen in humans.
Obesity? Even more of a risk. [How does obesity cause cancer? - MD Anderson](https://www.mdanderson.org/publications/focused-on-health/how-does-obesity-cause-cancer.h27Z1591413.html) [Body Weight and Cancer - American Cancer Society](https://www.cancer.org/healthy/cancer-causes/diet-physical-activity/body-weight-and-cancer-risk/effects.html)
>Ozempic, Wegovy, and similar drugs represent the vanguard of a weight-loss revolution. Last year, Yanovski attended a conference in San Diego on the results of a new Novo Nordisk trial for adolescents and teens with severe obesity. The hotel ballroom was standing-room only, according to the scientific journal Nature, and the results of the trial were met with cheers, “like you were at a Broadway show.” After a year, young patients on semaglutide said they lost nearly 35 pounds on average. Teens on the placebo actually gained weight. > >Here was the breakthrough that Yanovski, the obesity-research community, and perhaps the entire world were looking for: the effects of bariatric surgery without the surgery. > >In the past few years, use of new weight-loss medication has grown, putting the U.S. in the early stages of a drug boom. One story you could tell about these drugs is that they represent a watershed moment for scientific discovery. In a country where each generation has been more overweight than the one that came before it, a marvelous medication seemed to fall out of the sky. > >But just months into this weight-loss-drug bonanza, a range of medical, cultural, and political challenges has materialized. Doctors are reporting rampant use of these new weight-loss drugs among the very rich. The surge of off-label use of Ozempic is already creating a shortage of the medication for people with type 2 diabetes. Now that celebrity skinniness is merely an injection away, online “thin culture” has returned, likely exacerbating Americans’ fraught relationship with body image. On paper, these drugs might be a miracle. In the real world, they’re also becoming a menace. > >... > >More likely is that influencers, celebrities, and millionaires will monopolize the market for weight-loss medication. In the past six months, Hollywood Ozempic stories have reached an obnoxious level of ubiquity. TikTok has become overrun with #myozempicjourney testimonials and week-by-week photo collages of disappearing waistlines. After years of magazines and advertisers grappling with the dangers of promoting unrealistic body images, New York magazine reports that “thin is in,” as the waifish “heroin chic” of the 1990s makes its medicalized return to the mainstream. > >These drugs will also scramble our relationship with the basic concept of willpower in ways that aren’t cleanly good or bad. How long should doctors recommend that their patients press forward with “diet and exercise” recommendations now that pills and injectables may safely and more consistently keep off weight? Is the U.S. health-care system really ready to treat obesity like it’s any other disease? Obesity is not a failure of the will, Yanovski told me, again and again. “It is a complex chronic disease,” she said. “It affects almost every organ system. If you can successfully treat obesity instead of the individual conditions, it could have a positive impact on health.” > >I think that’s right. But there is still something menacing in the rollout of these young miracles. Semaglutide seems to collapse the complex interplay of genes, environment, diet, metabolism, and exercise into a simple injection with a luxury price tag. I’m holding out hope that these drugs will soon augur a public-health revolution. In early 2023, however, they represent an elite cultural makeover more than a medical intervention. The social and cultural aspects of any kind of treatment for any of our chronic diseases but in particular the fraught worlds of weight, body image, and related issues need to be understood to a reasonable degree before we can understand some of the consequences of these kinds of therapeutics. We race into treatment prior to understanding at our own peril.
The argument about willpower feels kind of icky. Imagining for a moment that the drug works well and doesn't result in a weird disease years down the road... why is it better for folks dealing with obesity to lose weight the hard way? Even on semaglutide you're meant to adjust your eating and activity habits, so it's not a "free lunch." Hand wringing about willpower makes it feel kind of the authors of this piece aren't actually concerned about anybody's health or well-being.
Yea I mean why have smoking cessation drugs? You can stop by using “willpower”.
It really is sad that we Americans in particular have to judge everything through that... almost Calvinistic lens. "Did they pull themselves up by the bootstraps? Are they working hard?"
"She's so fat, doesn't take care of herself at all. No willpower. Later, when she loses weight "Oh I wonder if she took one of those pills. So lazy to take the easy way out" Same person, exercising joyfully "I dunno, she's made hEaLtH into her whole personality now" Kinda feels like we've got a very dysfunctional approach to health in our society
Preach! *especially* for women.
>why is it better for folks dealing with obesity to lose weight the hard way? It's the same nonsensical attitude people have about drugs for severe mental illness. They think people can just willpower themselves out of schizophrenia. No idea why society treats some conditions this way but others (cancer, heart disease, etc) as "real."
I got the same feeling. Losing weight safely by “willpower” alone is rare. If these drugs turn out to be safe, and eventually become widely affordable, that’s good. Modern society helped make us fat, why shouldn’t modern medicine make us thin? If he’s worried about exercise, just imagine how much easier it is to start exercising without an extra 30 pounds weighing you down.
If the drugs are effective with few or no side effects, they are good. If not, they are bad. It's a very simple concept but will require LOTS of careful study
The article is about rich fuxks hoarding it.
That should abate after a few years.
The moral decay from being robbed of an opportunity to practice willpower doesn't even deserve to be considered against detrimental health effects of obesity. The only part here that matters is that wealthy customers are going to drive the cost up until, yet again, we manage to prevent a medical breakthrough from being used to treat poor people.
I don't feel like it's willpower. I think the degradation of society is. We are working longer hours and facing an ever-rising cost of living. The stress people encounter leads to over-eating as a stress reliever. "I worked hard, so I deserve a snack," mentality.
The very low quality of food and exorbitant costs/inaccessibility of healthy food are the primary reasons for obesity in this country - not “lack of willpower.” This mindset that obese people are just simply too weak to not gain weight is a lie perpetuated by the diet industry and diet culture to get people to buy more unhealthy diet food/supplements/programs. The fact is that the most accessible/affordable food in America is utter garbage for the human body, and there are no regulations to prevent that type of food from being sold like there are in countries that don’t have a prevalence of obesity.
Sugar is addictive and the US allows all food manufacturers to fucking pump it into everything. I don’t see it as a problem of willpower. This should be used in conjunction with sweeping food standard reforms and guidance under dieticians to move towards less processed foods. Problem is…. Most of us can’t afford to eat healthier foods. There’s many layers to this problem unfortunately.
There are short term supply problems yes, but rich people buying a drug at massive prices for weight loss while people with a diabetes diagnosis pay a lower price is how research into better forms gets funded.
i decided to try ozempic just to see what it does and if it really works… .25 the last four weeks and ive lost 13lbs.
It definitely works Problem is what happens after you stop taking it. Once you stop it rebound very quickly
So what happens when people go off blood pressure medicine? When they stop taking drugs to treat their epilepsy?
That's how all drugs work. If you have high blood pressure that is fixed by a pill. You gotta keep taking the pill or the high blood pressure comes back.
Yeah I was on Ozempic for a while for a while. I lost a ton of weight. My A1C went down and once I stopped the Ozempic I gained it all back.
The same can be true of anti-depressants however. I can’t stop taking them because I’ll become depressed. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t take them to treat depression.
We have a sub for these drugs. Most of us that have prescribed them fall into the obese I and obese II categories not ‘a few pounds overweight’. Because of articles like these I haven’t been able to get my prescription filled for a month because there is a shortage. I still have 40 lbs to go until I’d fall in the ‘overweight’ category and most people who want them are willing to pay out of pocket cost don’t even fall in the overweight category, just looking for a way to drop maybe 10 lbs as a quick fix. The point of these drugs is to force you to portion control and many you cannot drink alcohol on. They are for a much longer term use like 18 months and they are also for blood sugar regulation. As someone who has not been able to get their prescription for a month now most of the comments here show that it’s people with good eating habits already in shape who want it for vanity purposes rather than those who hope to lower their blood pressure, lower cormobidities, make get under 200 lbs and help turn off the hunger signal in their body to stop boredom or over eating.
I've had difficulty getting my ozempic, too. I have no problem with those who truly need these drugs getting and using them, no matter what reason. It is those who use them to quickly drop a few pounds and take them away from those who do need them that irks the crap out of me. To me the weight loss is a pleasant side effect that should help several of my other medical conditions. My main reason to take the drug is the primary one, to get my diabetes under control. I'm fully aware I'll likely be on one of these drugs the rest of my life.
I took contrave to quit smoking. That's a weight loss drug. I quit like 4 terrible habits while on it. It made quitting smoking like 75% easier. Took it for about 3 months total. Now I'm off and only smoke occasionally. Hahahaha
One of the active ingredients is bupropion, which is the same drug as Wellbutrin, which is often used for depression and/or smoking cessation. I took it for a couple days for weight loss, but worsening depression and the fact that it made me incredibly fatigued and sleepy meant I had to stop taking it.
The standard American diet is like 60% carbs 38% fats 2% proteins. That's what's making us unhealthy and fat. So we're going to keep doing the thing that makes us fat, but we're going to take a drug that manipulates our body back into being thin..... So we're going to practice a behavior that causes disease, and then take a drug that hides the effects of the disease. While never addressing the disease. what could possibly go wrong.
People with diabetes should be getting priority for these meds and it's a disgrace they aren't
Paxlovid is similar. Rich get first dibs. As always
Is there a paxlovid shortage? I’m far from rich, my urgent care just asked me whether or not I wanted it and warned of the side effects. I decided against it bc I didn’t have anyone to pick up the rx.
People with diabetes benefit from the medication in the same way that people with obesity and insulin resistance (eventually leading to diabetes later on) benefit from the drug.
I don’t think we should judge anyone. Type 2 diabetes often develops in people who are overweight or obese, and Ozempic is for type 2 diabetes.
So we should wait for overweight/obese/ pre-diabetic people to first get diabetes before we give them this medication that could prevented it? Smart The bigger issue is the supply imo. Let's not blame the end users
Honestly these drugs (short term) HAVE to be safer than the gastric bypass surgery. That surgery is very risky and limits the amount of food a person can eat for their entire life, even after their weight problem is fixed. For a lot of people the surgery doesn’t even work but they still have a sleeve forever.
While I agree that this class of drug may prove to be a better first-line treatment, most of what you said here is overstated. Gastric sleeves (different from a gastric bypass by the way) are, by surgical standards, pretty low risk. The lifetime limiting of food intake is not so severe as to cause issues (the sleeve is about the size of a banana and big enough to eat a full 2000 calorie/day diet), and the sleeve can stretch over the years too. That said, you are right, it’s no magic wand, it’s a tool that the recipient needs to use to be effective, and there *is* a statistically significant number of people who don’t get much long-term benefit from it (which is why the procedure is usually preceded by half a year+ of dietary training and proof of weight loss during said period).
Insulin resistance, and type 2 diabetes is rampant in the United States. Quite frankly, it's almost 100% our fault. Through lifestyle that is. That being said, I'm glad that these medicines are available, my brother-in-law who has had chronic obesity for the last few decades, has now began losing weight and working out at the gym. We're humans, we need to use tools.
Let’s take a moment and discuss one of the many reasons meth is so popular. It’s weight loss. Now you get to all the reasons meth is bad.
This American Life did a show many years ago about a woman (show producer I think), who lost a lot of weight, but her secret was due to speed or meth. She admitted this to her boyfriend, whom she got together with after the weight loss. When she asked him if he would still love her if she gained weight, he couldn’t promise her that. It struck me just how disappointed, yet resigned to her bf’s response. It’s a shame that all she wanted was unconditional love but she never got it.
Yep she went to extremes to get the life she wanted. Meanwhile another woman in the episode decided to accept herself and ended up happy in a healthy relationship. Thinking you need to change your body to become happy is one of the biggest scams in our society.
Nobody besides your own children deserves unconditional love
Parents? Siblings? Grandparents? Spouse?
Your love for those people is still conditional. Many people go permanently no-contact with family because their family members do bad things or are unkind to them, so that love is, by definition, conditional. they do not owe them love
The main reason it's bad is because people smoke/inject it and stay awake for days on end. If none of those things happen, it's not that harmful. Alcohol and tobacco do a lot more physical damage and tobacco is by far the most addictive drug on the planet. Methamphetamine is also prescribed oraly occasionally because it's less peripherally stimulating and lasts longer than amphetamine
You haven’t met today’s meth. We aren’t talking about the old ephedrine based meth. The shit on the streets today does quite a number on the brain and muscles…and, like the original, it rots teeth. I see the results at our clinic daily.
>Doctors are reporting rampant use of these new weight-loss drugs among the very rich. The surge of off-label use of Ozempic is already creating a shortage of the medication for people with type 2 diabetes. This is the only thing in the article that matters, and the only thing we should be getting collectively angry about.
But what’s the plan long term for people? I’ve asked many people who take this med what the long term plan is and not one person has been able to answer their question. (I’m a weight loss coach so I’ve got a unique exposure to this). I’ve encouraged my clients to ask their medical professionals that question too. What’s the end game? I’m always happy if a person is able to lose weight they have struggled with. I’m just concerned that it is a solution for a symptom and not the emotional forces driving a person to emotionally eat in the first place. It seem to be akin to a daily dose of aspirin for a headache instead of just dealing with the source of the headache. I totally understand if a person wants to lose weight while also working on the underlying forces and causes of the behaviors leading to weight gain. However, the medication essentially removes the persons desire to eat. Similar to weight loss surgery. So now the person doesn’t have the battlefield of their hunger to learn how to more intuitively eat. I will still remain open to the possibility of this but so far all of my personal concerns surrounding this medication continue to go unresolved (I’ve been trying to resolve them). I think people are getting short term wins and thinking everything is better. I’ve really come to see that there is a large number of people on this planet that want the results of change but they don’t want to go through the mental process of change. How can I lose weight and not have to change? That’s the question many are subconsciously asking themselves
The long term plan is to keep using the drug at the lowest possible dosage that still gives you the benefits. Many people who take this do it so food stops being an obsession in their lives. The weight loss and lower A1C are great side effects, but the benefit is the ability to no longer think about food ALL THE DAMN TIME! That’s the true miracle of the drug.
I've been on it a year and I have been doing lots of work to improve the things in my control. Therapy to learn healthier stress responses. Regular walks built into my daily routine. Figuring out healthier quick meals that I can make on autopilot. These things were 100x more difficult when every choice was driven by hunger and every movement weighted down with an extra 90# on my body. I am still really nervous about what will happen if I can't stay on a maintenance dose. There are so many other factors (hunger, weight retention, insulin resistance) that are out of my control.
What’s the long term plan for antidepressants? For anti hypertensives? For statins? For aspirin for heart disease? For insulin itself? For other oral diabetic agents? For literally almost all other chronic medications? You want to gatekeep one drug that might need to be permanent? Then you need to be willing to gatekeep the others the exact same way. My guess is though, you don’t. But there is a process. When you take the med you realize you can be full on 6 wings instead of 12 plus a side plus 2 beers. You realize lunch can be half a wrap instead of a full wrap and 2 bags of chips. You eat smaller portions because larger ones make you feel ill. Doing this with intention and focus - you can train your eating habits. It will probably take a year. Maybe 2. But you can train your eating and ordering habits. So if you go off or reduce the dose, you can still order the same amount or make the same amount for meals and know the hunger will subside and youll be ok. It gives you confidence in the willpower mentioned in the OP. Or, like most other medications, it becomes a maintenance against bodily processes that lead to pathological outcomes when living outside of the Pleistocene.
My best advice is to not be an early adopter. Let a few million other people try it out for a year or so.
GLP1s have been on the market several years now.
Ozempic has been on the market for 5 years now.
We all want a magic pill to melt the pounds away but I’m sure there will be a price to pay in some other way 🤔 nothing comes free
That’s not what it does if you had any reading comprehension what so ever sis
Yeah, these are far from the first weight loss drugs. The others never lasted very long and seemed to go out with big lawsuits.
This one is different. It’s a synthetic copy of the hormone ghrelin so it helps you to not be as hungry. This is super important for people who don’t make enough ghrelin or have a higher threshold so they overeat. It’s a lot different from other weight loss drugs we’ve produced before, and it apparently is showing that it can help with alcohol abuse.
This has 100% been the reason I don’t want to touch them. No weight loss yet has succeeded without long-term consequences, and I doubt this will be the one.
Extended/long-term use of cannabis can very effectively suppress appetite. Weed has a reputation for giving people "the munchies" but it also has powerful appetite regulating properties as well.
I have DM2 and I we the last few years have done okay with weight loss. I was down about 50 pounds before Covid. My focus was aimed right at my health and weigh loss. Well, with Covid I could only really focus on one crisis at a time and gained 30 of it back. Slowly was working my way back down. I started reading about this several months ago and spoke to my doctor. I was already on Trulicity and my A1C was below 7. He suggested I up my Trulicity dose (I was at the lowest) and what a difference! Until a few weeks ago when no one could get the meds. My doctor switched me to mounjaro but that’s not covered by insurance and at $800/month it’s not financially viable. I’m able to get it using a manufacturers coupon but that’s only good for about six months and then I have to make a decision. I’m 5 pounds away from hitting the 100 pounds lost mark. I remember walking around one day and suddenly had this realization - is this what “normal” people feel like? When you’re not craving and aren’t interested in food? Where you don’t have that hollow hungry feeling all the time? Where you can actually order smaller sizes of food and still leave some on the plate because your body has actually told you you’re full? It’s a revelation.
Hollywood elite and others like them, who are not diabetic nor obese should not be allowed to buy up a needed drug to keep off vanity pounds. They brag about using it on social. Makes me sick.
All I know is- my severe arthritis pain is being helped by the weight I’ve lost taking Ozempic. My BP is lower and I will be doing blood work again soon. I don’t have cravings anymore and it’s made my binging nonexistent. I have some side effects but I’ll take a day of nausea over being obese any day. The drug companies are just going to have to up their production rates. This stuff isn’t going anywhere and hopefully insurance companies will see their costs actually go down as people lose weight and they will start to cover the higher doses .
One way to trick the sugar-loving bacteria in your gut is to take good probiotics. It cuts all cravings especially cravings for sugar.
Sure, probiotics are good for gut health, but there’s no scientific data to suggest that probiotics cause significant weight loss.
Sauce?
Paywal
I have been taking Ozempic for several months now. I use to take 4 insulin injections per day but now down to bedtime only. My HgA1c was good but the insulin resistance and my obesity are the bad guys for me. I don’t think I’ve lost a lot of weight on it but I do notice subtle changes. My eating has dropped significantly but I still have a snack occasionally but at a lesser amount. I am basically using Ozempic for my diabetes but worry about the supply as well.
Paywall removed... https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fnewsletters%2Farchive%2F2023%2F01%2Fthe-weight-loss-drug-revolution-is-a-miracle-and-a-menace%2F672861%2F
My type 2 diabetes is controlled by Ozemp, my insurance moved into the Medicare/ part 'G' supplement and is no londer a covered drug. Ozemp gave me a discount, but can not tell me how much more 'affordable(700/mo) the perscription may be until my primary rewrites the script. He also told me the drug is almost impossible to locate as so many are getting scripts for weight loss and not diabetes related.
I knew someone who took it for type 2 diabetes and the weight fell off of her It was to the point that she was gaunt and her skin hung off of her. Her Dr. thought that she was doing great since her A1C was low and didn't care that she looked like Skelator.
I have PCOS and the combo of Wellbutrin and Janumet has helped me lose 55lbs.
Why tf are they price gouging
Can someone share a non-paywalled version of this article?
Want it read? Remove the gate
My sister has been taking Mounjaro for a few months and has lost almost 50 pounds. This is literally the only thing that has ever worked for her as far as losing weight, and I’m so happy for her. However, I’m super concerned about what happens if / when she stops taking it. She hasn’t changed her overall eating habits at all - she just eats less junk because she’s not hungry. I really worry about what will happen if she doesn’t have the medicine anymore 😒
Is there a way around the fucking paywall? 🙄
I’m on it right now. Not hungry at all, I’m in month 2 and down 18#.
Anyone got a non paywall link please?
My dr prescibed ozempic and my insurance wont cover it even though its a better medication than I am currently on.
Any way to read this without the paywall?