Financial times article ozempic.
https://archive.ph/2024.09.27-180929/https://www.ft.com/content/498c2c5e-fb9c-461e-8e9c-5429696b56a6
so
many people on these drugs that the whole country is 2% less obese. This was recently called out by Walmart as a strategic headwind to their grocery revenue growth.
it's wild to think that a drug has had this much of an impact in such a short time. I'm going to ignore the stupidity of normal people using it to be super thin.
My sister in law is on it for diabetes, but she's lost a bunch of weight as a side effect. She needed to.
She's not necessarily healthier, though - no muscle tone and no cardio. My wife (her sister) probably outweighs her now, but is packing a whole bunch of muscle and has a cardiovascular system that's in much better shape. Losing weight is only part of getting healthy. But losing weight does make moving easier, so it's a good first step.
To be clear, no one related to the source of the information has confirmed its related.to ozempic.
Im just wondering what the related side-effects will be 10-20 years down the road. I forget if its ozempic, or just generic semaglutides, but there are already reports of increased risk of blindness associated with it
Keith Tanner said:My sister in law is on it for diabetes, but she's lost a bunch of weight as a side effect. She needed to.
She's not necessarily healthier, though - no muscle tone and no cardio. My wife (her sister) probably outweighs her now, but is packing a whole bunch of muscle and has a cardiovascular system that's in much better shape. Losing weight is only part of getting healthy. But losing weight does make moving easier, so it's a good first step.
That is actually a really interesting discussion. A quick google shows inactivity increasing risk of all cause mortality by 38%, and type 2 diabetes increases the risk by 100%-200%. So stopping DM2 as quickly as possible is a really really important goal. It is going to be really interesting to see the long term effects and whether a medication can actually be a worthy antidote to our terrible food lifestyle.
Skinny fat is still fat.
Ya gotta move your body!
I'd rather be obese (I am) and do cardio for 3 or 5 hours week (mountain biking) than just have a great metabolism.
I'm not sure the studies back that up, but I definitely seem to be healthier (even with my beer consumption) than those people that are naturally, or unnaturally skinny that don't move their bodies to the limit a few times a week.
I'm on a similar drug for my diabetes control. I have been decently active and not in perfect shape but still active and I feel not bad for almost 50.
I was surprised, I went from 215 to high 190s (198 this morning) I was surprised with the weight loss TBH. I was not expecting to lose that much.
I don't think it's something that is sustainable as most I have seen are not making the lifestyle changes too.
A combination of busting my ass, a complete rework of my diet, and a sister medication to ozempic (wegovy) saw me at 37%+ weight loss. The effects glp class medications have cannot be underestimated.
In reply to wvumtnbkr :
I read an article in Scientific American about a condition called MHO Medically Healthy and Obese. This says that people with a high BMI are not necessarily unhealthy if all other indicators say they are ok.
One of my personal truisms: the best drug is the one you don't have to take.
DrMikeCSI said:In reply to wvumtnbkr :
I read an article in Scientific American about a condition called MHO Medically Healthy and Obese. This says that people with a high BMI are not necessarily unhealthy if all other indicators say they are ok.
Makes sense. Look into the history of BMI. It was originally calculated more via correlation than anything truly scientific.
It has value, but mostly as a signpost.
Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) said:One of my personal truisms: the best drug is the one you don't have to take.
Completely agree.
Instead of drugs, try eating food that is an identifiable part if a plant or animal. Visually identifiable! Hot dogs and bread are not identifiable. Neither is granulated stevia or apple juice.
Try not to drink anything with any sugars or sweeteners regardless of caloric counts. (One exception would milk}.
Essentially dont eat processed foods, but saying "processed" doesnt seem to describe it well enough to people.
Those drugs apparently generate 40% of their weight loss from lost muscle mass.
So, if true, America has lost about 1% of it's muscle...
... literally weakening America...
1988RedT2 said:
This was the truth for a while. It sucked. But I've got a notoriously difficult gi tract anyhow so I'm sure that didn't help.
aircooled said:Those drugs apparently generate 40% of their weight loss from lost muscle mass.
So, if true, America has lost about 1% of it's muscle...
... literally weakening America...
Where did you see that? I just looked and found a UC paper that describes the product as just regulates appetite, and nothing else. I guess it would be possible to lose muscle because you are not using it to carry the excess weight. But given how it works, I don't see a mechanism to specifically reduce muscle mass.
The original goal of the drug is to reduce the risk of diabetes- which it seems to be pretty effective at. So "fat-thin" ends up being better than "fat-fat" thanks to the reduction of diabetes in many people.
I, too, don't want medication, so I do my best to not need things like this. But at the same time, I'm not going to ridicule other people for needing this. It works, and should end up reducing expensive health care problems later on.
My friend is a registered dietitian. She's spent the last thirty years designing diet and exercise programs for people in nursing homes and weight loss programs. She's a phenomenal chef and an absolute fitness machine.
She said that for the past year, she can't get any work done because her phone is ringing off the hook with people who want Ozempic and Wegovy.
She said that nobody wants to put any effort at all into actually improving their health, and they absolutely don't give a E36 M3 about any of the side effects.
Woody (Forum Supportum) said:She said that nobody wants to put any effort at all into actually improving their health, and they absolutely don't give a E36 M3 about any of the side effects.
Well, those folks are going to be disappointed. I've been on semaglutide for a couple of years now. It's a great tool for weight loss. It reduces appetite and makes me feel full much sooner. It also turns off the "food noise" in my brain where I used to obsess about food, especially when dieting.
But it's not a magic bullet. You still have to burn more calories than you eat. It makes it easier to eat fewer calories, but trust me, you can power right through that if you want to. I lost about 40 pounds initially, gained 10 back, and have been sitting there for the past year or so.
In short, semaglutide doesn't make weight magically fall off you, it makes it easier to eat less. That's it. You still have to do the work.
I've lost 35# since last thanksgiving. No drugs needed.
alfadriver said:aircooled said:Those drugs apparently generate 40% of their weight loss from lost muscle mass.
So, if true, America has lost about 1% of it's muscle...
... literally weakening America...
Where did you see that? I just looked and found a UC paper that describes the product as just regulates appetite, and nothing else. I guess it would be possible to lose muscle because you are not using it to carry the excess weight. But given how it works, I don't see a mechanism to specifically reduce muscle mass.
The original goal of the drug is to reduce the risk of diabetes- which it seems to be pretty effective at. So "fat-thin" ends up being better than "fat-fat" thanks to the reduction of diabetes in many people.
I, too, don't want medication, so I do my best to not need things like this. But at the same time, I'm not going to ridicule other people for needing this. It works, and should end up reducing expensive health care problems later on.
I don't think that it's specific to the drug-just weight loss in general. It's been years since I looked it up-but my understanding is almost any weight loss plan that comes from pure calorie restriction has at least 25% of the loss coming from lean mass. You can make that better by including exercise and/or altering your nutritional intake as part of the weight loss plan.
In reply to MrJoshua :
Sure, but the original point of this specific drug was to control type 2 diabetes. The weight loss was a side effect that was looked as a good thing. Then people used it to lower chronic obesity.
Then thinner people wanted to pay big bucks to be lazy.
In reply to alfadriver :
Yeah, I don't have a specific reference. It was a local news story (a very respectable station) a while back, so I would think there is something to it.
It's possible, as a wild guess, that it might be talking more about less than obese people using it? (See Alpha's note above)
In reply to aircooled :
Could be. I remember a year ago, a person I knew who was taking it for T2 complained about the availability of it. At the same time, they were super happy that this was the most effective drug taken for T2.
For the most part, even if you do a Keto based diet, if you don't exercise, at some point, you will run out of fat to burn- or the selection will be roughly equal. For the most part, the side effects are very similar to that diet- so I suspect the net mechanism is similar.
Especially if you are already reasonably thin.
But I would not worry about that for the obese that need to take it or the T2 people who use it as the best control of their diabetes.
Disclaimer: I'm 5' 11", 155lbs and not a doctor.
BUT if I was overweight I'd jump on these drugs in a hot second. After they get cheap enough (i.e there are no more shortages), I may still try them to get a summer six pack.
1. Our current understanding is that the loss of lean muscle mass on GLP-1 agonists is roughly equivalent to what people experience in traditional dieting. https://www.drugdiscoverytrends.com/glp-1-impact-lean-mass/
2. For large portions of the US population the cardiovascular benefits of losing weight via GLP-1 drugs are now obvious. This study shows that taking Semglutide decreased the risk of heart attack and stroke by about 20% in an group of obese adults with no history of diabetes.
3. Cardio issues aside, obesity itself is tied to higher rates of some types of cancer and skeletal disease like osteoarthritis. GLP-1 drugs are too new to show an impact on these diseases, but it's very likely that lower obesity via GLP-1 drugs will in turn lower odds of people ending up with with cancer or arthritis as well.
https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/basics/consequences.html
https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/weight-management/adult-overweight-obesity/health-risks
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We've created a society that is remarkably unhealthy for wide swaths of the population, and taking a holier-than-thou attitude to weight loss is counter productive. If you can stay at a healthy weight without these drugs, awesome. If you need to pin yourself once a week to stay healthy, also awesome.
I don't think we should care if it's a black cat or a brown cat. If it kills mice it's a good cat.
In reply to CrustyRedXpress :
I tend to agree. Helathier population is better and cheaper for all of us.
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