Will Ozempic and other drugs like it eliminate obesity?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No. I’ve been a personal trainer for 30 years. Masters in Exercise Physiology. No drug will ever work. No fad diet will ever work. No shiny new exercise program will ever work. Healthy, strong bodies are built through hard work and discipline. People may lose for a few months or even years. But it always comes back. Changing your body requires a complete lifestyle change. Few people are willing to put in the effort.

You are incompetent.

How is it incompetent to state common knowledge? What the pp said is true, except maybe these drugs will be more helpful than previous ones.

Not that poster, but the personal trainer is clearly extremely uneducated based on that post. It’s rational to assume the trainer is incompetent. I mean, it’s blindingly clear that the last time that trainer did any education was over thirty years ago.

[Anonymous]

30 years ago I watched my mom try over and over to quit smoking - she tried everything. And we were all scared for the health repercussions of her smoking addiction. Then a drug came out that reduced her cravings and she was able to quit for good.

I am so thankful for the drug because my children get to know my mom and she is in good health in her seventies now.

[Anonymous]

I know someone who lost over 100lbs on Ozempic and is now at a healthy BMI. Their doctor says they still need the Ozempic due to type 2 diabetes even though they are now completely off their twice a day insulin shots as a result of the weight loss. My question is what will happen if they just keep losing weight? What if they get down to an unhealthy BMI, will the doctor think they should stop the drug then? Is it possible to force yourself to eat more while under the effects of this medication? How important is the drug for diabetics once they've lost so much weight?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No. I’ve been a personal trainer for 30 years. Masters in Exercise Physiology. No drug will ever work. No fad diet will ever work. No shiny new exercise program will ever work. Healthy, strong bodies are built through hard work and discipline. People may lose for a few months or even years. But it always comes back. Changing your body requires a complete lifestyle change. Few people are willing to put in the effort.

I realize you feel threatened for your livelihood but the empirical evidence suggests these drugs are highly effective.

I agree, in the short term. But, they've been around only a couple of years and are being marketed similar to insulin and other drugs that require regular use for a lifetime. I don't think we know if they are sustainable over a lifetime or what it looks like when other needs and medical issues layer on top. (Not saying I know they won't make a large dent in obesity ... just that it's early.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know someone who lost over 100lbs on Ozempic and is now at a healthy BMI. Their doctor says they still need the Ozempic due to type 2 diabetes even though they are now completely off their twice a day insulin shots as a result of the weight loss. My question is what will happen if they just keep losing weight? What if they get down to an unhealthy BMI, will the doctor think they should stop the drug then? Is it possible to force yourself to eat more while under the effects of this medication? How important is the drug for diabetics once they've lost so much weight?

The answer is: it’s complicated, personal, and some of this is still being worked out. If they have good glucose levels and are still losing weight, their doctor will probably gradually move them down to a lower dose to reduce the weight loss. But that’s less likely. What is more likely is that their body will eventually settle at a new reasonable set point, where they will need to stay for awhile. They probably won’t (and shouldn’t) move off the drugs quickly. They are still diabetic (although there is a lot of discussion about this now). Essentially they are a diabetic with successfully managed — but not cured — diabetes. There is some question about long-term efficacy of these drugs for maintaining weight loss, but what does seem to be clear is that treating this class of drugs like “diet” drugs (where people go off as soon as they hit goal) doesn’t work. People for whom these drugs are effective likely need to stay on them for long periods of time after weight loss.

It’s great that they’re off insulin — that’s a major health victory.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No. I’ve been a personal trainer for 30 years. Masters in Exercise Physiology. No drug will ever work. No fad diet will ever work. No shiny new exercise program will ever work. Healthy, strong bodies are built through hard work and discipline. People may lose for a few months or even years. But it always comes back. Changing your body requires a complete lifestyle change. Few people are willing to put in the effort.

I realize you feel threatened for your livelihood but the empirical evidence suggests these drugs are highly effective.

I agree, in the short term. But, they've been around only a couple of years and are being marketed similar to insulin and other drugs that require regular use for a lifetime. I don't think we know if they are sustainable over a lifetime or what it looks like when other needs and medical issues layer on top. (Not saying I know they won't make a large dent in obesity ... just that it's early.)

Not the PP but FYI most of this class of drugs has been available and in trials for around a decade. It’s just the authorization for weight loss that’s new (except for Mounjaro, which is in fact fairly new).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Excuse me but Victoza came out in 2010. They marketed it for weight loss as a side effect in the commercials.
Pharma is sneaky. Ozempic is a cousin of Victoza. Read about the cancer risks and all kind of other negatives. If you still want to call me an idiot, go for it and gladly take a drug pharma is using to pump up their stock prices.

This is nothing new people.

Being overweight or obese is knowingly associated with increased risk of 13 different types of cancer.
I guess we all get to make our own decisions in life especially that between making less money being a fat female and also having increased risk of 13 cancers or getting thinner and being viewed as less lazy and increased risk of thyroid cancer if I also happen to have a family history of that very specific thyroid cancer and endocrine disorder. 🤔

[Anonymous]

What is the long term safety of these drugs? Do we even know? I just don’t think pharmaceuticals are the key to health, lifestyle and diet is a more difficult but proven solution.

[Anonymous]

No. My father is on it and still overweight. It helped him shed pounds and regulate blood sugar, but it can't change lifestyle factors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is the long term safety of these drugs? Do we even know? I just don’t think pharmaceuticals are the key to health, lifestyle and diet is a more difficult but proven solution.

Lifestyle and diet are essentially proven advice failures at this point. If you are counseling lifestyle and diet as the sole key to long-term health for obese people, you are flat-out helping your clients have shorter lifespans and likely also setting them up for severe psychological harm.

If doctors were hawking cures for literally any other disease that had a 95% failure rate, we would be bringing them before medical boards for fraud and harm. But that’s what happens for obesity regularly and it is instead a rapacious multi-billion dollar industry. You see elements of that here in DCUM — look how panicked and angry the personal trainers and “diet counselors” of DCUM are about the existence of this class of drugs. Never mind that these folks have been giving failing advice for decades.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No. I’ve been a personal trainer for 30 years. Masters in Exercise Physiology. No drug will ever work. No fad diet will ever work. No shiny new exercise program will ever work. Healthy, strong bodies are built through hard work and discipline. People may lose for a few months or even years. But it always comes back. Changing your body requires a complete lifestyle change. Few people are willing to put in the effort.

I realize you feel threatened for your livelihood but the empirical evidence suggests these drugs are highly effective.

NP. Empirical evidence? Like the same empirical evidence showing that oxycodone wasn't addictive. Lots of nerds believed that nonsense. Do you honestly think that taking a weight loss drug is going to improve the health of weight challenged individuals?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is the long term safety of these drugs? Do we even know? I just don’t think pharmaceuticals are the key to health, lifestyle and diet is a more difficult but proven solution.

Lifestyle and diet are essentially proven advice failures at this point. If you are counseling lifestyle and diet as the sole key to long-term health for obese people, you are flat-out helping your clients have shorter lifespans and likely also setting them up for severe psychological harm.

If doctors were hawking cures for literally any other disease that had a 95% failure rate, we would be bringing them before medical boards for fraud and harm. But that’s what happens for obesity regularly and it is instead a rapacious multi-billion dollar industry. You see elements of that here in DCUM — look how panicked and angry the personal trainers and “diet counselors” of DCUM are about the existence of this class of drugs. Never mind that these folks have been giving failing advice for decades.

If there’s a 95% failure rate for lifestyle and diet, what is the failure rate for semi-glutides? Can people who are size 28 expect to lose weight and keep it off? Is it a no-brainer to take the drugs?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is the long term safety of these drugs? Do we even know? I just don’t think pharmaceuticals are the key to health, lifestyle and diet is a more difficult but proven solution.

Given the mountains of evidence that medical providers advising people to eat less and move more is a total, abject failure at reducing obesity, please explain what you mean that "lifestyle and diet is a more difficult but proven solution"? It would be much closer to the truth to say "lifestyle and diet is not in any reasonable sense a solution for most people."

Oh, and by the way -- I'm someone who can pretty easily lose weight whenever I need to by eating less and working out more. But, based on the data, I'm clearly an outlier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No. I’ve been a personal trainer for 30 years. Masters in Exercise Physiology. No drug will ever work. No fad diet will ever work. No shiny new exercise program will ever work. Healthy, strong bodies are built through hard work and discipline. People may lose for a few months or even years. But it always comes back. Changing your body requires a complete lifestyle change. Few people are willing to put in the effort.

I realize you feel threatened for your livelihood but the empirical evidence suggests these drugs are highly effective.

NP. Empirical evidence? Like the same empirical evidence showing that oxycodone wasn't addictive. Lots of nerds believed that nonsense. Do you honestly think that taking a weight loss drug is going to improve the health of weight challenged individuals?

You seem confused about the meaning of the term "evidence." There was ample evidence pretty early on that Oxy was being diverted and that the anti-tampering measures were inadequate, but regulators ignored the evidence. What happened with the Sacklers was corruption and massive regulatory failure. It was not a problem of evidence.

You also seem confused about how pharmaceuticals and medicine in general work. Semiglutide is a drug that's been improving the lives of people with diabetes since 2012. It was authorized for obesity management in 2021, but the drug has a proven track record of helping people with diabetes pretty dramatically.

I get arguing that regulators can be corrupted and bribed to ignore evidence by drug companies, and that's a problem that needs to be addressed by strong oversight and regulatory reform -- something Americans are politically really bad at demanding.

But you're not making that argument; you seem just to be arguing that pharmaceuticals are bad, which is weird considering that humans now live on average more than twice as long as they did before modern pharmaceuticals began to be invented.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is the long term safety of these drugs? Do we even know? I just don’t think pharmaceuticals are the key to health, lifestyle and diet is a more difficult but proven solution.

Given the mountains of evidence that medical providers advising people to eat less and move more is a total, abject failure at reducing obesity, please explain what you mean that "lifestyle and diet is a more difficult but proven solution"? It would be much closer to the truth to say "lifestyle and diet is not in any reasonable sense a solution for most people."

Oh, and by the way -- I'm someone who can pretty easily lose weight whenever I need to by eating less and working out more. But, based on the data, I'm clearly an outlier.

it's not the lifestyle and diet are not the solution, it's' that the advice to change lifestyle and diet is useless. the change itself is the solution, but almost no-one is able to make the change and keep at it.

these drugs will hopefully, help with that. i am on ozempic and it's a tremendous help. i do think that these drugs are a gamechanger and will eventually significantly reduce obesity.