People on weight loss drugs eat less? My god, what else will science discover?!
It’s more than just eating less. The drugs change people’s relationship with food and it helps them control their impulses. This new class of weight loss drugs really are revolutionary.
The worldwide impact of these new drugs could be kind of amazing. They don’t just have you burn more calories or not digest food you eat. They completely change how people think about food. When obesity is an epidemic that causes all kinds of health problems, imagine how much less we’d spend on healthcare if more people were healthier weights.
It’s an epidemic because of greedy corporations pushing shit food combined with our shit culture, overwork, and lack of exercise.
On top of this, what’s medically considered overweight is a really flawed logic and weight can often be a comorbidity of other problems that get passed off by doctors as the person just being too fat. For example, according to the BMI, champion weightlifters are morbidly obese.
BMI classifying weightlifters as morbidly obese is a flaw of the BMI, not on how medics consider obesity. BMI is used because for most people it is really simple and quick and gives a reasonable result. When a doctor considers your health, they consider many many factors including your bloodwork, quantity and location of fat, fitness level and more
Yeah, but when an insurance company is looking to deny a claim, suddenly the nuance of all that goes out the window
Can’t have that. Might hurt profits somewhere. A big insurance company here just removed one of the drugs from coverage inexplicably.
Makes you wonder why despite a doctor prescribing it for weight loss, the insurance company can go ahead and just, nope out. and what motivation do they have to keep people fat?
They don’t want to pay out for expensive drugs. They can’t be profitable if they pay for the healthcare your doctor prescribes for you.
A good friend of mine is on them. He physically gets sick if he overeats. He has event missed work because he was home vomiting. He learned fast to eat small amounts only. We used to have lunch about once a month. We have not gone out since he started on them.
And that’s cool and all, but maybe it would be better to spend the time and money on providing better food options in the first place.
IDK if I’d call food rotting in your stomach because your body just isn’t digesting it a revolution.
And the article calls it rare in the first sentence.
To the point that it gets rotten yes. But the entire purpose of the drug is to dramatically slow the digestion process which has a whole host of other problems, rotten food inside you is just the grossest.
Digestion itself is a rotting process using our gut bacteria
I think the lesson here is that all drugs have side effects and it’s a question of whether the positive effect is worth the danger. If you are looking for the perfect pharmaceutical, it will never exist.
In this case, not science but an investment firm. Trying to figure out if they should cut investments in restaurants, groceries or both.
It is slightly interesting that people mostly seem to cut eating out and not groceries, rather than it being proportional. That being said, if I’m taking a weight loss drug I’m probably trying to eat at least a little healthier, which probably means less eating out.
They are also stupid expensive. If you’re spending 1k a month on medicine, of course you’re gonna eat out less.
That’s the new dystopian plan for those who can’t afford groceries. Take a pill!
My mom told me that when she was send away to a remote school where she lived with other teens they drenched cotton balls in orange juice and ate that to lose weight. That thought still haunts me.
What’s crazy about that, you could just eat high fiber foods and get the same effect.
People did that because the cotton wouldn’t be digested and make their stomachs feel full for a long time. Literally the same thing nondigestable fiber does.
What’s actually crazy is most people today barely eat any fiber.
I guess that’s one way to get your fiber.
73% of Americans are overweight. They’ll be just fine if they eat out less.
As a lot of people here know, I am the last person to be saying this, but if it was possible to take a pill to avoid paying for groceries, it’s probably worth it.
Just don’t end up living on Ensure and V8 because it’s just as expensive, trust me.
I used to think of eating and sleeping as wasting my productive time. Were I then able to take a pill to reclaim that time, I would have. I’m much lazier now. I like the new me.
Trust me, eating is one of the best things in the world. Maybe the best thing in the world if it’s the right meal. Every culture is built around food.
I am very much in a position to know this.
Edit: I forgot my point, which was that even though it’s great, if people could only do it when they wanted to instead of when they had to, they would probably make that choice.
I’m on Ozempic. I eat way less. Many restaurants offer portion sizes that are far, far too big for a person NOT on weight loss drugs let alone one who is. I often ask for a half or a quarter portion because I don’t want to waste the rest of the food. I always say I will pay full price but I don’t want all the food. Some restaurants give me a break on the price. Others don’t. When you’re faced with such huge portions it’s just easier to avoid restaurants.
Why is taking home leftovers not an option?
I do when I go to a restaurant close to home. I travel for work and can’t take leftovers back to my hotel most of the time. I’ve found that most restaurants are good about cutting portion sizes and that sometimes when I ask for half because I can’t eat a whole portion but offer to pay full price they will give me a break.
Hasn’t it been killing people due to prevention or absorbing food properly even after stopping the medication?
There are some very rare possible serious side effects. I’m not sure what the numbers are. No one is being forced to take it.
I’m a caregiver for a diabetic person and Medicare decided at the new year that they would not cover the medications he’s been doing very well on because they (state insurance, not his doctors) want him on Ozempic instead. They let him keep his insulin, but Victoza, Pandin and Jardiance are gone. We’re having a very hard time keeping his blood sugar steady, he’s getting dangerous lows that he’s not capable of communicating to us, and higher spikes than I’ve seen in the four years I’ve cared for him, so we’re testing more frequently and no, they will not cover the additional testing supplies, that’s out of pocket now.
So, yes. Some people on Medicare are being forced to take it.
The US medical system is grotesque.
I am taking Ozempic, Metformin, and Jardiance but I live in a civilized country where my doctor makes the decisions about what drugs I am taking and talks to me about his recommendations before prescribing.
No one is being forced to take it.
That’s kind of missing the forest for the trees. Dying because some company pushed weight loss pills on your doctor who then pushed them onto you is kind of fucked up just like drugs like Chantix driving people to kill themselves or leak fluids out of their asshole in order to stop smoking, two things that have a multitude of other methods to acheive the same goal with much less of a risk.
You’re free to choose not to take it.
Removed by mod
Exactly. If you’re not crushing it and snorting it then you might as well flush it down the toilet.
Why? Is there a shortage?
It’s a diabetes drug and weight loss is just a fun side effect. I don’t know about any shortage though.
Not in the US, but production is limited and there have been pretty bad shortages in Canada and Australia. They had to put an export ban on Ozempic because so much of it was being sold to Americans, in Canada we pay $160US, while the same box sells for $970US in the states.
Im a diabetic, and earlier in the year we had a hard time getting it due to all the off label use.
Thank you for that context.
Sounds like it’s functioning as a means of reducing the development of type 2 diabetes. Mission failed successfully?
I am reminded of Fen-Phen, which was big in the late 90s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenfluramine/phentermine
Everyone and their mother got on it and lost tons of weight. Then suddenly it came out that, shockingly, drugs have side effects and some can hurt your heart. Suddenly there’s a flurry of lawsuits and a perfectly good drug is removed from the market because the public abused it.
This could be just like that. If it is more harmful than it is already known to be, then the widespread adoption should highlight that faster.
If there are supply issues, as others have mentioned, widespread adoption and profitability will hopefully cause an increase in production.
It would have to be pretty bad for you to be worse than the detrimental health effects of being 300lbs+
That’s where I was on the whole fen-phen thing. I recall speaking to a couple doctors (in casual conversation) who thought that the lawsuits were stupid and that it was, indeed, good for the morbidly obese to have options like this. Me, personally, I believe that a bunch of lawyers got dollar signs in their eyes and decided to go after the big bucks.
I guess the FDA can be persuaded with enough pressure.
It’s not a fun side effect.
Spend your money on weight loss drugs so you don’t have any money to eat out.
Begun, the drug vs food wars have. (Just kidding they’ve been going on for eons)
Who needs plants, just feed the cows other cows. what could go wrong?
Water? Like from the toilet?
People are healthier, so CNBC worries about the profits of junk food corps.
Fast food lobbyists are going to demand ozempic be banned
Big pharma vs big mac.
No one said it yet?
Water is wet, news at 11
Mmm, okay. Duh?
Most takeout and many restaurants aren’t healthy, and I would expect many people taking dietary supplements/weight loss pills to be health conscious. And also eat less in general.
Also: The focus the article and study puts on this impacting the corporate food world sickens me.
These drugs aren’t giving people the calories they need to live, so it sounds like your business depends on making people unhealthy.
These drugs aren’t giving people the calories they need to live
Of course the drugs don’t give people calories. Food does that.
A lot of times the reason restaurant food is so good is because of the ungodly amount of butter they add to it
And piles of salt.
Sometimes, living off of stored calories can improve ones health
These drugs aren’t giving people the calories they need to live
That’s what the fat reserves are for.
