Excellent guide to keeping calm & carrying on. My daughter for at least the last 15 years has tried a myriad of diets & interventions. Been to her GP at least three times often in tears to be told here's 12 weeks at the gym here's some tablets to help you poo orange fat here's an appointment with the dietitian & here's the health NHS food plate. The 'fat-jab' is working for her, she keeps to the 2.5 dose with no intentions of upping dosage and we are ecstatic that at long last her weight is reducing. She feels it is re-educating thoughts about constantly thinking about food to feeling indifferent about it. She is not lazy she knows what foods to eat she walked daily but nothing apart from this medication was working. Thank you both for taking the time to remove the scare and turn it into care.
In my opinion, these medications are truly life changing for so many people.
I think every social media ‘expert’ should be made to read this article. They try guilt tripping users, spread fear and anxiety by posting ridiculous theories about the dangers of these drugs, the side effects, the long term effects of use and how the weight will just’ pile back on’ when the user stops taking them. They spread fear with their usual conspiracy theories about the contents of the drug causing unnecessary fear.
The other so called ‘expert’ is the one who clearly demonstrates their ignorance by declaring users are cheating! All that is needed is to keep their face out of the fridge and get off their lazy ar$e and do some exercise. Oh if life were so simple.
That is brilliant, I hope that you both do more essays like this. Go into somewhere like W H Smiths and the only magazine doing what you and Emma have done is New Scientist whilst magazines touting ‘wellness’ diets and lifestyles are everywhere on the racks. And as for newspapers, especially the tabloids, they are more likely to be recommending lifestyle and supplement hacks rather than laying out reasons why modern medicine is the best thing since we started walking upright. So yes please, more of the same
I am concerned that, as with other diets/diet pills etc, that users will get addicted to the high of losing weight, including all the societal rewards they receive. My concerns are threefold:
1) an increase in eating disorders. Some research suggests 95% of eating disorders start with 'normal dieting'. Can a similar thing happen with these drugs?
2) an opioid style crisis. Especially those who get the drugs through the NHS for a limited time, or those who can only afford them for a short time. Plenty of shysters will be willing to flog them all and sundry or indeed obtain the real thing through back channels.
3) weight cycling (yo-yo dieting) may have all sorts of effects on long-term metabolism etc.
Do we know yet what happens to people when they stop taking the drugs? Especially when it's not by choice?
I'm reluctant to take such things if it's just going to be a more dramatic (and expensive) repeat of history. I really want to be wrong.
Conspiracies aside, which just cloud the issue, big pharma clearly controls social and legacy media, so a shortage doesn't have to be real for it to be in the news. When licensed for obesity an imagined shortage created more demand.
Doctors are not pushing the drugs- but pharma is- via the media. Doctors may waffle about life style changes but patients want the wonder drug they've heard about.
In the most successful Oz induces wt loss of 20 to 25%- before users quit leaving them still obese but less so. Most stop taking them before losing wt. 1 in 15 plateau at ideal wt.
Quitting could be the high cost of up to $1,350 a month (though cost of production is $40 a month- with 10% profit margin! And no they don't need 330% mark up for development- Novo Nordisk eg spends $7 billion on paying share-holders and half that $3.4 billion on R&D.
Or side effects such as vomiting and diarrhoea could cause people to quit. Or the fact that 40% of weight loss is from fat-free mass including muscles.
These drugs are also being offered to teenagers and people as young as 12. These drugs have not yet been tested long term on their effect on brain development- even though they affect the brain. It was only after 2017 and the oral version showed appetite suppression that it was only approved for wt loss in 2022. Most trials only run using healthy adults.
The obsession you have with conspiracy theorists blinds you to the quick buck that pharma wants to make for shareholders, even if users quit after a couple of months that's still plenty of money made and there's always new users.
'Benflurex, sold as Mediator was another drug created for diabetes that had been repurposed as an appetite suppressant. Despite causing 100s of deaths it wasn't pulled for 33 years. The manufacturer knew but covered up. The Judge's concluded that the drug company's priority was systematically given to preserving its own economic interests over safety of consumers.'
Excellent guide to keeping calm & carrying on. My daughter for at least the last 15 years has tried a myriad of diets & interventions. Been to her GP at least three times often in tears to be told here's 12 weeks at the gym here's some tablets to help you poo orange fat here's an appointment with the dietitian & here's the health NHS food plate. The 'fat-jab' is working for her, she keeps to the 2.5 dose with no intentions of upping dosage and we are ecstatic that at long last her weight is reducing. She feels it is re-educating thoughts about constantly thinking about food to feeling indifferent about it. She is not lazy she knows what foods to eat she walked daily but nothing apart from this medication was working. Thank you both for taking the time to remove the scare and turn it into care.
In my opinion, these medications are truly life changing for so many people.
I think every social media ‘expert’ should be made to read this article. They try guilt tripping users, spread fear and anxiety by posting ridiculous theories about the dangers of these drugs, the side effects, the long term effects of use and how the weight will just’ pile back on’ when the user stops taking them. They spread fear with their usual conspiracy theories about the contents of the drug causing unnecessary fear.
The other so called ‘expert’ is the one who clearly demonstrates their ignorance by declaring users are cheating! All that is needed is to keep their face out of the fridge and get off their lazy ar$e and do some exercise. Oh if life were so simple.
A great collaboration by you both.
That is brilliant, I hope that you both do more essays like this. Go into somewhere like W H Smiths and the only magazine doing what you and Emma have done is New Scientist whilst magazines touting ‘wellness’ diets and lifestyles are everywhere on the racks. And as for newspapers, especially the tabloids, they are more likely to be recommending lifestyle and supplement hacks rather than laying out reasons why modern medicine is the best thing since we started walking upright. So yes please, more of the same
I am concerned that, as with other diets/diet pills etc, that users will get addicted to the high of losing weight, including all the societal rewards they receive. My concerns are threefold:
1) an increase in eating disorders. Some research suggests 95% of eating disorders start with 'normal dieting'. Can a similar thing happen with these drugs?
2) an opioid style crisis. Especially those who get the drugs through the NHS for a limited time, or those who can only afford them for a short time. Plenty of shysters will be willing to flog them all and sundry or indeed obtain the real thing through back channels.
3) weight cycling (yo-yo dieting) may have all sorts of effects on long-term metabolism etc.
Do we know yet what happens to people when they stop taking the drugs? Especially when it's not by choice?
I'm reluctant to take such things if it's just going to be a more dramatic (and expensive) repeat of history. I really want to be wrong.
Conspiracies aside, which just cloud the issue, big pharma clearly controls social and legacy media, so a shortage doesn't have to be real for it to be in the news. When licensed for obesity an imagined shortage created more demand.
Doctors are not pushing the drugs- but pharma is- via the media. Doctors may waffle about life style changes but patients want the wonder drug they've heard about.
In the most successful Oz induces wt loss of 20 to 25%- before users quit leaving them still obese but less so. Most stop taking them before losing wt. 1 in 15 plateau at ideal wt.
Quitting could be the high cost of up to $1,350 a month (though cost of production is $40 a month- with 10% profit margin! And no they don't need 330% mark up for development- Novo Nordisk eg spends $7 billion on paying share-holders and half that $3.4 billion on R&D.
Or side effects such as vomiting and diarrhoea could cause people to quit. Or the fact that 40% of weight loss is from fat-free mass including muscles.
These drugs are also being offered to teenagers and people as young as 12. These drugs have not yet been tested long term on their effect on brain development- even though they affect the brain. It was only after 2017 and the oral version showed appetite suppression that it was only approved for wt loss in 2022. Most trials only run using healthy adults.
The obsession you have with conspiracy theorists blinds you to the quick buck that pharma wants to make for shareholders, even if users quit after a couple of months that's still plenty of money made and there's always new users.
'Benflurex, sold as Mediator was another drug created for diabetes that had been repurposed as an appetite suppressant. Despite causing 100s of deaths it wasn't pulled for 33 years. The manufacturer knew but covered up. The Judge's concluded that the drug company's priority was systematically given to preserving its own economic interests over safety of consumers.'