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Diabetes drug Mounjaro was available at $25/month, then increased to $1k/month

independent.co.uk

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Re: Diabetes drug Mounjaro was available at $25/month, then increased to $1k/month

#111

Post by DangitBobby »

fourseventy wrote: post #39

Pro tip, you can lose weight for free with no drugs at all.

This is true, and I frankly don't believe anyone that says there are conditions which make weight loss impossible, since I've lost 90 pounds myself and kept it off by changing my diet and moderating calorie input, a grueling and on-going process.

Regardless, I am very happy to see that there are effective weight-loss treatments that will be available soon, because losing weight is incredibly hard, and it's been shown definitively at this point that something is causing most Americans to be fat (not just Americans anymore either), it negatively impacts their lives, and for one reason or another they are unable to lose the weight without help.

Re: Diabetes drug Mounjaro was available at $25/month, then increased to $1k/month

#112

Post by eclipxe »

fourseventy wrote: post #55
smallpipe wrote: post #13

The obese are mad at the diabetics, the diabetics are mad at the obese, while they should be mad at their failure of politicians who won’t regulate the drug market like any other functioning democracy. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so tragic

They should be mad at themselves for failing to take ownership over their own lives and health. But no, its someone elses fault that they eat an entire box of oreos every night.

Sigh.

Re: Diabetes drug Mounjaro was available at $25/month, then increased to $1k/month

#113

Post by cameronh90 »

bedast wrote: post #65
Bluecobra wrote: post #11

> When someone takes an anti-obesity medication like Mounjaro, the amount of fat the body wants to maintain is re-regulated, usually to a lower weight. “When you take the medication away, that defended fat mass goes back up, and weight is regained,” Jastreboff said. “In order to continue to maintain the new re-regulated defended fat mass, and weight reduction, you have to continue taking the medication.” This doesn’t…

The biggest problem using these drugs for weight loss is they need to be used as part of a program that also includes making lifestyle changes. If you don't push the changes and just do things to your limits, when you stop the drug, your unchanged habits make you gain the weight back. This is one of the biggest things people with obesity struggle with. This is seen as a miracle cure for obesity because it doesn't req…

I take Wegovy for obesity, and it completely changes my behaviour. I don't often think about food any more, and when I do, I am quite happy preparing a small amount of healthy food. Not only that, I have more energy so I maintain a far more active lifestyle.

Given that I can go for months without those "bad habits", but if I stop taking it they come back, I think they're more than habits. Habits break if you stop doing them for a while, these compulsions don't. Until I took this drug, I didn't know what it was like to be able to not constantly think about food and being hungry. I've been overweight for nearly my entire life since I was a breastfeeding baby, and this is the first time in my life that I don't feel like I'm being held hostage to my hunger.

I have lost weight and maintained a healthy weight for periods of time, but I'm just hungry the whole time and eventually the hunger starts beating my willpower.

For what it's worth I also have problems with anxiety. Similarly I tried years of therapy/mediation/mindfulness/etc. to get rid of my anxiety but it never went away until I took sertraline. Now, I live a pretty much anxiety-free life as long as I take a pill a day.

Re: Diabetes drug Mounjaro was available at $25/month, then increased to $1k/month

#114

Post by ilikecakeandpie »

diordiderot wrote: post #22
kemiller2002 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem is not as a weight loss drug, but as a way to regulate diabetes. My girlfriend is on it, because the other medications don't work outside of insulin which has it's own difficulties. The sudden raise in price and her insurance refusing to pay for it means she either has to do it out of pocket or try and switch to something else which may or may not work. The real problem with using it as a weight loss…

> The drug doesn't fix you wanting the food Shouldn't it _eventually_ have a pavlovian effect where you associate all food with nausea?

It doesn't really work like that. The way it was explained to me, it slows your digestion down so you feel/are fuller for longer. It took a lot less for me to be satiated and effectively eliminated any kind of binge eating, but it wasn't because it made me nauseous; I just felt full. Once I got off the drug, I started eating more again.

There are side effects, especially initially with loose stool and some nausea, but generally they don't last. I'm sure they persist with some but that's effectively every medication. The goal isn't to change the relationship with food where it makes one physically ill when seeing or eating food

EDIT: My experience is with Ozempic, not Mounjaro. They may work differently

Re: Diabetes drug Mounjaro was available at $25/month, then increased to $1k/month

#115

Post by hansvm »

msrenee wrote: post #64
HDThoreaun wrote: post #37

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/semaglutidonomics These new weight loss medications are the solution to obesity. Imo this is one of the biggest medical advances of the century and at least in urban areas of wealthy countries, I don’t think we’ll see obese people anymore in 10 years. The pharma companies realized they’ve got something truly revolutionary so they took the old tried and true drug dealer strategy.…

Are they the solution to obesity? I'm curious as to whether the weight stays off long term. 10 or more years at least or else it's just another bandaid. What we need is better access to nutritious food that doesn't take up so much of folk's scant downtime and tight income. I understand there's lots of reasons people are obese that aren't just laziness, but the drug doesn't solve those either. They're still not gettin…

Not less nutritious food? Or is the argument that the [everything else] to calorie ratio should be higher?

Re: Diabetes drug Mounjaro was available at $25/month, then increased to $1k/month

#116

Post by ilikecakeandpie »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #63
ilikecakeandpie wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is tough, but that initial "whoosh" can be the momentum someone needs to help them continue/maintain healthy habits they built during that time. I was put on Ozempic last year for a short amount of time. That, combined with changing of diet and starting an exercise routine, lead me to lose ~60 pounds in a relatively short amount of time (~8 months). I'm not taking the medication anymore and I did gain about 20 pou…

It may be a cynical take but I highly doubt most people searching for this drug are going to do what you have done. Props to you for sure but I fear this will just create another cycle of dependence that only benefits the company manufacturing the drug.

It absolutely can be something that creates a cycle of dependence but I tend to look at it as harm reduction at that point. Weekly injections aren't a fun process though and, at least for me, I was striving to be off any/all medication. Being told you're effectively Type II at 34 was not a fun experience for me and I've been trying to control/put it into remission without having to take Metformin and Ozempic.

To be clear, I'm not intending to shame or throw shade at those who take or need the drugs, I just want to do all in my power avoid them as much as I can.

Re: Diabetes drug Mounjaro was available at $25/month, then increased to $1k/month

#117

Post by HDThoreaun »

lm28469 wrote: post #110
HDThoreaun wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depressed people take ssri’s their entire life. People with ADHD take adderal or the like. I don’t see any reason to think of obesity as a different type of disease. Some people just find it extremely difficult to keep off weight, it doesn’t matter what kind of food they’re eating. Yes they could eat less, just like I could keep my thermostat at 45 in the winter to save on my heating bill. But that’s not a realistic…

> I don’t see any reason to think of obesity as a different type of disease. Because it's man made and completely avoidable. Look at tobacco for example, it was the exact same thing until it wasn't because we woke up and decided to act on the issue Helping currently obese people to get out of the loop is good, breaking the system we built that make more and more people obese would be better. Also, being obese is only…

> breaking the system we built that make more and more people obese would be better.

The system exists because people like it. I don't think it's possible to break it at this point considering how people normally react to having their life made worse. You can't stop people from eating what they want, but these drugs make it possible to change what they want.

Re: Diabetes drug Mounjaro was available at $25/month, then increased to $1k/month

#118

Post by cameronh90 »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #71
HDThoreaun wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food is cheaper and tastes better.the solution isn’t expensive bland food. It’s these drugs.

Amazing how there's no room for self-control or accountability in these discussions. There's a reason most of the world isn't addicted to heroin...

We banned heroin because it being readily available leads to loads of people getting addicted to it. Even with it being illegal, lots of people still end up addicted to it. No matter your views on prohibition, it's pretty obviously not a good idea to encourage heroin use due to the risk of addiction.

Yet we do precisely that with salty sugary foods, with many of them advertised specifically towards children.

Re: Diabetes drug Mounjaro was available at $25/month, then increased to $1k/month

#119

Post by pwinnski »

bedast wrote: post #36

Mounjaro is not an obesity drug. It's a type 2 diabetes drug. Do not call it an obesity drug. The headline is editorialized. The linked article's headline: The ‘next Ozempic’ became a social media sensation. Then everything changed The coupon didn't go away. The coupon's terms changed. I'm using the coupon now. Because I have type 2 diabetes. The coupon changed because people were using it to get the drug for off-lab…

I'm aware that you're upset because of shortages in the medicine you need.

I think your beef should be with the pharma company seeking to maximize profits by constraining supply such that they are easily overwhelmed by off-label use, not with people seeking effective medical treatment.

There's a common meme among what I've seen from diabetics complaining about the shortages: that this is a tik-tok thing, or prompted by some celebrity, and the medicine is being take by people trying to lose ten lbs. I don't think any of that is true. Doctors are prescribing this for people who have medical conditions that make them dramatically overweight. My mother found relief from lipedema after decades of pain thanks to mounjaro, and she's facing the same shortages you are. She's done the half-doses and the quarter-doses and stretched them out until the pain came back.

Mounjaro is the best drug for a number of conditions, both the approved diabetes and some number of not-yet-approved conditions. Eli Lilly is maximizing profits in a way that leaves people with Type 2 diabetes and other painful conditions suffering. There's no need to blame social media for Eli Lilly's shortcomings.

Re: Diabetes drug Mounjaro was available at $25/month, then increased to $1k/month

#120

Post by pwinnski »

counttheforks wrote: post #90
automatic6131 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>obesity may very well lead them to diabetes. People will die. How scary! If only there was a reliable way for patients to prevent this disease :-(

Like taking the drug? If you're implying people should "just eat less", that's clearly not very reliable.

Not only unreliable, but ignorant. There is so much in hormone responses and often-undiagnosed conditions that makes "just eat less" absolutely irrelevant to many people.
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