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Ozempic linked to stomach paralysis, other gastrointestinal issues: UBC study

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31–40 of 89 posts

Re: Ozempic linked to stomach paralysis, other gastrointestinal issues: UBC study

#31

Anecdotal sample of one here: since starting the treatment a year ago, I have hardly set foot in a fast food restaurant, and my visits to other food establishments have been reduced by 75% at minimum. Grocery shopping has been more mindful and smaller in size. The impact on my desire or even ability to consume food beyond the base metabolic necessity is real.

Out of curiosity, do you also drink Yakult or similar?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakult

Re: Ozempic linked to stomach paralysis, other gastrointestinal issues: UBC study

#32
post #28
post #14

Anecdotal experience - Good friend of mine who struggles with weight was taking Ozempic for about two months. He described nausea quite often when I saw him but the results were pretty astounding. He then hit a wall where gastroparesis would happen quite often and I happened to be at his house when one of these bouts got very severe. He went from feeling bad, to hunched over in pain and started projectile vomiting in…

His doctor isn't monitoring correctly. They should drop the dose. Standard treatment is start with a really smart dose then you double it each month for 5 months. In reality, if you're losing weight, you should just keep on that dosage.

May be his pharmacy struggling with supply -- I hear lots of folks are titrating outside of the guidelines because they can't get the appropriate dosage.

Re: Ozempic linked to stomach paralysis, other gastrointestinal issues: UBC study

#33
post #19

It's going to be very interesting to see how the people who insisted on getting off-label prescriptions fare in court.

Wegovy is incorrectly listed in the article as a diabetes medication, it is only approved for weight loss. It is also 30% more expensive. https://www.wegovy.com/

Wegovy, Ozempic and Rybelsus are all brand names for the same underlying drug semaglitude that was approved first for diabetes in different dosages.

Re: Ozempic linked to stomach paralysis, other gastrointestinal issues: UBC study

#34
"Another issue he brought up with the study is that the researchers found that people on Ozempic were five times more likely to drink alcohol compared to the other medications."

Hm. May have located the problem.

This is considered to be the first generation of weight loss drugs that work. There will probably be better ones.

Re: Ozempic linked to stomach paralysis, other gastrointestinal issues: UBC study

#35
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can! But should we? Being fat is similar to being a drug user. At first, you actually are fat and happy. Over time, being fat will absolutely reduce your happiness from the medical, societal, and physical issues that arise. Similar to how drug users build up a tolerance and instead of using the drug to be happy, they use the drug to feel normal. And just to state a simple fact, I do not condone shaming people with…

I have thought of this before. But it isn't really the same. Drugs, the really bad ones will probably ruin your life or kill you in the space of two or three years. Being fat unless it's super super severe often won't start impacting your health seriously until your 30's or 40's. on the opposite side anorexia will kill you much faster than obesity

At 30, you have more than half your life ahead of you. At 40, you are just about the halfway mark.

That's just the more serious longterm effects. The reversible short term ones are immediate.

I was at a birthday hike for a friend - up a short granite hill for good views, some slow meandering around a lake. Very relaxed stuff. One of her guests couldn't make it up the hill. Full on bawling, had to leave early. This woman could not participate in even a casual hike for a friends party and she clearly wanted to be able to.

I was fat but below the obesity level before I started my whole thing and the first "benefit" I noticed was that I could do any physical activity. I might be bad at it, but I could rock climb, and kayak, and play basketball with people. The "Oh, I can't do that" was simply _gone_.

Re: Ozempic linked to stomach paralysis, other gastrointestinal issues: UBC study

#36
post #5

Can we just let people be fat and happy

Yes, to a certain degree. But now we are in an obesity epidemic. It is just as bad as people smoking in the previous generations. Loads of people are MORBIDLY obese.

Good for them?

Re: Ozempic linked to stomach paralysis, other gastrointestinal issues: UBC study

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the non-diabetics using it will generate great data.. for the rest of us.

Unfortunately not really, because the infrastructure that allows us to glean insights from actual healthcare practices is abysmal/nonexistent, at least in the US. It became clear during COVID that a lot of people seem to presume there's some way for researchers to just "look at what's happening," and there isn't.

There's no nationwide research infrastructure for gleaning insights like that. But large provider organizations have huge patient populations and do a lot of research. They have multiple studies underway for Ozempic and similar drugs.

Re: Ozempic linked to stomach paralysis, other gastrointestinal issues: UBC study

#38
post #13

Pancreatitis is already a listed side effect of GLP-1 agonists, right?

I'm not an expert, but from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32103407/:

> Seven CVOTs enrolling 56,004 patients with T2DM were identified, with a median follow-up time ranging from 1.3 to 5.4 years. [...] Conclusion: Pooled analysis of CVOTs did not suggest any increased risk of either acute pancreatitis or pancreatic cancer with GLP-1RA treatment in T2DM patients.

Re: Ozempic linked to stomach paralysis, other gastrointestinal issues: UBC study

#40
I was on it for 2 months, and felt no serious adverse gastrointestinal effects. A tiny bit of nausea, but no vomiting or stomach pains. I was conscious of things acting differently down there so I made sure to eat smaller meals, and avoided fatty foods. A lot of people keep eating just like before and that's where most problems stem from.

Initially my appetite almost completely went away, but then it came back to what felt like normal. There were days where I felt like I was eating too much or binging, but the weight kept coming off at about 2lbs per week. Also, being free from the food noise was incredibly liberating because I'm otherwise always thinking about food.

I ended up stopping because I would get incredibly sleepy at about 10pm to the point where staying up was almost impossible. I tried eating more thinking it was a blood sugar issue, but that didn't help. It just didn't work with my schedule.

I plan to get back on it, or an alternative like Mounjaro.

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