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Ozempic is changing people's skin, say plastic surgeons

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Re: Ozempic is changing people's skin, say plastic surgeons

#111

Post by dark-star »

istultus wrote: post #38
dark-star wrote: post #27

A quick explanation about what Ozempic is would be helpful in this case. Not every country uses the same name for their drugs and the brand names are often very different

That's an interesting remark, considering this is most famous drug on the face of the Earth, and only has one brand name worldwide (in a different dosage it's called Wegovy, and when it's released as a pill it will be called Rybelsus). Its generic name is Semaglutide.

lol what? Have you heard of Aspirin, Ibuprofen, Paracetamol? I bet you that by far more people know those three than "Ozempic".

Re: Ozempic is changing people's skin, say plastic surgeons

#112

Post by dark-star »

azinman2 wrote: post #75
dark-star wrote: post #27

A quick explanation about what Ozempic is would be helpful in this case. Not every country uses the same name for their drugs and the brand names are often very different

It literally says this in the article.

It says that a lot of people are on Ozempic. And that it changes the skin somehow. And that these people get plastic surgery.

If you search for "diabetes" in the article, then yeah, you'll find it about half way down, but by then I already stopped reading because I had no idea what the whole article was about.

So yeah, it might technically be in the article, but it wouldn't have hurt to put it in the post title now, would it?

Re: Ozempic is changing people's skin, say plastic surgeons

#113

Post by cm2187 »

thefz wrote: post #109
cm2187 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK those products are only available to people with a BMI > 30. If you have 20 or 30 kg to lose it is simply not true that most of the weight loss is muscle mass. The fat is visible and the fat loss is also visible. You might lose a bit of muscle mass, and doing exercise at the same time is good. But between the loss of a bit of muscle mass during the diet vs remaining obese, it is an easy trade off from a hea…

BMI is an empty metric anyway, you can be VERY muscular, slim but not very tall and still being in the same category of a near obese person.

Great, so professional bobybuilders who are no fat all muscles shouldn't start a diet on ozempic...

Re: Ozempic is changing people's skin, say plastic surgeons

#114

Post by rswskg »

anakaine wrote: post #43
cm2187 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of effort are you talking about? Weight loss has very little to do with exercise and mostly to do with how much you eat. Those drugs allow you to combat the carving when you restrict food. Is fighting the carving the "effort" you think people ought to make?

This, and there's seems to be a number of people with a misconception that getting medical assistance is either cheating, or you're not trying hard enough. As someone who is quite strong and fit, but has a family history of obesity, and who has been packing on the kilos into their 40s - I've recently started with ozempic and it's a breakthrough drug. The incessant never ending demand to eat, that voice which never go…

It isn't a permanent solution, it's purely designed to drop weight. You have to do the mental and physical work to be able to maintain which is a different mindset.

Re: Ozempic is changing people's skin, say plastic surgeons

#115

Post by thefz »

cm2187 wrote: post #113
thefz wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BMI is an empty metric anyway, you can be VERY muscular, slim but not very tall and still being in the same category of a near obese person.

Great, so professional bobybuilders who are no fat all muscles shouldn't start a diet on ozempic...

It's a bad metric both ways, one can be really skinny with almost no muscle and all fat, and still be in a "healthy" BMI range.

Re: Ozempic is changing people's skin, say plastic surgeons

#116

Post by silverquiet »

cm2187 wrote: post #100
silverquiet wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My perception is that we judge fat people as weak and contemptible and therefore a drug is allowing them to cheat their way out of their sin instead of paying the proper penance (diet and exercise). It's well known that people treat fat people worse; I constantly wonder how aware people are of their own biases? For what it's worth I've been fat before and I've been in shape before. I have my own biases that are beyon…

Ozempic doesn't make you lose weight unless you do a diet. All it does is to make it easy to do a diet by suppressing the craving for food. So it's not like people are losing weight with ozempic while stuffing themselves with burgers. As for exercise, it has many benefits but is a fairly minor contributor to weight loss. I am doing a bit of a hardcore diet at the moment (helped a ozempic competitor), lost 20kg/44lbs…

Believe me, I'm aware of calories in/calories out, but I've never really found it so simple. Exercise has benefits beyond purely burning calories. And moreover, if you want to change body composition rather than just lose weight, it's important (fitness types have the term "skinny fat" for people who don't weigh much but still have high body fat).

Re: Ozempic is changing people's skin, say plastic surgeons

#117

Post by salawat »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #12
bamboozled wrote: post #6

It's strange how there is almost never a shortcut to anything. Like a universal law. So now you might get free weight loss without making any effort at all, but you'll also look older in the process? I have to say, my father has been taking it, and I noticed that he does look older all of a sudden...and his weight loss also plateaued. I thought it was just my imagination, but maybe not.

> strange how there is almost never a shortcut to anything. Like a universal law There are win-win tradeoffs. Vitamins, for instance. If you're running a vitamin deficiency, there isn't a downside to increasing your intake of that vitamin. (Curing acute dehydration via IV is another shortcut that just works.) The Ozempic story, for me, has been more about how we almost seem to be reflexively against the idea of a win…

Ever heard of Fen/phen? Was a big thing back in the 90's. Weight loss drug combo that was ultimately found to do major harm.

You have to keep a clear head as an early adopter in some things, and be aware of incentives. Remember, the pharma company pushing the drug/treatment to market is out to make money first. Having a knock-on problem down the line to fix also serves that purpose, and in fact, has been a tactic employed by other notorious pharma manufacturers. Lest we forget the lessons of the opioid crisis do quickly.

Re: Ozempic is changing people's skin, say plastic surgeons

#118

Post by thefz »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #65
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> strange how there is almost never a shortcut to anything. Like a universal law There are win-win tradeoffs. Vitamins, for instance. If you're running a vitamin deficiency, there isn't a downside to increasing your intake of that vitamin. (Curing acute dehydration via IV is another shortcut that just works.) The Ozempic story, for me, has been more about how we almost seem to be reflexively against the idea of a win…

I think it's pretty simple, unfortunately. A lot of folks have this visceral, instinctive horror of fat people, and instead of examining that, they convince themselves that what they actually despise is laziness and gluttony: inner vices expressed outwardly, like a medieval morality play. But if there's a way to lose weight without major lifestyle change, it threatens that tidy moral barometer. Someone might look vir…

> A lot of folks have this visceral, instinctive horror of fat people

Because humans spent some hundred thousand years on earth with no fat human in sight, and only around 3-400 with the ultra obese. It's unnatural.

Re: Ozempic is changing people's skin, say plastic surgeons

#119

Post by pwthornton »

ceejayoz wrote: post #62
brigadier132 wrote: post #44

Two guesses: - it's just stretched skin - people get on ozempic but are not eating nutritious diets, so now they are malnourished

This is a challenge for the first hypothesis: > These are changes he hasn’t noticed in patients who have lost significant weight in other ways—like through diet or gastric bypass surgery—which makes him think it’s unique to GLP-1 usage.

I've seen other data that says that 50% of weight lost on these drugs is muscle mass, which is high for weight loss. You should expect to lose both muscle and fat when losing weight, but that's a very high ratio. With weight lifting, you can attenuate that a bit, perhaps completely.

It would be interesting to see a study that compares people who take GLP-1 drugs and make no other modifications and others who lift heavy weights under supervision.

The other issue that should be studied is diet. If you eat a poor diet lacking in protein and then you take drugs to make you less hungry and now you just eat the same diet but less, you may not be getting nearly enough protein.

It would also be good to study the impacts of protein consumption while taking these drugs.

I also wonder about the velocity of weight loss. Losing weight too fast could also be part of the issue.

Re: Ozempic is changing people's skin, say plastic surgeons

#120

Post by pwthornton »

arcticbull wrote: post #96
synicalx wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> literally nothing else works for obesity except roux-en-Y gastric bypass I assume you mean as a therapeutic/last resort treatment?

Nothing besides GLP-1s and roux-en-Y has been shown to help people lose a clinically significant (>5%) amount of their body weight and keep it off long term (>5y). Exercise does roughly speaking nothing to help you lose fat (it's great for all sorts of other things), and diet has not been shown to work long-term either due to changes in metabolic rate and hunger leading to ~zero compliance. Most people reverse trajec…

Exercise most certainly helps you lose fat, and it helps you keep your blood sugar in check.

Exercise is often not good at helping people lose weight, but it is good at helping them lower their body fat and increase lean body mass.

You'd much rather someone be a muscular, overweight person than skinny-fat person. In particular, if you got someone lifting weights three times a week, it would have a noticeable impact on their body composition and overall health, regardless of weight.

The data also shows that exercise can lower appetite, but it has to be at least 300 minutes of vigorous exercise a week: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/well/move/to-lose-weight-...

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