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Goodbye, Ozempic

theatlantic.com

21–30 of 89 posts

Re: Goodbye, Ozempic

#21
post #7

An alternative / replacement without the side-effects would be huge. Since I started 1mg / week of Ozempic, the phrase "power vomiting" has become part of my vernacular where it never was before. Just last night I was overcome by a round of puking that rivals stuff you'd see in a horror movie. :-( It doesn't happen often (2 times this year so far) but when it's bad, it's BAD.

I’ve been debating whether to ask my doctor about trying it. My whole adult life I’ve been struggling with my weight and tried nutritionist, apps, you name it and can’t keep the weight off for more than a year. I hate vomiting so this is making me rethink. Thanks for sharing very helpful.

I personally take ozempic and have also prescribed it to ~150+ patients for diabetes. I've maybe had to stop it in ~8 patients for tolerability issues.

We unfortunately usually dont get to hear many chiming in to say that they tolerated it just fine. I do (2mg/week), down 45lbs.

Being heavy is really bad for you. Don't be so quick to write it off d/t the possibility of vomiting.

Re: Goodbye, Ozempic

#22
post #5

We need to push lifestyle change to treat obesity - diet, exercise, sleep - vs. pharmaceuticals. Big pharma just keeps rolling out v2.0, 3.0, etc. for the customers they've built through advertising and having doctor's marketed to push them on their patients along with government lobbying. He'll, how many COVID boosters did Big Pharma try to push at $30bn a round going into their purses?

These new drugs are not a replacement for a health diet and exercise. Drugs like Ozempic, or Wegovy, aren't a permanent solutions, once you stop taking them the effect stops and you can't take them forever. They are only meant to get you motivated and help start up a lower calorie diet. We are also now seeing people where diet and exercise simply isn't working as expect. There was a study that indicated that PFAS pol…

They're permanent as long as you keep taking them, like blood pressure medicines or statins.

Re: Goodbye, Ozempic

#23
post #5

We need to push lifestyle change to treat obesity - diet, exercise, sleep - vs. pharmaceuticals. Big pharma just keeps rolling out v2.0, 3.0, etc. for the customers they've built through advertising and having doctor's marketed to push them on their patients along with government lobbying. He'll, how many COVID boosters did Big Pharma try to push at $30bn a round going into their purses?

These new drugs are not a replacement for a health diet and exercise. Drugs like Ozempic, or Wegovy, aren't a permanent solutions, once you stop taking them the effect stops and you can't take them forever. They are only meant to get you motivated and help start up a lower calorie diet. We are also now seeing people where diet and exercise simply isn't working as expect. There was a study that indicated that PFAS pol…

"There was a study that indicated that PFAS pollution affects the metabolism in some people during the night. Normally you still burn calories while you sleep, but for some elevated PFAS levels causes their bodies to basically stop burning calories during the night."

I would be interested in reading that study...

Re: Goodbye, Ozempic

#24
post #9

I’m delighted that there are all these new alternatives. Not only because I believe they will help people. But selfishly because I take .75 mg a week to help manage my glucose level and the weight loss users have made the drug hard to get (even though a dose as small as mine doesn’t help weight loss — in fact I’ve been gaining weight, something I have struggled to do). A couple of months go the drug stopped being bac…

You sure thats Ozempic? Sounds like Trulicity based on the dose.

Re: Goodbye, Ozempic

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These new drugs are not a replacement for a health diet and exercise. Drugs like Ozempic, or Wegovy, aren't a permanent solutions, once you stop taking them the effect stops and you can't take them forever. They are only meant to get you motivated and help start up a lower calorie diet. We are also now seeing people where diet and exercise simply isn't working as expect. There was a study that indicated that PFAS pol…

They're permanent as long as you keep taking them, like blood pressure medicines or statins.

Is it true that your body adjusts to the drug and once you stop taking it you can no longer process shit correctly, exacerbating the problems and forcing you to remain on it for life?

Re: Goodbye, Ozempic

#26
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been debating whether to ask my doctor about trying it. My whole adult life I’ve been struggling with my weight and tried nutritionist, apps, you name it and can’t keep the weight off for more than a year. I hate vomiting so this is making me rethink. Thanks for sharing very helpful.

I personally take ozempic and have also prescribed it to ~150+ patients for diabetes. I've maybe had to stop it in ~8 patients for tolerability issues. We unfortunately usually dont get to hear many chiming in to say that they tolerated it just fine. I do (2mg/week), down 45lbs. Being heavy is really bad for you. Don't be so quick to write it off d/t the possibility of vomiting.

I will step in to be the "it's not so bad" coming forward.

I get stomach upset and a bit of reflux when I overeat, but that makes total sense given the goal of the medicine.

Honestly the metformin I was prescribed at the same time as semaglutide makes me feel worse more consistently, and even that is tolerable.

I say go for it OOP. It shouldn't cause any permanent damage trying it out.

Re: Goodbye, Ozempic

#27
post #5

We need to push lifestyle change to treat obesity - diet, exercise, sleep - vs. pharmaceuticals. Big pharma just keeps rolling out v2.0, 3.0, etc. for the customers they've built through advertising and having doctor's marketed to push them on their patients along with government lobbying. He'll, how many COVID boosters did Big Pharma try to push at $30bn a round going into their purses?

I took Ozempic for the first time three months ago. I'm 45 years old. Three months ago was the first day that I can remember when I wasn't hungry.

Really, now I understand people when they say that "I don't want more food". Because I always wanted more food. Of course, I realized that it's important to not over-eat, and with effort it was possible.

But that's exactly the point. It's always a struggle against one of the most basic instincts you have - to not be hungry. Every day. All the time.

This is the thing that is missing from the "just eat less" slogan. That for some people it's harder than others. Honestly, I really had no idea that people felt like I feel on Ozempic.

I just thought I was weak for not being able to say no to food. I could eat until my stomach felt pysically stuffed full and still feel hungry and desire for more food.

In the context of war and hunger is my struggle the hardest one? Of course not, but it's still a struggle. Feeling fat sucks and feeling like you're weak for not being able to say no to somethig that you really really want all the time sucks.

Re: Goodbye, Ozempic

#28
post #7

An alternative / replacement without the side-effects would be huge. Since I started 1mg / week of Ozempic, the phrase "power vomiting" has become part of my vernacular where it never was before. Just last night I was overcome by a round of puking that rivals stuff you'd see in a horror movie. :-( It doesn't happen often (2 times this year so far) but when it's bad, it's BAD.

I’ve been debating whether to ask my doctor about trying it. My whole adult life I’ve been struggling with my weight and tried nutritionist, apps, you name it and can’t keep the weight off for more than a year. I hate vomiting so this is making me rethink. Thanks for sharing very helpful.

Of course everyone's struggle is personal. For me, I have been listening to the Maintenance Phase podcast, reading Aubrey Gordon's new book, and learning that a lot of what we hold as fact or "common sense" about weight loss is untrue, that individual bodies respond very differently to the same diet and exercise schedule, and that a lot of the ideas around fatness are rooted in a cultural anti-fatness that views fatness as a personal failing, rather than another parameter of the body like height or hair color.

This has helped me learn to simply be happy with my size. Our bodies are not all meant to be skinny like the people we see on TV or instagram. There is a natural variance even for people with healthy diets and good exercise routines.

I can't enumerate everything that Aubrey Gordon shares in her excellent book, but I can say that learning to accept myself has been far more rewarding than constantly trying to chase weight loss schemes that only leave me back where I started. I feel confident and sexy now without any weight loss, and this is leading more people to be very obviously more attracted to me (because confidence is sexy!). I realized I never needed to lose weight to be attractive, I needed to accept myself for who I am.

I would urge anyone considering these treatments, whose lifelong effects we still do not understand, to learn about anti-fatness and how we have all been misled in to believing that everyone is supposed to be skinny.

Here's a great article from Aubrey to get started: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/12/1148169767/anti-fatness-keeps...

Finally I want to say that if anyone is just going to come in here and say being fat is unhealthy, or repeat any of the common tropes about weight loss, you're not going to get anywhere with me. The whole point of Aubrey's work is that these so-called common sense ideas are so deeply held in our society that few have really questioned them, and it takes more than a cursory examination to try to make sense of how we got here. Repeating the basic ideas does nothing to advance this conversation. If you must respond, read the article above before criticizing the basics of what I am saying. Aubrey can explain it far better than I can.

Re: Goodbye, Ozempic

#29
post #16
post #5

We need to push lifestyle change to treat obesity - diet, exercise, sleep - vs. pharmaceuticals. Big pharma just keeps rolling out v2.0, 3.0, etc. for the customers they've built through advertising and having doctor's marketed to push them on their patients along with government lobbying. He'll, how many COVID boosters did Big Pharma try to push at $30bn a round going into their purses?

A better push would be to prevent the food industry from poisoning us with ultra-processed food and corn syrup. Having food regulation would go a long way in preventing obesity and many other negative health outcomes.

No one solution is going to reverse the obesity epidemic. Better food labeling, ingredient regulations, health education for all age groups, cost of living reduction, food desert reductions, and likely many more things will need to be addressed if we hope to see noticeable changes.

Re: Goodbye, Ozempic

#30
post #5

We need to push lifestyle change to treat obesity - diet, exercise, sleep - vs. pharmaceuticals. Big pharma just keeps rolling out v2.0, 3.0, etc. for the customers they've built through advertising and having doctor's marketed to push them on their patients along with government lobbying. He'll, how many COVID boosters did Big Pharma try to push at $30bn a round going into their purses?

While I do agree with lifestyle changes, it is very clear at this point it doesn't work for the majority of people. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity, or something like that...

Source on "majority"? It seems like for the vast majority of people it's the opposite - they just eat too much and what they eat isn't helping. (Soda/sugar waters, chips, fatty meat, etc)

If they lack the motivation or determination to see through a diet, that's on them. The resources to count calories are there, it's not nearly as hard as it would have been 20 years ago.

Now, some people genuinely have some form of disease or unusual case where medication is 100% needed and no lifestyle change would help - and those people should get whatever treatment best suits them.

But 36% of the US (obese) is not an unusual edge case, some rare genetic disorder or disease.

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