The popular weight-loss drug Wegovy reduced the risk of serious heart problems by 20% in a large, international study that experts say could change the way doctors treat certain heart patients.
The research is the first to document that an obesity medication can not only pare pounds, but also safely prevent a heart attack, stroke or a heart-related death in people who already have heart disease — but not diabetes.
The findings could shift perceptions that the new class of obesity drugs are cosmetic treatments and put pressure on health insurers to cover them.
There’s gotta be negatives to this right?
Like, what are the side effects and long term consequences?
This is mostly anecdotal and I am not a medical doctor. In my small circle of family and friends, I know several people who have taken or are currently taking Wegovy and similar drugs for weight loss and/or diabetes like Mounjaro and Ozempic.
All of them have experienced severe nausea when starting on these drugs. After a few weeks/months of use along with figuring out what they can eat and how much they can eat, that tends to subside. However, any time they eat too much or eat too much of the wrong thing, it will make them sick.
Two people have ended up with complications. One ended up having to have their stomach pumped because their digestive system basically went into hibernation, food stayed in their stomach for too long, and it caused a whole bunch of problems. They were taking Ozempic.
The other person stopped taking Wegovy abruptly (insurance suddenly decided it would no longer pay and the stuff is otherwise prohibitively expensive) and ended up in the hospital due to severe intestinal pain that did not respond to any treatment. After about 4 - 6 months, they seem to be back to normal, though.
So, it’s an antidiabetic that can be injected subcutaneously in addition to orally, neat but why? Diabetes and pre-diabetes are known risk factors for atherosclerosis and heart disease, so the antidiabetic drug is being used for people that may or may not be diabetic but want to lose weight? Wouldn’t it have less risk for pancreatitis to do a weight loss coaching?
The point is that, for many people, no amount of telling them to eat less and exercise more will actually result in them doing it, and so given that reality, a drug that actually results in real change, even with moderate side effects, can still be a net positive.
To throw another example at you, high blood pressure can often be eliminated with cardiovascular exercise, and it’s probably better to do that than to take a drug. But, if the person simply is not going to exercise, then the choice is to either give them a drug that resolves the problem or to not and have them walk around with hypertension.
Solutions that some people won’t actually adhere to are not useful solutions to those people. You can criticize them, say they lack willpower, are lazy, or whatever else, and you might even be correct, but that doesn’t change the medical facts of the situation.
high blood pressure can often be eliminated with cardiovascular exercise, and it’s probably better to do that than to take a drug.
I’ve read somewhere that people with high blood pressure taking a certain medication are more resistant to some cardio-vascular diseases compared to people with normal blood pressure not taking any pills. This might be a similar effect.
I should probably start saving these articles, for the purpose of backing my shitposts with original sources.
Yeah I suppose you have a point. I guess I’m not trying to criticize that approach but trying to understand why the article says this drug will “shift perspectives.” Are they implying that instead of waiting until a patient develops symptoms of heart disease, they will prescribe meds to help control weight? Is that not what is already happening now?
It would have less risk of many things to do weight coaching and traditional weight loss methods. These drugs are very hard on your body and their effect has a high chance of fucking up the neuro chemical system it affects so that, if stopped, you can basically feel like you are starving forever. From what I have read about it most doctors are not in support of this being used this way with the exception of obesity issues so bad that the long term damage cause by a life of using this class of drugs is still less damaging than the weight.
Drug that reversed condition known to cause heart problems reduces heart problems!
Seems a bit like correlation versus causation, no? We sure it’s not just that morbidly obese people losing weight vastly reduces their chances of heart disease?
Sport can cut up to 100% of serious heart problems… But yeah it’s easier to swallow a pill and not change your habits.
So your belief is that nobody who plays sports ever dies of heart disease? Yeah, no. Heart disease can be reduced through exercise (but never cut by 100%—that part of your post is just flat-out wrong). At times it can also be worsened by it—see the marathon runners who drop dead partway through the race.
The drug in question also isn’t a pill, but that’s the least part of your medical ignorance.
That’s not my believe lol. Everyone has to die and there are many out there with serious health conditions, not caused bei their own mistake. My post was more aiming at the need to have anti-obesity drugs in the first place. First thing I learned in a pharmaceutical school was to prevent the things that cause or worsen your condition. If it’s serious, you should take meds, no doubt. But getting fit, eat healthy and don’t do drugs is usually the best thing to heal better, faster and maybe don’t get seriously sick at all.
Should have written that more clearly yeah. And I know that’s a subcutaneous pen…
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I don’t know if you have read my other post on one of the comments of it. This one was more generally spoken.
I’m sorry for you! And hope you’ll get better or can live without much pain.
Because I live in pain for years now, being sick since I was a child. There are 2 options for me. Do sth or do nothing. Even when I sat in the wheelchair, I went to the gym, same on crutches. Yeah, meds helped a lot, by that I mean big amounts of mostly opioid painkillers. I don’t need them currently, I can walk OKish, my back just still fucked up (broke it 2 times). If I stop my fitness now and stop eating healthier, I would be back on Oxy.
I’m not against any meds, I’m against the attitude that, yeah I can live unhealthy, because big pharma will safe me.
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