[JamesBarney]

>If you do not change your lifestyle, for real and not just superficially, then you will relapse with a vengeance.

Longterm glp-1 agonist research doesn't agree with this.

> but you have to continue that lifestyle after stopping the drug.

Why stop the drug?

>Will Ozempic users have developed the personal discipline to prevent themselves from relapse without the drug - or will they forever be on a the yo-yo of weight gain/loss?

A small % of people are able to achieve significant weight loss with diet and exercise. And an even smaller % of that group are able to maintain it for the long term. We've been trying to solve obesity this way for a 50 years and have bubkis to show for it. If someone has high cholesterol we give them a statin, if they have high blood sugar we give them diabetes. Now if they're overweight we give them ozempic.

[data_spy]

The research says you gain the weight back:

"For the two in every five patients who discontinue the treatments within a year, according to a 2024 JAMA study, this means that they are likely to rebound to their original weight with less muscle and a higher body fat percentage." The other issue is the muscle loss on being on these drugs as "Clinical data shows that 25 per cent of weight loss from Eli Lilly’s shot resulted from a reduction in lean body mass, including muscle, while 40 per cent of Novo Nordisk’s jab was due to a drop in lean body mass." Via https://www.ft.com/content/094cbf1f-c5a8-4bb3-a43c-988bd8e2d...

[JamesBarney]

Sorry I meant with continued use of the treatment you don't regain the weight. I agree if you stop taking the medication your weight will rebound.

[Alupis]

Right, so we doom some portion of the population to forever take a pill from big pharma? How is that acceptable with anyone?

The goal should be to use Ozempic until you are in a better place to manage things yourself. The goal should not be to get people hooked on Ozempic for their entire lives.

Perhaps Ozempic prescriptions should come with prescribed exercise with check-in and monitoring, or something.

[BurningFrog]

I guess young people don't always know this, but there are plenty of medications a lot of people take for the rest of their lives. Blood pressure and cholesterol pills are maybe the most common.

This gives a vast number of people 5-10 years longer lives, and I think this is great thing, even if some pharma executives end up getting rich.

[ido]

Or insulin. I’ve been shortsighted since childhood and will need to wear glasses for the rest of my life (unless I get laser corrective surgery, I guess).

Many people in my wife’s family have thyroid gland dysfunction and have to take thyroid hormones their whole lives.

[Karrot_Kream]

Not just young people. High blood pressure runs in our family. A cousin, despite being healthy in most indicators, developed high blood pressure at 23. She's still going in her 50s just fine but has had to take blood pressure meds for the last 27 years.

[JamesBarney]

> Right, so we doom some portion of the population to forever take a pill from big pharma? How is that acceptable with anyone

This is literally how almost all medicine works that treats a chronic condition.

> Perhaps Ozempic prescriptions should come with prescribed exercise with check-in and monitoring, or something.

Why?

[rootusrootus]

> doom some portion of the population to forever take a pill from big pharma

That is temporary. The effects are real. The fact that you don't think big pharma should profit handsomely for making it happen is not the only alternative. Before too long semaglutide, as one example, will be out of patent and available as a generic. It won't cost a thousand bucks a month to big pharma, it'll be practically free. Cheap enough that most insurance plans will likely subsidize it all the way to zero out-of-pocket cost just because the ROI is so good.

[fragmede]

How my decisions will affect some company's bottom line is way behind "will this help me live a better, longer life" in my list of priorities, but I'm already on other medications that are generic for the rest of my life for other genetic defects I've been blessed with, though I'm not on Ozempic.

[golol]

Why not? What would you rather be: Fat to your death, or healthy and dependent on modern technological society in yet another way? How is it any different to diabetes treatment?

[Tagbert]

I take a statin as something in my body produces high levels of cholesterol even on a low fat diet. I will always take a statin. It works well and there are few side effects.

My spouse must take a thyroid medicine every day for life.

Not taking these pills is life threatening. How is taking them not acceptable?

[lazyasciiart]

Wait til you learn about hormonal birth control.

[s1artibartfast]

Some regain, some don't. Some people have multiple heart attacks.

It is really that simple.

[Alupis]

> Why stop the drug?

Why would you want to continue using a drug for the rest of your life?

> Longterm glp-1 agonist research doesn't agree with this.

Please explain. If you stop using the drug, because you've achieved your goals, what stops you from relapsing other than your own personal habits and lifestyle?

> A small % of people are able to achieve significant weight loss with diet and exercise. And an even smaller % of that group are able to maintain it for the long term. We've been trying to solve obesity this way for a 50 years and have bubkis to show for it. If someone has high cholesterol we give them a statin, if they have high blood sugar we give them diabetes. Now if they're overweight we give them ozempic.

Yes, a pill for this, a pill for that... and there's no chance we'll discover these drugs have negative effects when used by a person for 50 years.

[JamesBarney]

> Why would you want to continue using a drug for the rest of your life?

It's better than being obese. This is true of most drugs for chronic conditions. very few of them are curative, almost all of them treat the condition.

> Longterm glp-1 agonist research doesn't agree with this.

Sorry I wasn't clear, I meant with continued treatment you don't rebound.

> Yes, a pill for this, a pill for that... and there's no chance we'll discover these drugs have negative effects when used by a person for 50 years.

They might have negative side effects but obesity has very large negative side effects. I would be incredibly surprised if any of these drugs that have been used in diabetes treatment for a long time have anywhere close to the negative side effects of obesity.

[tikhonj]

> Why would you want to continue using a drug for the rest of your life?

Because it is a substantial net benefit to your life?

Same reason I might want to continue with, say, a regular exercise routine or meditation practice.

[justinclift]

> ... if they have high blood sugar we give them diabetes.

That sounds like a hell of a treatment plan. o_O

[bregma]

It doesn't work. I keep trying to get off the diabetes and I just relapse after a few weeks. It doesn't help that my body tries to hide the glucose everywhere, like attached to hemoglobin or in my liver in the form of glycogen so it can share a hit with me first thing every morning.

Nope, not going back to the doctor that gave me diabetes. That was a mistake.

[lizardlena]

> A small % of people are able to achieve significant weight loss with diet and exercise. And an even smaller % of that group are able to maintain it for the long term.

Ozempic is only fighting symptoms of that, not the root of the problem which is the stigma around weightgain, being a big person, just fatphobia being extremly generalized and a lot of shame surrounding weight. While it's amazing for people who have medical conditions making them gain a lot of weight, just saying that they should take ozempic will not change people gaining too much weight. It's not anything like high cholesterol or high blood sugar in most cases.

[JamesBarney]

Fighting the symptoms of what?

Taking ozempic will definitely keep people from gaining weight and will help them lose weight.

[Eisenstein]

A few questions:

Can you qualify what you consider to be a 'symptom' vs a 'condition'?

Is high cholesterol a symptom of something, or a condition itself? What about high blood sugar?

Would you say that acid reflux is a symptom or a condition?

Is a person that takes Prilosec daily to treat bad reflux treating the symptoms and not the underlying condition?

What about people using asthma inhalers, or epipens: symptom or condition?

Are people allowed to use the medicines if their underlying conditions are not being treated?

[fortran77]

> While it's amazing for people who have medical conditions making them gain a lot of weight,

You mean matter is created out of thin air because of a "medical condition" and not by eating too much food?