My understanding is that the medical community is broadly in favor of this intervention in light of the extensive evidence tying excess weight to all sorts of health outcomes. Of course, it’s use and prevalence shouldnt be used to shame anyone either.
Our medical system has falsely tied excess weight to lots of different health issues (especially for women). You can be healthy at virtually any size - it often isn’t the fat that’s the problem. And we can’t just magically make people healthy by getting them to lose weight.
I dont think anyone meant to imply that this was an appropriate intervention for everyone, or even everyone with excess weight, as the medical community defines it. Just that, for a large number of people, it may be effective at heading off certain kinds of potentially avoidable issues.
Maybe you don’t see the numerous commercials for GLP-1s from companies likely owned by private equity promising to hook people up with doctors who will prescribe them for weight loss. The implication is that no one should ever be fat even if they don’t have health issues related to weight.
My previous doctor had me on Victoza and I did lose weight but I also felt like shit all the time and just couldn’t keep doing it. At which point I gained it all back.
Current doctor is happy with my current numbers which all got better when I stopped focusing on my weight.
“Let’s medicalize ourselves out of the very capacity for desire rather than try to change the social hierarchies that label some people subordinate and lesser based on how their bodies look.” Dystopian shit, IMO.
it's cool that everyone feels the need to tell you that these drugs are good cause they treat diabetes as if that's the context in which people are talking about them as a culture right now
Obesity is a medical condition, just like high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, or cancer. GLP-1 drugs are the best chance we've seen yet for those affected to find relief. We don't care to hear about concern for "Platonic disdain of the appetites."
There are a lot of us who don't want to be fat. There are a lot of bad health effects and shortened lifespan that come with being fat. I for one have a hard time OVEREATING (when I don't want to) not on Semiglutide. It helps me feel in control. Why is it bad for those of us who want to NOT be fat?
I respectfully disagree. Being severely overweight is bad for the body. Fat acceptance aside some of us have struggled to loose weight for years and it hurts the health when all of your indicators approach pre diabetes!
Knowing my knees, my BP, the fact that I don’t nearly die in sleep is good! I am sorry but it’s not anti fat acceptance to say “this drug helps people live longer and healthier lives
OP said Fat, did not define severe overweight nor use obese. Reading comprehension, much?
It should be OK to be Fat.
There are many of us who are fat, only by measured by your scale, bc we we do not have a normalized body shape or weight. I do not look all those pounds. Banish anti-fatness, now!
This is a good way to put it!/
First, Genetics. My parents physically didn't match. Huge mated w tiny. Then, US eating did a🧠💥on me, millions others
Turn back time, Never diet! By age 9 I was strictly dieting.
Because 3 years earlier I'd immigrated to the US; my whole family got fat.
NutritionFail
Never blame an individual in the United States for being fat.
The funniest thing?
I was an expat Canadian child constantly commuting / visiting my cousins in Toronto, me getting fatter by the year. However about 10 years in, by the mid 70s some of my Toronto cousins began Dieting
History
If it helps, there’s serious doubt about the validity of “pre diabetes” as a diagnosis. There’s not very good evidence that it often actually turns into diabetes, and the guy who helped coin the term thinks it was a mistake, FWIW. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.363.6431.1026
For your consideration, the keto perspective: the ADA are a bunch of jokers who have no idea what they are doing, and pre-diabetes is actually just diabetes that hasn't got very severe yet. You treat it by eating foods that don't spike your blood sugar 150pts over the reference range.
Moira,
I joined the bodySize Acceptance movement bc I couldn't win at thiness
(Masters dissertation) American cultural imposition of traditional beauty continues to scar everyone.
Most women are expected to be
Never at peace w our body so
Do the brain work till you can. Overcome the brainwashing?
I don't use it but my BiL got it for prediabetes and lost 100 pounds over about a year. He said he was happy to lose the weight but it was "unpleasant".
It is/should be okay to be fat. I don't think sweeping statements or moralizing about particular medical interventions is helpful, because it adds shame and stigma to fat people's choices.
Well, yes.
But if we stopped idolising thinness as a beauty/health/wellness standard, that would probably help. Not all fat people are unhealthy. Not all thin people are well. Like it or not, we have placed value judgements on these things. We need to stop.
I don't think that is the issue. The issue is one of addiction. People get on Ozempic, lose weight. Then side effects kick in, and they have to stop. Then they gain even more weight.
Counterpoint: Ozempic is good because when it is used as intended, as a diabetes drug and a drug for related conditions, it is incredibly beneficial and life-saving on a large scale. The ladies who lunch don’t get to determine whether the American people get medical care, any more than RFK does.
I get this idea, but there's a lot of people who would rather not need blood pressure medication, heart medications, cholesterol medications, sleep apnea, bad knees, bad back, or any number of the medications or conditions that come with being obese.
Ozempic is bad bc it’s widely used as some kind of “miracle drug” that anyone who wants to lose weight can use. But it’s not for anyone, it’s for people with medical weight issues that have extensively consulted with a qualified doctor
Well, I’m obese. As a result of that I have hypertension and am at risk for other conditions.
Life gets complicated in middle age and I can no longer go out running for long spans because that creates more time that my wife has to deal with everything else.
So, it’s helping me.
And that’s a great reason for you to use the drug as long as you understand the risk/rewards. But my dad asked me if my daughter would go on it to lose weight bc people like him think being fat is bad and being thin is good and that’s exactly the problem. She’s healthy! She doesn’t need it.
All types of bodies should be OK! But before Ozempic my co-worker died from heart failure from morbid obesity. In her late 40s. She tried so many diets and plans. Her weight struggles dominated her life. She so wanted to be here for her new grandbaby. 😢
Your point is valid, but I even before that, the side effects are scary. I have a friend on it, and she says that every time she stands up she feels light-headed now, to the point where she actually fainted once while getting out of a car. Started when she started the drug.
In addition to significant weight loss and better diabetic control, it has been shown in clinical trials to improve cholesterol/lipid levels, decrease cardiovascular risk, improve heart failure outcomes, improve sleep apnea, and improve kidney function. Metabolic disease underlies many things.
Fairly likely to be low blood pressure, which 1) generally resolves with time as the body adjusts; 2) may be due to dehydration, which is easily remediable; and 3) if she's on BP meds, maybe lower dosage. She should check her BP and talk with her doctor about this, but it's unlikely to be serious.
Is your friend on blood pressure meds? Ozempic can lower blood pressure so if you are on blood pressure meds and take it the combination can push your blood pressure down too much
I mean the side effects for a lot of drugs suck lmao that doesn't mean they're not useful. Chemotherapy has some pretty famously heinous side effects. So does birth control. Antidepressants.
True, but those drugs tend to be the only/best option for conditions they treat. I'm inclined to stick to diet/exercise for my own weight loss needs, rather than add yet another drug to the cocktail that already is in my bloodstream.
Before it was marketed popularly as a weight-loss drug it was used for diabetes/pre-diabetes. A friend was prescribed it years ago to avoid having to do the whole insulin injection thing.
My A1C dropped 2.5 in 9 months, going from full diabetes (but not yet insulin dependent) past pre-diabetic to normal. Yes, it should be OK to be fat. I'm still fat. But GLP-1 drugs are saving millions of people and it's horseshit to say they're anything but a miracle.
This is very much over simplifying a systemic issue. I would suggest giving it to people who are already thin is more of an issue but what measurement do we use?
Most ppl I know doing Ozempic are on it for a good reason.
It should be okay to be fat but you shouldn't shame ppl for using it
Is this a serious take? It's okay to be fat. It's okay to want to lose weight. It's okay to use ozempic to want to lose weight. They're not mutually exclusive.
Is it OK though? Because unless the cause of your weight gain is diabetes, it’s not going to stay off. Is it OK to keep people on a drug *indefinitely* that isn’t actually helping them be healthier, and may actually harm them?
I have bipolar disorder. I have been on lamotrigine for that for 20 years. I have not had symptoms of bipolar disorder in 20 years. "But you'll have to stay on it forever!" is not an argument against taking a medication.
Exactly. People asked me at first when I took my GAD/bipolar meds, “do you think you will stop taking them at some point?” Like, why I should I want to? They keep be mentally healthy and I have no significant side effects.
But statins can do some *interesting* things to post-andropause men and some BP meds exacerbate osteoarthritis and bleeding disorders. “Control” of disease means understanding individual “homeostasis” - which isn’t one of contemporary medicine’s strong points.
I mean - who is “we”? My lot are mostly Irish farmers who got a bit ill when they stopped moving. They were also (sadly, for them) quite clever - so they spawned a couple of generations of academics (who aren’t known for their athleticism).
You take Ozempic weekly and it has very stringent storage temperatures so it would definitely be something to consider if you like to travel at all. Now if it was just a pill then yeah who cares, especially if you're already on daily pills.
Turning ozempic-like compounds into shelf-stable pill forms is *the* cutting edge of pharmaceutical research rn. They're already working feverishly on it.
And a lot of that research is going in to the anti-inflammatory properties of Ozempic. It has HUGE potential to treat autoimmune diseases, if that effect can be isolated - imagine treating sickle cell without immunosuppressants. GAME CHANGER.
It should be ok to not take Ozempic but it has a ton of health benefits and this post honestly could is just giving fat people a hard time for taking it
As a columnist at a major publication, do you think it's responsible to conflate Ozempic, used to treat diabetes, with WeGovy, indicated for weight loss?
Having to get preauthorizations from my insurance, only to find my expensive diabetes rx in shortage due to new users trying to lose weight, means I wish people would stop philosophizing about this. Side effects vs medical necessity=choice I have to make made worse by hordes of affluent users.
The shortage isn’t the reason for the price, though, weirdly. The prices are wildly lower in other markets like Europe and China. It’s just price gouging. That’s not users’ fault. Compounding also reduces the price burden.
Europe (the UK especially) are getting the knock-on effects. The price hasn’t gone up here but the availability has gone down. So the people who *need* it (as opposed to want it) are finding it very hard to get hold of.
That’s still not the fault of the users imo. The drug has been approved for both purposes. Yes, people shouldn’t be using it to lose 20 lbs. But using it for 50+ lb weight loss is just as legitimate as use for T2D.
I’d agree if it were the only drug in the family that works for weight loss. There are three others, one of which is actually better for that job.
So I’d leave it to *on label* prescribers to make good decisions.
Yeah, I take tirzepatide personally. It is expensive in the states though. And hey, that’s why Wegovy exists - it’s explicitly for weight loss as opposed to Ozempic. I don’t think we disagree here.
Comments
Current doctor is happy with my current numbers which all got better when I stopped focusing on my weight.
How much untreated depressiona and anxiety is there in the world because of the SSRI backlash against psych meds in the 90s? More than we know, I bet.
It should be OK to be Fat.
There are many of us who are fat, only by measured by your scale, bc we we do not have a normalized body shape or weight. I do not look all those pounds. Banish anti-fatness, now!
First, Genetics. My parents physically didn't match. Huge mated w tiny. Then, US eating did a🧠💥on me, millions others
Turn back time, Never diet! By age 9 I was strictly dieting.
Because 3 years earlier I'd immigrated to the US; my whole family got fat.
NutritionFail
The funniest thing?
I was an expat Canadian child constantly commuting / visiting my cousins in Toronto, me getting fatter by the year. However about 10 years in, by the mid 70s some of my Toronto cousins began Dieting
History
I joined the bodySize Acceptance movement bc I couldn't win at thiness
(Masters dissertation) American cultural imposition of traditional beauty continues to scar everyone.
Most women are expected to be
Never at peace w our body so
Do the brain work till you can. Overcome the brainwashing?
But if we stopped idolising thinness as a beauty/health/wellness standard, that would probably help. Not all fat people are unhealthy. Not all thin people are well. Like it or not, we have placed value judgements on these things. We need to stop.
Life gets complicated in middle age and I can no longer go out running for long spans because that creates more time that my wife has to deal with everything else.
So, it’s helping me.
Prior to starting it, I was constantly hungry and thought about food constantly. It was honestly a pretty miserable way to live.
I am still fat but am physically healthier & much happier on medication.
(And of course, a lot of patients aren't great at listening to it, if it's given, or seeking it out from reliable sources. Alas.)
Most ppl I know doing Ozempic are on it for a good reason.
It should be okay to be fat but you shouldn't shame ppl for using it
Low BP, high BP. Detached retinas, the whole gang.
The answer? Move. More.
I have ADHD so I’m constantly fidgeting, including standing up and moving around, stretching, pottering about. I get really sick if I sit still.
So I’d leave it to *on label* prescribers to make good decisions.