Sat, Jan-13-24, 09:38
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Senior Member
Posts: 4,064
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Plan: Very LC, Higher Protein
Stats: 227/186/185
BF:
Progress: 98%
Location: Herndon, VA
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"A Weight-Loss Drug Changed My Life . . . "
" . . Will It Solve My Problem?" by Bradley Olson - WSJ
https://www.wsj.com/health/pharma/a...d=hp_lista_pos1
This is a touching and personal article that reveals what many who are at an already unhealthy weight or battling ever-increasing weight gain are thinking. This is behind the WSJ paywall, so I apologize to those who don't subscribe. I encourage those with access to read the article.
A few short excerpts:
Quote:
"In August, as I prepared to plunge the first syringe of a new weight-loss “wonder drug” into the fatty tissue in my upper thigh, I wondered: What would it feel like to stop being hungry? Since then I’ve lost 40 pounds. This week, I injected the last dose I felt I could afford, and now I’m wondering: What happens when I go back to wanting to eat normally again?"
"Fifteen years ago, just before I turned 30, I was 100 pounds overweight. I committed to a rigorous diet and exercise program and lost it all in one year, but then like so many in my situation, gradually I gave in to food cravings and began to gain it back again. Around my 44th birthday last year, just months after completing a grueling endurance hike across the Grand Canyon and back, I hit a troubling milestone. I weighed in at 233 pounds, up about 50 pounds from my low. After all those years of trying to maintain my weight loss, eventually I had gained half of it back, and now I had officially crossed the “obese” threshold in body-mass index for the first time in 14 years."
"Combined prescriptions of GLP-1s have more than quintupled since 2021, exceeding 36 million in the 12 months ending in November, according to the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science. Though Ozempic and Mounjaro were developed and authorized specifically to combat diabetes with weight loss as a secondary effect, the use of both as diet drugs has soared as their results have gained notice. Most insurance plans refuse to cover the use of those drugs for weight loss, which has many people struggling to pay the full price themselves—upwards of $1,000 a month."
"The cost issue applied to me as well. I chose Mounjaro, which has been found to work even better than Ozempic for weight loss in some clinical trials, with patients trimming more than 20 percent of their body weight on average. After discussing the risks with my doctor, I learned that my insurance wouldn’t cover the roughly $1,000-a-month I would need to pay after using a coupon. Doctors can prescribe these drugs for weight loss in what is called an “off label” use, and my tipping the scales into the ‘’obese” category was enough for my doctor to feel comfortable writing me a prescription."
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The author continues to show that monthly prescriptions for GLP-1s (Wegovy, Ozempic, Mounjaro, and Zepbound) have increased from miniscule amounts in 2018 to more than 3.5 million per month in early 2024. The other graph provided in the article shows the rise of obesity for those over 18 years in the U.S. from just over 27 percent in 2011 to just under 34 percent in 2022. The curve continues a steep rise.
The author describes his journey of weight management, which is very similar to many attempting to manage the same problem. He poses some thoughtful questions after he wrestled with the decision to use Mounjaro, as he's aware of the many issues associated with these drugs. While he focused on his experience with Mounjaro and the reasons for his decision, he didn't touch on the question many of us would ask in terms of why our population has an ever-increasing obesity and health problem. Not intending to be overly critical, I'm struck by the lack of any mention of how our available foods, manufactured foods for "convenience," have become an unquestioned part of our dietary choices. We've come to the point where they are assumed to be a standard part of our food choices, and that it's normal to make the decision to include these as core components of our diets.
This article forced me to step back and realize that 1) most everyone would like to be slim and healthy, 2) most everyone knows they need to lose weight to achieve better health, 3) most don't know how to approach this goal as we are inundated with conflicting messages, many from those with an agenda that is not aligned with the ability to achieve better health, 4) and last, there are many "experts" and respected groups/ organizations that simply due to their affiliations are thought to have knowledge of the topic of nutrition when in reality they don't base their knowledge on current research of nutrition or how to achieve satiety while avoiding unhealthy eating patterns. The lack of credibility and empathy is stunning in certain cases, and I'll leave it up to the readers to fill in the blanks of who and which organizations I'm referencing.
Last edited by GRB5111 : Sat, Jan-13-24 at 10:03.
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