Surprise, Surprise, Right in Your Eyes: 'Miracle' Weight Loss Drug Not So Miraculous
As it turns out, that "breakthrough" weight loss drug, semaglutide, marketed to US consumers as Wegovy and Ozempic -- the one that gets the corporate state media's tenderloins all wet with excitement -- is actually not so miraculous as advertised.
Via New York Post:
"When Eli Diaz lost 22 pounds in three months from taking the diabetes drug Wegovy for weight loss, she thought she had found a miracle fix.
She felt more confident than ever in form-fitting leggings and sleeveless tops.
Diaz, 36, a mom of three who runs a Naples, Florida, construction company with her husband, was desperately trying to get back to her pre-baby weight of 145 pounds.
She went from weighing 244 pounds in February 2022 to 222 pounds by May, taking weekly injections of Wegovy.
Then, after three months and paying around $3,000 out of pocket for the drug, which was not covered by her insurance, her doctors discovered an unrelated thyroid issue and told her to stop.
It was then that the “miracle” drug became her worst nightmare because she put on more weight than she had lost."
"Unrelated thyroid issue?"
Via MedicinePlus:
"Semaglutide may increase the risk that you will develop tumors of the thyroid gland, including medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC; a type of thyroid cancer). Laboratory animals who were given semaglutide developed tumors, but it is not known if this medication increases the risk of tumors in humans."
"Unrelated thyroid issue" – sure, sure. It's the new "safe and effective."
Furthermore, the often-cited study the pharmaceutical pushers use to buttress their fantastical claims about semaglutide:
a.) was conducted over a period of 68 weeks (meaning there is no long-term analysis of its effectiveness or safety
b.) did not examine what happens when an individual starts taking Ozempic for a few months and then goes off (as the subject of the above human interest story did)
c.) included "lifestyle interventions" in the experimental group, meaning that the researchers fed the participants diets designed to facilitate weight loss and forced them to exercise.
Via the New England Journal of Medicine (emphasis added):
"In this double-blind trial, we enrolled 1961 adults with a body-mass index (the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters) of 30 or greater (≥27 in persons with ≥1 weight-related coexisting condition), who did not have diabetes, and randomly assigned them, in a 2:1 ratio, to 68 weeks of treatment with once-weekly subcutaneous semaglutide (at a dose of 2.4 mg) or placebo, plus lifestyle intervention…
The mean change in body weight from baseline to week 68 was −14.9% in the semaglutide group as compared with −2.4% with placebo, for an estimated treatment difference of −12.4 percentage points."
I assume all of my readers are too wiley to have fallen for the pharmaceutical marketers' overwrought promises.
But if any of you need some tough love for whatever reason regarding excess heft you might be lugging around, here it is:
1. Get your fat ass on the treadmill, or the trail, or the Olympic-sized swimming pool, or wherever. The important thing is to get your fat ass moving.
2. Ditch the processed, simple carb-laden foods of convenience – chips, almost all cereals, pastries, etc. If you have impulse control issues, as many of us do, set aside a meal or week or so as a cheat meal.
3. Drink water.
4. Take appropriate vitamins and minerals that you possibly can't get enough of through diet alone. I would recommend starting with vitamin D/K2, creatine, and maybe zinc.
Of course, at times, medical issues will come up anyway. Nothing short of divine intervention is a cure-all. But this is 95%+ of the formula for optimal health.
What is surely not a 95%+-effective formula for optimal health is trusting what Vox and Pfizer have to suggest.
Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.
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I keep popping up and commenting on these fat stories, but I wholeheartedly agree with your bottom line - get off your butt, watch what you eat and you’ll lose weight. I am 55 years old and have been fat pretty much my whole life. I was 360+ and now I am 190. I have worked my ass off and changed my diet to almost literally lose half my body weight. There are no miracle drugs or diets needed!! Calories in just need to be less than calories out-this is not complicated!!!
Good food, good sleep, good exercise and time in the sun - works wonders for most any “dis-ease”. Which is why docs won’t tell you this, they need to push the pill to get paid.
When they start taking about making obesity a mental illness, watch out! Just means more people hooked on drugs. They definitely don’t care about your health!