I'm opposed to weight loss drugs, at least for me.

I'm not opposed to candy sweetened with Stevia, if eaten in moderation. At least for me.

Nestle is jumping on the bandwagon. That's what corporations do.

The main job of a corporation is to increase profits every quarter. It needs perpetual growth, or the stockholders will jump ship. Perpetual growth is unattainable in a closed system, which IMO the world is in the shape it is today. I see this as a problem and as much as I've thought about it, I have no idea how to fix it.

So people will buy Ozempic and suffer the side-effects, and people will eat Kit-Kats, and Big Pharma and Nestle will reward their stockholders with a little growth.

Me? I try to find pleasure in my daily life, take care of myself, eat sensibly, and do no drugs if there is a more natural way to solve any maladies that affect me.

To each their own.

Have we seen this story before? (I can't find it - feel free to delete if we have it on here already)



Novo Nordisk’s CEO says he’s fielding calls from ‘scared’ junk food suppliers asking for advice over Ozempic surge

(went with the Yahoo link since the story on Fortune was behind a paywall)

Clear admission that they make money from human misery.

"Dear heavens, we can't let them be slim and healthy and happy! That would affect our profits."

Those who are well into the obese category (meaning they are clearly qualified for the drug) are never going to become slim on the GLP-1 type drugs anyway - the maximum they lose on those drugs is about 20% of their starting weight over the course of 72 weeks. So if someone whose ideal weight is 150 lbs weighs 250 lbs, they're still going to be 50 lbs overweight and still in the obese category at the end of those 72 weeks (16 months)

There's also the issue of continuing to lose ENOUGH weight on the drugs for the insurance to continue to pay for it. If they're not seeing enough weight loss to warrant the continued cost, then they won't pay for it any more. If the individual can't afford to pay out of pocket, they end up quitting the drug, and since they never learned how to eat a reduced amount of food on their own (or eat the kinds of food that naturally reduce hunger levels), the weight comes back on. How quickly it comes back on depends on what kind of self control (white-knuckling it through the hunger) they can manage and for how long they can manage it.


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I don't know if this belongs in this thread or not, but I read an article a couple of days ago in The Atlantic about how the current weight loss drugs don't work for everyone.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/...ht-loss/677411/

(I can post a link, but as soon as I'd read the article, it said that was my last free article, so I can't read it again or quote it unless I'm willing to put up the money for a subscription. I've tried different browsers including a new incognito/private window and they all say the same thing.)

From what I'd heard months ago, all GLP-1 patients start out at the lowest dosage, and many people feel no effects from such a low dosage at all. Dosages are only increased once a month, and it can take a couple of months of increased dosages to reach a therapeutic dose where their appetite is affected enough to start losing weight.

According to the article though there are apparently people who the drug simply doesn't work for them at all, no matter how high the dosage.

However, they said there are a lot more weight loss drugs in development.

They didn't find this the least bit alarming, because there are drugs for many conditions that have have dozens or even hundreds of options to try, since not every drug works for every person. The one they specified as an example was blood pressure medication, and there were hundreds (or did it say thousands?) to choose from. If one doesn't work, they try another, and keep trying until they find one that works to reduce blood pressure to a normal level.

The point is that the current GLP-1 and PYY drugs are only the beginning. As they learn more about how to manipulate the body's response to foods, they'll develop more and more drugs that restrict appetite without the individual needing to actually change what they eat, or intentionally reduce how much they eat, since the drugs themselves result in them eating significantly less.

Whenever you buy anything from a corporation, you have to remember this:

The corporation does not care about you. All it cares about is your money.

A corporation has to make more and more and more and more profits every quarter, or the stockholders will jump ship.

Make sure you are aware of that whenever you buy something corporate, and then evaluate if it is good for you or not. The corporation doesn't care, all it cares about is your money.

Are they going to give it a catchy name, like "Ayds"? The caramel-flavoured chew was marketed as an appetite-suppressant candy, but went out of business during the Aids crisis in the mid-1980s. The active ingredient was originally benzocaine, presumably to reduce the sense of taste to reduce eating, later changed in the candy (as reported by The New York Times) to phenylpropanolamine.

My mom used those, only hers were the chocolate flavor.

I thought the benzocaine was to numb the stomach so you didn't feel so hungry, but I would imagine it worked to numb the taste buds too.



I'm sure they'll brainstorm some catchy names like

O-Zem-wow!
Wego-chews
Zep-bits

Ick! I had strep throat and used that numbing spray. But that's not candy But it did make food unappetizing. Which goes to show this has long been a civilization problem, not a hunter/gather one. People will do ANYTHING except stop eating sugar when food has become their drug.

And I think most kept this danger under control when they lived in a culture that did not bombard a person with processed opportunity every waking hour. A plain baked potato will give a person a sugar rush, if they would eat it. Starch is the same thing, chemically.

Which is how sweetened starch is determined to be our new future. And we need a drug to make us want the old one less?

If it weren't for the side effects, it would be a fool-proof plan. Just how much medicine is about saving us from what OUR FOOD is doing to us? They are creating their own market.

Not disagreeing - just want to make sure it's understood that these are 2 different markets.

There's the food manufacturers (Ok, UPF manufacturers) - their goal is to create and sell as much irresistible food as possible.

Then there's the drug market, and one of their current goals is to create drugs that reduce the individual's desire for irresistible food, and of course to sell as much of those appetite reducing drugs as possible.

That puts their goals in direct conflict with each other.

This is a very different scenario from the UPF market creating snacks and treats that diabetics can't resist, and drug manufacturers spiking the price on insulin because diabetics who can't resist UPF end up needing more insulin to keep their blood sugar somewhat under control.

The UPF companies are seeing the writing on the wall - If they lose sales because their best customers are suddenly their former best customers, that is a very serious problem for their industry, and as long as the weight loss drugs are selling more and more, it's likely to become even more of a problem - creating UPFs that are geared towards those whose appetites have been seriously dampened by drugs is going to be their natural goal, one they will pursue desperately.

Bob said it well:

In millions of years of human history, there was no way to store food for the starvation season (winter in the temperate zone and the dry season in the tropics).

Those who survived the starvation season put on a lot of weight before, and lived mostly from their fat reserves until the spring or the rainy season returned. Bears and others do that before hibernating.

The people that, put on the most weight, plus liked and ate a lot of sugar when the fruit ripened right before the starvation season, survived. So they passed their sweet tooth genes on to us. Those who didn't like sugar never made it to spring or the rains.

So loving sweets and eating massive quantities of them are in our genes. We can't help it.

But after millions of years, we now have ways to store the food through the starvation season. We don't have to depend on finding enough to eat every day, just to make it until tomorrow.

So that sweet tooth and the urge to indulge it in a big way have become a liability instead of an asset.

We have to understand that, and use whatever works for each individual to keep in shape for our own health. My parents died too soon due to obesity related diseases. I don't want that for myself, I like living.

I found what works for me, a ketogenic diet. I'm 77, in the very upper range of 'normal' in my BMI, on zero prescription medications, and according to my doc have a heart/circulatory system of a healthy 50-year-old person.

I've been on this diet since it was called Atkins Induction, and that's a long time. I was on my way to the 300 pound average in my family.

Sure, I still miss fried potatoes, chocolate cake, pecan pie, donuts, and so on, but the sacrifice is worth it. I've already lived longer than my father did, and am healthier than he was when he was in his 50s.

Will keto work for everyone? I have no idea. I do know if you want to be healthy and have a potentially long life, you need to find what works for you and stick to it.

Drugs are not the answer, Every drug comes with side effects, some worse than others, some won't rear their ugly symptoms for years, when it's too late.

My childhood family doctor preached to use drugs as a last resort. I think that was good advice.

So there will be no ayds, ozempic, or whatever alphabet soup drug they invent next for me.

If you want a longer, healthier life, do what you need to do. If you would rather take a risk and enjoy life today more, that's a valid choice too. After all, you could live in perfect health and have a meteorite fall from the sky and kill you way before your time.

I was thinking that making them sick with bad food was in best interest of pharma profit.

Heart disease and diabetes drugs are HUGE moneymakers, is what I was thinking. Not collusion. But causation.

Which leads me to my bigger question: Are drugs and medical all we can do? Is this another case of only having a hammer?

That's why I'm back to public health and prevention. Like a recent article said, "Just like tobacco."