How Ozempic, other weight-loss drugs are “changing medicine”
we try and mostly we fail to lose those
pounds that have left some seven in 10 Americans overweight but as you’ve seen in all
those TV commercials including on this network there’s a new class of drugs that could be a
game changer Susan Spencer looks into the pros and cons of what goes through your mind when
you see yourself at that weight a different person 44-year-old LaQuita Clark says
memories of being overweight and ridiculed go back to middle school I remember sitting on
the school steps with a group of my friends and just a group of other kids walking by just
oh my God you’re so fat o it was very hurtful that was my heaviest weight about 250 lbs over
the years Clark a nurse in Nashville Tennessee tried everything from fad dieting to kickboxing
nothing worked it was almost like like torture because of the relationship that I had with the
food it’s like these are things that I love I’m eating things that I love and um it’s giving me
Comfort at the moment so why why I change that there’s one dose in each package this is
a month’s worth but last June everything changed so what you do is you open it up when diagnosed
as pre-diabetic she was prescribed Ozempic with one small injection a week her health improved
and something else happened too when were you at your heaviest what were you and how much weight
have you lost since starting this drug the heaviest weight that I have been is 250 lb right
now I’m at 164 that’s life-changing tell me, in a nutshell, how do these drugs work so these
drugs are a class of medicines that signal fullness to the brain and regulate blood
sugar Dr Rekha Kumar chief medical officer found the reality is that people don’t fail
diets diets fail people the weight loss app that LaQuita Clark uses to receive her care and to
get her Ozempic so if I’m taking one of these drugs I will know when it’s time to stop eating
or what so it’s amazing to see it when it works and people will say that it’s the first time
they felt normal or it was the first time they felt full wow an obesity specialist she helped oversee
early Trials of GLP-1 medications GLP-1s include Ozempic and Mounjaro used for diabetes and
Wegovy and Zepbound are approved for weight loss on average people lose 10 to 20% of their
body weight in the first year for many of the roughly 74% of Americans who are overweight
or obese is almost unimaginable this is a scientific breakthrough and not just because of
weight control but because of cardiovascular risk reduction treating diabetes people are actually
getting healthier and that’s the point of medicine it isn’t just to be thinner but clearly
being thinner is what’s causing all the buzz it’s all over social media people are documenting their
Journeys they’re injecting on Instagram showing other people how to do it doesn’t this concern you
a lot of it concerns me I saw what’s most concerning we’re seeing people want to get
a hold of these medicines that don’t need them at all people trying to fit into dresses and wanting
to lose the vanity weight and that’s not really what these were made for what are some of the
most unusual places that you’ve heard of people being able to get these drugs the hair salon
oh come on yeah one of my colleagues forwarded me an email from her hair salon saying
like come get a blow dry and get your Ozempic but the hair salon isn’t the only place where drugs
like Ozempic is making an impression this certainly has not escaped Wall Street’s attention
not Simeon Siegel is a senior analyst at BMO Capital Markets he says
GLP-1 drugs could be a gold mine for investors in terms of one product that had the potential to
affect this many Industries have you ever seen anything like this well that’s so I don’t know the
numbers but I wonder if the iPhone the iPhone do you think this could have as big an impact as the
iPhone well if it hits 40% of the people at the end of the day this becomes something that
is as widely accessible as conversations can bring it to it should have a very large impact with
people thinner he envisions a ripple effect a potential boom in athleisure wear even in the gym
memberships it’s sort of intuitive that Ozempic might be the death knell for gyms that need
a gym my hypothesis with anecdotal evidence is when someone who hasn’t been fit becomes fit
starts becoming fit they change their life to make sure they’re protecting and truly Being Fit
And so instead of canceling the gym membership they would tend to sign up yeah he says analysts
even blue Sky about a big boost for the airlines since lighter passengers could mean lower costs
but all this depends on the drugs being widely available which currently is far from a given so
the biggest problem with these medicines right now is access and people are paying out
of pocket that how much sometimes up to $1,200 a month so right now we’re seeing maybe 30% of
the time we’re seeing coverage of these medicines which is quite low considering we said 70% of
the population might qualify yeah it used to be that what was the saying you can’t be too rich or
too thin now you can’t be thin without being rich it seems that way Beyond cost there’s the issue
of side effects like an upset stomach sometimes severe but the big lingering question about GLP-1s
what do we know about the long-term effects of it so I think that’s a a concern that we don’t have
a hundred years of data we have 20 years of data if taken purely for weight loss how long do you
have to take it uh we don’t know um that’s what do you mean we don’t know we don’t know so that’s
one of the active research questions that’s going on around this class of medication right now
is what happens when you stop um we think that people tend to regain weight but that is not
Dr Mara Gordon’s main concern health is so much more complicated than the number on the scale
rather she worries these drugs feed a serious Prejudice in our society the problem is fat phobia
right the problem is a culture that discriminates against people based on body size this is a real
serious moral issue that our culture is facing and Ozempic is absolutely part of that I may
sh this with some of you guys it’s something Dr. Gordon is an assistant professor at Cooper
Medical School of Rowan University in Camden New Jersey she calls herself a body positive
doctor, basically I don’t bring up my patient’s weight unless they want to but you have no qualms
about prescribing Ozempic or one of these drugs in cases where their health is at stake
in patients who have diabetes medications like Ozempic can help them it can help improve
their blood sugar can help protect their heart I think Society is stuck on what your body looks
like not so much concerned about the inside or your health and though she is quite happy with
what her body looks like now LaQuita Clark says feeling better on the inside is the most important
part if that involves taking medication so be it my focus and my goal is being healthy and being
around for some years to see my children and my grandchildren grow up so I don’t care about what
Society thinks or what people are saying about it
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