- cross-posted to:
- nyt_gift_articles@sopuli.xyz
- cross-posted to:
- nyt_gift_articles@sopuli.xyz
The blockbuster weight loss drug sold as Ozempic and Wegovy [has, on 21 March, gone] generic in countries that are home to 40 percent of the world’s population, significantly lowering the price of a costly medicine that had been largely unaffordable to nearly all but the wealthiest people. On Saturday, Novo Nordisk, the company that until now has had a monopoly on selling the drug, will lose patent protection in several of the world’s most populous countries. The first generic versions are expected to arrive in India as soon as this weekend. In the coming months, the generics are also expected to become available in China, Canada, Brazil, Turkey and South Africa.
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edit: man imagine being angry that a drug has gone generic so more people can benefit from it, i hope all you removed and removed
I hope it comes soon here, I’m prediabetic and was starting to be unable to hold myself up for more than 5 minutes without a sharp pain in my back that made me unable to do a lot of things (except work of course)
Right now I’m on fentermine and it helps my audhd but the main effect is that now I don’t feel the urge to eat huge volumes of food just to feel “good” and bloated for the next 4 hours. I already lost 10 kilos and it let me start exercising. Good shit but I’m already on the last half of my treatment
I hope no-one is in a position where their own body betrays them with a chemical imbalance that leads them to not make the best decisions for their health, because after reading some comments some of you would commit suicide before taking any “stupid pill”-
i tried it briefly for a couple months, got embarrassed at myself for my brief moment of insanity that I had tried it and stopped.
observing all this is beyond my ability to any longer have sympathy for the human race as a whole . Instead of banning cars, starbucks and fast food etal we design a drug to sell to you.
Like many of the endless examples of human stupidity, it seemingly makes lots of sense at an individual level and is completely fucking insane at a societal level.
If you look at photos and footage from like 50 years ago, everyone was way thinner. I don’t believe we’ve just got greedier. I don’t believe people were necessarily choosing healthier options. The food has changed and is practically poisonous. People don’t want to be this way and I don’t think it’s fair to blame them directly.
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Here comes a gentle reminder: Ozempic is primarily meant as a medicine for type 2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. It has plenty of side effects, does not lead to long-term weight loss and may harm you in the long run. It may be helpful, but it shouldn’t be taken uncontrollably.
Consult your physician to determine if it’s the best way forward.
I’ve been on it for 2 years for weight loss/maintenance and it’s life-changing & I wish this existed 30 years ago, my entire life & self-esteem would’ve made me a completely different person so much more confident & goal-achieving
Lost my best friend of 20 years and I blame this drug. I am convinced rapid weight loss when you’ve been fat for 35 years is going to be a huge change to the brain as well. Dude isn’t the same person anymore
I assumed your friend died from the first sentence, care to elaborate?
After losing half of his weight he ghosted me and I haven’t heard from him in 2 years now.
My best theory is he got female attention for the first time in his life and he subconsciously wrote me off as useless to him now. He got strung along by a couple of girls and he didn’t like my opinions on any of that and kind of just got rid of me.
damn that’s sad, I have seen this thing happening with people losing weight in general. not like they all turn our like your friend but some of them just behave a certain way due to lack of self-esteem.
no wonder i guess, people usually don’t treat you like a person if you are overweight, and then having all that attention went over his head probably
Yeah it was actually chatgpt that tossed me this theory and it makes perfect sense. I don’t think ozempic itself destroyed his brain. It was just the rapid weight loss in general which was only possible due to ozempic. Dude went from like 350 to 200 so fast.
Basically said he only kept me around because I was a loser like him and now he thinks he’s better than me. I think this nails it.
People don’t care. They just want to lose weight with zero effort.
Already have had friends of friends and family who have been on it, lost 30-40lbs, and went off it, and gained it all right back. It’s basically the yo-yo dieting in prescription form.
Most of my friends and family are skinny and healthy and have never gained much weight beyond temporary gains… how? Diet and Exercise. But I def regular encounter that basically think diet and exercise can’t possibly be the solution to their weight issues… while they suck down 40oz sugar coffees everyday and are winded by walking .5km
What would you say to someone who weighed about 28.5 stone, suffers with chronic lower back pain that limits movement, inflammation causing limited range of motion caused by the excessive weight, knee problems which limit ability to climb stairs and do things like squats or stand from kneeling or from the floor who eats uncontrollably to get a dopemine fix because they cant get adhd medication because of NHS wait times and lack of in person clinics, which are needed due to hypertension and irregularities on ana ECG and doesnt self medicate with weed anymore due to legality l, access and health issues.
Can’t exercise effectively due to weight, can’t lose weight to get help with excessive eating due to inability to exercise effectively. Catch 22. I am fucked.
Do i not qualify as having a legitimate reason to take weightloss medication to get me into a place where i can move properly. My quality of life is shit and i have done everything to try to fix it. I have an exercise bike but cant use it for long due to pain in my knees and shins, started swimming to ease the load on my knees but couldnt get any room in my local pool to exercise due to lane swimmers, all the dedicated classes take place whilst i am in work or too close to my finishing times. I need to travel 40 minutes to a pool that does a class at the right time for me. Have kids and house to help with. I took a weightloss course with NHS but lost nothing because it was a pile of crap course that didnt adress the issues people have with weight and only told us all what we already knew and offered a single 40 minute class a week doing low impact exercises in 2 minute bursts.
I started taking mounjaro which i pay out of my arse for, and i have lost 2 stone so far. On track to lose even more. Starting to exercise again. Feel better overall. Cardio is better, can walk further than 30 metres without needing to sit down. Back pain is still here but hopefully will ease off.
Ive never been this big in my life, always a bit chunky (like 14-16 stone in my teens to early 30s) stopped smoking and piled it on over a year.
Its not so black and white.
I’d question your mental health.
Ok so putting aside the fact that i talked about having ADHD and it being a big contributor to my eating habits. I list a bunch of physical health problems and how they dorectly impact my ability to lose weight and you question my mental health?
I think its clear that in terms of mental health, you are the one with problems. You are narrow minded, you have a bit of a god complex based on your other comments in this thread, you are arrogant and seemingly ignorant to all of it. What kind of person does it take to give a bad opinion, have that opinion challenged with genuinely good points but still turn around and “no you” it back to me?
The only thing your comment fails to address is everything i said. Its clearly unintelligent, backing down, goalpost moving trash.
you do realize he mentions ADHD? i’m sure you don’t mean to but your comment implies the mentally ill can just pull themselves up by their bootstraps
I think they meant it.
Then treat it.
I am more than familiar with people like him. I have had relationships with people who made endless excuses, and refused to manage their conditions, and then of course, told me it was my fault. As if I was supposed to magically cure them of all their mental and physical issues… that they actively embraced and enhanced by poor habits and recreational drug use.
When it comes to mental and physical health, yes you do have to pull yourself up. Nobody can do it for you. Nobody can fix my health problems for me. It’s my responsibility to manage them. Or I suppose I could just give up, and be a twat about it and incessantly whine to whomever will listen to my self-imposed misery. And go around taking random internet comments as personal attacks on myself… lol
Read my post properly and you might see why treating it is a problem.
You need to stop ignoring the bits that counter your argument because it is making you look ignorant.
And i can’t get over that whole point you are trying to make about people (me in this case) making it all about themselves when you are doing exactly that. You are imposing your narrowminded and ignorant view poi t on everyone else. Hilariously, no one agrees. You are on your own on this one.
Please do us all a favour. Read and critically analyse this comment thread. Be self critical, look at it from a view point that is not your own. And understand that my offering a personal anecdote, in contrary to your view is not “an attack” it is not me taking your nonsense as a personal attack on me. It is just me trying to introduce some nuance. Something you may not know.
Isnt the point of these message boards to have discussions with real people from around the world? Are you really on a social media platform pretending you don’t care what other people think?
Wild that mate…
don’t worry nobody here is taking anything as a personal attack, you just repeat ableist rhetoric that is used to attack anyone with a handicap and i want to make that clear for anybody else reading it
be more of a .ml user. are you a tankie too? you think Chinese communism is going to magically improve your personal problems too?
setting aside that not all kinds of adhd are treatable, if you read his post again, you’ll see the current external obstacle to his treatment.
everything I want to say to you will be removed
exactly. if that’s your impulse… you probably need some better mental health habits and emotional regulation.
I have my own health problems. I am not here blasting other people about them and how horrible and unfair my life is because of them… why is that you think?
because you don’t care for other people but will whine about other people not caring enough to lose weight
nobody is here “blasting” you they are speaking from their own experience with weight loss and all you had to say was to question their mental health
yeah i lack emotional regulation, like that’s a thing for me and people with my condition, at least i know my faults
I don’t care for random internet strangers and people in the vague abstract mass of humanity, yeah. It’s fucking weird that anyone thinks that is legitimate caring. It isn’t. It’s just a proxy for grand standing and ego-stroking.
I don’t care about their experience. It has no impact on what is a massive public health issue. The world is not about them and their individual experiences. And their inability to see usually means they are a egotistical nutjob who thinks everything is about themselves and their personal feelings… which actually is the type of people who give a shit about nobody but themselves.
Randomly going into vivid detail abut all your personal problems to vent at some stranger you feel has aggrieved you in a public space is insane and hostile behavior. I’m sure if I randomly went up to you and started screaming at you about my personal health issues, you’d find that very offputting and offensive and you’d wonder if I was off my meds.
Individual differences matter.
Some people are eating like a truck and can barely be called active, yet remain slim.
Some others put a much greater effort into keeping themselves in shape, stick to a diet, exercise a lot, and still don’t have it.
There are plenty of genuine issues that can make losing weight problematic. But taking random drugs without prescription like there’s no tomorrow is not going to help.
We’re not able to regulate the food and automobile industry so we’re going to drug everyone forever so that we don’t end up like the Pixar spaceships. In 20 years we’ll discover the side effects and everyone will be shocked.
Infinite money glitch: sell ammo and medkits
i believe cravings can make one obese even if ze only selects foods that ze can make in zir own kitchen
Thanks I hate z pronouns
i like them because they’re immediately understandable in everyday spoken conversation and i used to trigger more people by saying “they’s” (“they is”)
Ok so how can I get generic ozempic from India, because here in the US there probably won’t be a generic until at least 2032 due to how our patent laws work.
You could get it from Canada, its a bit closer.
Because some idiot at Novo Nordisk forgot to file parent renewal forms on time with Health Canada.
i am guessing ask someone to bring it over (maybe courier also works).
Yes, my understanding is that it’s legal in the US to purchase prescription-only drugs from overseas as long as they’re only for personal use. It’s kind of a grey area but as long as they’re not scheduled substances, I and multiple people I know have saved a lot of money by buying prescription drugs from Europe and shipping them here (we have such a wonderfully broken system here, don’t we?)
If you go to border towns in Mexico like Tijuana they have pharmacies on every corner like Starbucks where you can buy medications.
Genuinely: are we still crossing borders? I’ve stopped even considering it given… everything.
I wouldn’t if I wasn’t a US citizen. Apparently even domestic flights can put you at risk now too.
I’ve purchased generic medications on DNMs before. There was a user “Indiapilldaddy” who sold hundreds of different generics. Antibiotics, antivirals, cholesterol, blood pressure, etc. With the review system on the DNMs it’s probably more trustworthy than some random website that pops up.
DNMs
It’s fun to dereference jargon the First time you use it.
What are “DNMs”?
From the reports that i have read (am indian), 20+ generics are expected, within roughly 2 months or so, with previous price being something along 10k INR (roughly 100USD) a month to about 3-4k INR (30-40 USD) a month. Drugs have always been kinda cheap here (as an example, a simple paracetamol (tylenol) tablet costs 1 INR (~1cent US)), so it is still expensive (for vast majority, it is more than 2-3 days of work), but much better. hope people use this cautiously though with reasonable expectations.
Sounds to me like the US is going to continue to be a country of morbidly obese poor people in a much skinnier world.
The rest of the world doesn’t need Ozempic.
There are morbidly obese people all over the world, but the US does fat more bigly and with more of the population than any country I know… Looking it up with Google - lots of Pacific Island countries have slightly more obese people than the US (which is at 42%), also Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are tipping the scales in the US overweight class, but yeah - US is a world leader in total number of fat people, by a big margin - though China is growing quickly and may soon outweigh the US in total numbers, if not percentage of the population.
But they weren’t there 30 years ago.
This is a lifestyle problem with a drug solution.
This is a food supply problem with a drug solution. You know what happened 35 years ago? Tobacco was banned in most US public spaces. You know where TOBACCO MONEY went? Processed foods. Sugar was replaced with HFCS - not just for the profit factor, but also because of the psycho-bio ramifications of mass consumption of HFCS. These are the same people who did meticulous scientific research on nicotine addiction, inhalation patterns, etc. and never published any of it. What do they know about food that they didn’t share, but put into practice in your grocery stores and restaurants?
Never believe it’s not so
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it acts like an appetite suppressant.
All diets and exercise are temporary if you abandon them.
isn’t it meant to be a permanent treatment?
no one says insulin is inefficient because diabetics die if they stop taking it.
Ibuprofen also doesn’t work, because my pain comes back after a while.
Exactly. And these drugs were originally diabetes medications. And they don’t cure diabetes.
the only reason they were diabetes meds was because obesity and high carb intake is the cause of most type 2 diabetes.
All these drugs do is trick the brain into thinking you just over ate.
Not directly.
But borderline people who lose a lot of weight can sometimes get into the range of non-insulin-dependent life.
that’s type 2 and early stages.
i hope that my example made it clear I didn’t mean those cases.
Ozempic doesn’t do much for type 1. It was never approved for type 1.
I’m this particular comment thread, were talking insulin not Ozempic
sorry but some people do say it’s inefficient and unfair. insulin is not free (not in all countries at least) and it’s extra effort and task management which is forced on people, some of them just because they were born with diabetes and never had a choice.
it’s like a tax for being born a certain way.
insulin is practically free to make, is about a couple $ per month without subsidies.
If you pay more than that it is a literal scam and people belong in jail.
insulin is practically free to make, is about a couple $ per month without subsidies.
No drug is inexpensive to make at GMP level.
I think you need to make permanent changes to lifestyle and eating to keep weight off. If you return to your old ways then the weight comes straight back on. Just like a crash diet.
This drug isn’t the solution: it’s a band-aid to give people more time to develop better habits.
Many people will not - sometimes they believe they can merely get back on the drug when their lifestyle starts killing themselves again.
The drug will drop the weight, though. But, like dialysis, it’s not a permanent treatment, nor is it a fix.
imo the fact the drug works as well as it does is more evidence that the problem is better conceptualized as physiological than psychological. If someone’s body insists to them, wrongly and chemically, that they are starving, that’s the real problem because making decisions with chemicals is what our brains do, and we evolved to have less direct agency over the things that most directly impact our survival.
I took Ozempic for awhile until I left the US it was amazing simply for the fact it just curbed my constant hunger. I was always ALWAYS hungry. I would literally eat til full and then still feel hungry. I went on a big diet for awhile to manage portions and generally eat healthier but the hunger just distracted me constantly and kept me from sleeping. I was on the diet for the better part of A year and I never got used to the portion sizes (I did get used to eating better food though)
then I finally started taking Ozempic and when the hunger started subsiding I felt so much better. My type II was able to be managed much more effectively so I actually had energy. I slept better, I worked better and could think clearer. It was actually life changing and I did start losing weight.
Now im in a country where its not as accessible if at all and even if it was available, I make so little money I probably cant afford it. I used my last two doses while I was here and then just went off it. The hunger is back and my blood sugar is back to being not so controlled. Im eating more because of the hunger and if I dont I get very grumpy and unpleasant to be around. Im tired and exhausted all the time. I am doing a little better than before because good healthy food is easier and cheaper to come by. Im also much much much more active whether I like it or not but it is keeping the pounds off so im definitely burning all the calories that I am eating at least but being so active and hungry is even more miserable.
The point is to help a person get used to eating a lot less, and when they hit their target weight, they can continue with their new eating habits.
But if you go back to the same eating habits that made you fat, you’re gonna get fat.
I’ve dropped 100 pounds over about 3 years (and still dropping), without any drugs, because I taught myself to get by with much smaller portions. Partially it came from eating only when hungry, not bored.
The other, possibly more important thing was using a distraction, so when I’m tempted to go see what’s in the fridge, I pick up my guitar instead. So I’ve lost a lot of weight, AND learned to play the guitar at the same time. Replacing a bad habit with a good one is very effective.
the weight lost from these drugs were all regained within two years after stopping the drug.
So you have to buy and take the drug FOREVER!!! Why do you think they went to the trouble to develop and release it?
I believe they work by lowering your appetite, generally leading to less eating, especially snacking.
Even liposuction, literally taking the fat out of the body, doesn’t result in permanent weight loss.
What do you expect a drug to do to make you skinny without it needing to become something you take regularly? If you want to lose weight permanently, you have to work for it, no matter which strategy you use.
If you want to lose weight permanently, you have to work for it, no matter which strategy you use.
What people want is the magic pill that they take once and they look like Cindy Crawford at 26 years old forever.
without it needing to become something you take regularly?
There are the structural things - removing parts of the intestine, installing restrictive bands around the stomach. One they haven’t talked about much that would probably work if we had the knowledge and bravery to try it would be physical modification of the brain, either by ablation or slightly less risky with neurostimulation (deep brain stimulation)…
https://karger.com/sfn/article-abstract/100/2/75/826710/Effectiveness-of-Deep-Brain-Stimulation-in
There are the structural things - removing parts of the intestine, installing restrictive bands around the stomach.
Both of them require a surgery and can have HUGE complications. Oh yeah and they are not a permanent solution, just as ozempic they just help to start developing better habits, you will regain weight after sometime if you don’t keep a better diet even with these procedures
can have HUGE complications.
Agreed. What most people don’t realize is that meds can, and do, have HUGE complications too.
you will regain weight after sometime if you don’t keep a better diet even with these procedures
Agreed. The structural solutions, including brain stim, give a significant period of opportunity for learning better habits - for people who actually want to lose the weight and keep it off it can get them “over the hump” into a pattern that doesn’t relapse. Just like opiate addiction, there are things that take significant time for your body/mind to get out of the habit with food, and any addictive behavior really.
Of course if you’re determined to live a life of gluttony, these things are all temporary - even more temporary than life itself.
Of course if you’re determined to live a life of gluttony, these things are all temporary - even more temporary than life itself.
You could just not assume that? It’s not about determination, as you said, it is an addiction. The root cause is not a food addiction, we literally need food to survive, but that root cause is different for every person and unless you are that same person you just don’t assume shit about intentions or determination.
There’s a large grey area between determination and uncontrollable addiction.
that root cause is different for every person and unless you are that same person you just don’t assume shit about intentions or determination.
Very true. Some “diet aides” work well, some help a little, most barely work at all. Then there’s the influence of environment - how likely a gambling addict is to relapse can be strongly influenced by whether they live in Las Vegas or Salt Lake City. Heroin addicts in Seattle have a much harder time kicking the habit there than in Atlanta.
As for food, do you eat socially? In restaurants? My wife and I have started taking the “Senior Citizens’ discount” on restaurant food by simply ordering one entree and sharing it instead of overstuffing ourselves on separate dishes.
All these factors come into play, and still some people in the US are avoiding obesity, but not many - and IMO that’s down to the food / social / economic environment we live in here - it’s not healthy, but it is good for the medical business.
You sound bitter.
yet we could just improve our culture and our food supply but I guess a pill will do. Good luck with them hershey squirts you filthy animals.
Oh, great, thanks for that advice. My mental and physical preconditions just stopped influencing my eating and workout habits and fixed my metabolism, nice!
/r/thanksimcured
While I agree that in best case, everyone could control themselves. But I think you misunderstand what the drug does.
It makes you not wanting to eat as much. The pill doesnt make fat magically go away.
Which effectivly would fix the food supply issue.
But I do agree that there’s a cultural problem, especially in the US.
“just improve our culture and our food supply”
…as if it was that easy 😅 Especially with the interwoven net of geographical factors, industrial lobbying and tradition/consumer taste.
have you seen American food culture? not sure it can be fixed in any reasonable time
The portions are out of control - one restaurant lunch for me I can make 2 lunches out of. We are trained to eat too much.
high quantity, low quality, plenty of corn syrup.
Pretty cool for folks with type 2 diabetes, but that’s if they can still get any sort of supply.
