Studies show that many doctors tend to overestimate the amount of weight you can lose with obesity medications or simply have no idea.
Current weight-loss drug options include the ridiculously named Qsymia, a combination of phentermine (the fen in fen-phen) and topiramate, a drug that can cause Seizures if you stop abruptly. Qsymia was “explicitly refused“ several times for security reasons in Europe “due to concerns about the drug’s long-term effects on the heart and blood vessels”but, at the time of making my video Are weight loss pills effective?, remains available for sale in the United States. Belviq is in a similar situation: it is allowed in the United States but not in Europe due to “concerns about possible cancers, psychiatric disorders and heart valve problems…”.
Belviq is sold in the United States for about 200 dollars a month. If you think that’s a lot, there is Saxenda, which requires daily injections and is list at the low price of just $1,281.96 for a 30-day supply. He carry a black box warning, the FDA’s strictest warning of potentially life-threatening hazards, for thyroid cancer risk. Paid consultants and employees of the company that makes it. argue The higher number of breast tumors found among drug recipients may be due to “enhanced detection,” that is, easier detection of breast cancer simply due to the effectiveness of the drug.
Contrave is another option if ignore Its black box warns of a possible increase in suicidal thoughts. Then there is Alli, the drug that Causes fat malabsorption, which produces side effects “including fecal urgency, oily stools, flatus with discharge, and fecal incontinence”: Alli can be Your ally in anal leaks. The drugs obviously”cash the patient to wear diapers and know the location of all bathrooms in the neighborhood in an attempt to limit the consequences of an urgent leak of oily fecal matter.” An exposition of the Freedom of Information Act found that although studies sponsored by companies reclaimed that “all adverse events were recorded”, a trial apparently conveniently failed to mention 1,318 of them.
But what is a small intestinal leak? compared to the ravages of obesity? As with everything in life, it’s all about risks versus benefits. However, in an analysis of more than one hundred clinical trials of anti-obesity drugs that lasted up to 47 weeks, drug-induced weight loss never occurred. exceeded more than nine pounds. That’s a lot of money and a lot of risk for just a few pounds. Because the underlying cause (a fattening diet) is not being treated, when people arrest When taking these medications, weight tends to come back quickly, so you would have to take them every day for the rest of your life. But people do stop taking them. Using pharmacy data from one million people, most Alli users stopped using after the first purchase and most Meridia users didn’t even make it three months. Taking weight loss medications is so unpleasant that 98 percent of users stopped taking them within the first year.
Studies show Many doctors tend to overestimate the amount of weight you can lose with these medications or simply have no idea. One reason may be that some clinical practice guidelines go They go to great lengths to advocate for the prescription of obesity medications. Are you serious? recommending drugging a third of Americans: more than 100 million people? It may not surprise you learn that the lead author of the guidelines has a “significant financial interest or leadership position” in six different pharmaceutical companies that (coincidentally) work on obesity drugs. In contrast, independent expert panels, such as the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care, explicitly recommend against weight loss medications, given their poor record of safety and effectiveness.
In case you missed my related video, watch Are weight loss pills safe?.
As with all lifestyle diseases, it is best to treat the underlying cause, which in the case of obesity is a fattening diet. For an example of what is possible with a healthy diet intervention, see Throwback Friday: The Weight Loss Program That Got Better Over Time.
Watch the related videos below to learn more about weight loss.
