I fear the same thing but then people that know more about this say that these GLP-1 drugs have been used for many years (by diabetics) so they aren't untested or un-studied.
Literally from the Wikipedia article: “In 2002, Eli Lilly partnered with Amylin to develop exenatide and secure approval to market the drug. Exenatide's 2005 approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration showed that targeting the GLP-1 receptor was a viable strategy and inspired other pharmaceutical companies to focus on that receptor” [1].
There is a minor risk that a new drug causes cancer or something. However, obesity is a major risk for very large amount of health problems, including many cancers.
Obesity has a known, well established, multi-modal cancer risk, and then on top add metabolic syndrome (T2, heart disease, etc).
So, you're weighing a hypothetical risk against and establish risk, and concluding that the unknown risk is scarier than the known risk. Which is irrational.
Imagine if someone asks you if you want to take the "obesity pill," and you looked at the side effects objectively. But instead you weight obesity as "normal" and this as "new and scary."
To be completely honest I don't 100% trust the medical industry whenever there's so much money behind marketing something. There's a very real vested interest in trying to downplay the risk factors because let's just say tomorrow they found out this stuff makes all your teeth fall out.
A whole lot of folks would lose billions of dollars. My first instinct is to think I need to go and take another Europe. The food is better there and I lost a good amount of weight the first time.
Understood. You may be interested to learn that Liraglutide, a GLP-1 Agonist, has been commercially available and commonly used since 2010 (15-years+) without any unknown/unexpected additional side-effects appearing. It was developed in 1998.
The main reason GLP-1 Agonists are suddenly more popular is two things:
- Liraglutide had to be taken daily, instead of weekly.
- Nobody every paid for Liraglutide to be clinically approved for weight-loss. It was an anti-diabetic medication; but the mechanism of action is the same.
Compared with liraglutide, semaglutide was engineered mainly with a longer, differently attached fatty-acid side chain that increases albumin binding and slows clearance, so it lasts longer; both drugs activate the GLP-1 receptor.
Nah, you'll just be on it for the rest of your life. Drug companies prefer chronic illnesses since they cannot be cured, and recipients take the drug for life. All these hormones (GLP, testosterones, hrt) will need to be taken forever. Very few people come off GLP-1 and keep weight off.
I mean, obesity is a chronic illness, so is hypogonadism. If your balls don't work they don't work.
Chronic illnesses require chronic medication. The same is true even WITHOUT the medication. If you're obese and want to lose the weight, you need to manage your diet and exercise. Forever. Until the day you die. You can't ever stop that or you'll be obese again.
Some things just don't have one-time solutions, and that's okay.
Gilead has made bank on Solvadi, a drug that cures a previously-chronic disease [1].
> Very few people come off GLP-1 and keep weight off
Rebound can be close to 100% if you’re severely obese, but for most people it’s much less [2]. (Everyone I know who was taking it two years ago is off it, and they eat and exercise healthier than they did.)
