This is the Weight and Healthcare newsletter! If you like what you are reading, please consider subscribing and/or sharing! I received the following question from reader Connie: “My doctor is pushing me to take Wegovy. I told him I’m not interested in weight loss medication but the kept pushing so I said that I was worried about the side effects. He said they are ‘nothing to worry about’ and that ‘all drugs have side effects’ and that ‘besides, this drug has been around forever and is safe.’ I didn’t know what to say to that, can you help?”
“4 events that lead to discontinuation of the drug”
Wow, what kind of pressure were they putting on test subjects to stay on the drug in order to come up with this number? Of all the people I know who’ve tried these drugs, way more than 4% discontinued due to side effects within a year. Granted this is just anecdotal, but…I smell something.
I feel like the major side effects - a la FenPhen - are coming. There have been increasing reports of gastroparesis (stomach paralysis) and ileus causing blockages. It also seems that the FDA has reports of more of these, enough that they changed the label warning in September to indicate that there have been reports of ileus. It’s not great.
That provider's responses were totally unacceptable! I would never trust someone who talked down to me like that! My primary has *respectful conversations* with me, and that is their job!
My sister and my best friend are both on this and while I respect their individual choices, it honestly scares me for them. But both definitely believe it’s “worth it” so they can be thinner and are equating that almost automatically with healthier.
Hi, Ragen. My name is Natalia, I'm from Colombia. I don't really know if I'm able to ask you a direct question or if that's only available to paid subscribers, but I've been really eager to ask you about the argument of the 5% lost of weight and the benefits it provides. I've read your piece about it but I keep questioning if there is any scientific proof that the benefits occur because of the effect that a 5% lost of weight causes in the body or if it's just the nonseses that 5% is sort of magical even if you end up being in the exact same BMI catherogy. (is that even their argument?, by them I mean the fatphobic biases science community). Or is there something i'm missing, some sort of effect that applies to each body without a regard of the ending weight. That would mean that if somebody stars at 100 and ends at 95 they get the same "health effect" that if somebody starts at 95 and ends at 90.25. If you know about it, I¡ll be forever gradeful.
Thanks for the question. The short answer is that there is no research that shows that losing 5-10% of your body weight improves health, and there is research that finds that claim isn't valid (and posits that it's actually behavior changes and not small amounts of weight loss that cause any health benefits.
I've written about this a few times so I wanted to make sure you had seen each of the pieces in case that helps - the first two look at the research around this:
“4 events that lead to discontinuation of the drug”
Wow, what kind of pressure were they putting on test subjects to stay on the drug in order to come up with this number? Of all the people I know who’ve tried these drugs, way more than 4% discontinued due to side effects within a year. Granted this is just anecdotal, but…I smell something.
I feel like the major side effects - a la FenPhen - are coming. There have been increasing reports of gastroparesis (stomach paralysis) and ileus causing blockages. It also seems that the FDA has reports of more of these, enough that they changed the label warning in September to indicate that there have been reports of ileus. It’s not great.
That provider's responses were totally unacceptable! I would never trust someone who talked down to me like that! My primary has *respectful conversations* with me, and that is their job!
My sister and my best friend are both on this and while I respect their individual choices, it honestly scares me for them. But both definitely believe it’s “worth it” so they can be thinner and are equating that almost automatically with healthier.
Hi, Ragen. My name is Natalia, I'm from Colombia. I don't really know if I'm able to ask you a direct question or if that's only available to paid subscribers, but I've been really eager to ask you about the argument of the 5% lost of weight and the benefits it provides. I've read your piece about it but I keep questioning if there is any scientific proof that the benefits occur because of the effect that a 5% lost of weight causes in the body or if it's just the nonseses that 5% is sort of magical even if you end up being in the exact same BMI catherogy. (is that even their argument?, by them I mean the fatphobic biases science community). Or is there something i'm missing, some sort of effect that applies to each body without a regard of the ending weight. That would mean that if somebody stars at 100 and ends at 95 they get the same "health effect" that if somebody starts at 95 and ends at 90.25. If you know about it, I¡ll be forever gradeful.
Hi Natalie,
Thanks for the question. The short answer is that there is no research that shows that losing 5-10% of your body weight improves health, and there is research that finds that claim isn't valid (and posits that it's actually behavior changes and not small amounts of weight loss that cause any health benefits.
I've written about this a few times so I wanted to make sure you had seen each of the pieces in case that helps - the first two look at the research around this:
https://weightandhealthcare.substack.com/p/does-losing-5-10-of-body-weight-really
https://weightandhealthcare.substack.com/p/the-5-10-weight-loss-lie-part-2
https://weightandhealthcare.substack.com/p/the-utter-ridiculousness-of-the-5