United States: Popular weight loss drugs like Ozempic have been promoted as miracle products for the millions who cannot lose weight, while millions of patients taking the product are not losing fat.
Some obesity specialists have since come forward cautioning people about side effects of the medications saying that twenty percent of patients have adverse reactions to it – and a select few even gain more weight.
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Around 31 million Americans have ever used obesity-reducing medications thus millions of them or the non responders are not receiving the wanted benefits.
Doctors have added that this comes at an expensive time — between USD 800 and USD 1,100 a month for the drugs, if one is without insurance—and more so, many of the patients need these drugs for life, should they want to ensure they do not regain any weight they may have lost.
However, this week, the Biden administration has made intentions with regard to extending provisions of Medicare and Medicaid to embrace these drugs despite many in Donald Trump’s incoming health team openly questioning the efficacy of the drugs, Daily Mail reported.
About weight-loss drugs
Wegovy, Ozempic, and Mounjaro all belong to the injectable GLP-1 receptor agonists, and how they operate is by mimicking a hormone in our body that regulates the speed at which food is digested – this process is slowed down.
This in turn helps to suppress the appetite and enables food intake to be reduced.
Most of the users in clinical trials of these drugs for obesity had reduced their body weight by an average of 15-22 percent.
The nonresponders, however, are put far below average losing just five percent of their body weight according to recent research.
What precisely happens in nonresponders is not known to scientists but they have opined that this must have something to do with the biology of their body.
Obesity, however, is different from one patient to another and the doctors continue to caution clients that they cannot lose as much weight as their favorite celebrities saw.
According to Dr Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity expert at Massachusetts General Hospital, “It’s all about explaining that different people have different responses. This is a disease that stems from the brain. The dysfunction may not be the same [from patient to patient].”