alt Hacker NewsSeems like a wonder drug to me. The benefits just keep piling up.
Where I live (Sweden), there's a perhaps surprisingly large portion of overweight/obesese people, especially in the countryside. Semaglutide could really do wonders here for quality of life and health.
Meanwhile, the newspapers keep pushing exceptional scare stories. The one that stuck with me from a few weeks ago went like 'I puked up my own poop.' Perhaps tellingly, the people they tend to feature in these stories typically aren't really overweight.
It is not yet generally subsidized, unless you have a diabetes type 2 diagnose. It really should be, above some BMI (sans body builders).
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I keep expecting for them to discover some horrible side effect. I wonder if people thought the same when they discovered antibiotics though.
> Seems like a wonder drug to me. The benefits just keep piling up.
That's a massive red flag. It's a common sign of snake oil when something claims to be the cure for a ton of completely unrelated conditions. While I do think these drugs are actually effective at some things, I also wonder how much they're being overprescribed already. It seems like there's a massive push to try to get insurance to cover the drug for just about anything and everything. I've never seen a drug advertised as aggressively either.
The drug is helping people and improving lives and that's a good thing, but I'm not sure how much of the attention on this drug is just a massive scheme by phrama companies to get sales and how careful doctors and patients are being.
The constipation is REAL though. Like 10 plus days real. That scare story might be extreme but severe constipation is pretty common (and fecal vomiting can be a result of extreme constipation/impaction I believe)
> Seems like a wonder drug to me
Not really, it's that hormones don't do just one thing in the body. GLP-1 isn't just some weight management hormone.
> The one that stuck with me from a few weeks ago went like 'I puked up my own poop.'
That happens if you let constipation go on far too long, and is not something unique to GLP-1 meds.
For me, it really is a wonder drug. My blood test results were stellar when the drug worked for me. Unfortunately, with me, it either works and I get side effects, or it doesn't work at all. I feel minimal effects (and almost no weight loss) even on a 10mg dose.