The popular weight-loss drug Wegovy reduced the risk of serious heart problems by 20% in a large, international study that experts say could change the way doctors treat certain heart patients.
The research is the first to document that an obesity medication can not only pare pounds, but also safely prevent a heart attack, stroke or a heart-related death in people who already have heart disease — but not diabetes.
The findings could shift perceptions that the new class of obesity drugs are cosmetic treatments and put pressure on health insurers to cover them.
So, it’s an antidiabetic that can be injected subcutaneously in addition to orally, neat but why? Diabetes and pre-diabetes are known risk factors for atherosclerosis and heart disease, so the antidiabetic drug is being used for people that may or may not be diabetic but want to lose weight? Wouldn’t it have less risk for pancreatitis to do a weight loss coaching?
The point is that, for many people, no amount of telling them to eat less and exercise more will actually result in them doing it, and so given that reality, a drug that actually results in real change, even with moderate side effects, can still be a net positive.
To throw another example at you, high blood pressure can often be eliminated with cardiovascular exercise, and it’s probably better to do that than to take a drug. But, if the person simply is not going to exercise, then the choice is to either give them a drug that resolves the problem or to not and have them walk around with hypertension.
Solutions that some people won’t actually adhere to are not useful solutions to those people. You can criticize them, say they lack willpower, are lazy, or whatever else, and you might even be correct, but that doesn’t change the medical facts of the situation.
Yeah I suppose you have a point. I guess I’m not trying to criticize that approach but trying to understand why the article says this drug will “shift perspectives.” Are they implying that instead of waiting until a patient develops symptoms of heart disease, they will prescribe meds to help control weight? Is that not what is already happening now?
I’ve read somewhere that people with high blood pressure taking a certain medication are more resistant to some cardio-vascular diseases compared to people with normal blood pressure not taking any pills. This might be a similar effect.
I should probably start saving these articles, for the purpose of backing my shitposts with original sources.
It would have less risk of many things to do weight coaching and traditional weight loss methods. These drugs are very hard on your body and their effect has a high chance of fucking up the neuro chemical system it affects so that, if stopped, you can basically feel like you are starving forever. From what I have read about it most doctors are not in support of this being used this way with the exception of obesity issues so bad that the long term damage cause by a life of using this class of drugs is still less damaging than the weight.