At 150$ a month this is tempting, but I'm worried it's going to cause cancer or something.
Don't know how accurate that is, though.
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].
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."
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.
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.
Everything is risk calculus. If you're just a bit overweight, then yeah probably not worth the risk. If you're morbidly obese then it's a no brainer.
I will say this: the bar for obesity is lower than most people think.
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.)
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.