And a lot of these medications have side effects that can affect quality of life negatively in other ways. That doesn't mean they're not helpful, or shouldn't be taken. But the "no free lunch" rule usually applies, sometimes to a noticeable degree.
Wow. I had no idea.
Come on, why is it that whenever GLP-1s come up on this site, the comments are filled with people helpfully pointing out this fact as if no one knows it already?
First, I don't personally have it out for GLP-1s specifically.
Second, here's the thing about side effects: there are a good number of examples across multiple categories of drugs showing that some people experience side effects doctors and pharmaceutical companies have insisted aren't real or are exceedingly rare, with evidence later showing this not to be the case.
For instance, there is a growing body of evidence that a subset of people who take SSRIs experience life-altering sexual dysfunction that persists long after the SSRIs are discontinued. Up until fairly recently, that this was happening at all was basically dismissed by all but a small number of practitioners. Now, there's a name for this and even some warning labels.
In the US, which is only one of two developed countries in the world that allows pharma companies to advertise directly to consumers, there are huge incentives to minimize side effect profiles and even to bias clinical trials so that benefits are exaggerated and downsides are underestimated.
Oh, there’s consequences? One of those is an almost universal weight gain measured in the dozens of kilos? You want help with that?
Sorry, it’s against Calvinist/puritan morality to help you with that by providing a medicine to counteract that. You need to do it the hard way (regardless of the statistics that show you will just be obese now until you die thanks to the meds which, I maintain, that you must take).