Many people have the desire to lose weight, and in the diet industry, new products are constantly being introduced and talked about, regardless of the economic climate. Especially popular are the slimming pills that are said to help people lose weight easily. This weight control pill is said to have been first experimented with by clinicians in the 1890s, when they first began experimenting with desiccated thyroid in combination with stimulants and other drugs to improve the effects of the thyroid gland on the heart. More than 130 years later, drugs originally designed to treat conditions other than weight control have been continuously marketed as diet pill. The type 2 diabetes medicines are now being sold as weight loss medicine, and their popularity has exploded.
Over the course of 130 years, a variety of weight control drugs have appeared and disappeared in the U.S. Diet pills using amphetamines, a type of central nervous system stimulant, were developed in the 1930s to suppress appetite. Despite the fact that they were said to be dangerous due to their frequent side effects, the diet pills called Clarkotabs, Benzedrine (inhaler), and Obetrol, which all contain amphetamines, have been sold in the United States. As many of you may remember, the Fen-Phen diet pill exploded in popularity in the early 1990s. However, drugs such as fenfluramine (an appetite suppressant) and dexfenfluramine (a type of obesity medication) were found to be associated with heart valve problems and were withdrawn from the market in September 1997.
Two years later came orlistat, marketed under the name Xenical. Xenical inhibits fat digestion, so that 30% of the fat in the diet is expelled in the stool as oil, which can cause anal leakage, oil that you thought was air, and sometimes causes loss of bowel control. Then in the 2000s came lorcaserin, which was sold under the brand name Belviq. It was approved by the FDA in 2012 as weight loss medicine, but eight years later, in 2020, the FDA asked the manufacturer to voluntarily withdraw the drug from the U.S. market due to “increased cancer incidence in safety clinical trials.
And those of us who do not study history, seem to have completely bought into diabetes medications with no guarantee of safety. The two diabetes medications currently being hyped in the United States for weight loss purposes are Ozempic, and Mounjaro. Ozempic is a brand name for semaglutide, which is a GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide 1) receptor agonist. GLP-1 receptor agonists stimulate insulin secretion from the pancreas, and the secreted insulin lowers blood glucose levels. Monjaro is a brand name, and the contents are tirzepatide. Tilzepatide targets two key hormones that regulate blood glucose levels: glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) and GLP-1.
Their popularity is strong, and the demand has outpaced drugmakers’ capacity to manufacture them. However, more and more reports of their side effects havre been revealed. Pancreatitis, gastric insufficiency paralysis, and intestinal obstruction have been reported, and psychological abnormalities such as eating disorders and thoughts of self-harm and suicide have also surfaced. In August of this year, a Louisiana woman sued Ozempic and Mounjaro’s manufacturing company because of serious side effects. The lawsuit alleges that the plaintiff was caused to suffer from severe gastrointestinal events, and as a result sustained severe and permanent personal injuries, pain, suffering, and emotional distress, and incurred medical expenses. Critically, these drugs’ effects on people who are not overweight or diabetic have not been studied, so as long as people continue to take these drugs, I believe a variety of side effects will be reported.
Is man an unlearning mammal, or does we just like to gamble? They think they won’t have any side effects, so no matter how dangerous it is, if a doctor prescribes it, they’ll feel safe using it. How our brain works, like thinking that anything that is popular on social media must be safe, remains unchanged, no matter how many times the cycle is repeated.
Reference:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3482033/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/speedy-history-americas-addiction-amphetamine-180966989/
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/pharmacy/another-ozempic-side-effect-pops-up-5-updates.html
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/03/business/ozempic-mounjoro-lawsuit/index.html
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