Here’s one side benefit from the emergence of Ozempic et al.:
For a very long time, bariatric surgery, in which doctors removed a portion of the stomach, was the standard procedure for helping patients lose weight and manage obesity, alongside metabolic disorders such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. However, ever since GLP-1 medications like Ozempic became available on the market, there has been a shift in how people seek to lose weight.
I just wish this stuff had been around all those years ago, before I had my bariatric (gastric band) surgery. I don’t often regret my important decisions, mostly because I’ve given them a considerable amount of thought before making them; but having a plastic sphincter installed at the top of my stomach — thus reducing the amount of food one can swallow — was easily the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.
Executive summary: it took away one of my few pleasures in life. And yes, I could probably have had the thing removed (probably not now, it’s been too long), but at the time I had no health insurance (and the removal probably wouldn’t have been covered anyway) so here I am, some eighteen years later, still stuck with the damn thing.
And still unable to swallow a decent mouthful of delicious food.
And yes, I’m back on Ozempic, because (as I discovered) it did change my attitude towards food and the quantities thereof while I was taking it. I thought this attitude would persist after I stopped taking it, but it didn’t: in the year after losing some fifty pounds, I put about ten pounds back on. And so here I am, back to the weekly prick in the stomach, at about $50 a pop for the 0.25mg privilege.
Fach.
Just don’t expect me to feel any sympathy for the bariatric surgeons as they see their income shrink.