Discussion Board

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/business/fda-advisory-panel-backs-diet-drug.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha25

This drug can help someone lose 10% of her body weight in a year -- but it also increases heart rate and causes birth defects. I have a better idea -- how about eating more oatmeal, brown rice, and potatoes? I've lost 23% of my body weight in 7 months, and lowered my blood sugar and cholesterol. Side effects include needing new clothes.

I saw that. It made me mad. It doesn't address the cholesterol or diabetes problems. Skinny people can be sick too. When I was growing up back in the dark ages, few people other than professional atheletes exercised. You never saw anyone running or jogging. In the 1970's Jim Fixx almost singlehandedly made jogging and running a national pastime. He was skinny, but they found him beside the road one day. He had gone out for his morning run, but never finished. He died of a heart attack. His autopsy showed he had atherosclerosis with three blocked or partially blocked arteries. Skinny does not equal healthy. Healthy=healthy.

Yeah, I laughed about that 10% (TOP range) thing too. I lost 42% of my body weight in less than a year with no drugs. Umm . . . . hardly seems like a serious choice between the 2, now does it??

And the lawyers are licking their chops.............

So disgusting, when the real solution is simple, cheap, effective, and affordable for nearly anyone.

I know this is old news but, the approval of a new drug may have other motives by the FDA. I forget the amount of user fees that the big pharma pays upfront to get any drug passed by the FDA....check out this website.....Jay
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.http://www.anh-usa.org/fda-negotiating- ... om-pharma/

And the doctors in the article were complaining that there aren't enough options to help people lose weight. There are so many options! Rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, buckwheat, oatmeal, quinoa . . . . options all over the joint!

I should add that my 23% number is with feast days and simple cheating included. I'm sure if I had been more compliant the number would be higher.

Just another form of legalized speed...how irresponsible. I have to chuckle when I hear stories about America's "War on Drugs"...I don't believe it.

Actually it's a combo drug that mixes an amphetamine with an anti-seizure med called topirimate (brand name: Topomax).

I have some experience with the topo. A sympathetic doctor offered to let me try it as an appetite suppressant (off label of course) when I was at my heaviest. It's a powerful brain drug. It made me a little bit jittery, it made me drool just a smidge, and it gave me extremely mild aphasia -- I was having to struggle just a bit to find my words, which is not normal for me (my verbal facility is typically very high).

It also suppressed the heck out of my appetite.

Wait. That's not quite true.

What it actually did was disrupt my "eating frenzies" as I call them. It allowed me to "forget to eat" -- as the skinny people like to say right before the rest of us attempt to refrain from murdering them -- for the first time in my life. I can't be more precise than to say that it had a sharply noticeable and beneficial effect on disrupting some of my psychological/compulsive urges to eat.

Ultimately I found it to be a very helpful and effective drug with some rather disquieting side effects. I lost 50 or 60 pounds (very rough estimate, I had no scales in those days) while taking it and was able to fix some bad eating habits in ways that persisted after I stopped taking it.

For me, when I started taking it, the hazards and side effects were worth the benefit. By my obesity-related health situation was extreme. I stopped taking it as soon as I felt safe doing so, and would not want to take it again.

I am not arguing that this new combo drug is a good idea. I'm just saying that my experience with one of the ingredients gives me reason to believe the drug might be helpful to some people. Do I think there's a better way? Obviously, or I would not be here. But I'm not hopeful that doctors across America are suddenly going to start prescribing a plant-based diet. And -- remembering as I do the abject terror and weary defeated feeling of being near 600 pounds and not having any options that seemed likely to help me -- I'm not so convinced it's so terrible in principle for there to be pharmaceuticals that can support weight loss.

MixedGrains, thank you for sharing that. I'm glad the drug helped you, and hearing the side effects I'm glad you don't need it any more.

Hi Toadfood

I like the side effect - 'new clothes'

Sue

MixedGrains..I am glad it worked for you...but my feelings are that drugs and surgery are just a "bandage" to the obesity problem..quick fixes...in the long run..if the person does not change bad habits...the weight will creep right back on..

Potatohead, I agree with you. However, not all drugs are the same -- I was prompted to post by the assertion that this was "just another form of legalized speed" when that's not really the case (although the drug that prompted this thread appears to be a mixture of legalized speed with the drug I've got experience with).

In another thread I wrote, of being on topomax:



It's maybe too simple to say the drug helped me "change bad habits" -- I don't think "habits" adequately conveys the power of the food compulsions and behavior patterns I was struggling with -- but in effect, that's what happened. So, yeah, the "habits" have to change, but I'm open to at least the idea that pharmaceuticals can assist with that.

Sadly there's a whole 'nother rant about doctors who prescribe meds without providing (without being able to provide, for most folks who aren't rich) the kind of supportive monitoring and care necessary to make sure that the meds aren't having dangerous side effects. And in the medical system we have, that problem isn't going to go away. It's not so much that drugs are dangerous -- they are, they have to be -- as that we get them without adequate medical support. Consider a cancer chemo drug. It's a poison. It will kill you as dead as the cancer if you don't get the dosage just right, reducing it or decreasing it as the tumor responds and/or the side effects become intolerable. Does that make the drug "bad"? No, it just means that it's useless unless it comes with adequate medical support. And most of us -- especially the uninsured -- don't get adequate medical support for any of the drugs we are prescribed. This new diet drug -- even if it's otherwise useful -- will be no different.