Episode 199 Transcript

You're listening to the Fierce Fatty Podcast, episode 199, Ozempic/ Wegovy (GLP1s). Where are we now? Let's do it.

Hello, welcome to the podcast. I'm your host, Vinny Welsby. My pronouns are they/them. So excited to be in your ear holes today or your brain holes today. If you're reading the transcript, this episode is. It's probably gonna be a two parter is my prediction. Sorry that you didn't have an episode last month. The reason is that there was so much that has gone into this episode. But you're gonna get two episodes this month to make up for it. So yes, if you appreciate the work that I do and you want work like this to continue, feel free to go to my KOFI, KOFI link will be in the show notes and consider Chuck on me five bucks or not consider doing a review, making a. Writing a review on Apple or whatever. Or not. Just think good vibes about me if you don't want to do either of those things.

Now, I have done two previous, well, three previous episodes on WeGovy Zempic GLP1s. In 2023, I did a two parter and that's the first time I did like a big deep dive into Wegovy Zempic. It's the same drug basically. And then 2024, I did a Zempic Wegovy three, three years on. So now it's been another year. And we've been living with this donkey shit bullshit for many years. Many years since 2021. A review of, you know, is everyone thin now? What's happening? Do we have new data? What are the, what are the people on the street saying? And if you just want to know anything about the drugs, I'm going to give you an overview of what we said in the previous episodes. But if you want a deep dive about about like the history of the drug manufacturer or how the drugs work or deep dives on the studies, go listen to those episodes. I'll link them in the show notes. Link to every single thing that I'm saying will be in the show notes. And there are probably like seven zillion links. But if you just want to quickly look, it's episode 155 and 156 and also episode 192. Okay, so basically what was happening in 2021, that is the year. Well, let's go back a little bit. So azempic, generically known as semaglutide, was created and approved by the FDA in September, December 2017. So Ozempic, the diabetes drug, was approved in 2017.

WeGovy, which is the same drug but at a higher dose by the same manufacturer. Novo Nordisk was first approved in June 2021 and the media went into a frenzy thanks to a huge marketing budget from Novo Nordisk. Plus societal anti fatness like this is. This is not anything that most of us have seen in our lifetimes. And actually it's quite surprising considering we'll get to it in the show that. Well, it's quite surprising. Well, I say quite surprising for. And then I'm like, well it's not surprising because anti fatness is just so powerful, but quite surprising because the drug is pretty fucking shit for weight loss, for diabetes. Love it. Great. Perfect. People report saying it's wonderful, but an unintended side effect that they noticed was weight loss and now they give it to people who don't have diabetes in, in huge quantities, large doses. I mean large doses higher than what they give to people with actual diabetes. It has different effects on people's bodies because one, they don't have diabetes and two, they're using it for an unintended side effect in these large doses. We didn't at the time have data about what it was gonna do. So in 2011, sorry, 2020, 2021, they released it with just a 68 week study is what happened, what they found. Let me give you an overview. When it first came out, this was. This is the big hoo ha, the big oh my God. Life changing, game changing. I don't know if you remember all of the headlines, like literally fatness has ended. The word game changing. The way. The reason I'm using it is because that was the word that was used over and over again by media. So the game changing amount of weight that their own study. So the study that was funded, created, written by Novo Nordisk and the study authors, um, many of them, if they weren't actually employed by Novo Nordisk, were paid by Novo Nordisk. There were. I don't think there was. From the top of my memory. I don't think there was many people who were not either Novo Nordisk besties or in the weight loss industry. It was just red flag central. And not just for that, but for many different reasons. Anyway, the study said the gargantuan change, game changing weight loss was 2 pounds a month over 68 weeks, 2 pounds a month. So total 33 pounds weight loss. This is alongside. You don't just take the injection, but alongside also needing to diet and exercise 30 minutes a day, six days a week.

At week 60, participants weight plateaued. And that's for those still taking the medication. And during the study, there was a 50% dropout rate, more than a third because they were experiencing unmanageable side effects. 95% of the participants had side effects. And the most common were nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, constipation, stomach pain, headache, fatigue, upset stomach, dizziness, feeling bloated, belching gas. 10% had serious side effects like pancreatitis, which can lead to pancreatic cancer, gallstones and gastrointestinal issues, acute kidney injury and suicidal ideation behaviors. And then from this study, they reported that there were many health benefits. Not only does it make you super skinny, supermodel, Listen, we've got health benefits out the wazoo. This is what they found. Well, they actually found, this is, this is Novo Nordic's own data. Okay. They actually found that HbA1c, which is a diabetes measure, the change was from 5.7. And by the way, this is not in people who have diabetes. These are people who don't have diabetes. So HbA1c, the change was from 5.7 at the start of the study to at the end of the study. You're not going to guess this. 5.6. Oh, a 0.1% difference. This is. I don't know if you, I don't know if you know this, but that's not a significant change. And guess what? Both of those numbers already in the normal range, cholesterol, triglycerides and inflammation markers went from normal range to normal range. Game changing. Get over here for that. Two pound a month. All right, so that was the first study that came out. Let's move to the 2024 episode, what I was reporting in there. So they came out with a 221 week study. So that's four years and two months. Okay, so, all right, so the, so the weight loss is pretty shit for the first one. But second one, we've got four years and two months of data. We're gonna see that all of these fatties are just walking around thin, just living their dreams, right? At 208 weeks of the 221 week study, people had lost 10.2% of their weight. So as an example, a 200 pound person would lose 20.4 pounds over four years, or that equates to 5 pounds a year or 0.4 pounds a month. So first study, it was 2 pounds a month. Second study, which was longer. First study was 68 weeks. Second study, they're showing at 208 weeks that people are losing not 2 pounds a month, but not 0.4 pounds a month. Why do we think that is? Why do we think that is? If we look at the first study and look at the second study, because it's continuing data that at week 60 participants weights plateaued. And what we could see, because if you look at every, every piece of information we know about dieting is this is what happens. It's normally about a year one to three or sooner. But that people when they have weight loss, if they're able to achieve weight loss that are about a year, that's when things start to go tits up, right? And surprise, surprise, artificially starving yourself but with a magic game changing drug. Also your body is responding in around about the same way that you know, about a year people who can still tolerate the drug. So these are the people who were still taking the drug. We'll tell you how much, how many of those people there were, their body is, is, is rebelling, is saying bitch, feed me. Okay, this enough, enough. And then the weight regains. Okay? In that first study we didn't have that information on what was happening, happening after that kind of year Mark. In the second study it's showing that oh, surprise, surprise, people are not continuing to lose weight. In fact, the average weight loss has, has, has gone down. And these unimpressive results are not even a true representation of the average person's experience because there was a huge 89% dropout rate in this study, 8,794 participants started the trial and a paltry 118 people remained. So we only have the Data of those 118 people, the 10.5% who could tolerate taking the drug. If we had the data of the vast majority, almost 90% of the participants, we would have a better idea of what happens to weight on this drug, specifically semaglutide. Wegovy moving forward, we know that that 10.5% they are still taking the drug and they're not seeing that continued weight loss. What is happening to the people who are not taking the drug? We don't have that data. What we can guess and surmise. Why, why did Novo Nordisk not include their data? Well, we can guess and surmise is their weight went back to pre intervention a number or potentially higher, which is what we know about dieting is that two thirds of, two thirds of people end up weighing more than when they started the diet. Sorry, one third correction, one third. So the people who dropped out we don't know why they dropped out. Presumably they couldn't tolerate the drug or put on weight and didn't see the benefit in continuing the weighs it weigh ins. Recently, Novo Nordisk have claimed that WeGovy has significant benefits for heart health. What they actually found is, is very different. I don't know, I don't know if you saw this, but I saw this. I saw this really. This guy that I follow and he seems like a really good guy. He kind of like debunks science bull and other social, like social justice stuff. And he was sharing this thing saying, can you sign this petition to help save men's health? Like get. Can you say, can you sign this? Not me, but his followers. Can you sign this petition to get congress to fund heart health? And I was like, hmm, what is this? Click on it. What do you think it was? It was Novo Nordisk trying to get people to lobby the government to provide Wegovy for free. I can't remember what it was. Do something. Increase access to WeGovy in some way because it was gonna stop everyone from having heart attacks, stop men from having heart attacks, heart attacks or heart disease. So they had a study that they released which misleads readers claiming Semaglutide showed a 20% reduction in major adverse cardiovascular events. Thanks to the work of Regan Chastain who reviewed the study, it was discovered that in fact it was a 1.5% reduction and only in a small group of mostly smaller fat cis white men with the average age of 61 with pre existing cardiovascular disease without diabetes. Really specific group of people. And also every listed author had either taken money from, was contracted by or a direct employee of a Novo Nordisk. Plus many of the peer reviewers were in the pocket of Novo. So summary, from where we were at most people, 90%, let's be generous, it was actually 89.5. 89.5% of people cannot tolerate taking the drug or the drug wasn't successful.

So 89.5% of people dropped out of the study. These were people who were getting the drugs for free, by the way. Add into that, add in that and being like supervised and monitored by, you know, these scientists. So I think that, I think in real life that number would be higher because you're paying for it, theoretically. And if you're paying for it and it's out of, out of pocket, it's thousands of dollars. And you don't have that like, oh shit, I'm gonna have to go to that weigh in because so and so the science people wanna know if I've lost weight on their magic drug. Maybe you go into a weight loss meeting, maybe that's a factor. And so you are probably less likely to continue if it's costing you a lot of money, if it's, and it's not working, or if it's, the side effects are too, too difficult to deal with. And, and what was it? 90% of people experiencing. 95% of people experiencing side effects. 20, 10% of them serious side effects. Yeah, 95% people. 95% of people experiencing side Effects. 10% serious side effects. And something to mention is just because something is approved by the FDA doesn't mean it's necessarily completely safe. What the FDA does is they weigh the risk benefits. And so they say, is this worth taking that risk to cure fatness? Are we willing to risk fat people's health and their lives because fatness is framed as this such deeply abhorrent, unhealthy, deadly thing? Then the answer is more likely to be yes for things that are not likely to be said yes to for people in smaller bodies. So because they're on the risk benefit thing, they're saying, well, it's a, it's a risk, but being fat is a risk. At that time, law firms had begun setting pages up to capture clients who had had those adverse outcomes or relatives of people who had died. Here's the thing with tricky thing with knowing about lawsuits and number of deaths is we can't know if someone dies. They're taking wegovy and they die. We don't know if they died because of WeGovy. Some people in the, in that previous episode, we had people with their, you know, video testimonies, not people from me, but, you know, news reports and people sharing their experiences, being like, I know my loved one died because of this. I know I saw what they were going through and it killed them. But we don't really, we don't, we don't have that data, right? To say yes 100%, I guess, you know, autopsies and things like that can be done and, but we don't have that data, right? So, you know, people were sending up, you know, lawsuits, lawsuits, and there were, as of April 2024, 222 reported deaths in the U.S. and many, they said, dozens of reports of adverse outcomes. And just like an FYI, many people are taking these drugs. And so those numbers are not high. And it's early days, right? And every drug is, you know, potential to have an adverse outcome and potentially cause Death, however unlikely that might be for certain types of drugs. Right, so let's move to today. We've got the history. Okay, so 2025, Novo Nordisk. What have they, what have they been showing us? Any juicy, juicy new studies? What do we think? What do you think? Any new, juicy studies from Novo Doord Nordisk? Have they gone, have they gone the extra mile during a six year study? No, no, they haven't. No, no, there are. Zero. Zero. Not just for Novo. We'll talk about the other drugs in a moment. Zero studies showing that GLP1s create. That's the family of. Family. Well, I'll explain in a minute, but that's the kind of name for the family of GLP1 agonists, for the family of, of drugs that cause this side effect of weight loss. So zero studies showing GLP1s create significant sustainable weight loss. There's no change in that game, changing amount of weight loss. There's no new studies showing, wow, everyone's thin. Now you might be saying, hang on, Vinny, how is this true? We know everything I've read, everything I've seen, I've seen all these celebrities, I've seen all these influencers, they're also thin. Now what you're seeing is the, the small percent of people who are able to tolerate the drug, who are able to do that dieting and 30 minutes of exercise six days a week, who can afford it, who have had the results that they like. What do you think? That 89% of people. And rewind a bit. And that's the people that have lost the £2amonth. Right. With the average, let's go back to what the average weight loss was, 10.2%. Right. So for a 200 pound person, 20 pounds. Right. So if a 200 person, 200 pound person lost 20 pounds, they're not going to be necessarily showing their pictures on Instagram being like, look how thin I am now. Because they're still probably a fat person or a small, small fat or mid size or whatever you want to call it. Right. And so what percentage of people who lost that very large amount of weight? We don't have that data, but I'm gonna guess it's less than the 11%. But we know, we don't need to guess. We know, we know that the average person is losing 10%, which is about 0.4 pounds a month for someone who's 200 pounds. So we know it's a very, very, very small percentage of people who are losing large amounts of weight over this longer period, that's what we're seeing. The. Let's be generous and just say it's the 89.5% of the people who are not able to take the drug long term. Are they gonna be posting pictures being like, oh my God, look at my body. I went on nozempic and I'm now exactly the same weight? No, no, no, they won't be. They'll be deep in shame, embarrassed, frustrated, blaming themselves, sad. Seeing all these other pictures of celebs looking thin. Why didn't it work for me? Something wrong with me, all of that stuff. If we really actually saw the reality represented on, on media, you would have a feed filled with people saying, I tried wegovy and I couldn't take. Made me feel like shit. I tried we govy. I was on it for a year and it cost me tons of money and I only lost £20. I was on regovi and I didn't lose anything. What a waste of time. And then you'd have that one person who's like, oh my God, look at me, I weigh three pounds now. But we don't have that reality presented to us because no one wants to see that because it would be ruining the, the fantasy. The fantasy. And I just want to stop here and say I have such deep compassion for people who are currently on it, who are trying it, who have tried it in the past, who are thinking about trying it, or who will try it in the future. I was just talking about, about this with a team of dietitians yesterday, weight inclusive dietitians. And I was saying like, remember when. Cause it, they were talking about it being difficult. It's difficult to work with a client who is committed to weight loss because we know that it doesn't work. It's not appropriate for us to say, if you're, if you're in a caring profession, to say, listen up, ding dong, what you're doing is not gonna work. Okay? Because that would totally break down the relationship and potentially really harm the person and drive them further away from finding something that brings them actual, you know, body peace and health and blah, blah, blah. And who knows, they might be in the percent of person who it works for and they feel wonderful. Right? The compassion that I was talking about, the feeling that if I go back to the me when I was starting a new thing, I knew this time would be different. I really want it. I'm not like those other people who, they were probably doing it wrong. I'm really dedicated. If it's going to work for anyone. It's going to work for me. And oh my goodness, perhaps this time next year, ah, I won't even have to worry and think twice about going to the beach. I can have my arms out and not care what people think because I'm going to be thin. Maybe I'll have a new spouse, maybe I'll do better at work or I can leave my job and go for another job because I'll feel more confident in my body. Think of all of the clothes I'm going to buy when I'm thin. I'm going to be able to walk into straight sized clothes stores and just buy something off the rack. I'm going to fit in that airplane seat. I'm going to be more mobile. I'm going to be able to run after my kids. I'm going to be. And that is so powerful, that feeling of hope and then someone coming along and being like, not going to work. When you're there, are you likely to go, oh, you don't think it's going to work? Oh, the data shows it's not going to work. Okay, well I'm not going to do it and I'm just going to be fat. When you're deep in it, the answer is no. No, that wouldn't happen. Remember, you know, if you're in this place where you've, you've been in fat liberation for a while, your own journey to deciding that dieting wasn't your thing and that working on trying to unlearn anti fat bias was the, was the right route for you and it was probably a kind of like a slow trickle. Eventually you got there and maybe you saw an article one time and you were kind of like, well that's, I don't believe in that. And then you saw maybe something else and you were like, kind of makes sense. And then you, someone said something and then you're like, yeah. And then eventually you kind of discovered it on your own. Although you know, you didn't discover it on your own. It was there on the Internet and in life already. But you know, it was kind of something that you arrived to on your own. And the unlearning of everything that thinness would give us, whether that be based in reality or not, is painful. So I want people to know who are taking the drugs that I hope that you get what you want from the drugs. I hope that you are in the few percent that it works for because I want you to realize those dreams and if it doesn't happen for you, it's not your fault. And I don't think that you're a piece of shit if you take these drugs. I can understand many people are angry about people who are in fat liberation taking those drugs because I think, you know, sometimes when people are in so much pain around whatever it is, if they find something which is maybe gonna alleviate that pain, maybe it stops them from not being able to survive life. I don't know what everyone's situation is anyway. Side tangent. That was a side tangent. We've still got lots more to talk about. So. All right, so now in 2025, roughly 1 in 8 adults in the US have used GLP drugs. And about half of those NUM users are currently taking them. So 1 in 16 US adults are taking GLPs. And that translates to approximately 15 million adults in the US at least. Apparently the CEO of Novo said at least 25,000 people in the US are starting WeGovy each week. I would be interested to see, you know, long like are the. Are they. Are they still increasing the sales year over year? The answer is yes. But here's the thing. It'd be better to see that longer data because they had that shortage, right? We'll talk about the shortage in a minute. And so that kind of slowed things down. And so then was that, you know, that's maybe not a true represent representation of the sales of like, if they had all the drugs, would the sales have been higher at the beginning and lower now? Okay, so and the other thing I'm quoting from this Reuters article. WeGovy use among US teens up 50% as O word crisis worsens. Don't go and don't read this, this Reuters article. Cause it's an absolute piece of fucking shit the way that they're framing fatness. But this information was interesting. Quote, the average rate of teens beginning treatment with the highly effective lol Novo Nordisk drug. See that? It's just like someone, someone wrote that game changer thing back in 2021 and then no decided to look at the study and be like, was it game changing? Was it. Oh, mate, Pete over there, the journalist for ABC Company, they said it's really amazing. And so it's really amazing. And no one does. No one's checked. Anyway. The average rate of teens beginning treatment with the highly effective Novo Nordisk drug grew 50% last year to 14.8 prescriptions per 100,000 adolescents, according to an analysis by health data firm Truveta. That's up from a rate of 9.99. 9.9 prescriptions per 100,000. So it went from 9.9 in 2023 to 14.8 in 2024. And in 2023, year that Wegovy was available to children aged 12 and older, the average rate climbed further during the first three months of this year reaching 17, this year being 2025, reaching 17.3 new prescriptions per 100,000. Now this is, this is frightening. This is really frightening. I want to quote from Reagan Chastain, my favorite, who wrote about this in Substack newsletter. You can go and subscribe for free. And the way you can do the paid one, do the paid one. It's amazing someone mentioned to her about seeing Wegovy in kids and so Reagan said semaglutide. Wegovy was approved for kids starting at age 12 in December of 2022. Tirzepatide Zep Pound is not yet approved, but they have a trial going. Semaglutide was approved on a 68 week study. That's that first study that we talked about. And the study participants regained weight rapidly as soon as they went off the drugs. I have a lot of concerns about this. Me too, Reagan. In terms of safety data, the semaglutide study itself found quote. This is for a quote from the study. The incidence of gastrointestinal adverse events were greater with semaglutide than with the placebo. 62% versus 42%. 5 participants, 4% in the semaglutide group and no participants in the placebo group had gallstones. Serious adverse events were reported in 15 of 133 participants, 11% in the semaglutide group and 6 of 67 participants, 9% in the placebo group. There does not appear to be any discussion of the ways in which these side effects. Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, impacted adolescents in their lived experience, you know, school, sports, treatment by peers, et cetera. And while there's no proof that taking the drug for life will lead to sustained weight loss, we know that going of a drug leads to rapid regain. So the party line from the drug company is that kids should take the drug for Life with only 68 weeks of data. And I find that deeply concerning. And then Reagan goes on to say there appears to be some trials that have been registered, including one truly concerning trial pairing weight loss surgery with weight loss drugs, another very concerning trial that includes children starting aged six and one that will look at a minimum of three years of use of the drugs in teenagers. But for now all we have is 60, 68 weeks of data. And then Reagan says something that I just said. Some of these drugs do impact mimic various hormones. But it's likely that the risk benefit analysis is skewed for these weight loss drugs because of the weight loss industry driven belief that being higher weight as a child is quote, so dangerous that weight loss drugs are worth the risk. Oh lord. Really, I'm just, oh my just heart just is going out to those kids. Imagine the harm that many of us experienced as kids with this stuff. Maybe depending on the age, maybe you're one of the people that took fen phen, one of the OG diet pills. Maybe you were like me and you know, just had like the slim fast and things like that. Imagine being injected every week with an experimental drug. I say experimental because like Reagan says, we don't have that much data about it. We don't. And they're doing, they're doing Trials on kids 6 years old who is letting their child do that? Someone that those kids are going to be in therapy in 20 years hating their parents. Not all of them. Not all of them, but many, many of them. Okay, so other stuff that's going on the. So we talked about celebrities losing weight. You may have noticed in the fat community are fat influencers losing weight. I have a whole, I think I have a whole episode about this and people's feelings but there was a whole Teen Vogue article about it. Teen Vogue is great. Teen Vogue has got it going on when it comes to the content that they're they're writing about and local fat awesome human Lydia Okello they them their handle is stylish style is quoted in it. Lydia's fat black queer fashion icon. Just general cool human. So yeah Lydia, they are quoted in this article. So just a little bit of the article. I could name names but I probably don't need to. We've all noticed our favorite plus size social media influences shrinking before our eyes amid the rise of GLP weight loss drugs. Many formerly fat influencers who built their career on talking about their bodies are now losing weight. Some of those influencers are documenting that journey and some are getting paid for it. While others are quietly downsizing, simply withdrawing from the plus size of body. Positive content they posted. This has unfortunately come alongside a cultural resurgence of fatphobia. Thin is in again online fatphobic TikTok trend trends have racked up views and being skinny is once again being held up as an inherent value. Nydia Kello, a writer, model and digital creator, says this abandonment isn't actually about body size at all. It's about values. Each person is an individual. I don't believe it's my right to tell someone my opinion on whether they, whether or not they want to lose weight. But I have seen Influence who talked a lot about accepting their body where it was or appreciating how they look regardless of weight, really flipping the script and using the way they looked previously as a negative contrast to where they are now. Akello says. That's the part I really disagree with. Okello has noticed that when influencers lose weight, the bulk of negative comments on their posts don't have to do with the actual weight loss. Instead, it's people who once found representation, community, or meaning through what the influencer represented, feeling abandoned by a stark shift in tone or opinion. I think the audiences that are feeling abandoned, in my opinion, largely the feedback is not I'm mad that you're skinny. Akello says the feedback is, why are you acting like the body that I have is not worthy anymore? Yes. So I messaged Lydia and I said, that was a really good read. I always say that you don't actually know a fat person's politics unless they explicitly state that they are fat positive. And I think a lot of fat influencers haven't done the work unlearning their own anti fat bias and are temporarily riding the wave of acceptance from peers until they find that quote, magic solution, like hang out with the nerds until the cool kids like me vibe. That's what I said to Lydia. That's what I said in my, in my previous episode, is that if someone's fat and if someone says love your body, we still don't know their opinions on fat liberation. Especially if just someone's fat and they're online and they're like, I'm a clothing influencer. Unless they're saying, listen up here. I believe in fat liberation. I think that fat people don't need to lose weight. I believe that I am worthy regardless of my weight. I believe that fat people should have equal access. I believe that we've been lied about the idea that fatness is a disease, et cetera. Unless they're saying these things, we don't know. And I always, you know, give that kind of. I don't. I give the opposite of a benefit of a doubt. I just assume that they aren't necessarily a fat liberationist. They're just a fat person. Unless they, unless they say they're a fat liberationist. And so then when, when I'm following someone, I'm like, oh, I just love their clothes. And then they're like, oh, my God, I've lost weight in Ozempic. And I, I just. I personally can just unfollow them and just be like, well, you know, good for them, if that's what they want. And also that really sucks for the people that are following them, who are looking up to them as a source of inspiration, whereas I would see them as a source of inspiration for places to shop. And it sucks that I've now lost that resource of someone to tell me where cool clothes are or for me to admire their fashion or whatever. But they had never, like, we'd never entered into any contract where they said who they were. And even if they did, they can change their mind, but I can really feel that disappointment. Like they understand the disappointment from people who, you know, are seeing time and time and time and time again. Not that they've lost weight, but what Lydia says is that they're like, look how fucking disgusting I used to be. Everybody, look, look, I used to be like a size 16. Oh, it's huge. That's hyperbole. I don't think that. Hyperbole. I don't think that, you know, they're actually saying that, but they're using a before and after. And now I'm really healthy. It's a really coded language. Now I'm healthy and happy and blah, blah, blah and my past body. And I was hiding I wasn't my true self and things like that, which is kind of a slap in the face for all of the fans who were there before size. And this person is basically saying, you will. You all are unhealthy and ugly and, you know, not the true versions of yourself and all that type of stuff. So I think that's, that's, that's where a lot of people are upset about fat influencers. Have we done a. Have we. Have we made a portmanteau of that? Fat fluencers. Is that. Has that already happened? Fat fluencers, yes. So anyway, let's talk about compounding, in case you've never heard of this. So I watched this video. The video is called A. Zempik's origin story is insane. I don't. I say, do you want to watch it? I don't know. It's 30 minutes. The guy's not fat positive, but it's. He's kind of a little bit. He leans to the right of fat positive. As in not fat positive, but not egregiously anti fat. The presenter. But it talks about like the history of things. But as well, says great for weight loss. So anyway, if you want to go watch it, I probably wouldn't, but you know, you can links for everything in the show notes. So compounding pharmacies where they make made to order medicine. So like say if you needed a certain amount of medicine or you needed something else added or something taken from your medicine or you know, something that you're allergic to or even like my, my pharmacy, my just regular pharmacy, they did like a compound of some eczema cream because the doctor had prescribed a weird amount. And so yeah, regular pharmacies can do it or there can be these bigger places that you don't just walk into. You buy them off the Internet or from third party companies. A compounded version of a drug. So a compounded version of a drug. Let's say you've got drug A and you're allergic to ingredient B in it and you also need to have extra C in it. That new version of the drug doesn't have to be approved by the fda. Or even if you have a drug where they're like, okay, what's, so what's happened with, with semaglutide is that when there was a shortage, the compounding places are allowed to recreate that drug, but they don't have the original ingredients to make that drug. But they've got things that are maybe close enough. And so they make this kind of hodgepodge drug that's the same but not really and it's not FDA approved. So if the, if the FDA declares a shortage and we had a shortage semaglutide of Wegovy, then they can make the drugs. And so that's where you saw those adverts. I think it was hims and hers. Do you remember in the super bowl there was this like gross ad, really fucking gross advert where it was like just talking shit about fat people being like, we come take our drugs. And you might be like, hang on, I thought that, you know, there's only one brand of this. And it's because there was that shortage, the compounders couldn't buy semaglutide from the original source. So they had to resort to less regulated sources and they're not held to the same purity standards as pharmaceutical grade versions. That's a quote from that, that video. And the FDA even issued, issued a warning about their concerns that the compounded drugs were not the same drugs that were actually FDA approved. And again, even if they are FDA approved, doesn't mean that they're necessarily safe. It's that They've weighed that, that, you know, risk benefit analysis February 1, 2025 semaglutide February 1, 2020, 2025 semi glutide was taken off the shortage list and the compounders were given a few months grace period to stop selling. But that didn't stop the company's advertising that they have drugs. And people were seeing ads for drugs, you know, off brand label drugs. Some person said that they saw an advert with a cake and on the cake it had the words written out on the cake saying PSA for girls. You don't need to be over to start GL A GLP1. But anyway, they're not allowed to. But you know that, you know there's probably freaking GLP ones on TEEMU or something. You, you know, you know, they, you're getting them, people are getting them. If they can't get the name brand ones right. And you know, all of the talking about Wegovian friends still, they, they are, they're regulated right. There's a, they're to a different standard. They still could be dangerous and they could still not work. But these other ones are unregulated. Could be even worse for you or maybe not. Maybe they're great, I don't know. But we also have liraglutide, the brand name. So we'll get into, let's go into the, the what's what on all these names that I'm saying. So Victoza is a. Another drug. So Victoza is the brand name and the drug is liraglutide. There's a generic version. Liraglutide and semaglutide are both GLP1 receptor agonists. We also have Tirzepatide. The brand name is Morgano. I always say this word wrong and that's also a GLP one. Okay, so let's break it down. Like what the fuck are these words? Vinny, if you're confused. So the GLP1 GLP1 stands for glucagon, like peptide 1. So GLP1 is a naturally occurring hormone in the body that plays a role in regulating blood sugar levels and appetite. That's GLP1. GLP1 agonists are a class of medication that mimic the actions of this hormone. Primarily used to treat type 2 diabetes and increasingly has been used for weight management. GLP1 is a peptide hormone produced in the gut in response to food intake. GLP1 receptor agonists. These medications bind to the same receptors as GLP1, amplifying its effects. Semaglutide is the active ingredient in Ozempic or Wegovy, which is a GLP1 agonist. Okay, so let's, let's break that down and then I'm going to give you an analogy. It makes it easier for my brain to understand. So GLP1 agonists, a class of drug that work by mimicking the action of the naturally occurring hormone GLP1. Semaglutide is a specific GLP1 agonist, meaning it's one specific drug within a broader class of GLP1 agonists. Ozempic, Wegovy, Ribulus are brand names of medications that often contain semaglutide as their active ingredients. All right, so let me give you an analogy. Our body needs liquid. We have liquid in our bodies. It's naturally occurring. Perhaps the way that we access or process liquid is broken. So liquid is equivalent to, in this, in this analogy, GLP1, a naturally occurring thing in our bodies. Sports drinks are going to help with a liquid issue. Say we, we haven't got enough liquid or whatever or liquid. Our liquid processing is broken. Let's have some sports drinks. And there are many different sports drinks. Maybe some are better or worse, maybe some works in different ways. But all the group of sport drinks are all liquids. Some may hydrate you more by giving you electrolytes, some may not. So the sports drink would be semaglutide, which is also a GLP1 Agonist. Agonist. The word agonist, by the way means in biochemistry, it's a substance which initiates a psychological physiological response when combined with a receptor. In anatomy, agonist means a muscle whose contraction moves apart of the body directly. So agonist means something that's going to do something when combined with something. So the sports drink, total package. So the everything comes the everything that comes with the sports drink, the packaging, the bottle, the bottle shape, the way that you drink it and any other secret things that they make it interesting, the branding. So for example, the sports drink drink brand, Gatorade. Gatorade would be Wegovy. Or literally trying to think of another sports brand drink. I don't know. Buzz your tits off. Sports water would be a zen pick. And so they all contain water. They all maybe do the thing differently or maybe they have a different dose of water or they have a different extra vitamins in it or whatever. Oh, vitamin water, maybe that's one. But they're all doing the same thing. And that same thing is hydrating. So the hydrating the water is the GLP. Wegovy or Saxenda, they are both taking GLP1 agonists, which are both sports drinks in this analogy. But the difference is wegovy is Gatorade, aka semaglutide, and Saxenda is Red Bull, aka liraglutide. And so there's also other drugs under that GLP1 agonist umbrella. But you know that. So you'll hear things like Liraglutide, which is that Victozo or Saxenda or Semaglutide, Dulaglutide. So there's different names for that same group, different names in that same GLP1 group. So they're all basically in their own way doing something similar and they all have different names and then they also have different brand names for their, the whole drug. So if you see all these names about basically basic, very basically, it's basically the same things. But then one person will say one, one manufacturer say, my drug is better, our drug is better. And that's something else that came up recently. Is that, is that actually, is that, is that actually the same drug manufacturer, Novo Nordisk, they have a weight loss drug. I don't know if you knew this, but Saxenda is a weight loss drug from Novo Nordisk, who also do Wegovy, who also do Ozempic. But Saxenda was a weight loss, is a weight loss drug that was approved in 2014. And Nova Nordisk is saying, yes, Saxenda was great and all, but we gobies where it's at now that I find this really interesting. Saxenda approved in 2014. Why didn't we have this, why didn't we have this whole game changing? La de da da. Then Saxenda, what they found was that people lost £21 over 52 weeks, which is around £0.4. Doesn't that £0.4 sound familiar? £0.403amonth. WeGovy, £33 over 68 weeks equal £0.48amonth, right? So there is a £0.077 difference difference in the drugs per month. So that ain't a lot. We're talking pounds per year here, right? But they're saying Saxenda, whatever, not so great. We go, v, this is a game changer. The difference is Saxenda is a once daily injection. And from what I've heard people say is that Saxenda was hard to tolerate, is hard to tolerate. But Wegovy has that 89.5% dropout rail rate in the trial. So that leads me to think that is also hard to tolerate. And the difference as well Is that it's a once weekly injection. Is that the only difference is that like the huge breakthrough is that you take it once a week versus once a day. And that's the game changing thing because the amount of weight loss is almost exactly the same within a few pounds. So what is going on there with that? Why is it that now in 2021, maybe what it is is that when. Because, because so Ozempic is the one for diabetes. Maybe they started seeing that side effect of weight loss. They started with those trials and they are different drugs, right? Ozempic being the semaglutide. And so they started with all these trials being like, how much are people losing? And they spent, you know, that four year, four year, was it four year, two month trial. So they spent a lot of money on this. Did they then discover, oh, it's pretty much exactly the same as Saxenda or. And did they then be like, well, we got to put our money behind it. Let's, let's go, go, let's go bananas on the marketing, which is what they did, and really hype this up because we need to recoup that money on the, on the clinical trials that we've done and just really be like, Saxenda wasn't that great. But this one, this one, like, is that what happened? Because as well, WeGovy is like WeGovy Ozempic. People, people keep saying Ozempic, but what they mean is wegovy. Or maybe they mean Ozempic. But anyway, everyone recognizes the weight loss drug as Ozempic. Ozempic has the brand recognition when other drugs. So all of those other ones that I mentioned like 5 minutes ago, all those other GLP ones, GLP1s have pretty much the same outcomes. But WeGovy. Ozempic is the fashion one. You know, it's, they, they've paid for this, you know, brand recognition and so everyone wants that one and it's positioned as the best. The best, the best. So there's other study that came out, this other study, because, you know, we've got all these other GLP ones, right? This other study came out and it was something that Reagan Chastain wrote about in her subst titled weight loss drug Cage match quote. On May 11, 2025, the study Tirzepatide as compared with semaglutide, both of those are GLP1s for the treatment of O Word was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. This study was essentially a cage match between the two newest weight loss drugs to see which one created more weight loss. The results were over 72 weeks. Participants on high dose semaglutide lost 15.4% body weight and participants on high dose tazepatide lost 21.6% of body weight. That would be a for the tirsipatide, a 200 pound person, 2.4 pounds a month. Again, just a heads up, if you're thinking oh, 2.4 pounds, that sounds more than 0.4 pounds which is what the WeGovy one was. Remember this is a 72 week study. The weight is high. Weight loss is higher in the shorter term and then lower in the longer term, the four years plus. So however the the results were totally fishy. Surprise, surprise. For many reasons, even the results aren't impressive, but they were fishy. Paid for by Eli Lilly, which is the manufacturer of Tazepatide, co authored by Eli Lilly. Different duration to the WeGovy study. So the different results, longer term, people lose less weight, etc. And by the way, this isn't an endorsement for WeGovy because their studies are not are also filled with red flag central. And the weight loss is also dog shit. So they're like, mine is better. No, mine, I'm mine. The participants lost 2 pounds a year. And mine, they lost 2.1 pounds a year. You know, it's all just like the bullshit. So some commentary from, from folks that I've seen. You know what I really like? Dr. Rachel Milner, who is a psychologist, psychologist, psychotherapist, let's go for psychologist. Rachel has been putting out some really great things on the Instagrams. One thing that she put out was talking about the, just the side effects of GLP1 so taken when it's taken at a, you know, higher dose for weight loss and the side effects or complications from anorexia, side effects are the same. Fatigue, hair loss, low blood sugar, headaches, suicidal thoughts, heart damage, gastroparesis, fainting, dizziness, bone loss, nausea, seizures, blurry vision, death. She continues, I believe in body autonomy and I believe in informed consent. And when it comes to GLP1s being prescribed for weight loss, informed consent means explaining that the prescription for these meds is essentially a prescription for the exact same behavior, side effects and complications of anorexia. People get to make decisions about whether to pursue intentional weight loss via these medications. But healthcare providers are required to give informed consent. That's not optional or a decision that's necessary. If someone presented to an ER or doctor's office and gave a list of symptoms, side effects, behaviors and complications. It would be near impossible to know if the person had anorexia or is taking a GLP one for weight loss 100%. And you know, we've got all this stuff that we don't know really. Like we've haven't ideas about how this stuff works, but we don't really know. We don't know. Yeah, we don't know. We don't know the, the outcomes. And that's, that's really scary, right? Especially with it being used for fat people because again, it's seen as something that fat people can tolerate because the alternative is them staying fat. And that is a horrible alternative according to many people. A lot of fat people are suffering a lot versus if someone was in a smaller body and they said, hey, I'm experiencing all of these things. You know, healthcare professionals would be like, oh my God, we need to help you. But if a fat person said I'm experiencing all of these things, they'd be like, like, oh my goodness. And then they said, oh, I'm taking GLP1. They're like, oh, phew, it's helping you lose weight. So it doesn't matter. Obviously not all healthcare professionals, but you know, that's a general. Well, if it's helping you not be fat, then why don't you just, you know, chop off your leg? Who cares? Okay, so I'm gonna leave it there for this episode and then I'm gonna record part two tomorrow. We're gonna learn about the Labour government and their response in the UK to this nonsense shrinkflation of pus sized clothing, what's happening to muscle on a zempic contraception, smell lawsuits and what else they've got cooking up as well, some harm reduction stuff. So thank you for hanging out with me for this episode. We'll see you in the next next one. And if you're feeling any type of way about this, this stuff, give yourself a big dose of compassion for, you know, anything you're feeling. And if you're feeling angry, I feel you. Giant fatty hugs to you. If you appreciate the work in this episode, feel free to go to my Ko Fi. You get some free stuff when you go to Kofi too. You get the size diversity resource guide if you, if you do $5 and it's amazing. Podcasts, TEDx talks, books, people to follow. It's, it's really good. And yeah, so you get something for your money apart from the feel good feeling. All right, Giant fatty hugs to you Tatty. Bye. See you next episode.