As a people, Americans tend to be a fairly heavy group. Check out just about any New Year’s Eve list of resolutions and close to the top — or even at the top — of the list is weight-loss.
A huge percentage of us would love to shed lots of pounds to just a few pounds.
That quest is fraught with problems. The American public also is in love with instant solutions to difficult problems. It’s tough to quickly lose weight because losing weight often means changing life-long habits. Fad diets don’t tend to work very fast and exercising weight off is also time consuming.
And who wants to exercise anyway? It’s time-consuming and just plain hard work. So many of us quickly give up and bag the whole idea.
A Kaiser Family Foundation poll says close to half of us — 45% — are very, or somewhat, interested in taking a safe and effective drug to lose weight. It’s one of those the instant solutions to weight-loss.
- At 51% the poll found women are more interested than men
- Most interested — at 67% — those diagnosed as obese by a healthcare provider
There are three drugs originally developed to combat type 2 diabetes. They are Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro. Their assistance with weight loss while taking them for diabetes has led to the popularity as a weight loss drug.
That said, only Wegovy has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a weight-loss drug.
All three drugs have to be taken via self-administered injections. That’s where the instant solution loses its luster.
- Interest in taking them falls to 23% when people learn they have to inject them
- It drops to 16% if the medications are not covered by insurance
- Just 14% are still interested — even after learning they’ll gain the weight back if they stop injections
Source link: The Hill — https://bit.ly/44ZQvpY
