What the Ozempic Craze Means for Our Personal Health
Notes from America with Kai Wright
WNYC Studios
4.4 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 8 January 2024
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Interest in Ozempic as a way to lose weight has only been outmatched by demand for the drug, which has been in short supply as celebrities and social media influencers continue to popularize its use. The Type 2 diabetes treatment, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2017, has become a catch-all term for a class of medications now used to treat obesity, including Wegovy, Zepbound and others. The efficacy of these drugs have some in the medical community pondering if we are on a path to effectively eliminating obesity by treating it as a chronic disease, rather than solely treating the diseases most often related to it.
Kai invites Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity medicine physician scientist and associate professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, to explain how these latest weight loss treatments work, and who can (and can’t) access them. Plus, Ronald Young Jr., host of the podcast Weight For It, joins the show to share his experience and express some concerns about how Ozempic and similar drugs have dominated the conversation about our bodies and our health. And we hear from listeners around the country who weigh in with their questions and stories.
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Notes from America airs live on Sundays at 6 p.m. ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I talked to my doctor a long time ago and said look can we agree that |
| 0:06.2 | BMI is bullshit and she said yes the number one gold star like badge of honor |
| 0:12.3 | is going into a clothing store that has clothes you could |
| 0:15.7 | never fit before and putting on a 2X and having it fit. You know when you gain the |
| 0:20.7 | weight you get older, things get harder. |
| 0:23.8 | I approached 40 with a knee that was going to need a knee replacement within 5 to 10 years, |
| 0:29.7 | a blood glucose that was just above what's considered normal range, a blood pressure that was a little |
| 0:37.0 | high. |
| 0:38.0 | Imagine a mountain. |
| 0:40.0 | If losing weight is climbing the mountain and gaining weight is coming back down, |
| 0:45.0 | I've gone up the mountain, I've come down the mountain. |
| 0:48.0 | I've never reached the summit. So, It's Notes from America. I'm Kai Wright. Welcome to the show and welcome to |
| 1:14.5 | 2024. The voices you just heard are from episodes of the podcast Wait for |
| 1:21.8 | it hosted by Ronald Young Jr. |
| 1:24.0 | That's Weight as in body Weight. |
| 1:26.0 | It's a show that quote |
| 1:28.0 | unpacks the nuanced thoughts of fat folks |
| 1:31.0 | and folks who think about their weight all the time. So, you know, that means it's a show for most of us, particularly at this time of year. |
| 1:39.7 | We'll hear from Ronald later this hour, but we're going to begin our conversation this week with a physician because any conversation about body weight these days, |
| 1:48.7 | unavoidable means talking about Ozimpy. The drug became a social media buzzword last year as high profile |
| 1:55.6 | celebrities began turning to the medication for its fast results in their efforts to |
| 2:00.3 | lose weight. But it was initially approved by the FDA to treat type 2 diabetes, way back in 2017. |
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