The FDA-Approved Pill That Could Democratize Weight Loss

Let's dive right into the first story. WeGovy is going to be available in a pill version. The FDA has just approved a pill version. Patients will no longer have to inject themselves with a needle. Let's face it, a lot of people do not like needles. But they are looking for an easy way, a relatively easy way to lose weight. Now, in clinical trials, people lost on average 14% of their body weight. That is pretty significant, pretty dramatic. Not much different than the percentage of weight loss from people taking the injection. So why is this so big? Why is this so huge? Well, Govy and these other GLP1 drugs have radically transformed society. I'm sure you've seen it. I've seen it. Friends that you meet and you haven't seen them in six months, and they look like a completely different person. They've lost half themselves. So, folks, it's not a news flash to say United States and a lot of the world is facing an obesity epidemic. Food. As much as people like to complain about affordability crisis, food has never been cheaper for most people in the world in terms of a percentage of income spent on food. Fast food especially is cheap. And it's extraordinarily fattening and it's bad for your health. So currently, even with all of the GLP1s out there, some 70% of Americans currently are either obese or overweight or have diabetes or have combination of three of those things. So there's clearly a need for some solution. Now, the easiest and yet the hardest solution, let me not be glib here, because it's not easy. The best solution, according to every medical expert, is that people eat zero junk food. They eat whole food, relatively unprocessed food, and eliminate sugars and artificial sugars from their diet and exercise a lot. Then it's almost impossible not to weigh a healthy body weight. But let's be honest, nobody wants to do that, or very few people want to do that. We all want that easy shortcut. And for years, there was always some magic pill promoted back in the day. Late night tv, infomercial scams, quick scams on Instagram, selling you some magic potion. And then a few years ago, the real deal did come out. Now there are extraordinary negative side effects from these. I'm not, and I'm not your doctor. I'm not telling you to go on a GLP1, and I'm not telling you to take this new pill. I'm interested in looking at it from the standpoint of how this could radically transform society and what's going to happen here. Let's look at more of the facts. So again, the Wegovy pill has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It does contain semi gluten or glutide. That's the same drug as in the Wegovy injections. The maintenance dose is 25 milligrams of semiglutide. There was another oral tablet that did come out, but it only had 14 milligrams, so it wasn't as successful. But they did a true double blind test. The placebo group lost almost no weight and those taking this drug lost 13.6% of their body weight, which is pretty substantial. And interestingly, the price is only $149 a month now before it's been thousands. So this is essentially going to democratize weight loss at a massive level. Couple of predictions here. It's all well and good to say everyone is beautiful and yes, all human beings have of inherent value and are of equal moral worth. But we do live in a looksus society and I think a certain percentage of people are going to do this just because they want to look better for pure vanity. But there's also the very unpleasant fact, and I get accused of fat shaming sometimes. I don't. What I think is a shame is dying at age 50 from diabetes and heart stroke and hypertension when you could have lived to 90. That's what I think is legitimate shame. And that is largely a result for many Americans of simply eating too much garbage and weighing a lot more than your body can support. So to the extent that these drugs can solve that problem might not be an ideal fix, but it's better than the status quo. The status quo is for many Americans, certainly in certain demographic groups, life expectancy is no longer expanding. I mean, the history of humanity, certainly since the age of Enlightenment has been long life expanding, going higher because of increased sanitation, increased nutrition, abundance of food, and lack of people starving to death. Well, in recent years, it's gone the other way. We are literally killing ourselves by putting too much garbage in our mouth. And apparently these GLP1s do a great job of just making people feel full, making people not think about food all the time. Now, according to Dr. David Kessler, the former FDA commissioner, trials always look better than they are in practice. So he's suggesting if the average person is losing 13% from the trials, maybe it's more like 7% in real life. But if you can take 7% off of your weight, I mean, if you weigh 200 pounds and you can get down to 186. I mean, that could certainly make the difference between being obese versus in the normal healthy range or the, or the difference between being overweight and being healthy. So I'm not sure that is a reason not to do it. According to Dr. Scott Hagan at the University of Washington, there's no way I'm going to take a pill and not drink coffee for 30 minutes. So here's what he's getting at. This new pill, you need to take it as soon as you get up and you need to keep your stomach empty for 30 minutes. So Dr. Hagan is pointing out the potential problem with this a shot. Apparently you can just do that anytime. It goes right in your bloodstream. Whether you're full, hungry, doesn't matter. This new oral form, you have to take it on an empty stomach first thing in the morning. And like a lot of people I know, I typically have a cup of coffee within about 10 minutes of getting up. You can't do that if you're going to do this drug. Okay. I do predict this is going to be a big, big thing because the GLP1s are already huge and I have to assume an extraordinarily high percentage of the population is scared away from needles. I don't like needles. Fortunately, I don't think I need one of these drugs either by oral form or a shot. But if I did, I would definitely opt for a pill. So I think we're going to see a dramatic increase. When you combine the ease of use of a pill versus a needle and the dropping of price. You might see 100 million Americans on this drug soon. And supposedly it helps with a lot of other problem people all of a sudden drink less. Other addictions can seem to, if not completely be eliminated, at least minimized. So this can have far reaching health impact on American society. Again, look at the side effects. If you are overweight and you're thinking of taking one of these drugs, whether it's in a prescription form or needle form, don't take my advice, but do your research. And one of the things I would urge you to do is look at the side effects of these drugs. There are a lot of side effects. You've got to balance that with. What about the side effects of being obese? Because the side effects of being obese are the following. Increase the chance of dying early from a heart attack. Increased chances of dying from hypertension, from stroke, from diabetes, of having limbs amputated from diabetes. So it's not as clear cut as, oh, there's a small risk here. I better not do that. There's risk in the typical American lifestyle, which is eating lots of garbage, highly processed food and exercising too little. So I'm going to be monitoring this because I do think this has a potential of dramatically altering our society. Will it be for the better? It might be, but there may be all sorts of side effects that people get after being on it for five years that we just don't know yet. Stay tuned.