There’s Nothing Wrong With Taking Weight Loss Drugs Long Term
Demonizing weight loss medications like semaglutide (WeGovy/OZempic) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro/Zepbound) is just another example of weight stigma
The last few years have seen a genuinely remarkable breakthrough in the world of medicine. Excess weight is an objectively big problem for society, and we’ve gone from having essentially no effective medications to help with the issue to already having two very good ones — semaglutide and tirzepatide — with a third one — retatrutide — on the way. Even more impressively, a recent large randomized trial has shown that semaglutide, with the brand name Ozempic or WeGovy, caused people with cardiovascular disease to have a lower risk of heart attacks and death when taking it. All of this is genuinely huge, and a great win for society.
But a lot of headlines have come out recently casting doubt on the long-term efficacy of these medications. According to a range of media stories, people who stop Mounjaro, the brand name for the drug tirzepatide, regain quite a lot of the weight that they lost while taking the medication. Quite a few people have taken this as a sign that the drugs are ineffective, because you have to keep taking them to maintain the weight loss.
