Assuming the United States is still extant six months from now, nobody will be corpulent except the Fat Lady at the circus and Mr. S. Claus of the North Pole, since not a kid in creation wants a stringbean Santa.
O-O-Ozempic is swashbuckling across the nation dispatching fat by the bucketload and turning tubbies into telephone poles…and what, you ask, could be wrong with that? Are you kidding? It’s a potential economic nightmare. Fat spas will close, gyms will diminish, Weight Watchers will go broke. There won’t be any contestants left for The Biggest Loser. Diabetes clinics? Gone. Sumo wrestling? Forget it? Diet professionals? Thanks for the memories.
When we were kids, local wise guy Jimmy Lavery used to call my sister Alice “Crisco—fat in the can.” Today, she could get on the stuff, buy a bikini and vamp the neighborhood. What about the offensive linemen in football, mostly 300-pound behemoths who carry around enchiladas in their pockets? These monsters are needed to slow down savage 6-5 linebackers so the quarterback doesn’t get pounded to jelly. Try finding a 300-pound guy who isn’t fat, it’s like digging for gold in Daytona.
In 2005, a scientist at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shook up the health world by publishing material which argued that being a tiny bit fat might even be good for you. Katherine Flegal found that people with body mass indexes in the overweight category were actually at a lower risk of death than those with a “normal” BMI. The phenomenon that fat can offer certain protective health benefits is commonly called the obesity paradox, a term that illustrates just how much it flies in the face of everything we think we know about fatness and health. As we age, being “moderately overweight” also seems to offer protection against developing multiple comorbid diseases, making it a “marker of a healthy aging process,” according to a 2019 study in Italy. Bigger people tend to be stronger than thin people, making them better at strength exercises such as weightlifting. That’s because in addition to having more fat tissue, they have more muscle, too. We’re not arguing for obesity, The Great American disease, just adding food for thought.
Why Ozempic Works
The Big O is taken weekly as a subcutaneous injection into the stomach, thigh or upper arm. The usual dose for weight loss is 0.25mg per week for the first four weeks, gradually increasing to a maximum of 2.4mg per week. Ozempic is most effective when combined with lifestyle changes in diet and exercise. Without such changes, weight will likely return once you stop taking the medication.
Ozempic works by mimicking a hormone that signals fullness and slows digestion. It helps manage weight loss and type 2 diabetes. Its natural ingredient is semaglutide, which apes the actions of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), a hormone which is released after eating. When semaglutide levels rise, it signals to the brain that you’re full, which can help curb your appetite. Ozempic also slows the movement of food through your stomach, which helps you feel full for a longer period, similar to the effect of bariatric surgery. In its day job, Ozempic helps the pancreas produce insulin, a hormone that converts blood sugar into energy. This can help manage type 2 diabetes, an imp which can bring on health issues like eye, kidney and nerve disease if blood sugar levels are not managed. As with any weight loss medication, mild adverse effects like gastrointestinal discomfort, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea can occur but are usually tolerable.
In clinical trials, subjects taking Ozempic typically lose up to 7% of their body weight in one year. All GLP-1 weight-loss medications are only available by prescription. Because it isn’t FDA-approved as a weight-loss treatment, you can only get Ozempic off-label for weight-loss, so your insurance will not pay for it. A major point to consider is the cost of Ozempic, which is $1,199 monthly. There are lower-priced alternatives such as Levity’s generic semaglutide treatment called compounded semaglutide for a comparatively meager $225 a month.
Sales are raging, ectomorphs are falling from the sky and there is joy in Mudville. But while Ozempic is a train that can take you to the station, it can’t do much for you after you after that. The rest is up to you. We learned from Charley on the MTA that nobody wants to be riding the train forever.
Weight Loss Wonders
From tapeworms to arsenic, there’s been no shortage of weight-loss shenanigans throughout history. For centuries, con artists have been peddling shady pills, potions and “medical” devices sure to streamline your profile in notime. In 1906, the U.S. government came up with the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to help put the brakes on fraudulent products. Most of the time, it worked.
Remember Trim cigarettes? The fun-loving profiteers at Trim guaranteed that smoking three packs of their product a day would help believers lose 20 pounds in eight weeks without any dietary changes. Trim said their smokes were “clinically tested and medically approved” by somebody, but they didn’t say who. The FDA lassoed Trim and hogtied the company in 1958.
In the early 1980s, an Arkansas optometrist named Dr. John D. Miller invented a little jewel called Vision-Dieter Glasses. According to Miller, people wearing his two-toned glasses just two hours a day could control their appetites and lose weight. Doctor John placed ads in a number of local newspapers, claiming his tinted specs created “a very low-level confusion in the subconscious that is translated into a rejection in the conscious.” The rejection allowed the individual to refuse things like food, cigarettes and coffee. Miller said he developed his glasses after observing how food companies use colors to attract shoppers to their products. He reasoned that if consumers could be controlled by color, they could also be decontrolled by color. His glasses, which sold for $19.95, were to be worn in the morning and afternoon but strangely enough, not during meals.
Promotional material for Vision-Dieter Glasses showed a picture of Miller holding up “independent laboratory tests which confirm the results of this amazing new discovery.” The tests, conducted by something called McKenzie Psychological Services, involved only 42 subjects, divided into two groups, one of which wore the fabulous tinted glasses, another which didn’t, two hours a day for 20 days. The FDA smelled a large rat and sent an investigator to visit Dr. Miller. The doctor brought his lawyer along and would not answer any questions. Okay, see you soon, said the FDA man.
Subsequently, the government boys seized 652 pair of specs from Miller’s Vision Center. The doc’s attorney asked for them back, promising to be good and not peddle them as diet aids. The FDA said nuh-uh, ordering all but 75 pair be melted town into mini-garden gnomes. The leftovers were kept “for education of the public concerning quackery.” Nice try, though, Dr. J.
Those Madcap Victorians
The Victorian Era---roughly the 1830s to 1900---is notorious for its wacky beauty standards and the even more bizarre secrets to meeting them. The ideal of the time was modeled after those afflicted by consumption (tuberculosis)---pale skin, dilated eyes, rosy cheeks, crimson lips and a meager and fragile figure. From swallowing ammonia to bathing in arsenic---which was known to be poisonous—to using figure-molding corsets in quest of a perfect 16-inch waist, there was no limit to what fashionable Victorians would do. Had Olive Oyl lived back in the day, she’d be the fattest girl in town.
Fortunately for later generations, most of the quackery of the Victorian Era diminished in the early 1900s. But not everything. The one gruesome dietary practice which survived was the horrendous Tapeworm Diet. The idea is simple enough. You take a pill containing a tapeworm egg, which once hatched grows inside of you, ingesting part of whatever you eat. In theory, this enables the dieter to simultaneously lose weight without worrying about calorie intake. This fits nicely into Victorian ideals as illustrated in The Ugly-Girl Papers by S.D Powers, one of the foremost beauty guides of the era, which advises “It is a woman’s business to be beautiful. If stout, a girl should eat as little as will satisfy her appetite; never allowing herself, however, to rise from the table hungry.”
The Tapeworm Diet was the perfect solution. A woman would never rise from the table hungry, yet she would continue to lose weight. Health concerns were dismissed with the claim that “beauty is pain and sacrifices have to be made.” Once the desired weight was attained, of course, there was still the little matter of Willy the Worm poking around in one’s nether regions. To confound Willy, there were pills and diabolical devices. One of them, created by the inimitable Dr. Meyers of Sheffield, attempted to lure the tapeworm out by inserting a cylinder with food via the digestive tract. Alas, there was the small problem of several customers choking to death before the tapeworm was removed. Other cures prescribed holding a glass of milk at the end of either orifice and waiting for the worm to come out for a taste.
The scariest aspect of all this is that the Tapeworm Diet is still around. Like rap music and air pollution, it refuses to die. Its presence is evidenced by numerous online forums dedicated to the question of the diet’s efficiency and questionable reports of modern clinics that will provide the treatment for about two grand. There are always maniacs ready to try something different. Khloe Kardashian once suggested she wanted to get a tapeworm on Keeping Up With The Kardashians, initiating a flurry of interest. The wily FDA, of course, has officially banned tapeworm pills and you have to dig a little to find them, as with most worms. If you decide to try the exotic TW diet, however, please give us a heads-up so we can monitor your yucky progress.
All things considered, we’d rather try Ozempic. It’s worm-free and it feels so good.
That’s all, folks….
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
