Weight Loss Drugs are Everywhere! Experts share the facts regarding medications that treat obesity

Oprah Elon Musk two of the most recognizable names on the planet share something else in common they've used weight loss drugs this medication has helped me tremendously OIC wovi monjaro it's rare prescription drugs become household names doctors describing them as breakthrough treatment for severe obesity and for just getting rid of those stubborn pounds but who has access to them and at what cost to both your bank account and your body it was only approved in 2022 and by 2023 it's our number one drug State officials voting this year to stop covering weight loss drugs or the State Health Plan could run out of money tonight on the record we talked to top weight management doctors and people who've used the drugs about a trend taking the country by storm and thank you for joining us for on the record tonight I'm Lena tette re evolutionary extraordinary Out Of Reach some of the ways a new class of medications to treat obesity is being described our panel tonight will bring the facts and their experiences to help us understand this topic Dr Sarah row is an obesity medicine physician and director of the UNCC Physicians Network weight management program Dr Nicole swier is a family physician based in Durham and a public speaker an advocate for Women's Health Dr swier also used OIC in her own weight lost Journey Dr William yansy is an internal medicine doctor at Duke health and medical director of Duke's lifestyle and weight management center and joining us via Zoom is Wendy Gant who is sharing her experience using a weight loss drug after a lifelong struggle with weight thank you all so much for being with me tonight Dr yansy I'd like to begin with you because I want to start with the basics drugs prescribed for diabetics were found to induce major weight loss explain this discovery yeah the medicines you're talking about are called glp1 agonists and they mimic a hormone that's in our body called gp1 basically act like that hormone in the body um that hormone works primarily by secrete causing the body to secrete insulin but there are far-reaching effects in the body and ones that were I think very surprising to people who are studying the drug so it helps people to reduce their hunger um and and those effects are thought to be in the brain originally it was thought to work by slowing down digestion in the stomach and that actually is true as well so the stomach um machinations the the movement in the stomach decrease and so that slows down digestion as well so those two effects seem to reduce or do reduce um food intake and people are able to lose weight that way Dr Row in our conversations you have called gp1s these weight loss drugs revolutionary why do you say that that um we think um this class of medication is a huge medical breakr it's reshaping uh the field of medicine it's reshaping pop culture it's reshaping um the global stock market experts believe that this class of drug is going to be the most prescribed drug in the history of medicine why um you know the weight loss effect the excellent ways that it decreases the blood sugar and uh latest studies show that it decreases the risk of heart attacks it decreases the risk of strokes and even it delays the progression of kidney disease in patients with diabetes this is a wonderful drug I think it's confusing for some people because we know that diabetes has has been an issue for a very long time and yet it seems with these drugs that were prescribed for diabetics all of a sudden we are also noticing that a side effect is major weight loss I mean how did that come to be Dr yansy well I think another point to make here and reason why they're so reev revolutionary is because there's a a large prevalence of obesity in in the United States and the world and so that means that this is a medication that could help a large number of individuals um in terms of how could it come to be I think it was unexpected to be honest with you this was a medicine that was developed to lower blood sugar and did a great job of that but at the same time they noticed weight loss in individuals and started studying that that was a second indication that um the the drug company started looking at um originally it was designed for diabetes control Dr swier who qualifies for the drug is this based on body mass index how can someone access the drug so it you know it takes a kind of a personal and one-on-one meeting with your medical provider first you know so people have been hearing about this stuff on on TV on the media and social media and they kind of you know come to the conclusion that yes I want to try this medicine for whatever reason but then the next step is having that discussion with your provider about you know the reasons why about your medical history things that you've tried and not tried and the other things that you will do along with the medicine if you do happen to qualify so that you know there's one part of qualifying for from a history standpoint but then the insurance coverage qualifications and all that is a whole another issue yeah and I am going to get to the cost in a bit because that's obviously a major factor I want to bring in Wendy Gant who has been using weight loss drugs for months now first Manjaro now wovi is that right Wendy tell us how you first learned about the drugs and why you decided to use it well I began using the drugs um manaro back in August of 2022 and actually I learned about it from social media um I was scrolling one evening on Tik Tok and these women kept coming up talking about their um weight loss Muro journey and their stories and their stories sounded like mine and I did some research and in a short period of time I had access to the medications what did it immediately do for you you what how did it impact you Wendy yes how did it impact you what did the drugs do well it for some people the impact is not immediate I will honestly say that within 12 hours of taking the drug I I took it on a um on a Monday evening and I woke up the next morning and felt different I felt like it flipped a switch in my brain and that constant food noise that chatter to thinking about what am I going to eat what um snack should I have what you know food should I have next it it was like a uh switch was flipped off and I kept thinking all that day this must be what normal people feel like in relation to food and satiety and hunger and can you share how much weight you've lost approximately 50 lbs in the past year and a half since taking the medications has your relationship to food changed has what changed your relationship to food changed yeah do you still enjoy it well I I really I I eat what I need um for my body to fuel for energy but I don't um restrict you know if I want to have a hamburger I'm going to have one one but chances are I'm going to only eat a fraction of it and that's very satisfying Dr swier you also decided to use OIC as part of your health Journey what went into that decision so the the other thing that I want to bring up is that you know this class of medicine or the type of medicine that it is the injections go way back you know so 8 10 years ago we were hearing about things like fosa and Sinda and then long along you know the line came uh OIC and then we'll go and all that but these these types of medicines have been around for years so in clinic when I was in clinical practice we were you know the farm reps were coming in and telling us about all these wonderful medicines that were being prescribed for diabetes and they were seeing these wonderful benefits but oh by the way people were also losing weight so you know I I had kind of the firsthand information from from the farm reps and then I would take that to my patients and then talking to my patients about it and clearly you know whether or not you have diabetes because obesity is such an issue you know people are very interested in you know managing their weight you know myself after having two kids and getting older I was like well you know let's see let's see what CU you know like many women I you know been trying the diet trying the exercise life gets in the way work gets in the way we reach for the wrong things to eat especially when you're in the office setting and so adding something like that that would help to literally you know control my portion intake and control what literally feels like the size of your stomach you know it helps you to control how much you're putting in and then of course you have to do the other things to help keep it off so this is you know years ago that that this trend was starting and it's just becoming a major deal now yeah everyone now knows about it has it been effective for you can you say that it was so you know when I first tried you know I like I said I tried some of the other ones just to kind of test and see just so I could give my patients a real life uh you know um experience about how it helped me um when OIC first came out I did try it for a little while um and when I was really consistent with it there was you know I guess 22 when it was kind of hitting the market um when I was really consistent with you know my diet and exercise and you know don't want to say diet but you know healthy choices uh and things that we're eating and doing those things for exercise and being consistent with that it it worked really well you know probably lost about 40 or so pounds over time of course and with changes of the insurance um coverage you know there were some gaps where either I couldn't get it or I had to wait a little bit or I had to switch to a different one um and that certainly you'll see a little bit of rebound weight gain um with that I did want to ask you that quickly Dr row if you stop using it do you gain all the weight back do you gain it quickly how does that work yes in clinical studies um if you stop the glp1 drugs within one year you gain about 80% of the weight back but in the real world in our clinical practice um many of our patients are taught what to eat you know when they're on these medications we really utilize that time to help them reestablish their relationship with food so we teach them uh What uh foods to take what foods to eat and uh what I'm finding as a weight management physician is that they're much more able to adhere to some of uh these uh uh better food choices so um my patients have not gained uh a lot of the weight back so there is a physiologic changes so they will gain some but many of my patients are not gaining all the weight back because it becomes a lifestyle change in addition to taking these weight loss absolutely because we say this is not a diet this is a lifestyle change right so much more to get to with this coming up we're going to talk about access to these drugs costs and why the state says it can't cover it anymore for state employees welcome back to our discussion about breakthrough weight loss drugs we've talked about the science behind it let's talk about the cost I have been looking through a number of these weight loss drugs to see how much they are on the market and how much insurance companies generally cover it will go about $1,350 per month less than $25 at least that's what Novo Nordisk says for 80% of their patients if they're covered with insurance OIC it's about ,000 a month as low as $25 for insurance Zep bound about $11,000 a month coverage there varies Manjaro $1,000 a month again covers their varies as well so the cost I mean thinking about that this is for a month of injectables Dr yansy why are these drugs so expensive that's a good question um I mean the medications um take a lot of money to develop and I'm sure that's a big part of the equation um the trials that need to be done to um to test these medications first of all you start in animals then you move through animals to humans in small studies and then you move to larger studies for um looking at efficacy and safety and then you have to do large scale thousands of patient trials to to determine whether they're truly safe and effective and to gather the data for the FDA to approve the medication so so that's costly um I'm sure that's a big part of the development and for every medication that does make it to the um approval by the FDA there are many that don't make it there and so the cost of those development those medications being developed is also part of that but is this a supply and demand issue at this point well one has to think that that could have something to do with it as well there's a huge demand for this medication um there's a difficulty that the me that all of the pharmaceutical companies are having ramping up um uh production of these medications it's hard to keep up with the demand um so that I think all these are part of the equation let's talk about the demand just in North Carolina I want to go through what state officials say have happened uh in just one year in terms of interest for state employees under the State Health Plan last fall we learned from State officials the popularity of the drugs exploded in a year looking at the numbers weight loss drugs costing the state 102 million the State Health Plan accounting for about 10% of all the state paid for prescriptions that is incredible the dime on every dollar is going to these weight loss drugs at the start of last year 5,000 state employees were using these drugs by the end of last year it moved up to $225,000 the state ultimately saying that they could not afford this asking Novo Nordisk to uh give them an even bigger discount because right now they are under a rebate and Novo Nordisk uh said that they could not do that ultimately this State said if they continued with this current rate that they would run out of money by 2026 so the state is no longer covering this for state employees I wonder what impact that is having on even some of your patients Dr row yeah so in our Clinic we're getting a lot of panic messages from our patients some of my patients have lost over 100 pounds on these medications and with the State Health Plan's decision uh they're going to be literally cut off from these medications on April 1st 20 th uh this year so um yeah it is we're a little um uh sad that this is happening uh we think it's a little shortsighted because on Whose part the states or Novo Nordisk uh both um because uh these medications have decreased or even prevent some of the most more expensive chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension we were hoping and we were advocating for the state health plan to do a limited coverage so uh patients who need these medications the most could have this coverage um but they chose not to so we're really really sad well State Health officials for their part said that they tried to negotiate that with Novo Nordisk and for the pharmacy provider saying you know essentially what if we're just able to cut back a bit and Novo Nordisk said we don't want any limit on the number of people who would be able to use our drugs I mean what do you make of that it's me yes it's probably going to have to be a decision largely from the pharmaceutical end to decrease the price of the medicine so that these folks can have access to it it can be a more reasonable cost because like the doctor mentioned if we're not preventing obesity and not preventing obesity related conditions then the complications of those things ultimately are going to end up being more expensive hospitalizations procedures surgeries you know unfort fatalities you know related to all these dialysis with kidneys if we're not treating the root cause of all these things it's going to end up costing everyone more money and you know more is at stake all right we have many more questions for our guests stay with us welcome back to our discussion about weight loss drugs tonight we want to talk about access and you said something that was really interesting Dr row about how shortsighted you feel that that decision was by both the state and by uh the pharmaceutical companies that produces some of the drugs you sent me a really powerful map that shows a correlation between where there are high rates of obesity and high rates of poverty and something tells me in those places with high rates of poverty they don't have easy access to these types of weight loss drugs why is that something that concerns you yes um this is the uh map that our team put together to show our institutions leaders that we need to pay attention to where the obesity rate is the highest so if you take a look at the top map it shows the obesity rate in North Carolina uh if you see the Eastern area there's the highest concentration where the obesity rate is the highest and if you take a look at the bottom map um it shows the most vulnerable population um uh the uh socioeconomic status is considered and their um uh language is considered their um minority status is considered you could also see that correlation in that Eastern um area of the state so so we showed this map and we said you know we really need to make sure whatever program we develop we need to make sure it's reaching the communities that need this service the most how can vulnerable populations get access to these weight loss drugs when they're so expensive Dr yansy it's really difficult for them the it's hard for people with good insurance to to obtain these medications right now because of the supply shortages and even then it's variable whether the insurance covers it but the the underinsured and the um the the folks with less insurance um it's not an option um and uh it makes it really difficult when those are the folks that have the highest rates of obesity and do you think that will change do you think that Medicaid for instance at some point May cover some of these drugs I don't see it in the near future it it would be great if that was the case yeah because it adds to all of these other potential chronic illness illnesses that people are dealing with Dr swier right absolutely so what what has been happening a little bit of and I guess they're both pros and cons to that is the compounding pharmacy industry has now kind of tapped into making their own version of these drugs um which you know is more accessible for some especially if you don't necessarily have insurance or your insurance won't cover the brand name version but there are also the negatives because some of these medicines have not been tested as as much as the FDA approved ones and so you know there are the pros and cons to it so I it's you know it's going to create more competition and more compounding pharmacies are probably going to enter the market and have their own relatable product but then you know there are those negatives too you know we don't we're not as sure how safe long-term these medicines might be because they just haven't been studied as much so there there's a lot at stake absolutely Dr Ro you wanted to add something um yes um uh there is a coalition of obesity physicians in North Carolina who advocated the Department of Health and Human Services to co or have at least a limited coverage for our Medicaid patients who need this uh drug the most we have not heard back from them and Dr yansy and we work together um to submit the letter of advoc advocacy But ultimately it would save the medical industry billions of dollars if there are fewer rates of diabetes and heart conditions and and high cholesterol Dr swier I do want to talk about for just a bit the cultural impact of these weight loss drugs we were showing some of the Tik Tok videos it's all over social media we heard Wendy say that that's how she even learned about it in the first place and I it's interesting because they kind of arrived in a period where body positivity was on the rise as well we were seeing models for instance of varying sizes on the runway and more clothing accessible to women uh and people of different sizes so how does this medical breakthrough affect potentially that if people are now more interested in becoming thinner with these types of drugs yeah so what what we really have to do and remember and focus on is healthy weight you know so being of a healthy weight or being healthy does not necessarily mean being skinny um there are you know plenty of folks that are underweight or skinny and uh you know have medical issues so it really is about being healthy um you can be of a particular BMI and hopefully not have any medical issues or not have to you know depend on medications for different medical problems or vice versa so we really have to remember what healthy means and and don't get caught up in the social media trends of just losing weight just for the sake of losing weight you know hopefully you are doing it for a good reason you're doing it with a certified medical provider a physician that is helping you to manage those things and to figure out what your goals are are they realistic are they healthy goals and how long you'll depend on these things to help you Dr swier Dr Ro Dr yansy thank you so much for your time so much more to get to that we weren't able to but we absolutely will in shows to come I also want to mention we have a statement from noo Nordisk you can find that on w.com what they say uh their responses to State Health officials if you have something to say about tonight's discussion you can email us your comments on the record at w.com have a great night

Channel: WRAL

Views: 12,797

Keywords: weight loss drugs, Adipex, Suprenza, Ozempic, Wegovy, Phentermine

Id: uq0oBTbhib0

Length: 23min 24sec (1404 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 03 2024