For those who prefer losing weight from the comfort of their living room couch while watching TV and eating a bag of potato chips with a large diet soda, the FDA has a new drug for you!
Vivus Inc. manufactures the FDA approved anti-obesity drug Qsymia. Doctors prescribe it for overweight and obese people who have at least one other health problem related to weight. Examples include hypertension, high cholesterol, or Type 2 diabetes.
The market for this highly anticipated new drug is huge, with more than 1/3 of US adults now obese.
Obesity projections are no doubt great news for Vivus Inc’s shareholders. Overweight and obese people will likely total 80% of the adult population by 2020 with more than 1 in 5 children obese in just a few short years.
Qsymia Nothing More than Repackaged Fen-Phen
The new anti-obesity drug Qsymia was created using two older drugs: topiramate and phentermine. If phentermine sounds vaguely familiar, let me jog your memory.
Fen-phen, the popular weight loss drug tied to heart valve damage and yanked from the market in 1997 was, you guessed it, one-half phentermine!
In a nutshell, this new anti-obesity drug Qsymia is fen-phen repackaged as … top-phen.
Thousands of lawsuits resulted from the damage caused by fen-phen with billions in settlements paid out to victims and their families.
That’s the standard business model in the pharmaceutical industry. Simply repackage a drug removed from the market by changing it up a bit, get it approved, and make a fortune fast. When it is yanked off the market for harming people (again), just settle the lawsuits. Just a normal cost of doing business, right?
In the end, Vivus will likely make much much more than will ever be paid out in future lawsuits from Qsymia, so it is a sound business decision for shareholders to get it out there and get the revenue flowing quickly.
This strategy is, of course, unethical, but it is perfectly legal and a proven way to generate huge profits for the drug industry in a short period of time.
Qsymia Side Effects
Acknowledged side effects of Qsymia include tingling in the hands and feet, constipation, dry mouth, dizziness, and insomnia.
Wait a minute – insomnia? Isn’t lack of sleep a recognized and very big cause for overweight problems in the first place?
What Obesity Medicine Specialists in their right minds would prescribe this for a patient?
It is important to note that the FDA initially rejected Qsymia, then known as Qnexa, in 2010 because of side effects including elevated heart rate, psychiatric problems, and birth defects. No worries, Vivus submitted additional “safety data”, with the drug application quickly approved.
Qsymia Doesn’t Help You Lose That Much Weight
Here’s the kicker. A patient prescribed Qsymia will take on all this unknown health risk from taking a drug that was previously removed from the market over 10 years ago. Worse, he/she probably won’t lose that much weight either. Hint: If you would like to know how long it takes to lose weight, this article tells you exactly with no gimmicks!
Documentation submitted to the FDA indicated that nearly 70% of patients taking Qsymia for an entire year lost only 5% of their body weight. This compares with 20% of patients taking a placebo losing the same amount!
This means that a 250 lb person would only lose 12.5 lbs after taking Qsymia for a full year.
This insignificant weight loss certainly wouldn’t reduce the long term health risk of anything weight related!
Eating Grassfed Meat Achieves Nearly the Same Results
An overweight or obese person would be much better off simply switching to grass-fed meat (here’s where to get it). A typical 6-ounce grass-fed steak has approximately 100 fewer calories than a conventional 6 oz steak from grain-fed cattle.
What’s more, since it is considerably more nutrient-dense, it fills you up better and you stay full longer. Since the average American consumes 66.5 lbs of beef per year, this simple change can have a profound effect! Such an easy tweak would translate to a 6-pound loss per year with all else remaining the same!
Eat grass-fed beef or take a new anti-obesity drug with many side effects that will no doubt be prescribed for children as well?
That’s an easy choice.
References
(1) Obesity Pill Qsymia Gains FDA Approval
(2) Young Americans Need to Cut Caloric Intake
(3) Eat Wild
Better living through chemicals! .<
Sorry, that’s Topiramate, dang spell check.
Also not mentioned…topirate, the new addition to this combo is contraindicated in pregnancy and conception. It causes major birth defects, so that adds another layer of complications for women prescribed this med.
No thank you!
/sigh
Oh no!
Wow! A drug that is pulled from the market and combined with topiramate which is generic Topimax. Topimax is used to treat seizures in people who have epilepsy. The common term for Topimax among people who have tried it or use it is “DOPE-A-MAX”. My daughter, who is in college, had to discontinue use of topiramate because the side affects of the drug left her unable to do simple math.
Epilepsy can be healed with a high fat, ketogenic diet and healing the gut (see the Epilepsy section in the 2010 edition of the GAPS book). But that doesn’t make companies billions of profits, so it’s kept out of the limelight.
I agree, Topamax impairs neurological function. Simple reading and math become difficult. Memory is impaired. Nerve problems arise out of nowhere. And immediate anorexia and lack of appetite is common. I guess all the more reason to push it as a diet pill!
My boss has been taking topamax since this spring and has lost a ton of weight (maybe 60lbs). She has really bad knees (due to her weight) and was told no surgery until she looses a ton of weight. I had no idea the side effects. Scary. Luckily no heavy machinery is involved at work.
I buy grassfed beef and I love the ground but I have tried the steaks acouple of times and they are so tough we had a hard time chewing them, very discouraging to fork out such high prices for this healthy food and then can’t eat it. I have read instructions on how to cook from hand outs from the farm that sells it and went on the internet – with no luck. Sarah, I think a good video on cooking grassfed steaks would be so helpful. What do you think about it? I love all you videos and have learned so much from them. Sometimes I watch them several times- I am a visual learner,,
You are so right about people eating the healthier foods for nutient dense calories instead of the drugs that kill. It is all about the money, money money! They don”t care that people die!. That is too bad!
You need to buy Stanley Fishman’s cookbook Tender Grassfed Meat and learn how to cook it so that it melts in your mouth. Disclaimer – Stanley is a good friend of mine 🙂
Will do!
I have had the same problem, Teresa. To the point that my husband wants me to go to the store to buy the “regular steaks” so we don’t have to cut around all the tough parts! I am curious to find out if there is a way to avoid that.
Health never comes from drugs, but from food and exercise. Every drug is a poison to some degree, interfering with the natural processes of our body. I have remained completely drug free for over ten years, meaning no prescription or non prescription drugs, not ever, and I am so much healthier.
Switching to grassfed meat is a great idea. In addition to having less calories, grassfed meat contains a substance, CLA, that actually causes the body to burn fat rather than store it.
Not that this is a good thing, but I believe phentermine was never taken off the market. It was the “fen” part, fenfluromine that was causing the damage. So, this is not really fen phen, but phentermine combined with a different drug, Topomax, which is an anti-seizure medication.
And Topamax causes immediate anorexia and sudden, dangerous weight loss, in addition to a multitude of neurological problems and other troubling side effects. I took it for migraines for a short time and it felt like I was quite literally dying. Do not take these dangerous drugs.
You’re absolutely right, Sarah, that the profit potential far eclipses any liability down the road, so it’s just considered good business for the pharmaceutical companies. They make $$$billions before coming out with the next slightly reformulated harmful drug.
My good friend took Topamax and nearly lost her eyesight to acute glaucoma!