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
Doctors need to push more running around the block and putting the Big Mac and supersized fries and “diet” soda with zero calories down. Uggh!
It seems there are more stumbling blocks in the road ahead to find a significantly effective weight-loss drug with a low side effect profile.
For the first time in thirteen years, the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has approved a weight-loss pill. Belviq, which also goes by the generic name of lorcaserin, was given a FDA nod despite concerns about safety issues. The “diet pill” is to be taken in conjunction with a reduced calorie diet and a program of exercise.
Lorcaserin has been approved for use by obese adults with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more or overweight adults with a BMI of 27 or more if they have a co-morbidity of high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, or high cholesterol.
The drug was tested in placebo-controlled clinical trials including subjects with and without type 2 diabetes. The treatment extended from 52 to 104 weeks. Patients treated with lorcaserin lost an average of 3 to 3.7 percent of their body weight in a period of up to one-year.
Translated, this means a woman who is 5′ 6″ tall and weighs 190 with a BMI of 30 can expect to lose six pounds.
It is recommended the drug be discontinued for patients who fail to lose five percent of their body weight after twelve weeks of treatment.
A panel of expert advisors recommended that the FDA approve sales of lorcaserin despite concerns about heart risks, tumor growth, and initial rejection for market.
The panel approved public sale of lorcaserin by a vote of 18-4 with one abstention citing the belief that the benefits outweighed the risks.
Learn more about the side effects of lorcaserin here: http://www.healthcentral.com/obesity/c/276918/154206/lorcaserin-loss
Ahem, did everyone pick up on the fact that the clinical trials lasted a year or more and the subjects lost 3-3.7% of body weight, but the FDA approves the drug with the recommendation that it be discontinued for patients who fail to lose five percent of their body weight after twelve weeks of treatment?!?!
SMH…
Personally, I am a reformed process food junkie. After having bariatric surgery in 2003 and losing 100lbs, I have slowly and surely educated myself on factory-farming and real food. Today, my family and I – including my dogs – #JERF, and we use organic products for cleaning and grooming as I learn about the causes of cancer (environment). Thanks for spreading the word, Sara. I try to do the same.
– MBL
Sarah,
I appreciated the article–while I would never take a weight loss drug myself, I have friends and family who would consider it and this is good to pass along. I also wanted to share that I take objection to the picture of the headless fat person at the beginning of the article. I’m fat. I’ve been fat for as long as I can remember and healthy self esteem in the face of our culture’s view of fat people is a daily challenge. I’ve started losing weight effortlessly in the past year because I finally found a doctor (ND) who bothered to do in depth thyroid testing on me which uncovered hypothyroidism and turned me on to the paleo/primal lifestyle. Despite my weight loss, I’m still fat and will possibly be for a grand long time, but I’m truly okay with it because I’ve come to love my body.
The picture bothered me personally for two reasons. First, not all fat people are lazy and the picture rather implies that. Most importantly though, “headless fatties” are presented as objects and blobs of fat meant to appear disgusting and shameful. Please don’t fall into this trap–don’t objectify that man or other fat people and don’t imply by including that picture with your article that you see people who are fat as just their bodies or as an object to be disgusted by. This article provides a good summation on why using these kind of pictures is harmful and dangerous:
Thank you for reading,
Nicole
Thank you, Nicole. You said beautifully exactly what I was thinking. Demonizing and stereotyping fat people is no better than selling them dangerous medications for weight loss.
Wow, unbelievable yet sadly not shocking. Yet the consumer demands this poison. It’s the easy fix.
They must have been planning this for a while. The FDA made the homeopathic hCG manufacturers remove their product from the market last fall. As i, and 20 people i know, all had excellent results with the homeopathic hCG i am incensed! Also, the manufacturers are allowed to sell a supplement marketed to look like the original hCG, but they contain none. Instead they have a variety of herbs. A nutritionist tried to tell me they are “essentially the same” but i had a severe negative response to the drops, and someone else i know ended up in ER.
Stupid, stupid FDA.
I am sorry buit a public hanging for the exec.(s) that authorized this would be fitting. This is not only unethical but it is immoral, dispicable, and any other adjective you want to put to it.
Don’t get me wrong I think all diet drugs are bad news, but this article is terribly misleading from a source that I usually look to for truth. fen-phen was a combination of fenfluramine and phentermine. The fenfluramine was found to cause all of the symptoms/ deaths. It was pulled from the market and, as far as I know, is no longer sold/available. The phentermine has always stayed available to anyone who can obtain a Dr’s prescription. phentermine does have its own problems. Be prepared if you need to take a UA to fail and have your results test positive for amphetamines.
Half of phen-phen was phentermine. The other half was amphetamine. The amphetamine half was what was causing the heart problems. They never outlawed phentermine. In fact, I got a prescription for it a few years ago as an appetite supressant. It worked great; I would forget to eat. The problem is, as soon as I stopped taking it I remembered again. 🙂 Not a great long-term solution.
As far as I know, there haven’t been any heart issues associated with phentermine.
Hi Carolyn
If you are wanting to lose weight then I highly recommend changing the challenge from weight loss to avoiding sugar. It’s amazing how quickly the weight falls off when you don’t consume it – even with eating healthy fats and following Sarah’s healthy eating recommendations. You’ll also be shocked to see that sugar is in almost everything processed – it’s quite scary!
Anyway, I lost lots of weight this way as the challenge became avoiding sugar which took my mind off losing weight – I only realised how much I was losing a couple of months down the track when my jeans fell off me when I was putting them on – then I realised that all my skirts were falling straight off, without even moving. Crazy. Was also a sign I was spending too much time inside in my trackpants! (baby and middle eastern summer). Good luck 🙂
Do you mean just refined sugars? Do you include fruit, too?
I was working with a nutritionist for a while, and he recommended I give up grains, dairy, all refined sugar, etc. and eat raw food. I think I could do the sugar, but rest was just too hard.
I’m about 9 months pregnant and will be nursing soon, so I’lll probably use that as my main dietary focus. I think avoiding sugar in any case is a good idea because I have a history of insulin resistance.
to loose weight I atel all I wanted of RAW aklaine organic veggies and juiced them. Live living food healed me.. fat is acidous too much acid foods.. Lost 45 lbs in 3 months and never was hungry, was getting nutrition plus detoxing the body.. also Dr Clarks liver recipe helped too. cleaning up the bodys immunes system that is not only the bodies immune system but sorts fats sugars.. etc. I eat grass fed beef once in a while, it is tender. I know who raised my beef and know what it ate, no vaccines etc… so buyer beware of labels that say grass fed beef. even organic grass fed beef can be given vaccines.. just say’n….
I love hearing stories like yours! You are inspiring! GOOD JOB!!!