Drugs for weight loss: Part 5

Follow-up therapy

The idea about treating obesity should be understood in the overall context of medical health. Treating obesity means one treats numerous potential risk factors and preventable disease at one time. Obesity is the genesis of a whole lot of other potential problems.

One of the major complaints most individuals have after using drugs to lose weight is that they re-gain the weight once they stop taking the medications. This suggests that further therapy with nutritional and behavioral therapy is essential to help maintain the initial weight loss. The drugs do provide a boost but they are not enough to cure the problem.

After 30 years of trying drug treatment therapy for weight loss, most experts believe that drug therapy alone is not adequate to control the obesity mania. It is unlikely that a perfect magical drug for losing weight will ever be developed and even if the drug is developed, it will not be the magic pill. Diet and exercise will always be the corner store therapy for weight control.

Drugs probably will end up being most beneficial to people who have a genetic propensity to being overweight. The majority of people who are obese today are as a direct consequence of their lifestyle and nothing to do with their genetics. These people better start walking and eating more vegetables.

The history of drugs for weight loss has taught us something- that these drugs have potent side effects and their long term complications are unpredictable. So far, drugs have not had a bigger success and have always come out on the shorter end in comparison to the food industry campaigns of “supersize”.

The last 30 years has seen a major erosion of our life style. We have abundance of food, which is cheap, readily available and the concept of supersize is now ingrained in us. We are always looking at how to make our lives easier with energy saving methods. A sedentary lifestyle is now a major preoccupation of more than 70% of North Americans. Even simple walking around the block has now become a burden for majority of individuals. New drugs may be another treatment for obesity but they will never be a replacement for a drastic change in our life style. Drugs will help lose a few pounds but beyond that, it is going to take a lot of hard work and exercise.