Five centuries ago, Niccolo Machiavelli proposed that a prudent ruler “will think of ways to keep his citizens of every sort and under every circumstance dependent on the state and on him; and then they will always be trustworthy.”
That is good advice for despots, and it’s also a good description of the business model used by the medical industry. All you have to do is look at the wonder drugs du jour – Ozempic and Wegovy – to see the dependence-fostering strategy in action.
For most of human history, obesity was associated with overeating (especially sweets) and a sedentary lifestyle. Thus, the solution to excess fat was assumed to be simple: eat less, skip dessert, and move more.
Around the 1990s, this started changing. Physicians and scientists started telling an increasingly obese public that weight loss wasn’t simple at all: genetics, age, endocrinology, culture, and other factors all had to be carefully considered. By 2013, obesity was classified as a disease, and the narrative adopted by journalists and doctors was clear: “diets don’t work.”
Obesity, we were assured by experts, could not be addressed by simply eating less. There was, you see, A Lot More To It. And you weren’t a doctor, you couldn’t possibly understand it. After all, if it were simple or easy, everybody would be slim.
So, the population got fatter and fatter, and seemingly there was nothing anyone could do about it.
Then along came a new class of drugs called GLP-1 agonists. They weren’t cheap – treatment can cost up to $1,000 per month – so they were first embraced by celebrities who have more money and more scrutiny on their appearance than regular folks. The results spoke for themselves, and drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy started entering the mainstream.
You might be wondering what magical formula these pharmaceutical products are based on. What is a GLP-1 agonist? Well, GLP-1 is a natural hormone (glucagon-like peptide 1) that helps regulate blood sugar and satiety. An “agonist” is a drug that mimics something natural (in this case, GLP-1). Ozempic and Wegovy trick the body into thinking it has more GLP-1 floating around in it that it actually does. In other words, the medicine makes you feel less hungry and more full, so that you eat less.
You may now be wondering what normally stimulates the body to promote more GLP-1. The short answer is: diet and exercise. Consuming healthy nutrients like protein and fiber either stimulate GLP-1 production or increase the body’s receptivity to GLP-1, as do physical activity and intermittent fasting.
In contrast, consuming sugar and artificial sweeteners reduce the body’s receptivity to GLP-1, meaning the more sweets you eat, the hungrier and less full you feel later.
In other words, if you want more of the benefits of GLP-1 – feeling less hungry and more full – you can do exactly what our ancestors suggested: eat less, skip dessert, and move more.
To recap: do these amazing new medicines address complex genetic or hormonal factors? No. Do they impact digestive chemistry? No. They suppress your appetite by tricking your body into thinking you’re leading a healthier lifestyle. You feel less hungry and more full, so you eat less. Since you’re consuming fewer calories, your body burns fat for fuel. Result: you lose weight.
This works for people of all ages and genetic/cultural backgrounds. It works because, as everyone used to know before we started being gaslit by the medical establishment, if you eat less, you will lose weight.
This is not actually a surprise to doctors. They are well aware that a caloric deficit results in fat loss. Consider one example. In 1965, a 27-year old Scotsman of Italian descent named Angus Barbieri decided to do something about his 456 lb. girth. So, he started fasting. For 382 days, he consumed nothing but tea, water, vitamins, and yeast extract (for essential amino acids). After fasting for a year, Angus had slimmed down to a trim 180 lbs. He gradually broke his fast, married, fathered two children, and maintained a healthy weight for the rest of his life.
But, even now, when it is patently obvious that they have been intentionally confusing the public for years, Big Medicine continues to discourage people from taking their health into their own hands, through fasting or other caloric reduction strategies. Such techniques are inherently difficult, they say, and are only safe and effective, according to them, if done under a doctor’s supervision.
So, just take a medicine like Ozempic or Wegovy instead.
But those drugs aren’t medicine at all. They don’t cure or treat anything. Contrary to what Big Medicine says, obesity is not a disease; it’s a natural, predictable outcome of caloric surplus. In fact, it’s only in the presence of dangerous conditions like parasites or hyperthyroidism that consuming excess calories does not contribute to weight gain. In any mammal, a healthy body will always store extra calories as fat, because it might be needed for fuel later.
In other words, these new wonder drugs are essentially just appetite suppresants. They work for weight loss, because they make it easy not to eat. But, more importantly, they follow Machiavelli’s advice: they foster dependency. Once you stop taking the drugs, the weight comes back (because you go back to eating the way you did before). Thus, they make people dependent on the medical system, and therefore loyal to it (and profitable for it).
There is a silver lining though. It’s obvious how Ozempic works. So, in theory, some people will recognize that they don’t actually need it; that they can fast on their own, reduce their caloric intake, and decrease their waistlines on their own.
Even more importantly, perhaps this experience will encourage people to start wondering about other ways in which they’ve been disempowered and made dependent. If losing weight is as simple as eating less (not easy, but simple), what else has been artificially complicated and obscured for the benefit of credentialed experts and their business interests?
This train of thought leads down a very long and interesting rabbit hole. One can only hope that there will be a large contingent of newly-svelte people who are interested in exploring it, and in discovering other ways in which we are being lied to and disempowered for the benefit of others.