Thin at any price?

Transcript: Thin at any price?

Mae: Now it’s time for a report on something that has been dominating the pop culture headlines. If you’re a pop culture junkie like myself, you probably won’t be surprised that this report is all about the infamousberühmt-berüchtigtinfamous weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy.

Owen: Ah, yes. Since late 2022, Ozempic and similar medications have been making headlines in pop culture publications like Vogue, People magazine and The Sun, just to name a few. 

Mae: It’s been widely reported that celebrities are taking these medications, but now the prices are dropping, and they’re becoming more and more accessiblezugänglichaccessible to everyone, especially in the United States. 

Owen: Our author Mary Beth Maslowski conduct sth.etw. durchführenconducted several interviews with psychotherapistPsychotherapeut(in)psychotherapists, dieticianErnährungswissen­schaftler(in)dieticians and actual patients who are on these medications. They discussed the benefits, dangers and lasting effects of these weight-loss drugs. 

Mae: So, to introduce the topic, we’ll first listen to a clipAusschnittclip from Mary Beth’s interview with Mary Anne Cohen, who is a psychotherapist. You’ll hear Mary Beth refer to sth.von etw. sprechen, etw. bezeichnenrefer to this group of weight-loss medications as GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1)ein Rezeptoragonist, Peptidhormon im DarmGLP-1s. This is the medical name for the popular drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. First, you’ll hear Mary Beth’s voice, and then Mary Anne Cohen’s. 

Mary Beth Maslowski: What do you think are the positive emotional effects of GLP-1s? 

Mary Anne Cohen: The New York Times did a really powerful documentaryDokumentarfilmdocumentary on Ozempic and these medications. And the reason I liked it so much is that it really underscore sth.etw. unterstreichen, hervorhebenunderscored the pain that people in larger bodies do experience and the relief when the food noiseständige Gedanken an Essenfood noise in your head no longer has the pullEinfluss, Sogwirkungpull. And one of the men, a very articulatewortgewandtarticulate man, interviewed for this documentary said, every minute of every day I think about fat, how fat I am, how much bigger I am than anyone else in the room. And this medication has silenced that for me. He said, I don’t care about long-term problems that may ariseaufkommen, entstehenarise. Just to be relieved of this constant self-hatred that I’ve had for years is worth any­thing for me. 

Owen: In this clip, Mary Anne Cohen says that one patient felt relief from the food noise – now, what is “food noise”?

Mae: A paper in Nature journal defines “food noise” as persistent, unwanted thoughts about food. So, someone who experiences food noise probably never has a clear head because they can’t stop thinking about what they’re going to eat next. So, what these weight-loss medications do is turn those thoughts off or quiet down the food noise.

Owen: OK. So, this sounds like a positive benefit of taking GLP-1 weight-loss medication. But how does it work? We’ll listen to a clip from Mary Beth’s interview with Jennifer Lynn Pullman, a dietician who takes Wegovy.

Mary Beth: If you can brieflykurzbriefly explain, how does Wegovy work on the body? 

Jennifer Lynn Pullman: So, Wegovy, like the other, it’s a GLP-1, kind of mimicimitierenmimics the natural hormone that we have that helps kind of control satietySättigungsgefühlsatiety. So, what Wegovy does is it actually works on the stomach to slow digestionVerdauungdigestion. So, you end up, one, filling up faster on smaller portions of food, but you also stay full longer. They’re also finding that there’s a lot of that information about food noise. What they’re seeing is it tends to work on the brain where people used to have cravingVerlangencravings for certain foods, and it seems to be taking that away. So they end up having less cravings combined with the decreasedverringertdecreased intakeVerzehr, Essenintake is helping them reduce their weight. Pretty quickly, actually.

Mae: Now, we know why someone might take this kind of drug, and how it works on the body. But what we don’t know is what the long-term effects on the individual might be. In the first interview, we heard psychotherapist Mary Anne Cohen quote someone from a documentary who said that he didn’t care what the risks were, it was worth it for him just to not have to deal with the food noise anymore.

Owen: Right, so there are still a lot of unknowns when it comes to the individual. But what doctors do know, is that these medications will have long-term effects on society. Let’s listen to a clip from one of Mary Beth’s interviews with Dr Wendy Schofer.

Dr Wendy Schofer: Using a personal medication, so an individual medication in order to address sth.etw. angehenaddress cultural issues and stigma is not the answer. And so, I think that part, a big part of my work is about calling out the stigma and the shame and saying we’re not doing right by our patients, our neighbours, our family members, ourselves, if we’re making a cultural stigma problem something that’s resting on individuals. 

Mae: Here, Dr Schofer says that taking an individual medication in order to address cultural issues and stigma is not the answer. What does she mean by this?

Owen: She means that there is cultural pressure to look a certain way. And the problem is that people think they have to change their bodies to look the way that society wants them to. And now with these medications, it’s easier than ever.  

Mae: Here’s Mary Anne Cohen on how we can address this problem.  

Mary Anne Cohen: The reason that so many people in my field, nutritionistErnährungswissen­schaftler(in)nutritionists, are against these medications, is that intentional weight loss is looked at as a way of continuing to stigmatize people in larger bodies. And, therefore, we should be changing society and society’s treatment of overweight people rather than changing the people themselves.