At the next meeting of the American Heart Association, participants will learn about the epidemiological situation results of 63,656 military veterans with type 2 diabetes in the Million Veterans Program who took GLP-1 receptor agonists (semaglutide – “Wegovy”, dulaglutide – “Trulicity”, etc.). Survey analysis found that those who also changed their lifestyle habits had a 50% lower risk of serious cardiovascular events(1) compared to those who did not report a healthier lifestyle and received diabetes care without GLP-1 RA medication.
Type 2 diabetes is overwhelmingly a lifestyle disease, and obesity ranks third on the list of preventable lifestyle diseases, behind only alcohol and cigarettes in mortality. It has doubled in the United States this century. Many cases of type 2 diabetes, unlike type 1, are preventable and even reversible. It often happens that insulin production once worked well but became overloaded due to food consumption. The struggle for sufferers is that dieting is a challenge. If you overeat for four years, you’ll have to cut calories by the same amount for four years, and overeating is much easier than cutting back.
GLP-1 RA drugs are a scientific shortcut. They lower blood sugar to treat diabetes, but many people now use them because they also reduce appetite. You won’t want to eat, so if you can break psychological habits (movies mean eating popcorn, every positive event in life means DoorDash, etc.), losing weight is a breeze. If people combine the medication with other behavioral changes (getting more exercise), the benefits are clear, according to the survey data.
People who made drastic changes, such as losing weight, quitting cigarettes and alcohol, and exercising, in addition to GLP-1 medications, had a 63 percent lower risk of having a heart attack or stroke, but the medication was associated with a 20 percent lower risk.
Like all epidemiology, these results are EXPLORATORY. The field has been criticized for decades for “linking” herbicides to cancer, vaccines to autism, and processed foods to obesity, but now it has become truly controversial because a leading evangelist, former Natural Resources Defense Council attorney Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., gained control of the National Institutes of Health. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health are delighted to have one of their own in charge, but scientists who had been silent from the time President Clinton diverted scientific funds toward strange correlation efforts until this year are alarmed.
However, the science is clear that eating too many calories is the only sure way to gain weight, and obesity is the only sure way to get type 2 diabetes. If spending money now on diet injections helps, the cost savings for government healthcare in the future will be enormous.
NOTE:
(1) 6,191 people had a major cardiac event during the 418,513 person-years of data included in the 2011 to 2023 data the authors analyzed.
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