As popular as the latest drugs being touted for weight loss, including Ozempic, Mounjaro, and Wegovy, are on social media, like any medications, they don’t work in the same way for everyone. Some are not even approved for treating obesity but are used as an easy way to lose weight. Some users can lose as much as 20% of their bodyweight with these drugs. Others struggle to reach single digit percentages.
That shouldn’t come as a surprise, since obesity isn’t a monolith and the factors that contribute to extra pounds are different for different people. In the same way that cancer doctors are now bringing more precision to which treatments they use by learning about the genes that drive people’s cancers, doctors who treat obesity are beginning to figure out the major contributors to an individual person’s obesity. That’s been catalyzed by the new class of more effective weight loss drugs that have been recently approved, with more on the way. Now that those medications are available, doctors are focusing on directing patients to the best treatments for them, whether it’s one of the newer drugs, some combination of older drugs, or a keener attention to diet and exercise.
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