Tags: Drugs

OZEMPIC FOR ALL.

The word “Ozempic” first entered the language in 2018 when it was approved as a diabetes inhibitor. That same year, in what has to be the world’s biggest ‘off-label’ transference since the heart-disease drug Viagra became a multi-billion-dollar erectile dysfunction drug, Novo Nordisk started selling Ozempic as a weight-loss drug for very obese people.

Then in 2023, Ozempic and its fellow “GLP-1” drugs were shown to prevent strokes and heart attacks.

The next year, it made a claim to reduce kidney disease.

This year, it showed promising results in reducing the effects of Parkinson’s, as well as alcoholism and addiction, and to reduce obesity-related cancers as well.

My physician wife often says that the more unrelated diseases a drug claims to cure, the more it looks like snake oil. In the case of Ozempic, she’d be happy to be wrong. It really does look to be a universal solvent, curing most everything it touches. True, it’s so new that there hasn’t been time to understand its long-term effects. Maybe it will be the next thalidomide whose crippling effects revealed themselves not in its patients, but in their children.

Read on…

YOUR CHEATIN’ HEART.

On September 24, 1988, the Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson placed first in the 100-metre dash, setting a new world record at the Seoul Olympics. Thirty million Canadians went wild for the born-in-Jamaica runner who was one of ours.

We’re #1!

Seventy-two hours later Johnson was disqualified for using the banned steroid stanozolol. Thirty million Canadians were crushed. This born-in-Jamaica runner was one of theirs. We’re #171!

A Grade 3 student could tell you why we were bereft:

Cheating is bad. A drug that gives you an unfair advantage corrupts the whole competition. Cheating on an exam cheats everyone. If people know the bid is rigged, they won’t enter. Just this week, Norwegian ski jumpers were caught manipulating their ski suits. Norway!

Read on…

WILL THE DAY COME WHEN ALCOHOL IS TREATED LIKE TOBACCO?

The fact that this question is even askable, let alone answerable, speaks to how drinking is fading, and what role your own diminished drinking might play in that.

I ask because once again, a respected medical authority has concluded that no amount of alcohol is safe to drink, and because we’re plunk in the middle of drinking season. These “none is too many” reports are growing each year, and the number of Canadians who drink alcohol is falling.

We were all brought up knowing that tobacco will kill you if you consume it over time, but drinking will kill you only if you consume too much of it. But what if the second half of that last sentence is false?

Read on…

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