Health matters newsletter A question of less: weight loss drugs

(In the weekly Health Matters newsletter, Ramya Kannan writes about getting to good health and staying there. You can subscribe here to get the newsletter in your inbox.)

Clearly this week too, the debate surrounding off-patent weight loss drugs has dragged itself into the health limelight. With Semaglutide slipping out of its patent period, and now open for development by Indian manufacturers, the debate has ranged about how affordable this will make the drug. Will this GLP-1 inhibitor class of drugs work for everyone? What are the range of side effects that one must be mindful of? What about lifestyle modifications and adopting better diets? Is it suitable only for those with diabetes and obesity, or is it also advisable to put people with high obesity levels on these drugs? Every day, more and more questions arise. To try and answer a few of them, we set ourselves a task to bring experts to the table to understand this phenomenon.