Current medications have changed the landscape for obesity, but other people’s experiences do not serve as universal answers.
Semaglutide, liraglutide and tirzepatide are part of a new generation of treatments that transformed the therapeutic possibilities for obesity. However, when a drug becomes trendy, it is easy for some personal experiences or opinions to take root as if they were answers applicable to everyone.
We are accustomed to hearing how much weight someone lost, seeing a celebrity recount their transformation, or an influencer sharing their experience with a particular medication. When these stories repeat again and again, they can create the sense that there is a single way to navigate a treatment or, even, lead us to oversimplify something as complex as obesity.
In Argentina there are medications used in obesity treatment, with active ingredients such as liraglutide, semaglutide and tirzepatide. These drugs act on mechanisms related to hormones that participate in the regulation of hunger and satiety, and have substantially broadened the therapeutic possibilities for certain individuals.
It is important to note that there are different molecules, different commercial presentations, and approved indications. Therefore, talking about “the weight-loss injection” as if there were a single treatment oversimplifies a medical reality that is much more complex.
The Importance of Medical Individualization
The indication depends on the clinical and personal situation of each patient: their medical history, other diseases and medications, their goals, possible contraindications, and also how they respond to and tolerate the treatment. Medicine does not work by imitation. That a drug has worked for one person does not allow concluding that it will be the indicated treatment for another.
Pharmacological treatments can be a great help in creating conditions that allow working on other aspects of the treatment. Medication can open a therapeutic window, but it does not replace everything we have to build within it.
A Tool Within a Broad Approach
The medication can be an opportunity to work on eating, the preservation of muscle mass, movement, hydration, rest and also on our relationship with food: what place it occupies in each person’s life, what meaning it has, how it relates to emotions, to relationships, to pleasure and to daily living.
Medication can collaborate to generate better conditions to be able to pay attention to all of this and to work on what also forms part of the treatment. Seen this way, it becomes a tool within a much broader approach.
For a long time obesity was thought from an overly simple logic: eat less, move more and have willpower. Today we know that it is a chronic and complex disease, in which multiple biological, metabolic, hormonal, environmental and psychological factors are involved.
Therefore, the challenge is not to ask a person to have more willpower, but to ask what we can build around the treatment so that it has more tools that make sense for their life and that allow them to take care of their health in a feasible and sustainable way.
It is possible that so many stories, news items and people talking about these medications spark curiosity. What matters is what we do with them; instead of seeking answers in someone else’s experience, we can bring them to a professional who can help us understand what we need and whether, in our reality, there is an indication for pharmacological treatment and how to incorporate it safely and with support.
The most important question is not whether you need an injection nor how much weight it can help you lose. The question is what treatment you need and how you can go through it responsibly and with support, alongside professionals who work to build real and sustainable change. Sometimes that process includes medication. Sometimes not. Because what transforms is not the injection alone. It is everything that is built around it.
*Dr. Virginia Busnelli (MN 110351) is a physician specialized in nutrition, an obesity expert, and president of the Argentine Nutrition Society
