Weight Loss Drugs: Panacea or Problematic?

So growing up, I played lots of tennis, like an enormous amount of tennis, it was just kind of my thing. I discovered that it was my thing when I was, I think nine or 10 years old, played a lot of sports growing up, you know, tried a little bit everything from baseball, to soccer to, you’re obligated to play hockey in northern Minnesota. So that and a little bit of football and basketball, skiing. Looking back, turns out, I did a little bit everything, but tennis was my thing. And they went on to compete at Division One level and got a scholarship. And so what’s important about that is I know a little thing about little thing or two about the game of tennis. And now I’ve got three kids and want, if they’re interested, I’m interested in helping them get what they want, I want them to be happy and healthy and to have fun and to learn the lessons that I learned from athletics. That’s fundamentally it. So what the, what the end result of that is, if it’s gymnastics, or martial arts, or if it’s tennis, I don’t care that’s not really that relevant to me, I just know that with my specific set of skills, I’d be able to help my kids get a little further along than other kids just because I know a lot about tennis. So I introduced my oldest to tennis, pretty early on, he maybe a little too early, maybe he’ll come back around. But he was just disinterested. And anything that I had to say about it, perhaps you’ve had this experience. And you can chuckle a little bit about that try trying to get somebody to do something, and they’re just really not that interested in hearing what you have to say. So that’s, that’s kind of a funny one, a less funny one. We all have, I’m sure, have had loved ones and family members that have struggled. And some level we’re all struggling with something. But I know that my older brother John struggled for a long time, with lots of different things. And I always tried the best that I could I did the best that I could to support him and to give him whatever I could, without being overbearing or trying to overstep or whatever. And sometimes it worked. And sometimes it didn’t. And I’ve also had the opportunity to be a mentor and to work with younger people who I don’t have a relationship with. And sometimes that works great. Sometimes it doesn’t. So think about adult learning is I mean, I think at some level, we need to really want to have the desire to learn to make change. But if we don’t have that, if I don’t want to change for whatever reason that I’m not going to, not going to. So this isn’t groundbreaking necessarily. But we’ve all known people that have gone through or we see them just headed for disaster, we see them caught up with the brown crowd, they’re going through some kind of a phase, suffering from a mental illness, sometimes people are just absolutely hell bent on destroy them, destroying themselves. And as empathy, empathetic and caring people which I assume that you are, we want to help those people. So different stages of our lives, we’re able to do that. And it’s this fine line again, between I don’t want to be a bulldozer parent, I don’t want to be a helicopter parent, I don’t want my kids to resent or hate me. You want to thread the needle, and do that just right, between being supportive and loving, but not overbearing. So it’s all a really, really tricky thing. That’s the reality. It’s hard. The human experience is hard. It’s hard to change our own minds about things. And we care more about our runny nose than we do about a flood that happened halfway around the world that killed 1000 people my runny nose, if I’m honest, probably bothers me more than than learning about that. What I want, what I want is again for you to get what you want, and I want a healthy, optimally running functioning society. And it appears that these two things are currently at odds. I want you to get what you want. I also want, I want to have this function in society. And it’s not just right now that this has happened, and I think it’s been happening for some time. But the reality is that, and we know this to be true, that you can’t have your cake and eat it, too, you can’t have things both ways. You can’t, you can’t have it all. I can’t eat whatever I want, and expect to be skinny. I can’t not go to work and expect to get paid. There are just things that we know to be true. But right now, we’re acting the opposite way. We’re throwing all that out. And we’re saying no, that’s not true anymore. We have a panacea, we literally have, we’ve, we’ve figured out the silver bullet to solve this problem. We’ve literally figured out a magic pill, it’s going to make it so I can do whatever I want. I can eat whatever I want. I don’t need to exercise. And I, there’s, there’s no cost to it. But that’s, that’s no matter how bad, we want that to be true. And I don’t want that to be true. I know that the things that I value most are the things that I’ve worked, the hardest for them to give to me, has very little value. And you see this with kids too. You give them 100 toys, well, they’re not going to value any of them, you give them one thing, and you give them something that they worked hard for or money to buy. That’s what they value. And to think that that’s not true. But that that’s not the case. It’s just flat out wrong. It just denies human nature. And the way that we human beings view and think about the world and everything else. So it’s a really tricky thing. I think that we’re heading down the wrong path. And I know that probably preaching to the choir, for many of you were listening, that many of you who are listening many people that I know are doing and engaging in the behavior use of what I’m going to talk about today. So I will also be guilty of yucking your Yum, which is pretty good term. Guilty of yucking your Yum, if you fall into the category of people that I’m going to be talking about today, and that’s fine. If you’re loving what I’m saying, you’re hating what I’m saying I’m here for all of it. Because it’s on my mind. I think it’s necessary. That I’m not I know, I know, I’m certainly not the only one that’s that’s talking about this. But I think it’s so important that that more people are talking about this and we are pulling our heads out of our proverbial butts. And waking up to reality versus just continuing down this road that I do not think is a very, very positive one. So I read this recently, and I found it to be very, very disappointing. And what a terrible emotion that is, who a man my mom was angry at me. That’s okay. But when my mom said she was disappointed in me rohtul read this, and this is a quote, had the biggest aha, along with many people in that audience, Oprah recalls, I realized, I’ve been blaming myself all these years for being overweight. And I have a predisposition that no amount of willpower is going to control. She goes on to say Obesity is a disease. It’s not about willpower. It’s about the brain. She says released my own shame about it and consulted her doctor who went on to describe a weight loss medication. I now use it as I feel I need it as a tool to manage not yo yoing fact that there’s a medically approved prescription for managing weight and staying healthier in my lifetime. Feels like a relief like redemption, like a gift. And that’s something to hide behind, once again, be ridiculed for I’m absolutely done with the shaming from other people, and particularly myself. Damnit obrah
don’t want to shame you. I’m not at all and you wouldn’t care anyway. But you’re happy, fine, and we’ll see what the future holds. But from my perspective, here’s the problem that there’s an F ton of people who listen to her and take her advice. She went for years repping one Weight Watchers as a, as a self reliant personal responsibility company. And now all of a sudden they are prescribing weight loss medications. So they’ve done a complete 180. They’ve completely changed their everything, their philosophies, their principles, their approach, totally different 180 degrees, the zig zag whatever, again, free to do what you want. But there, there’s this expression that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. In that sense, simply saying that nothing comes without a cost or a consequence. Nothing comes without a cost, or a that just, there is a cost to all of it, there are consequences to all of it. So sure that you’ve caught on, but I’m talking about the new weight loss drugs. I think it’s odd, and shocking how excitedly, people are running towards them. I mean, we’re coming off the heels of an event, an event where, where other medications were touted as the panacea. And maybe you think that they were an AR, I don’t necessarily, and the way that they were sold, I think I hope that we can all agree was not the way that it actually shook out. And the process for vetting, and I don’t need to get into the weeds on this. There is a flip side to all of this, there is a cost to all of it, there is no silver bullet, or magic pill that doesn’t have some additional cost to it. I mean, always a beside to the album, there’s another shoe that’s waiting to drop, you know, the story of Faust. And Faust is a really wealthy person who is just not happy. And so the devil came to him, he made a deal with the devil that he could do whatever he wanted. But at the end of it, he had to give the devil his soul. So fast knew what he was getting himself into. With an unknown intervention, like we’re talking about now, we don’t know what the ultimate price to be paid is going to be. You don’t think that there’s going to be one? It really is this panacea? Whose water you take it for that?
So I don’t I don’t hope the bad things are gonna happen. I just from experience. It’s not all good. So it’s, it’s a concern. Anyway, back to the problem after the episode rather. So I mean, we have a huge problem. And it’s a it’s a little bit of a pawn or a play on words that it’s a big problem. How big is the problem of obesity? It’s really big. Approximately 63.6% of US adults, in 2018, were classified as overweight or head obesity. Oof, that’s from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. And I guess that there’s no current data on that, but I bet it’s more. So that’s cheese. Six years ago, at this point, 73% of Americans were over beat that overweight or had obesity. I imagine that that’s higher. And that has a cost. Again, everything has a cost. There’s a price to be paid. You think that it’s not just that you are that you’re not feeling well, and it’s not just that you are sacrificing your health is that there is a massive cost to the health care system, which puts a strain on the health care system, but then it puts a strain on insurance. So the cost of our insurance, which is essentially shared, because we get most of our insurance as an employee benefit through our employer. As people need more care, the premiums go up. So they’re using more health care, the cost of health care goes up. So, if at some point if everybody is is obese or overweight, if that number goes from 73 to 100, which, you know, we’ll we’ll circle back to that one in just a second, then everybody will be, I guess, you know, doing their part by using the medicines. So this is the opportunity. And if you don’t think that these companies are looking around and looking for their next opportunity, I think that you are, you’re very naive. That’s, that’s what I think. If you think that, that great big companies that make pills don’t look and say, Oh, look, the vast majority of Americans are overweight or obese, or pre diabetic or have diabetes. Hmm, I wonder if there’s an opportunity there. And of course there is. So the New England Journal of Medicine estimated that annual cost of Medicare could be 13 billion to $26 billion a year. And that would increase total annual cost of Medicare Part D spending by approximately 25%, the cost of private health insurance would be even greater, when estimate is that the total annual us spending private and public on this class of drugs, which are treating obesity could exceed a $100 billion dollars by the next decade. So there you go. Now I know we’ve watered down a billion, but that’s still a ton of money. So can individuals pay for the cost of it? No, oh, no way, I can’t individually be expected to pay that I couldn’t even afford it individually. But Medicare? There you go. Let’s figure out how to get this in there. And I wonder if these big companies, I wonder if they lobby, they lobby the government? Of course they do. So like shut up, who cares? Stop saying this, I don’t care, I just want, I just want the drugs, I just want to take the pill, I just want to lose weight. I don’t care what the effect is going to be? Well, that’s sort of what I’m talking about. I’m seeing and witnessing people going down that path of destruction of dangerous behavior, like I talked about at the beginning. And me as an empathetic person, who cares, which I do, again, about individual people, but also have in in function in society. Number one, we can’t afford it. Number two, we have zero idea what the health consequences consequences are going to be. And I get it as a health consequence of being obese and diabetic. Is that is that worse, than whatever the health consequence is going to be of taking this, this this medication. And that’s the other shoe that’s going to drop because I don’t know, again, Faust made the deal with the devil, you get whatever you want, I get your soul. You consumer of medicine, who is obese, and deciding whether or not to take this new drug? You don’t know what that trade off is? You don’t know what it’s going to be. It is an unknown quantity. And to think that it is a panacea, that there’s no negative consequences or side effects, I think is foolish. I think it’s wrong. And I think that you know it, I think that everybody knows it. So at least we’re conscientious or we’re conscious about it. But then I realized that that’s probably not true. Probably a ton of people out there who think oh, there’s no way my doctor is telling me to take it. So it can’t be bad for me. So I just have to wait and see, I guess. Fundamentally, I want people to go into this thing with eyes wide open and think about it. So the other side, you want to talk about systemic problems that lead to obesity. That’s fine. I’m here for it. To talk about food deserts. We could talk about limited access to healthy food we could talk about little to no education on on proper nutrition, or exercise. Talk about the proliferation of fast food and just garbage food everywhere. We could talk about socio non socio economic problems, and you name it. There’s all these different problems, cultural norms, stomach problems, lots and lots of different things like that. And I get it. And I’m empathetic. And I’m sad about these things. And I also know that addressing obesity, obesity requires an awful lot. It’s a laugh awful lot that needs to happen. So, here’s a question. Do you think it’s good to have a healthy lifestyle? Do you think it’s good to have a healthy lifestyle? Maybe you don’t maybe think it’s good to literally eat? Dog s, Sit your ass on a couch? Maybe you’re all about doing that and taking a magic pill to make everything okay, is great. That’s you hear me and play along for just a minute. So, I mean, do you think we’ll just using a logical argument, again, if you’re a person who says that it’s okay to eat bad food, it’s okay to live a sedentary lifestyle. Using logic would be the goal of a lifestyle is to promote comprehensive well being Alright, so making healthy choices, including good diet and exercising to promote comprehensive well being, that’s a positive thing. Having healthy diet contributes to physical well being. So that’s also a positive thing. Regular exercise enhances physical and mental well being. So when you’re exercising, and you’re eating right, you’re going to be a healthier person, there are lots of mental and emotional benefits, improve mood, less stress. So based on that, having a healthy diet with regular exercise, that is a positive thing. So when you’re when you’re doing those things, you will have a higher quality of life. Physical health is interconnected with mental health and emotional well being nothing but a positive thing. So I mean, try to make a rational argument for why it is that you should pursue a healthy diet lifestyle, making a logical argument for why you should exercise. It’s just not very convincing. It’s not very convincing, because we want to feel a certain way. I don’t want to feel I want to feel good and healthy. But I would don’t want to do the work. I guess that that’s that’s really what this is saying. And I wonder, I wonder, is it a function of I don’t care that this is for lack of a better term, not earned. Because certainly you did the work of becoming obese. And I think that I will,
I think that I will die on the Hill of being obese. Absolutely being contrary to what Oprah said, that it is a function of willpower, that it is a function of personal choices, that it is a function of all those things. Do not accept that I do not accept that it is genetic, or that people are genetically predispositioned. To be overweight. think that that’s a hill that I’m going to die on. I’m 45 years old. When I was in school as a kid, elementary school, all the way through high school. There was one overweight person in my class one and even that person wasn’t really that overweight, not by the standards of today. So what does that say? What does it say if 1% of people 40 years ago, was obese or overweight? And today 75% of people are obese or overweight, that our genetics change, essentially completely over that time period. Is that the assertion that you’re making? Is that is that the argument? Doesn’t that sound crazy? When you think about it, when you were a kid, how many overweight people did you know? Maybe I was just in a one of those blue zones where it was only healthy people. So why do we resist change? Won’t we resist change because it’s uncomfortable. Change requires moving out of our comfort zone. And we don’t want to do that. We don’t want to do that for a lot of reasons. And this is, this is where this is where there is biology, because our bodies are designed to keep us alive. And so when all of a sudden we start doing things that are abnormal, or totally off the wall are totally different than our bodies trying to, they’re like, oh, no, George is putting himself in danger, need to pull it back. So our bodies want us to be safe. And so they encourage us to just keep doing whatever we’re doing, even though it is slowly, absolutely killing us. I mean, you don’t become 100 pounds overweight, in a month, you become 100 pounds overweight, over the course of several years. By gaining one or two pounds a month. Think about it, you gain a pound a month, well, that’s 12 extra pounds a year, you gain two a month, wait for it, that’s 24 pounds a year. It’s not that hard to gain two pounds a month, if you’re eating like shit. And you’re not exercising, that’s pretty easy. Especially because, and I get it, we have access to delicious food, and stuff to drink, and eat and all these entertainment options. But none of that says that that’s genetic, or biological, or anything like that. That is 100% lifestyle, and behavioral choices. I get it. I’m not excusing it 100% Understand, so. So we need to get out of our comfort zones, we need to understand the psychology behind it. And I know how hard change is I 100% do. So there’s a lot going on here. And I really don’t want to be I’m not trying to be mean, at all. That’s not I don’t, I never wanting to be mean, or to call names. I want people to be healthy. I want individuals to be healthy. I want society to be healthy and high functioning. And all these things. So this is the part where I’m trying to land the plane here. Getting people to change is really hard. I know that in order to do that, you need to be incredibly empathetic, need to understand where they’re coming from, need to help them to create a compelling vision for their future, if we don’t know how to do that. Nutrition is extremely confusing. There’s a lot of bad information out there. Exercise is also really confusing. There’s a lot of bad, there’s a lot of bad information out there. And if I’m not accustomed to moving, running or lifting weights, these are hard things. There’s not a reason why you would know how to do that. Unless you learn how to do it. Like anything else. We need to become literate in whatever area we want to become literate in and then need to put it to work and to become actually well. Literacy versus wellness, very two different things. Literacy is what I intellectually understand wellness is what I actually do. So oftentimes, there is a mile in between those two things. Right now we’re staring down the barrel of a lot of really bad stuff and stuff that from my perspective is very much an unknown quantity. I don’t know what this stuff’s going to do to you. It’ll make you lose weight. Yeah. But it’s not just burning fat. You’re losing bone density, you’re losing muscle mass, you’re losing tissue, and that stuff doesn’t come back. And that is something that is not talked about at all sarcopenia happens when you take these drugs. What that is, is what happens when we get old and we develop osteoporosis. We lose bone density. You don’t get that back. If you’re a parent, and you’re giving this stuff to your kids. That’s terrible. You’re causing their bones to become less dense, which they will never get back. So you’re essentially turning them into tiny old people. Sit down to make better choices. Educate yourself. take personal responsibility for your health. Take ownership of it. I wish, I don’t even wish I don’t wish that there was a pill that could do that. Because you don’t value it. And if you’re doing it, and then you’re not learning about becoming a healthy person, if you’re taking this medication, and you just keep eating like crap, and keep not exercising, that I mean, brutal. And I know what most people are going to think and say like, I’m just going to do it for a little while. Okay. Sure. Sure thing. But I know about human nature. And I know that your line, mostly to yourself, and then the people that you’re saying that to so other people too. And this is the tough love part of it. I mean, I don’t mind when people be asked me, I don’t know. I just don’t want people to lie to themselves. I want you to position yourself for success, and recognize that everything has a trade off. So the short term gains that you might be getting from something, you’re going to have a price as a price to be paid, at some point down the road. You know that to be true? You know why? You know that’s true, because it is true. No panacea. No magic, no magic pill, no silver bullet, it’s going to take care of all of our problems. And there’s not a consequence or a price to be paid. No such thing. So, make make good decisions. make good choices. Take ownership of your frickin life. Recognize that life is long. And embrace that, lean into it. Make small choices, incremental choices, the way to the way to lose weight. It’s not by taking a pill, or whatever it is. It’s by losing it the same way you put it on. It’s by losing one or two or three pounds a month. Do that over an extended period of time, that’s 1224 36 pounds that you can lose over the course of a year. That is a big deal. Like getting out of debt, you will gain lots of wonderful things along the way. You’ll develop self confidence. You’ll develop new skills, you’ll be learning about nutrition, you’ll be learning about fitness, you’ll be learning about self discipline, you’ll be proving to yourself that you’re fully capable of doing hard things that you’re fully capable of, of changing your behavior. You’ll be an example to your family, your loved ones to your community. And that’s an awesome thing. Like guarantee, you do that. You do it the hard way.
You’ll be way better off for it. As always. Do your part by doing your best

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.