The New Debt-Based Drugs
Every drug company wants the same product. It works fast. The patient sees the result in a few weeks, on the scale or on a scan. And when the patient tries to stop, the body reacts badly enough that he goes back on it. Most businesses can only dream of a product the customer can't quit. Some of the best-selling drugs in the world now work this way, and the design is deliberate.
Call them debt drugs. They don't fix the problem. They hold it off while you keep paying, and when you stop, the problem comes back worse than it was. You never own the result. You rent it.
Underneath, they all work the same way. Your body fights to hold its normal settings. Push it in one direction long enough and it adjusts to pull the other way. While the drug is in you, you hold the new number. Take the drug away and the body's adjustment is still there with nothing to push against, so you drop below where you began. That backlash is not a flaw the maker is trying to fix. It is the reason you buy the next box.
Start with the weight-loss drugs, already selling in the tens of billions a year. A quarter or more of the weight they take off is muscle, not fat. When people stop, and most do, the weight comes back, but it comes back as fat. You weigh what you did before, or more, and you carry less muscle than when you started. The drug left you in worse shape than it found you.
The osteoporosis drugs do it to bone. Denosumab builds bone density while you take it. Stop, and some patients break several vertebrae at once, worse than the disease would have done on its own. So the doctor puts you on a second drug just to get you off the first one safely. You don't get out of the debt. You move it.
The acid-reflux drugs are less dramatic and far more common. Proton-pump inhibitors shut down stomach acid, so the body works harder to make it. Stop after a few months and you make more acid than you did before you started. Researchers have triggered this rebound in healthy people who never had reflux. Millions take these drugs for years, when they were meant for a few weeks.
Testosterone does it to men most cleanly of all. Flood a man's body with testosterone from outside and it stops making its own, so his testicles shrink and go quiet. Worse, his body turns some of that extra testosterone into estrogen, and his estrogen climbs. Now he needs a second drug, an estrogen blocker, to fight the hormone the first drug created. It becomes an arms race. Some men end up on testosterone and blockers together and still grow sore breast tissue and put on fat they never carried before. And if he ever stops the testosterone, he does not come back to normal. He sits lower than the day he started, sometimes for months, sometimes for good. The clinic that sold him energy and drive left him needing two drugs to chase a feeling he used to make on his own.
Now you can see why this is a drug maker's dream. The quick result sells the first prescription. The backlash sells all the ones after it. When a second drug is needed to hold off the backlash, the company sells that one too, to the same patient. And the patient, feeling awful after he quits, usually blames his own body instead of the drug. The company collects every month, the patient's own biology does the collecting, and the patient carries the guilt. No ordinary business keeps its customers this way.
To be fair, not every drug you take for years is a debt drug. A type-1 diabetic needs insulin because his body makes none. Someone with a dead thyroid needs thyroid hormone for the same reason. Take those away and the patient goes back to where he was, not below it. That is honest treatment for something the body truly lacks. The debt drugs are the opposite, and one question tells them apart. After you stop, are you worse off than before you started?
So don't go into debt. Talk with me about achieving an even better result through diet and exercise. If you're already in debt, chances are your future self is going to get those pounds back after the interest comes due. Talk with me about the options your doctor won't.