Said Kirkland Shave, co-owner of the wellness retreat Mountain Trek, quoted in "The Ozempic era is forcing wellness retreats for the elite to change/Attendees might be looking to wean off weight-loss drugs or mitigate side effects such as digestive discomfort and muscle loss" (WaPo)(free-access link).
I've never gone on a wellness retreat — though I have watched Season 3 of "The White Lotus" — but I was interested enough to click through to the Mountain Trek website and to momentarily bask in the idea of the place. But as with all travel, you have to do the hard creative work of imagining what it's really like there. In this case, I needed more information, and I took it to Grok.
How I framed the issue: "I'm reading about Ozempic users who suffer from 'digestive discomfort.' I'm considering going to a wellness retreat where there would be a lot of these people. Would their 'disgestive discomfort' affect me at all? I mean, will they be farting and burping or anything like that? This is a posh retreat and I'm concerned that the other people will disrupt the illusion of luxury without which there's no reason to travel there."
From Grok's answer: "Anecdotal reports, including from social media and articles, highlight that sulfur burps and gas can be socially embarrassing due to their odor and frequency. For example, users on platforms like Reddit describe 'Homer Simpson burps' or excessive gas causing discomfort in social settings."
That reminds me: I have a greatly diminished sense of smell, including a complete inability to experience anything to be smelling bad. Indeed, after so many years in this condition, I would be delighted to smell something bad. I'm much more concerned that I will unwittingly remain somewhere that smells bad and be thought to be the source of it.
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51 comments:
I feel for Meade, being deprived the wonders of the Dutch Oven.
Said Kirkland Shave...
Poor man, named after a Costco product!
"Poor man, named after a Costco product!"
There's another guy quoted in the article and his name is Alex Glasscock.
.."There's another guy quoted '''' Well... I once knew a very, very nice lady named Myra Lipschitz. Are we sure this wasn't an A.I. generated article?
There's another guy quoted in the article and his name is Alex Glasscock.
Well, you got me there. I've got ancestors with that surname, so I won't head down the funny name road any more.
My wife is a ICU nurse and has a horrible sense of smell which I think is the ideal attribute for someone in her profession.
I used to work with a guy named Growcock.
When I started ozempic I had epic gas for about four months, luckily it was April 2020, so I was never in public and I live alone.
The gas went away and I take a magnesium supplement for that other problem.
I know a couple of people, overweight, that started on GLP drugs but had to quit because it made them so miserable. A couple of others that quit when the insurance ran out and they could no longer afford $1500/month. I can envision the treatment regimens becoming a lot more refined over time, non-standardized dosages and maybe better use of those real-time blood sugar monitoring devices. Feedback is always the best way to learn.
Gastrointestinal transition therapy.
All for real? Does anyone remember the four pilots of the crashed Korean airline at SFO? Ho Lee Fuk, Wi Too Lo, Sum Ting Wong, and Bang Ding Ow.
users on platforms like Reddit describe 'Homer Simpson burps' or excessive gas causing discomfort in social settings."
This happens to me a lot with grok—it takes my question in a direction away from what I asked for, often by inserting politics into a question that deliberately ignored the political angle.
It happens often enough that I rarely bother with grok despite how easy Musk has made it to use.
I know one guy who is on Ozempic. He complains about it making him feel nauseous but I haven't noticed him farting or belching - excessively.
put your finger on the word in this comment thread that made my brain scream "SHATTERED!".
I have a well-loved Kirkland hoodie, but I don't wear it in June.
I assume the drug just makes you less hungry. Never been my problem. When dieting, its take a week or so to get into the "zone" and then smaller amounts of food are OK. My problem - I get too much pleasure from food. When I was fed horrible hospital food for 3 weeks, I lost a ton a weight. I ate 1/2 of what they gave me.
I worked at Badcock Furniture here in Jacksonville when I was in college 50+ years ago. It's still in business even if I'm not.
Many years ago I worked in phone customer service for a magazine. Part of our job was to get yelled at by subscribers angered by the tactics of the jerks in marketing. On rare occasions, someone would take revenge on an abusive customer by putting something offensive in their profile, like changing their name to “the asshole at” on the address label. Which, of course, always led to another angry phone call.
I got a call from a woman one day about her subscription and, when I pulled up her account, the name was “Seymour Butts.” I took a deep breath and braced myself for what was about to happen.
“Am I speaking to Ms. Butts?”
“Yes.”
Where I used to work, we received an employment application from a guy, I presume Chinese, who gave his name as Long Wang, We didn't hire him; I'm fairly sure penis envy was not a factor.
RCOCEAN II said...
I assume the drug just makes you less hungry.
you're More than allowed.. to assume anything you want; this is america.
but; NOPE they do a LOT more/worse than that..
i'm not on Ozempic, i'm on metformin, and when people ask me about its side affects, i causally mention that it makes me bulimic.. and REALLY Hope that they'll drop the matter.
Let's just say, they make you digest food Far less efficiently.
OH! and make you far less tolerant of insulin
She who smelt it dealt it. You're good to go, Althouse.
Indian names encountered at a corporate job - Hardik and Dikshit. Giggles from globalism.
…Vickie Cox’s dad was Dick Cox…and there’s been a couple Michael Hunts, never Mike…
…as the Simpsons tag is on the Michaels are worthy of a Bart and Lisa crank call to Moe…
Put the fork down and exercise!
The Glascocks were a well-known family in the Rectortown, Virginia area with mills and roads named after them. When JEB Stuart set off on his disastrous attempt to go around Union forces just before Gettysburg, he and his cavalry went by night, single file along a little known road, Glascock Road, over the Catoctins. This took them past Federal lines and watch towers.
I once retraced the whole of JEB Stuart's route through Virginia and Maryland. Parts of the old roads are still there. This relates to Ozempic because Stuart seized the enitre convoy supplying the US Army in that area and took it with him. This weighted him down and slowed his cavalry down to supply column speed and this led in turn to other disasters such as not showing up at Gettysburg on Day 1, just as Ozempic is making people less athletic even though they lose weight. Both seemed like a good idea at the time.
Ibogaine: "we received an employment application from a guy, I presume Chinese, who gave his name as Long Wang"
That was the punch line of a cute MADTv sketch where the DMV and the Porn Star Name Registry were next door and constantly got each other's customers.
RR,
JSM
Grok speaks in the first-person, calling itself "I". That seems to be an anthropomorphism that most people don't seem to mind.
Is the same true of sponsored comments? What if a "commenter" is really a group of employees of a paid political consultancy putting out the party line day after day? How fraudulent is it for such a "commenter" to present as if it is a single person posting their own thoughts and ruminations?
To go further, what if that "commenter" inserts homey little nuggets about their "personal life" to further the deception? What if the personnel writing the comments rotates over time but the same handle is retained?
I would guess that such "commenters" try to avoid outright deception for legal reasons -- if so, what are the boundaries?
Wildswan: Ozempic is making people less athletic even though they lose weight
Details? Why it would make people less athletic? Muscle loss? But why muscle loss rather than fat loss (if someone keeps exercising)?
Don't forget NASCAR driver Richard Trickle, who went by "Dick."
Retreat's motto,
PUT DOWN THE FORK
BACK AWAY FROM THE TABLE
EVERYTHING'S GONNA BE ALRIGHT
Gerda, any weight loss program, be it drugs or just diet, that results in rapid weight loss causes muscle loss - on average, muscle loss accounts for 1/3 of all weight lost. My understanding is that ozempic use plus lack of strength training can up that to 40%.
While she is not on any of these weight loss drugs, I think my elderly mother has been deliberately trying to lose weight in the belief that it make it easier for her to move around (she was 222 pounds in January and was 204 a couple of weeks ago. However, her apparent method looks terrible to me- skipping most of the protein that I prepare for her. Rather than becoming more mobile the last 6 months, she has rapidly progressed in the other direction and I suspect nearly 100% of her recently lost weight was muscle.
Just FYI, keto worked for me. 245 to 215 in three months. Which is what I weighed in college. And you can eat as much as you want. You just can't eat whatever you want.
RCOCEAN - well, that's sort of right but specifics matter. My wife takes Wegovy which works by slowing the rate your stomach releases its contents into your large intestine (effectively). This impacts EVERYTHING you ingest, including liquids. She ran into problems thinking it would be a good idea to drink those meal replacement concoctions if she couldn't eat. Nope! The liquid overloads your stomach and makes you miserable. Same thing happens when you try to keep hydrated on hot days. She's finally getting with it but the aversion therapy to eating took about a year.
C'mon. Kirkland Shave?
Under the ancient and established legal precedent of "He [or she] who smelt it, dealt it," you are safe from suspicion, Prof.
I used to work with a guy named Growcock.
Wasn't Jimmy Carter a penis farmer? No, wait...
You can't grow a Glasscock, you have to blow it...that's my understanding anyway...I didn't ask Grok or anything.
Damn. Scooped again. I suppose I should read the comments before posting, but by then someone had already hit the hanging curveballs.
The Red Sox have a pitcher named Richard Fitz. The jokes about "tight ones" have all been used.
There's a drug I took for a while to combat an unusual headache. Topamax (Topiramate). It was an amazing appetite suppressant. It was dirt cheap too.
My appetite is voracious. A donut isn't worth the trouble. In my mind "donut"="bag of donuts". It's best (and totally, accurately) described as "eating makes me hungry".
Topamax completely counteracted that problem. Two medium slices of pizza and a serving of corn and I was done. The only side effect was nausea. It wasn't even that bad, but it was constant. After a month I was 6-8lbs lighter, but couldn't take it anymore. And anyway, the headache went away.
Another side effect is listed as "decreased cognitive function". I didn't notice anything. But then again, that might be how it gets ya.
Gerda Sprinchorn said...
“Is the same true of sponsored comments? What if a "commenter" is really a group of employees of a paid political consultancy putting out the party line day after day? How fraudulent is it for such a "commenter" to present as if it is a single person posting their own thoughts and ruminations?”
So what are you trying to tell us, Gerda?
Eames: They come here every day to sleep?
[towards Cobb]
Elderly Bald Man: No. They come to be woken up. The dream has become their reality.
“Wildswan: Ozempic is making people less athletic even though they lose weight
Details? Why it would make people less athletic? Muscle loss? But why muscle loss rather than fat loss (if someone keeps exercising)?”
My brother is on Ozempic. He has lost 60 pounds. He says he has no stamina, which makes it hard to exercise. That may be a side effect of the muscle loss.
Christopher B, replying to RCOCEAN, said “ The liquid overloads your stomach and makes you miserable. Same thing happens when you try to keep hydrated on hot days. She's finally getting with it but the aversion therapy to eating took about a year.”
What is the aversion therapy of which you speak?
"any weight loss program, be it drugs or just diet, that results in rapid weight loss causes muscle loss"
If you starve yourself, that is go on an very low calorie diet, your metabolism will go into survival mode, and since muscle costs more to maintain than fat, it will use muscle for fuel before fat.
My juvenile studies of the Baseball Encyclopedia revealed a great 19th century shortstop, Jack Glasscock.
He was no match in the Name Game for the immortal Cannonball Titcomb.
Elon Musk uses Mounjaro, a GLP-1 medication, for weight loss, although he initially tried Ozempic.
New research suggests that weight loss treatments using GLP-1 and dual GLP-1/GIP receptor agonists can lead to significant fat loss while still maintaining lean muscle mass.
The study found that strength training and enough protein were key to keeping muscle while losing weight.
After Instapundit had a link about it, I tried making muffins with a half cup of barley flour. All it suppressed was my appetite for barley muffins.
Natural weight loss is really a matter of developing different habits. You gain the weight due to eating habits, so changing them works. I lost 45lbs in 6 months despite retiring which greatly reduced my activity. I cut out most carbs and all sugar, and I generally don't eat until supper, so about 20 hours fasting. After a short time of this I completely lost my desire to eat for the entire day. Now it's effortless, and I eat whatever I want during my 4 hour window, but still avoid all sugar. I now weight 185, the same as I did in high school. I want to lose 5-10 lbs. more. I quit retirement too. It's incredibly boring and promotes unhealthy habits.
You might have added a newish American wellness retreat, Skyterra in the Pisgah Forest of North Carolina. It is not posh but it does reset your body through exercise, meditation, yoga, and good food. Not a place for someone who wants a glass of wine for dinner. Great place if you want to adopt new habits that will lead to weight loss, better health, and maybe happiness.
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