I had a chance to chat to my GP yesterday about a couple of matters, and some interesting stuff came out.
First: I’ve reached my “goal” weight of 220lbs — my weight after boot camp in the army back in 1977 — so I asked the doc whether I should keep doing the weekly Ozempic jab. His response was that in addition to its weight-loss properties, Ozempic has been shown to lower the risk of heart disease by over 20%. While I myself have a very healthy heart, my family (especially on my mother’s side) has had a history of heart issues (bypasses, stents etc.), and indeed several have died from heart disease. So the doc suggested that I keep taking the Ozempic because as I’m almost 70, this would be a prudent prophylactic measure. (This is also true of my gout medication, which I continue to take — albeit at a half-tab strength — even though I haven’t had a gout flare-up in well over a dozen years. But as he pointed out, maybe it’s because of the daily half-tab that the flare-ups no longer occur.)
Second: I had read in the Daily Mail (can’t find the article, but it’s not important) that one should not take blood pressure meds (e.g. Valsartan) close to when you have your coffee. The reason given was that caffeine takes away the slow-release coating on the drug, and instead of the magic ingredient trickling into the system over a few hours. it all gets dumped into the body in one shot. In some people, this can be problematic. The doc confirmed this, and suggested that I take my BP med (and all my other meds) at bedtime instead, saying that studies have shown that most drugs work better anyway when taken thus. (The problem is that most people forget to take their drugs at night — but as I already have to take my glaucoma drops every night before bed, I can just add my meds to that routine, no problem.)
Corollary: One of the reasons I continue to read the awful Daily Mail is because occasionally among the celebrity dreck and panicky headlines can be found articles of real value. Among American online publications, such articles are seldom published because there’s no blood, there are no politics / celebrities and no scare headlines to be had. (I have never, for example, got any such articles out of Breitbart or any other of the U.S. news sources I peruse on a daily basis.) In this particular case, the information was extremely helpful.
So the Daily Mail doesn’t always suck.