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Life-changing drug, and beating big pharma at their game


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I know many of you will be more interested in the latter, but I'm more interested in how life-changing this has been for me, and for many others.  The fact that they are "gouging" has to be measured against the immense effort to create it, and how much value it provides to society.

 

What is it?  Tirzepatide, brand name Mounjaro.  It's a GLP-1 and GIP agonist, the first of its kind ever, with stunning results.  What does this mean?  It stabilizes blood sugar for type 2 diabetics, or like me, pre-diabetics.  I don't have diabetes, but I also don't have fully normal/stable blood sugar.  It's been an ongoing challenge.  I also didn't know how much this factored into many other parts of health and life.  It does it through multiple mechanisms; better insulin response, and slowed gastric emptying.  If your food moves slower, you absorb it slower, and eat less of it.

 

Mounjaro has a retail price of $1044 per month.  Notice I said per month, not for any given quantity.  This is the game I'm beating.  It's sold in a pen injector, which delivers the entire thing in a quick subcutaneous shot.  The pens come in milligram doses of 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, and 15.  Each is in a 0.5ml suspension.  The price is the same.  That's right, you pay the same to be "fixed" no matter the dosage.  It is recommended to start at 2.5 weekly, and move up to 5 in four weeks.  Then see how the results are and probably, but not always, continue moving up.

 

I did none of that.  After many many hours of research, I decided on a new course.  Also, I had not realized that the pens were all the same price, and had no idea I could defeat them.  See, I was prescribed the 2.5 dose, and even with a coupon and insurance, my price would be $750 per month.  Motherfucker.  My searching and reading led me to various sources of a generic version of the drug, which is not legal of course, so that also made me happy.  Beating two systems at once?  Cool.  I started buying a dry powder version and reconstituting it myself, and just self injecting with a normal insulin needle.  I paid $150 for 5mg at first, to see how it worked.  That would still be expensive.  The results were pretty much a miracle, I'll get to that later.  Once I new I wanted more, I shopped harder and found a few other sources.  One was $100 per 10mg vial, from a US vendor.  They delivered in a few days.  The other is in China, $490 for ten vials of 10mg, but delivery is a month-ish.  Some people get it faster, some slower.  So anyway, I've been using various vendors of the dry powder.

 

Meanwhile, I learn about the game of the pens all being the same price.  So it would be $750 for the four pens of 2.5, or for the four pens of 15.  LOL, ok, I can see how to beat this.  Inject the pen into a sterile vial, instead of my skin, and dispense from there.  Too easy.  Also feeds my love of hacking systems.  Along with this, my reading led to the knowledge that the half-life of the drug is only 117 hours, so just under five days.  The once a week recommendation from the manufacturer?  Marketing, and ease of use for morons.  It would be too hard to get patient compliance for dosing every 3, 4, or 5 days.  And marketing "only once a week!" has a lot more power.  Motherfuckers.

 

So, I started on the dry powder at a rate of 2.5mg per three days.  This is way more than a recommended starting dose.  "Carlos, you moron, you're playing with your life and you think you know better than the doctors?"  Nah, my doc said it's perfectly fine, but that I will feel shitty.  The low recommendation is based on--marketing and patience acceptance.  If you get hit with major side effects you may hate it and/or stop.  So they start you on light side effect, but for longer.  Fuck that bullshit.  Rip the band-aid off.  Give me all the problems hard, now, and get it over with.  Also, I don't want the ups and downs of a weekly dose.  I got a spreadsheet showing the blood accumulation levels, and ran calculations on what would get me to a therapeutic dose the fastest, and be maintainable.  Again, doc says, you're not gonna die, roll with it.  Actually he said "I can't advise you to ignore the recommendations, but you'll be fine."

 

So my blood sugar is super stable.  I went from hitting 160-some regularly and peaks of 190+ to never hitting 130 at all (which is the normal max).  I went from a waking level of 105 (pre-diabetic level) to being in the 70s and 80s.  They consider 100 to be pre-diabetic, and below 90 to be ideal.  So cool, how does this change your life?  Well, I'm suddenly sleeping all night.  I'm suddenly full of energy most days, and have few energy drops that I had lived with and considered normal.  And then, one day...a friend makes a comment that makes me realize that the tinnitus I was left with after COVID, is gone.  And along with it the recurrent inner ear imbalance shit.  This drug is implicated in a shitload of inflammatory issues and auto-immune issues being resolved.  It's a possible treatment for MS and related disorders.  Diabetes is an autoimmune disorder too (for those who are very aware of T1/T2 differences, new research says T2 probably is too).  

 

Blood sugar problems have a shitload of other effects, and they are all gone.  The overall impact of the totality of the problem was hidden from me until they were gone.  I'm not exaggerating when I say that it's massively life changing, in so many completely unpredictable ways, fixing things I've taken for granted for decades.  I had this conversation with the guys at MotoGP; one of their wives has been taking it, and they say "life changing" is an under-exaggeration.  Also MotoGP pointed out all my resolved issues.  I got up way early, drove an hour, walked 8.1 miles through the entire day, drove an hour, sat around bullshitting, and was the last one ready for bed, at 2am.  Got up at 7, drove an hour, only walked six miles this time, drove a couple hours for various reasons, and again last one to be tired.  A side problem of diabetes is frequent urination, and being thirsty all the time, even while drinking lots of water.  That would suck at the track, and driving a lot.  But those things are gone.  Done.

 

A side effect of slowed gastric emptying is eating less.  Being forced to eat less.  Had to learn this.  But great, eating more rationally is good.  I learned I had extremely fast emptying, which led to never feeling full.  The brain connection was fucked.  It also means drinking less, including alcohol, and it has a very reduced effect.  Wouldn't you want to drink more?  Nope, the opposite.  And then I find myself thinking, why are all my friends fucking drunk?

 

Anyway, there's the long story.  I still have more powder, and now I have my pens.  I want to experiment with the real thing to build a baseline of expectations.  I'm 90% sure one of the vendors is fucking me on overall potency/amount.  But the way to know is to do the pens for a while, and then the dry, and compare results.  I'm wearing a constant glucose monitor so every minute is tracked.  And that was another pharma game to play, but this is already long enough.

 

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I forgot the moron part, and why this bullshit with the pens makes sense for many people.  I'm heavily involved in a subreddit for the generic drug.  People trying to make it affordable.  But...HOLY FUCKING SHIT are people retarded.  Common questions...

 

I've got a 5mg vial and need to do a 2.5mg dose.  How much should I use?  How many doses is it?

 

I've been taking 2.5mg doses and feel nothing.  (Ask some questions) User says they have a 5mg vial and have been taking four doses from each.

 

A woman had been injecting air, because nobody told her to turn the vial upside down.  Could not be bothered to watch a video on how to inject.  
 
Guy injected the entire vial, a three month supply.  (Compounding pharmacies often deliver a huge vial, lyophilized is 10mg max.) Wanted to know what to do.  Other than, you know, posting on social media about it to ask. 
 
I got a DM asking me how to calculate 250mcg to get a dose of 2.5mg.  I'm still unsure what's going on there, nobody sells this in mcg.  I think he was blown away by the concept of simply moving the decimal three places.  Black magic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by 41 minutes ago
 
 

Newbie

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About to order some TZ. How long is a 5mg bottle supposed to last assuming, from what I’ve read, that 2.5 per week is the starting point for me as a beginner?

 

 

 

 

 

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3 minutes ago, blackhawkxx said:

I'm sure life seems so much better when you feel well.

 

I feel like a drug addict.  I can't wait until tomorrow morning when I get to inject myself again.  Fucking weird, isn't it?  But it's a sign of continued progress or something.

 

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14 hours ago, SwampNut said:

I forgot the moron part, and why this bullshit with the pens makes sense for many people.  I'm heavily involved in a subreddit for the generic drug.  People trying to make it affordable.  But...HOLY FUCKING SHIT are people retarded.  


I know pharmacology is an art, but this is why so many people won’t survive long term market disruptions.  Adaptation requires you know what is a substitute for what you need but also how to portion and administer it.  It doesn’t require raw IQ but a willingness to learn and do the effort to figure it out.  My Clomid was available as a generic.  The company making the brand name bought the company making the generic and stopped production.  Thankfully, my compounding pharmacist could get the raw material and make the pills in house for a fraction of the cost…frankly, even cheaper than the generic.

 

Mad applause for learning to do this yourself.  No small achievement.

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4 hours ago, Zero Knievel said:

Mad applause for learning to do this yourself.  No small achievement.

 

Thanks and honestly it's easy, and fun.  Or maybe not easy but my sort of challenge.  This is the sort of thing that just clicks in my head.  Spreadsheet aside, once I can visualize it then it's just obvious.  I've ended up being the go-to expert on the Tirzepatide sub.  Which means I see a lot stupid also.  But a lot of people just need that little nudge to get them over some of the concepts such as mix and usage ratios.

 

Today I'm doing my first mix-up of the real Mounjaro pens.  Wonder how often pharmacists need a water pump plier in their daily work (to bust open the pen).

 

 

If you accidentally double your 2.5 dose you get...4!!  FOUR!!!

538F39DA-A730-4A02-BE3A-5782C8F9D8E4_1_201_a.jpeg

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23 minutes ago, 02XXCA said:

Why does the injector say 15mg / .5ml, shouldn't it be 1.5ml?

 

No, all of the pens are 0.5ml, with whatever dosage they want.  The actual drug is very tiny, the amount of fluid is just to make it measurable and usable.  It's just a solution, and the amount of solution is arbitrary.  Some people reconstitute the dry powder with different amounts based on their dosage plan.  It's irrelevant as long as you do the math on the ratio.  I'm not sure how clear that is, but 99% of that fluid is inert.

 

So I've taken the 15mg per .5ml pen, and injected it into a new sterile vial, to which I had already added 1.0ml of bacteriostatic water.  My total volume is now 1.5ml, with a 15mg dose.  You can see my logic here right?  Now I can measure out any amount, based on that easy power of ten.  My dose rate is 2.5mg, so I measure out 25 units on a standard insulin syringe.  I actually will have slightly more, because the pens never empty completely when you use them as an auto-injector, but I was able to empty it.  It looks like it had .6ml (just eyeballing it).  So I'm actually saving even more by extracting it all.

 

This video is long-ish, but mostly real time, me trying to figure out the pen and then how to mix it.  You can skip around to see the parts that interest you.  I'll be sharing this far and wide.  I'm sure I will be on some kind of list.

 

 

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Also on Rumble in case YT decides it's worthy of censorship, which I really doubt.  But why not spread it around?  Also, it could be fun if the sorts of conspiracy retards who live on Rumble decide to engage in discussion.

 

It takes around 4-5x longer to upload and process the same video on Rumble compared to YT, interesting.

 

https://rumble.com/v2ngd4s-beating-big-pharma-games-mounjaro-pen-disassembly-to-get-partial-doses..html

 

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2 hours ago, SwampNut said:

 

No, all of the pens are 0.5ml, with whatever dosage they want.  The actual drug is very tiny, the amount of fluid is just to make it measurable and usable.  It's just a solution, and the amount of solution is arbitrary.  Some people reconstitute the dry powder with different amounts based on their dosage plan.  It's irrelevant as long as you do the math on the ratio.  I'm not sure how clear that is, but 99% of that fluid is inert.

 

So I've taken the 15mg per .5ml pen, and injected it into a new sterile vial, to which I had already added 1.0ml of bacteriostatic water.  My total volume is now 1.5ml, with a 15mg dose.  You can see my logic here right?  Now I can measure out any amount, based on that easy power of ten.  My dose rate is 2.5mg, so I measure out 25 units on a standard insulin syringe.  I actually will have slightly more, because the pens never empty completely when you use them as an auto-injector, but I was able to empty it.  It looks like it had .6ml (just eyeballing it).  So I'm actually saving even more by extracting it all.

 

This video is long-ish, but mostly real time, me trying to figure out the pen and then how to mix it.  You can skip around to see the parts that interest you.  I'll be sharing this far and wide.  I'm sure I will be on some kind of list.

 

 

Why is age restricted?  

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17 minutes ago, blackhawkxx said:

Why is age restricted?  

 

Why not?  I just figured if any objection about the content could be eliminated, why wouldn't I?  Kids shouldn't be doing this anyway right?  Nobody who should be doing this would be affected by the age restriction in any way.

 

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1 hour ago, SwampNut said:

 

Why not?  I just figured if any objection about the content could be eliminated, why wouldn't I?  Kids shouldn't be doing this anyway right?  Nobody who should be doing this would be affected by the age restriction in any way.

 

No biggie, just curious.  I don't have (and don't want one) a YouTube account.  

 

On a different note, have you bounced what you are doing off our expert Phillip?  Not to say that you aren't doing it right but I would ask.

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I think it would be unfair to ask people for medical advice on a forum, if they are in medicine.  Too many liabilities.  Also, not to demean his skills, but his area of expertise is vastly different from this.  So I've used a combination of my PCP (a DO, family care guy), a third party DNP (I think that's the initials) with a specialty in the drug, and dozens of hours of reading about it.  Another medical professional on the forum and I have had a conversation but again I hate to put anyone on the spot especially publicly.  I won't even tell people who my actual prescriber is in case it creates a problem for her. 

 

It's interesting seeing the different reactions to my posts about this on the subreddit for generic Tirzepatide and the real name brand one.  On the latter, they are downvoting everything to do with using it off-script and my whole post about how to save money.  In the other forum it's full of curious and good engagement.  Fucking sheep.

 

 

 

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10 hours ago, SwampNut said:

I think it would be unfair to ask people for medical advice on a forum, if they are in medicine.  Too many liabilities.  


This was the issue back when I got into anabolic steroids.  Lots of help from other users, but nothing from doctors…which was pretty much criminal (no pun intended) because the AMA basic all threatened doctors with loss of license for advising patients to do anything other than avoid steroid use.  Rather than give sound medical advice and monitoring, they were of no help.  If you were lucky, you found one that would do blood work and not ask questions.  
 

There was even the Catch-22 where anabolic steroids were declared unsafe without scientifically valid testing, and when doctors asked why could they not study the medical benefits and risks of anabolic steroid use, they were told “no” because everyone knew steroids were inherently dangerous and it would be unethical to allow testing.  It wasn’t until there was a significant uptick in hormone therapy for andropause that doctors revisited the challenge to do scientifically valid testing based on the fact that there were now thousands of patients taking sizable doses of testosterone and NOT seeing an avalanche of cancer cases or any of the other promised horror stories.

 

And…for the weeds…this is why a biker I knew who was a med student went back to Israel after becoming a full doctor.  He said he’d only be a pill pusher in the USA and wanted to do real medicine where he, and not the pharmaceutical industry, decides what’s best for his patients.

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We need subforum in Diet & Health Exchange. 

 

For couple of our resident hypochondriacs. 

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This drug has been wonderful for my wife. It is difficult for people to find sometimes as its being prescribed wide open by doctors for weight loss use.

 

My wife must maintain her weight 125 to 130lbs to avoid issues with this med and that is difficult when this will suppress your wants for food. 

 

Her Libre sensor helps monitor her blood sugar and being linked to several people and the alarms set helps keep things consistent. There was a time I would have found her with cuts, bruises or still in the floor multiple times a month from rapid sugar level spikes or drops. 

 

 

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1 hour ago, The Krypt Keeper said:

when this will suppress your wants for food. 

 

I'm still hungry as fuck, like right now, but made a decision to just go to daily intermittent fasting along with this.  What dosage is she on?  I'm doing 2.5mg per three days.  But the drug does make it impossible (well very uncomfortable) to eat a lot, and does stop "food noise."  That's a funny term I'd never heard before, but suddenly understood.

 

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Also, thanks for chiming in here.  I didn't want to mention you by name on a sensitive topic.  I was pretty inspired by what you shared with me in Austin.

 

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3 hours ago, SwampNut said:

 

I'm still hungry as fuck, like right now, but made a decision to just go to daily intermittent fasting along with this.  What dosage is she on?  I'm doing 2.5mg per three days.  But the drug does make it impossible (well very uncomfortable) to eat a lot, and does stop "food noise."  That's a funny term I'd never heard before, but suddenly understood.

 

 

3 hours ago, SwampNut said:

Also, thanks for chiming in here.  I didn't want to mention you by name on a sensitive topic.  I was pretty inspired by what you shared with me in Austin.

 

She is doing 2.5mg once per week, I should be more clear on the suppression of the food cravings. She will not want just any old crap, you want good fresh foods. The thoughts of anything greasy just turns her stomach. Would rather not eat and wait to get something of higher quality, that "food noise" makes perfects sense in the grand scheme of things. Often people eat just because its part of their routine than not and get something quick and fast filled with 2000 calories. 

 

We went to lunch today and she had some grilled fish, steamed broccoli and a baked potato. She doesn't really do a routine of fasting but I highly doubt she will eat anything for dinner and fast till tomorrow morning. Stopped by the grocery store and she was excited to find some fresh Bolillo rolls to make a healthy sandwich for lunches this week. Those few carbs consumed are nothing compared to going someplace for lunch. 

 

She closely monitors her blood sugar, this med doesn't have the side effects of making her nauseous as others in the past. Her A1C levels have also been looking the best in over a decade with this med, believe her last checkup they were 5.6 or 5.5. Also got her wearing a Amazfit smart watch to let her see her sleeping patterns, steps per day and so forth. She easily hits 10k steps a day at work just walking back and forth, the other day she was over 14k. Was wondering if she walked to work or drove. 

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Injecting a concoction of stuff is scary as hell to me, even if it's effectively no different than eating some experimental concoction.  Regardless, your balls and skills to do this are awesome and sharing it is even more awesome.

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Well, one of my Reddit accounts has received a three-day ban for telling people exactly how to order the illegal generics from China.  Not totally unexpected.  I'll have to find how to skirt the line from "discussion" to " instructions" and also get a few more alt accounts going.  I have unlimited IP addresses and emails, it's on.

 

9 hours ago, superhawk996 said:

Injecting a concoction of stuff is scary as hell to me, even if it's effectively no different than eating some experimental concoction.

 

Funny, never thought that all through.  Here I am, looking forward to today's shot.

 

14 hours ago, The Krypt Keeper said:

Often people eat just because its part of their routine than not and get something quick and fast filled with 2000 calories. 

 

I thought I had killed the routine aspect, and junk food.  But now I *really* have.  I was telling myself not to eat on a schedule, but only if needed.  But I didn't really realize...I was telling myself.  Now there's just no food noise telling me to think about it, just nothing.  I mean, I'm hungry, but that's oddly less annoying then "hey, it's 11, have you thought about lunch...tacos?  Hey it's 11:30 and all the normal humans are eating, what about you?"

 

Those A1C numbers are awesome.  I was a lot less fucked, had hit just over 6 but now at 5.1.  And so great that she's getting that on the lowest possible dose.  Unfortunately I'm adjusting and having to increase. 

 

As to the carb comment, I'm finding that this lets me eat them, with no penalty.  That's the other part of food noise; some sort of twisted addiction to the reaction, and then the bounce back from high sugar to low, etc.  It's harder eating well when you also feel shitty from those fluctuations.  One of my early tests was an otherwise healthy gnocchi and veggie meal, but 100g carbs.  And...nothing.  Blood sugar under 130.

 

I have zero desire for hot sauce and spicy things.  Nothing.  Gone.

 

image.jpeg

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Sound terrible to not crave hot sauce and how in the hell can you not crave taco's? These meds are saving your life and ruining it at the same time. :lol:

 

Feels weird to me when out of town to actually go and grab lunch, if I am really hungry there is always a granola bar or protein shake I could get to in my truck. 

 

How are you checking your blood sugar? Finger poke to a meter or a wearable meter? Both are ok, but the wearable one could be easily used for tracking and collecting data of foods and how they affect you. 

 

Forgot to mention the costs to my injections for RA, out of pocket cost per injection for a 100mg/0.1ml dose every 2 months.. $13,400 but for the low price of $5 through my insurance delivered to me in a icepack filled box like clockwork. If I have a misfire from the auto injection (happened 1 time in last 4yrs or so) my doctor grabs one from the fridge and all good. Now, are the costs just inflated to that level knowing that insurance is footing the bill?

 

I go in a few weeks to do my annual 3 month blood work to make sure the meds are not destroying my liver. 

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