Ozempic for weight loss: What you need to know I do have friends, family, and even patients ask me all the time about should I consider taking Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, any of those, you know, numerous drugs that are out there, some aren't approved for weight loss, some are. There's a lot to unpack with who should use it under what circumstances, and what support are they getting when they're using it.
So Ozempic is an injectable drug, FDA approved for [type 2] diabetes, but not for weight loss. It basically looks to mimic what a normally occurring hormone that we have in our bodies does, which is to increase insulin levels, which then lowers sugar, decreases appetite, increases how full someone feels after they eat.
And that hormone is called GLP-1 or glucagon-like peptide-1. So it's looking to do what the body just can't do anymore in order to prevent the long lasting effects of diabetes. It does. It does work for weight loss. And as with many things in medicine, it was sort of a side effect. Right, a beneficial side effect.
The then sort of iteration was, all right, how can we make it work better? And that's how they went from the Ozempic to the Wegovy, which is the one that's approved for weight management. And Wegovy is made by the same manufacturer as Ozempic. It's just a higher dose. The way that it works, the effects on the body are pretty much identical.
Ozempic for weight loss: What you need to know
There are a lot of medications out there for weight management. I think the older medications for weight management really were looking to affect what happens once you eat. And there was orlistat, or Alli, as it was called, which weren't allowing people to absorb a lot. And so, you know, they had these horrible side effects.
The newer classes of medications,Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and similar, they're trying to prevent you from being hungry, or they're trying to make it that when you eat very little, you stay fuller and more satisfied longer. Ozempic is sort of the, you know, the earliest one. Wegovy and Ozempic are the same, and then the newer ones are Mounjaro Zepbound, which is basically the next generation of Manjaro for weight loss, with patients who are not only overweight, but have one of the effects of excess weight.
Mounjaro, Zepbound work the same as Ozempic, or Wegovy but they have an additional ingredient, if you will, or a different mechanism. And that's the GiP. So it's glucagon, insulinotropic, polypeptide say that ten times fast. So it's going at the same effect of increasing insulin levels, but through a different mechanism than Wegovy or Ozempic would.
There are some guardrails or some guidelines for who qualifies for these medications that are specifically FDA approved for weight loss. So Wegovy and Zepbound, there are criteria. You know, it's. A bmi of 30 is considered obese. But 27 with another medical issue that is directly impacted, attributed to, or worsened by being obese, that would make you a candidate.
So we're talking about, in addition to obesity, for example, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, diabetes which we know are very, very strongly correlated to being overweight. Yes. You'd have to consult with a healthcare provider, ideally someone who has had training. You know, there's now obesity medicine certification so that have studied the effects of these and really know how to care for a patient in a more holistic way versus, you know, going online and, you know, getting a, you know "consultation with a medical professional."
Everything You Need to Know About Medical Weight Loss
You don't know who's, you know, answering these questions for you. There's side effects. You know, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, abdominal pain are pretty much. And kind of in that order. They're most common. And there are some data out there that are actually showing that it's increasing the incidence or the complexity of disordered eating.
So what they used to call eating disorders because of the whole yo yo effect, the rapid decline in weight and then the very rapid increase in weight, and often to a level higher than what it was before the weight was lost. And just how it's so out there in social media, for example, that people begin to doubt themselves.
Well, I had a friend who tried it, and they lost 30 pounds in a month, and I'm only losing ten. I'm a failure. And so it really does just confuse things significantly for patients, especially if they're not supported by the appropriate program. The data showed that you can regain up to two thirds of whatever you lost.
So, you know, the bounce back or the lack of the effect is real. Sort of just feeds the narrative of, you can't go off it for the ozempic and similar medications. It's that your body all of a sudden, isn't getting this boost of extra insulin to decrease your blood sugar so dramatically and to affect your satiety and to slow down how fast your stomach empties and things like that.
So the weight just comes right back on. I say, what's your goal? What's your goal and what do you hope to accomplish? Because you know, patients, especially fall into a couple of camps. One is, I just need to kickstart something versus. I've really tried everything, and it's just not working. There is an epidemic of obesity in our country, and we know that there are health related conditions that are worsened or brought on by being overweight, and so getting control over and helping individuals who suffer from being overweight is,
you know, supremely important to us. And for me, as a weight loss surgeon, I affect that change by weight loss surgeries. And there's several options. But, you know, now that there are other options that don't involve surgery, there's the weight-loss medications, and we should really consider them for the right patients under the right circumstances.