2023-05-18 22:03:12
When actress Mindy Kaling walked the Oscars red carpet and unveiled what appeared to be a dramatic weight loss, social media commentary immediately began. “Mindy Kaling threw the first stone at the Ozempic factory,” wrote Alexis Wilson op Twitter.
But it diabetes injection drug Ozempic is so fizzy that Jimmy Kimmel even referenced it in his opening monologue on Oscars night and said, ‘Everyone looks so amazing. As I look around this room I can’t help but wonder: Is Ozempic suitable maybe something me?‘
The sudden popularity of Ozempic
Ozempic is for people with diabetes. The chemical composition is the same as that of Wegovy, which is intended to treat obesity, and which received a lot of attention when Elon Musk tweeted that he took it to make it ‘fit, ripped and look healthy. Both work by mimicking the action of a naturally occurring hormone, GLP-1, which helps the body make more of its own insulin, says dr. Deborah Ohan endocrinologist at Sharp HealthCare in San Diego.
“It’s thought that because this hormone acts in different places, in addition to its effect on insulin, it also acts on the brain to reduce the feeling of hunger,” she says. “It works directly on the gastrointestinal tract to slow down the passage of food and thereby increase that feeling of fullness.”
Basically, it makes your body digest food more slowly, and patients who take it report feeling barely hungry or needing to remind themselves to eat. As rumors and news stories circulated that celebrities took it – from Elon Musk to Remi Bader to Chelsea Handler to the Kardashians – more and more people started to ask their doctors for the medicines. The interest has led to a shortage of medicines for people with diabetes or obesity who may really need them. And for those without those conditions, getting insurance to cover the drugs can be difficult, meaning paying more than $1,000 a month. Not to mention the plastic surgery bills for repairing the so-called ‘Ozempic face‘, with users losing so much weight that their facial skin becomes sagging and looks older. Plus, says Oh, the drugs can have intense side effects.
Ozempic satisfies hunger, but does the effect last?
“Because it acts on the gastrointestinal tract, it can cause a lot of nausea and even pretty severe vomiting, so not everyone who qualifies can even tolerate the medication,” she says. “Especially if you use it for non-medical reasons and maybe not under the same amount of supervision, the side effects can be serious.” And in the worst case it can cause pancreatitis, a very serious inflammatory condition that can even lead to hospitalization and serious consequences.’
Oh says there is also a misconception about the drugs as an aid to rapid weight loss – they work slowly for a year, not like a fast diet to lose five kilograms before a wedding. “And they won’t help you keep that weight off,” she says. “As soon as you stop the medication, that weight comes back.”
Ozempic is not for off-label use, says Allison Schneider, a spokeswoman for Novo Nordisk, which makes the drug. While we recognize that some healthcare providers may prescribe Ozempic for patients whose goal is weight loss, we do not promote, suggest or encourage off-label use of our medications and are committed to fully complying with all applicable U.S. laws and regulations in the promotion of our products,” she wrote in an email. “We rely on healthcare providers to evaluate a patient’s individual needs and determine which drug is right for that particular patient.”
She says that Wegs, also made by Novo Nordisk, is intended for weight loss and is used to treat obesity along with dietary and lifestyle changes. And she says both drugs come from “an established class of drugs, which have demonstrated long-term safety in clinical trials.”
“The most common side effects are gastrointestinal related,” she wrote. ‘Specific for Wegs the most common side effects may be nausea, diarrhoea, vomiting, constipation, stomach ache (abdominal pain), headache, tiredness (tiredness), upset stomach, dizziness, bloating, belching, gas, stomach flu and heartburn.’
Intuitive eating
In some ways it is Ozempic presented as part of the anti-dieting movement, acknowledging that diets don’t work and that drugs may be the only answer. There is also another buzz philosophy that stems from the backlash to the diet, but its approach is the antithesis of taking a drug to feel full.
It will be intuitive eating and it’s been around since the 1990s, when two nutritionists pioneered the radically simple nutritional philosophy: eat when you’re hungry and stop eating when you’re full. You can eat whatever you want, just pay attention to how your body feels, and you won’t overeat.
Fast forward to now, and Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch suddenly get a lot of attention for their decades-old philosophy. The nutritionist first came up with the idea in response to the calorie-counting and low-fat trends of the ’80s, but it also meshes well with today’s anti-diet reaction and embracing your body culture. Intuitive eating is popular with celebrities like Demi LovatoLena Dunham and Jennifer Lawrence and the hashtag #intuitiveeating has been used billions of times on TikTok. According to Tribole, this is because their philosophy fits in so perfectly with the anti-dieting movement which has become so popular in recent years.
But Tribole is shocked to see injectable drugs such as Wegovy en Ozempic doing what she calls “co-opting the anti-diet movement,” because intuitive eating is about respecting bodies of all sizes. The philosophy does not promise that you will be size 0, but that your body will be healthy and your attitude towards food will change.
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The difference between philosophy and medicine is great. While intuitive eating you learn to pay attention to your body’s hunger signals and eat only when you are hungry and stop eating when you are full, injectable drugs make your body feel no hunger at all, or very little. So the philosophy is about trusting your body to know what it needs, while the drugs are about masking your body’s signals.
Co-author Elyse Resch says the idea that you’d have to take medication for the rest of your life to avoid gaining weight again raises the question of why our culture says you have to be thin.
“You’re being told you’re not OK in the body you’re in, and this is your way of changing that body, but being told what body you’re supposed to be in is such an oppression,” she says . “We promote oppression of people in bodies that don’t fit this culturally thin ideal.”
Resch thinks the renewed interest in intuitive eating stems from anti-dieting and the #metoo movement of 2016 and the social justice movement of 2020.
“It’s like, ‘stop telling me I have to be thin to be acceptable in this world and spend my life thinking about how I’m eating, whether it’s good, whether it’s going to lead me to thinness’,” says Resch. “I want to eat what I want to eat, I want to be in the body I’ll be in, and I’m done with it.”
Resch jokes that she has a business because people pay her to say she just have to eat what they want. But it’s more than that, of course, and many people’s relationship with food is so twisted that even hearing something as basic as “we should eat when we’re hungry and stop when we’re full” can be truly revolutionary.
“You want to feel good, so you tend to learn to eat when you’re comfortably hungry and learn to stop when you’re comfortably full, because you want to feel good, and you know you can get what you want when you’re hungry again in a few hours,” she says. “It’s such an amazing, exciting experience.”
And, she says, changing that attitude means you get back so much of your brain space, because you’re not obsessed with food. “We have a goal, and if your goal is to stay as thin as possible and do everything you can to do that, it really takes your mind, your mind time and space and everything, right?” she says.
For her co-author Tribole, every new diet or drug means people intuitive eating have to keep learning. “As long as people endorse intentional weight loss in some way, there will be a need for it intuitive eating to help them as a way out of the suffering that comes when you get so focused on changing your body size at any given time,” she says.
Tribole says when you’re trying to lose weight, you lose confidence in yourself while eating and anxiety around food increases.
“If you outsource your eating decisions to plans, influencers, and so on, it comes at the cost of disconnecting from yourself, and so it really becomes a mess,” she says. “Then there is the need to learn how to eat again. And so what I’m saying is, if you’re tired of being on the diet treadmill and being a dieting victim, we have a way to get you through this.”
And it starts with listening to your body, not jumping on what the current diet or trend is.
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