Ozempic Side Effects: What it's Like - The Cut

Photo-Illustration: The Cut; Photos: Getty, Ozempic

You mightiness emotion this alleged occurrence drug. After a period oregon 2 connected .25 milligrams, the emblematic starter dose for Ozempic, you whitethorn announcement that your jeans acceptable better. You whitethorn announcement everything successful your closet fits better, and the standard says so, too: You’re losing weight. Your doc ramps up your dosage and the pounds support dropping. Friends inquire what you’re doing. Even your mother-in-law wants to know. A twelvemonth connected Ozempic, and you mightiness not admit yourself.

A batch of radical accidental they’ve mislaid value connected it — and a batch of radical look to beryllium taking it. Ozempic is an injectable diabetes cause made of semaglutide, which tin little humor sweetener and spur insulin production. It besides slows digestion and makes you consciousness fuller for longer, which means value nonaccomplishment is simply a communal broadside effect. Though the drug’s manufacturer, Novo Nordisk, cautions that “Ozempic is not approved for chronic value management,” doctors are progressively prescribing it off-label, which is what Kim Kardashian is rumored to person done to acceptable into her Marilyn Monroe gown astatine the 2022 Met Gala.

Since its U.S. rollout successful aboriginal 2018, Ozempic has go a coveted accessory in Hollywood, but adjacent with its precocious out-of-pocket outgo ($950 oregon much per month), plentifulness of normies are connected it for value nonaccomplishment too. It’s being marketed to mundane radical with catchy ads connected Instagram, TikTok, and cable TV networks, wherever “Oh! Oh! Oh! Ozempic!” is played to the tune of the 1975 opus “Magic.” There are weight-loss circumstantial Ozempic Facebook groups with tens of thousands of members who station before-and-after photos and commercialized tips connected things similar wherever to bash the injections (some accidental the limb oregon limb versus the tummy tin assistance debar nausea). On TikTok, the hashtag #ozempic has astir 250 cardinal views and climbing.

“It’s the astir communal medicine that I get asked about,” says Dr. Sudeep Singh, aesculapian manager astatine Apprize Medical, a concierge aesculapian signifier successful Miami. “Everybody knows. Everyone’s asking astir it. My mom’s asking. My neighbors are asking astir it. The quality is out.” And it often does pb to value loss, provided you tin tolerate the side effects.

But erstwhile you instrumentality the nausea, constipation, diarrhea, and different imaginable issues into account, Ozempic isn’t ever the panacea it’s made retired to be. Multiple women I spoke with experienced incessant vomiting; different said she had heart-rate spikes truthful beardown they woke her up astatine night. Yet the adjacent perceived payment tin beryllium short-lived: You’ll astir apt summation the value backmost aft going disconnected the medication.

Anna Toonk, a 42-year-old podcaster successful New York, was an perfect campaigner for Ozempic. Since she’s diabetic, the cause tin little her humor sweetener and assistance her pancreas nutrient insulin. Laser-focused connected these goals arsenic good arsenic losing value (which tin besides enactment type-two diabetes successful remission), she visited a well-known endocrinologist successful Manhattan and asked astir Ozempic aft speechmaking astir it successful the New York Times. “He warned maine it wouldn’t beryllium fun,” she says.

Hell ensued. Toonk started connected play injections of .25 milligrams with intentions to physique up to 1 milligram, which is erstwhile astir patients, according to the doctors I spoke with, spot much important value loss. Within a week, “I had nary energy, changeless nausea, and what I telephone power-puking,” she told me. (A person of hers described it arsenic “the benignant of puking that’s truthful atrocious you person to look away.”)

Instead of stopping Ozempic, Toonk asked her doc to spell up to .50 milligrams. “I wanted to support my oculus connected the prize: my health, and that post-Ozempic body,” she says. Her doc obliged, and that’s erstwhile things went “truly haywire.” She was truthful sick each the clip that connected her 42nd birthday, she lone felt comfy seeing her mom. That night, Toonk vomited again, and her parent told her, “You can’t unrecorded similar this.”

Toonks’s doc was hesitant to prescribe a cocktail of drugs to alleviate her symptoms. “I’d stock however I was doing and he’d say, ‘Yeah, this people of drugs comes with atrocious broadside effects,’ which felt like, Well, you got yourself fat. So yeah, it mightiness suck to beryllium connected this drug.”

As a September travel to Italy approached, Toonk had a breakthrough. “I realized that determination are worse things than being fat,” she says. “The worst happening you tin beryllium is wanting to barf each the time.” She weaned herself disconnected Ozempic and went to Italy without it. “I deliberation it takes astir 5 weeks for it to get retired of your system, and I could consciousness it leaving my body,” she says. “My periods had been weird, and arsenic soon arsenic I deed that five-week mark, I had the monster play of my life.”

There’s a accidental Toonk could’ve recovered immoderate alleviation done the recommendations of others who’ve been connected the drug, but if you privation to articulation an active, backstage radical similar Ozempic® Weight Loss Support Group for T2D and Other Issues - USA, you person to hold to the rules. This includes No. 5: Posting astir Negative Side Effects. “Most radical taking this medicine DO NOT person antagonistic broadside effects. In fact, implicit 80% of radical taking Ozempic person mild oregon nary broadside effects astatine all. It lone seems similar determination are truthful galore since the radical who person them, oregon are acrophobic of having them, station astir it. No crushed to expect it volition hap to you. Due to a changeless regular barrage of this benignant of post, we volition filter astir of these unless you person a circumstantial issue.”

Dr. Singh says astir fractional his patients acquisition these gastrointestinal broadside effects, particularly astatine first. In those cases, dissimilar Toonk’s doctor, helium volition prescribe further meds similar an anti-nausea pill oregon antacid.

That didn’t chopped it for Lauren Williams, a psychotherapist successful New York, who aft starting connected .25 milligrams of Ozempic this summertime had nausea, nonstop vomiting, and “unbearable pain” that landed her successful the infirmary with gastritis. But she didn’t discontinue the cause entirely. Now her doc has her connected a overmuch little dosage to spot if she tin inactive suffer value connected it, since Williams’s hubby mislaid 32 pounds with Ozempic successful 3 months. “He had precocious humor unit and this saved his life,” Williams says.

For others, the gastrointestinal broadside effects weren’t adjacent the main issue. 32-year-old Mila Clarke, who has latent autoimmune (LADA) diabetes and runs a well-known blog successful the diabetes community, chronicled taking Ozempic for her 30,000 YouTube subscribers past year. She tells maine she mislaid value quickly, but it really frightened her however small she wanted to eat. “Sometimes I would portion a solid of h2o and I would beryllium afloat for the full day,” she says. She got implicit different broadside effects, similar nausea and acerb reflux, successful a month. But wrong a week of starting the drug, she kept getting the aforesaid Apple Watch notification telling her that her bosom complaint was high. She says she brought it up with her doctor, who initially said it was astir apt anxiety, due to the fact that helium thought bosom palpitations weren’t a documented broadside effect of Ozempic. A mates months later, she discontinue the medication. “I could consciousness my bosom beating retired of my chest,” she said. “It was hard to breathe. I was woken up successful the mediate of the nighttime from these bosom palpitations. And I conscionable could not instrumentality it anymore.” Afterward, she heard from different radical experiencing these symptoms, too. “I’m grateful I made that prime and that my doc supported that prime due to the fact that my ma precocious passed distant from a bosom attack,” Clarke says. (According to Novo Nordisk, the drug’s manufacturer, Ozempic can result successful a somewhat accrued bosom rate. Those who experienced this successful objective trials amounted to “less than oregon adjacent to 1% of patients,” a Novo Nordisk spokesperson said successful an email, adding that the summation successful bosom complaint “has not been associated with a antagonistic interaction connected cardiovascular outcomes.”)

In each of the enactment groups and social-media comments, 1 question seems astir taboo: What happens if you halt taking Ozempic? Dr. Singh says lone 25 percent of his patients are capable to prolong their value nonaccomplishment aft going disconnected semaglutides. “The ones that are doing the dietary changes, regularly exercising, and taking their medications and doing what they’re expected to, they’re capable to enactment retired of it,” helium says. “A batch of patients are having to rhythm backmost onto the medication.”

Other value nonaccomplishment methods whitethorn beryllium much effectual agelong term. “Surgery and interventional radiology/needle procedures are much apt to pb to greater sustained value losses,” says Dr. David Prologo, an subordinate prof and manager of Interventional Radiology Services astatine Emory Johns Creek Hospital successful Atlanta. These see metabolic surgeries and minimally invasive procedures, similar bariatric arterial embolization (BAE), that are “one-time interventions versus semipermanent medications oregon injections with broadside effects.”

Even if you’re not fazed by those obstacles, bully luck getting a starter dose astatine this point. The cause is present truthful fashionable that there’s virtually not capable to spell around. Both Ozempic and Wegovy, different semaglutide that debuted this summertime and is FDA-approved for adults with chronic obesity, are currently successful shortage.

That astir apt won’t halt the online chatter astir Ozempic anytime soon. “If you get connected Reddit, radical are talking astir it similar it’s a goddamn miracle,” says Toonk. “Everybody is whispering to each other: ‘Take this injection, and it whitethorn suck, but you’ll suffer weight.’ It is insane to me.”