Nearly 30 million Americans use GLP-1 diabetes and weight loss drugs to improve their health but not everyone sees the same results.
While some users report transformative, positive impacts, others say nausea and gastrointestinal side effects have forced them off the medications.
The Independent asked people around New York City if their hopes for taking a GLP-1 drug matched up with the reality of the experience.
One New Yorker, Val Wallach, 66, explained she had recently started taking Wegovy to help her lose weight. She has lost 12 pounds in a couple of months on the shot but it’s not working as well anymore and she is “starting to get the food noise back.”
“So, I’m trying to figure out what the right dosing is,” she told The Independent. If increasing the dosage doesn’t work, she says she’ll consider switching drugs to another GLP-1.
Shekinah Lewis-Hackett, 35, and her husband Lewis Hackett, 64, who were visiting the city from Atlanta, Georgia, have both been on GLP-1s for a couple of years.
“Before I started taking the GLP-1, I knew I would have some stomach aches, but it was gonna kill a lot of the food noise that I was experiencing when it came to eating and overeating,” Shekinah explained.
She lost 40-50 pounds after a year and a half on Zepbound shots.
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“But when I did start taking them, I had some nausea, at first. And then my body got used to it after the second week and I started eating less, craving less, had to remind myself to drink water because I wasn’t drinking anything at all. I could go a whole day and realize, “Oh God, I haven’t eaten or drank anything,’” she said.
She said she had to set reminders to eat and drink so she wouldn’t feel nauseous.
Lewis Hackett, who has Type 2 diabetes, suffered from “stubborn weight.” He was put on Mounjaro by his doctor to help him lose it and it worked. He’s lost around 30 pounds. “So all my clothes are falling off me,” he told The Independent.
Ria Das, a 27-year-old from New Jersey, said her father had been taking Ozempic for the past two years. There was still a lot “unknown around Ozempic” at the time, she noted.
“And he had a lot of weight loss from it. But he was originally put on it because he is diabetic,” Das said. “ He gained a lot of weight over the last couple of years, so the Ozempic helped with that. It helped temper the diabetes and his eating to be a little more controlled.”
He hasn’t experienced a lot of side effects, either. “He probably will end up sticking with it,” Das said.
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