Oh-oh-oh-zempic-oh-no!
In this post I will give a rundown of the class of GLP-1 agonist drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic. In this post I will cover the good and bad of Ozempic specifically. Ozempic is a once a week injectable drug that is mostly used for weight loss control and diabetes management.
The benefits of Ozempic
One of the most popular drugs in the last few years is Ozempic. The main factor for the wide use of Ozempic is the overall effectiveness it has for weight loss. It also has been prescribed to diabetics to control blood glucose levels. Ozempic is part of a class of drugs known as GLP-1 agonists. GLP-1 agonists refer to glucagon like peptide 1. An Agonist in biochemistry are elements introduced to an organism that attach to a receptor and cause a physiological response. The physiological response in this case greatly causes a reduced appetite from the glucagon-like peptide released.
Negative consequences of Ozempic
In a few other posts I talked about the hormone glucagon and the role of importance it has on a healthy metabolism. GLP-1 agonists are made of a synthetic hormone and the injection of an artificial form of it can potentially have detrimental effects with long term use, but more studies are needed to be conducted to say definitively. Another pitfall that Ozempic has is the weight that is being lost is not solely body fat, but much of the weight is muscle mass and can cause lower bone density….not good. Rapid deterioration of muscle mass is called sarcopenia and a DEXA scan has revealed patients body composition have experienced this while on Ozempic.
Furthermore, they found patients that discontinued used of Ozempic had difficulties gaining the lost muscle mass back and difficult to re-lose body fat. Some side unpleasant side effects have been reported by many of those taking Ozempic. Some of those are nausea, vomiting, fatigue and digestive issues. The digestive complications from Ozempic are gastroparesis which causes the food digestion process to slow and causes food malabsorption issues. I’m just speculating but the appetite suppression from the drug provides may be due in part of how long the food is in the digestive system. One of the other benefits from Ozempic I talked about was blood glucose control, but Ozempic can cause glucose to drop to dangerously low hypoglycemic ranges.
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