Ozempic and eating disorders
It was only a matter of time before I showed up here, on the internet, ready to share my opinions about the latest weight-loss trend that’s on the tips of everyone’s lips. So here I am.
When Ozempic first hit the airwaves, I was skeptical. It was billed as a medication for people with diabetes, but that’s no longer what we, the consumer, think about when we hear the name.
Now we think of Ozempic as a way to lose weight faster, to leapfrog the traditional weight-loss methods. It’s the magical cure-all for our dieting woes, a final answer to all the diets we’ve tried and failed. We’re hoping that one day we’ll be able to afford the exorbitant cost of this miracle drug. But like with any other health hazard masked as a diet, Ozempic isn’t all it seems.
Ozempic’s unintended side effects
Although intended to help people with Type 2 Diabetes regulate insulin, Ozempic has presented some hunger-related side effects (i.e., patients have reported decreased feelings of hunger). By word of mouth, people have gotten wind of this side effect and have been lining up for prescriptions in hopes of experiencing the same effects.
Shockingly, some practitioners see this as an advantage for people who struggle with Binge Eating Disorder (BED). If this drug “turns off” hunger signals, maybe it could stop people from bingeing.
Misinformed physicians may see such drugs as a “quick fix” to conditions like BED, but unfortunately, it’s not that simple.
Eating disorders aren’t simply physiological—they’re also (mainly) mental. Comorbidities such as depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) can occur alongside eating disorders.
Eating disorders are about much more than hunger cues and diets gone wrong. You can’t just turn off an eating disorder with a pill. If that were the case, we could have prevented 30 million Americans from suffering from an eating disorder at some point in their lifetime, and eating disorders wouldn’t have the second highest death rate among mental illnesses, second only to opioid overdoses.
The issue with turning off hunger
If diets worked, we wouldn’t see new regimens sprouting up every few years. When diets inevitably fail, our bodies usually return to their natural size and we continue eating the way we did before the diet. So it only makes sense that the same thing would happen with a medication like Ozempic. If Ozempic quells hunger and then you take Ozempic away, hunger is likely to come back as a normal bodily sensation.
So if someone wants to maintain weight loss, do they have to take this drug forever?
I’m a person who has depression and anxiety, and I take medication for it. The brands and dosages have varied over the years, but medication is likely something I will need to take for the rest of my life.
Why? Because mental illnesses, like eating disorders, are the result of chemical dysregulation in the brain and some need to be regulated with meds. But they also can be regulated with things like lifestyle changes, therapy, a strong social community, and exercise.
All this is to say that EDs aren’t just about hunger cues and weight gain and weight loss and binge eating and starvation. EDs are complex, and they can’t be solved with a pill.
The dangers of abuse and misuse
Despite the body-neutral and fat-positive social movements that are happening around us, we still live in a society that pummels us with messages like thin equals good and fat equals bad, and we should always be wanting to lose weight. And just like the celebrity spokespeople who (dis)graced our TV screens for diet programs like Atkins and Nutrisystem, we’re now seeing a similar ripple effect on the general population: a celebrity achieved that, so I want it, too.
We like to think we have enough moral fortitude to know when we’ve taken things too far, but if we see behaviors of some of our favorite figures go consequence-free, why can’t we experience the same?
I think back to my early days of my eating disorder, when Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan were photographed and making headlines for their small bodies and “party girl” personas. They may have been engaging in destructive behaviors, but to me, an impressionable young woman, they were glamorous. I liked to pretend my life was like theirs—drinking excessively, starving myself to the bone, and feeling free. If that’s what made the magazine covers, it must be worth having.
We face the same comparison dangers with Ozempic. While some patients who really need it may benefit from its effects, there will always be those who misuse it. And when drugs aren’t used for their intended purpose, the put-togetherness starts to unravel.
Another eating disorder in disguise
We don’t yet know the long-term health effects of drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, but we do know that eating disorders are deadly. The proximity of these drugs to the harmful effects of starvation are cause for concern. Because just like with any dieting fad, there is risk for snapback. But in this case, the risks are much greater and more severe.
Want to learn more about the link between Ozempic and eating disorders?
Click here to read a well-informed essay written by Cole Kazdin, author of What’s Eating Us: Women, Food, and the Epidemic of Body Anxiety.
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