Since GLP-1s like Ozempic and Wegovy burst onto the market for weight loss, I’ve been talking to patients about their experiences on these drugs. Over the years, I’d gathered up a sizable collection of stories about insurance barriers, side effects and disappointments. Something like half of the people who start a GLP-1 don’t continue, and I wanted to dig into why. Reporting doesn’t always lead where you’d expect. The answers we got back from our Times Opinion/Morning Consult poll of current and past GLP-1 users were overwhelmingly positive. People were happy with these medications. Not only that, but they reported generally feeling better on GLP-1s. And most intriguing, most said they would continue taking them for reasons other than prescribed. As I write in my Times Opinion essay this week, it’s time to stop thinking about these drugs as just weight loss and diabetes tools. Instead, the people we surveyed were on GLP-1s for conditions and diseases as varied as long Covid, lupus, concussion, addiction, perimenopause and irritable bowel syndrome. Many reported finding relief. But a lot of this experimenting was happening outside of the health care system, and was not being captured by doctors and scientists. Researchers have been scrambling to figure out why the drugs seem to help with such an array of health issues. While they’re not finding a single narrative to explain all the results, one striking explanation has to do with the drugs’ effects on inflammation. Altogether, GLP-1s represent a new frontier in medical science. It’s also a story of what happens when medicine escapes the boundaries of the health system and the implications for regulation and policy. I call this the great American GLP-1 experiment, and believe it’s only just beginning.
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