So, so many kids are taking so, so much Ozempic

More and more teenagers are using Ozempic and Wegovy than ever before – and that may not necessarily be a good thing.

A new study published in Journal of the American Medical Association reports that among people aged 12-25, there was a nearly 600 percent increase in prescriptions for GLP-1 agonists such as Ozempic and Wegovy over the past three years.

In 2020, the study found that approximately 8,700 prescriptions for GLP-1 drugs, which mimic the feeling of fullness in the stomach and have been on the market for decades before Ozempic came on the scene, were written per month.

By 2023, the same year the American Pediatric Association began recommending that teenagers get weight-loss surgery and medication in an effort to more aggressively treat childhood obesity, that number had risen to more than 60,000.

Some young takers of the hard-to-take drug have seen incredible results, like Tennessee teenager Israel McKenzie, who told Associated Press that he had lost 110 pounds over nine months and felt much better about himself and his health.

But between the side effects these drugs can produce and the prevalence of eating disorders among young people, those kinds of stories and the growth of young people given these drugs may not be cause for celebration.

Perhaps one of the biggest problems with this class of drugs is the wide range of side effects, which include everything from dizziness, stomach cramps and nausea to more serious conditions such as gastroparesis, which is when the stomach someone is paralyzed.

Because there haven’t been many studies on how GLP-1 specifically affects teenagers, there doesn’t appear to be any greater risk of teens developing GLP-1 side effects.

However, the concept of giving a child a medication that they or a parent must inject that could make them sick raises questions of consent, especially if the teen is too young to understand the consequences or is given these drugs against them. will.

In short, it’s a topic that deserves a lot of nuance. Along with pop culture’s obsession with Ozempic as a kind of memetic shorthand for rapid weight loss, some doctors are concerned that teenagers may be getting the wrong signals.

“If young people get the message ‘your body is wrong and to fix it, here’s a pill’, it can cause a cascade of reverting to quick fixes, low self-esteem and negative body image that can last for years. undo” , said nutritionist and health expert Lexy Penney WebMD earlier this year.

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