Diabetics in panic: looming Ozempic shortage due to diet craze
Apparently I’ve been living under a diet rock for months, because until recently I had never heard of Ozempic. You either? Well: Ozempic is a medicine that is prescribed for type 2 diabetes. It helps keep insulin levels up. But there appears to be a “nice” side effect to Ozempic: it suppresses the appetite. Resulting in weight loss. You may see this coming: Ozempic is now being used not only by diabetics, but also ‘off-label’ for weight loss. The result: a looming shortage of this medicine.
Off-label use means that a medicine is used for something for which it has not been approved. Students taking ADHD medication Ritalin to power through an exam, for example. Or people who want to lose weight and use Ozempic.
How does Ozempic work?
Ozempic is a medicine containing the active substance semaglutide. Semaglutide is similar to a natural hormone called ‘glucagon-like peptide-1’ (GLP-1). This hormone is released by the intestines after a meal. In diabetes, the medicine works by stimulating the release of insulin and inhibiting the release of glucagon. For obesity, the medicine acts on areas (receptors) in the brain that regulate appetite. As a result, you feel full sooner, feel less hungry and have less desire to eat.
Simply put, GLP-1 medicines work by mimicking a hormone that regulates blood sugar levels and suppresses appetite.
Ozempic as a weight-loss drug
One Ozempic injection a week and the kilos fly off. For people who want to lose weight, this sounds like music to their ears. But the side effect is bitter: now that it has been embraced as a weight-loss drug, demand has risen sharply, resulting in shortages, internist and professor of obesity at Erasmus MC in Rotterdam Liesbeth van Rossum told EenVandaag. Although Ozempic is currently approved in the Netherlands only as a diabetes medicine, the people who genuinely need it—people with type 2 diabetes—may soon have to switch to something else.
And switching to another medicine is really not desirable, because patients need to be re-adjusted and their blood sugar levels may become disrupted, according to the Medicines Evaluation Board. Van Rossem agrees: “Most people with type 2 diabetes who stop taking Ozempic subsequently develop higher blood sugar levels. In the short term, this can be dangerous.”
Stopping means gaining weight again
That is why the Board issued a call last year to Ozempic manufacturers and medicine users to use Ozempic only for diabetes patients. So far, this has received little to no response. And that is hardly surprising. The biggest fear of people who lose weight is putting it back on. And a large proportion of people who take Ozempic to lose weight gain weight again after stopping the medicine.
“This is related to the disruptions that take place in the body, which cause weight to naturally want to rise again. These medicines have an inhibiting effect on that,” van Rossem explains.
No off-label use
Ozempic’s manufacturer, Danish company Novo Nordisk, announced this week that the shortage of the popular Ozempic is expected to worsen this year. The shortage is due to rising demand for GLP-1 medicines and capacity constraints at some production sites.
I truly understand that it is wonderful when you have found something that helps you lose weight, but as the daughter of someone with severe diabetes, I would like to urge you: stop taking Ozempic if you are using it off-label. You could save lives by doing so. And there are alternatives. Wegovy is a medicine approved for the treatment of obesity. Saxenda, Mysimba, Xenical and Mounjaro are too.
Read also:
- Diet failed? Blame the supermarket
- Bizarre: the wine-and-egg diet really exists and actually works (but whether it’s healthy…)
- It really does exist: the carnivore diet. Is this a good idea?
Sources: medicijnen.nl, Medicines Evaluation Board, EenVandaag, Quartz
