They were designed to treat type 2 diabetes and correct the metabolic failure that puts patients on the path to fatal heart disease.
But it wasn’t long before researchers noticed an unusual side effect of the drugs: People lost a surprising amount of weight. And fast.
Blockbuster drugs, including Ozempic, Mounjaro and Zepbound, are being distributed today to millions of people who need to lose weight to improve their health, and they appear to be causing other unexpected effects.
Some patients have reported a dulling of emotions and even suicidal thoughts, while others have reported a drop in libido and decreased sensation during sexual intercourse.
Some have also seen it cure addictions. People who consistently had a couple of drinks each night found that they had no desire to drink alcohol while taking the medication. Others found that their desire to splurge on random items in stores had also decreased.
Now, experts speaking to DailyMail.com have revealed a fascinating new explanation for these curious and varied symptoms. They say it all has to do with the drug’s impact on a master brain chemical that determines virtually all human behavior.
This means that it is entirely possible that injecting Ozempic could alter your entire personality.
TikToker Ashley Raibick (left) said taking semaglutide to lose weight left her libido in the dumps and said “nothing turned me on.” Karen Ramirez (right) posted on TikTok and told DailyMail.com that Ozempic made her “disgusted” by alcohol.
Ozempic and its sister drug Wegovy work by causing the body to bind to a receptor called glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), a protein that triggers the release of hormones in the brain that keep the stomach full and tell the body stop eating and avoid cravings
The brain chemical at play is dopamine, responsible for a variety of essential functions including feelings of reward and pleasure, as well as motivation and movement.
It is also involved in fueling our emotional and physical drive for food.
Dr. Kent Berridge, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Michigan, said this explains why curbing hunger also limits cravings for other vices, such as alcohol, cigarettes or drugs.
This is because both addictive substances and foods activate the same dopamine signals and reward learning regions in the brain.
“Cravings for addictive drugs are also amplified by hunger,” Dr Berridge told DailyMail.com.
‘When researchers try to teach animals to self-administer cocaine, they often keep them hungry for a while, as this helps them learn.
‘Hunger is specific to food, but it is more general than that, it activates the desire for many things.
“If you are hungry, the motivational value of things, even things that are not food, seems to increase,” he added.
Ozempic, which works by mimicking GLP-1, a natural hormone that tells the brain it is full, can buffer this effect by making a person feel fuller for longer.
By suppressing dopamine activation, drugs suppress food cravings and potentially drug and alcohol cravings as well.
“Satiety may not only reduce the desire for food, but potentially for other things as well,” Dr. Berridge said.
GLP-1 drugs also make you feel less hungry overall by making you feel full faster due to delayed stomach emptying, Dr. Sue Decotiisa New York City weight loss doctor told DailyMail.com.
But GLP-1 drugs appear to modulate motivational dopamine systems in a way that doesn’t dampen desires completely. Patients still want to eat, but end up not eating as much as before.
One possibility is that the cravings are still there, but the medication makes them less intense, Dr. Berridge said.
‘That would be a possibility: take the [edge off certain cravings]”And those are the ones that are problematic if you’re trying to lose weight or if a person is trying to stop taking drugs,” he said.
Some patients taking GLP-1 medications have also found that their desires to do things like masturbate and have sex with their partner decreased significantly.
A decrease in libido is “conceivable,” Dr. Berridge said. Having sex is a natural desire, so if you are repressing the desire If you reduce the reward pathway a little, this could lead to a reduction in sexual desire.
Having sex with a partner, thinking about having sex with them and seeing them would normally trigger sexual desire, he said, “just like drug use triggers the desire to use drugs.”
‘But if you are repressing [dopamine activation] a little bit and cutting off those mountain peaks, sexual desire is a natural peak, so that would be plausible.
‘Now, how are you doing that? How is it suppressing dopamine systems? We don’t know that,” Dr. Berridge said.
‘It may be acting in part directly on the nucleus accumbens [the brain structure known for its role in pleasure, reward and addiction]because there are receivers there.’
Other theories are that the indirect effects of GLP-1 medications on hormones could be causing changes in libido.
Rapid weight loss can affect hormonal balance, as can a restricted diet, by reducing the amounts of essential sex hormones, testosterone and estrogen.
Ozempic users previously told DailyMail.com that the drug has caused them to no longer want to drink alcohol.
Henry Webb of North Carolina finished a two-month treatment with Wegovy after reaching his goal weight. In the past, he always had a couple of drinks at night, but he said, “With the medication I had no desire to do that.”
Could increased sexual desire be possible due to GLP-1 drugs?
“That doesn’t really fit the usual pattern,” Dr. Berridge said. However, he proposed that it is possible that an increase in sexual appetite is indicative of patients exchanging one animal instinct for another.
Yet another theory from concerned experts is that GLP-1 medications can suppress dopamine so much that it actually leads to depression and even suicidal thoughts.
The FDA has received hundreds of reports of suicidal thoughts and depression from patients taking weight-loss medications since 2010, as well as dozens of deaths “from suicide or suspected suicide.”
The patients included a mother of four who said she felt like she didn’t want to be here anymore and a nurse who wanted to shoot herself.
The idea that semaglutide could cause low mood is “not impossible,” Dr. Berridge said.
This is due to a phenomenon called anticipatory anhedonia, he said, which is when patients have an inability to predict the future experience of pleasure, as well as a reduced motivation to take steps to achieve pleasure.
‘There are cases in the past that have been called anhedonia, as in depression and schizophrenia… which after all turned out not to be a loss of pleasure, but a loss of desire for pleasure.
‘Pleasure’ still gets it[s] Normal grades but nothing has value in life, and that’s a problem.’
‘Yeah [Ozempic] If we were causing problems like that, I’d expect it to be like this: evolution rather than an actual loss of pleasure.
It may be that the person taking Ozempic was depressed before starting the medication, he said.
The European Medicines Agency recently said there was no evidence of a causal link between Ozempic and suicidal thoughts. The FDA reached a similar conclusion in January.
Dr. Decotiis, on the other hand, believes that Ozempic reduces depression.
“I think it regulates dopamine: it can raise it or lower it, but it basically keeps it in a stable range.”
“I’ve seen a lot of reversals of depression in patients, because when you improve the action of dopamine, you actually reduce depression, anxiety, compulsive behaviors like gambling and drinking, and all those things, even people who don’t they do.” “I don’t feel the need to go out and do that anymore,” she said.