An unexpected beneficial side effect of using drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy for weight loss has emerged. Compulsive eaters say GLP-1 medications also quell ‘food noise’ cravings. And that makes the meds all the more effective…
For once in a very long time… A positive double whammy for dieters! The medications – originally meant to help T2D sufferers control their blood sugar, also directly helps them control physical hun-ger. But as a bonus, it appears to also help control what doctors call ‘hedonic’ hunger – the compul-sion to eat.
The superhero’s sidekick
It’s a bit like a superhero’s side kick. A loyal companion always ready to back them up. And, in some tight situations, even snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
If there was one really BIG story in the war on obesity in 2024, it was the discovery that GLP-1 receptor ‘antagonists’ such as Ozempic and Wegovy can help folks lose weight even if they don’t have type 2 diabetes (T2D). Put another way, you can take Ozempic and similar meds solely to help you lose weight, without any untoward side effects. And they can be amazingly effective as well as fast acting.
GLP-1 is a hormone that tells you when you’re full. And, therefore, can – should – stop eating. But some folks seem to have a A GLP-1 deficit. They keep eating after they’re full. And the excess nutri-ents are stored as fat.
Drugs like Ozmepic have the direct effect of turning off ‘hunger’ signals. But they also seem to turn off overeaters’ cravings – the signals that nag compulsive eaters to keep eating even after they’re uncomfortably full.
‘Internal chatter’
“Food noise is incessant internal chatter about food that some people experience, which can make it hard for them to make healthy decisions about their nutrition,” CNN’s Carma Hassan explains. “The conversation around it has grown, especially online, as more people taking popular weight-loss and diabetes medications realized the drugs seemed to turn off the noise.”
Huntington Beach, CA, resident Savannah Mendoza, 27, says she was hooked hard on food. She con-fesses to sneaking snacks whenever she could. Making up ‘fake’ errands as an excuse for hitting the drive-thru. Dipping into the ice cream when she had the fridge open making her kids’ school lunches in the morning. “I just thought I was obsessed with food.”
But she quickly noticed the ‘food noise’ cravings disappeared when she started using Ozempic. Now, she says, she feels ‘at peace’ with her self and her food.
An extreme case…
“I would [always] be thinking about, planning for, trying to finagle how I could eat something [more],” says Summer Kessel, 37, of Tampa, FL. “I would have breakfast at home, then breakfast at work, and then lunch at work, and then a snack before I left work, and then fast food on the way home and then dinner when I got home.”
But just a week after her first injection with a GLP-1 receptor antagonist, she says she was already feeling emotional relief.
“Like all of that s**t in my head was finally quiet, and I was able to just go about my life without obsessing about food or being hungry all the time,” she recalls.
My take
Physicians and psychologists agree that there should be a way to tackle ‘compulsive eating’ via known and proven methods of behaviour modification. But compulsive eating goes hand-in-hand with a physical imbalance in the GLP-1 signalling system. Making it very hard to overcome without some kind of additional help.
I’ll buy that. And I’ll gladly stipulate that humans are, by their nature, addiction-prone. As well as hard-wired to crave sugar fat and other stuff that’s not good for them in excess.
In the specific case of compulsive eating and it’s contribution to the raging obesity crisis, prescription Ozempic and it’s clones might be just what the doctors should order…
~ Maggie J.