More than 30 million Americans are now estimated to be using GLP-1 drugs for weight loss. The fad barely had time to be a fad before becoming a monster trend. But new science suggests GLP-1 meds may also promote longevity…
Ozempic, Wegovy and their competitors are all semaglutides, originally intended to treat
diabetes and, more recently, found useful in controlling auto-immune diseases…
Imagine that… Losing weight and living longer to enjoy your new, svelte self! It may not be as crazy an idea as it sounds on first reading…
Emerging side effects
Semaglutide drugs – the best known of which are Ozempic and Wegovy – are still revealing new tal-ents – and dangers – as science ‘catches up with them’. The diabetes control drugs were not intended to have other benefits. But diabetic folks taking them soon found they were losing weight, too. And excess weight has traditionally been a curse on diabetics, who constantly fight to control the amount of sugar in their blood. As we all know, excess sugar gets stored as fat…
A new danger
Earlier this month, a research team from Australia found an alarming trend among folks who use GLP-1 meds solely for weight loss, The Independent reports. They uncovered, in 2023 and 2024 alone, 15 cases of an extremely rare, but potentially fatal brain condition involving an extreme lack of vita-min B1.
Wernicke Encephalopathy (WE) can cause permanent memory loss and inability to form new mem-ories. In extreme cases, it can be deadly. Sufferers often complain of other side effects including vomiting and diarrhea, and loss of appetite.
A new benefit?
There’s an old ‘law’ generally referred to as ‘The Balance of Nature’. “[It] proposes that ecological systems are usually in a stable equilibrium or homeostasis, which is to say that a small change (the size of a particular population, for example) will be corrected by some negative feedback that will bring the parameter back to its original “point of balance” with the rest of the system,” Wikipedia explains. “The balance is sometimes depicted as easily disturbed and delicate, while other times it is inversely portrayed as powerful enough to correct any imbalances by itself.”
Restoring equilibrium?
Perhaps the almost coincidental finding that semaglutide use also appears to increase longevity is just nature’s way of restoring equilibirium in the ‘Ozempic’ system…
What they did…
Researchers at at the University of California, Berkeley set out to compare semaglutide directly with calorie restriction, one of the best-known interventions for extending lifespan in laboratory animals. But they got more than they bargained for…
What they found…
The drug reproduced many of the anti-aging effects of eating less, but in several important areas, it appeared to go even further.
“The findings raise an intriguing possibility,” an abstract of the study report relates. “GLP-1 drugs may influence the aging process itself. Earlier animal studies have shown that these drugs can delay the onset of multiple age-related diseases. If semaglutide acts on biological mechanisms that drive ag-ing, that could help explain why GLP-1 treatments have shown benefits across such a wide range of health conditions.
The takeaway
“Most chronic diseases are deeply rooted in the aging process. If GLP-1 agonists do indeed slow it down, then a wide range of clinical benefits is exactly what you’d expect to see,” said Rafael de Cabo, Ph.D., a senior investigator at the NIH’s National Institute on Aging (NIA), and author of a commentary on the new study.”
All of which doesn’t mean it’s time to start prescribing semaglutides for older folks just to help them ward off aging, the researchers are quick to point out.
My take
But the implications are clear. And society needs the follow-on research the Australian team pre-scribes to proceed as quickly as possible. If only to make further inroads into treating chronic diseases which are becoming a growing evil as the population ages…
~ Maggie J.