Ozempic... Buy or Bust?

Experts are calling it the biggest thing since the Internet, but why?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past several months, you’ve probably heard the words Ozempic, Semaglutide, GLP-1, or at least something roughly associated with the latest weight-loss frenzy.

The above jargon refers to pharmaceutical drugs that are causing an absolute raucous in mainstream media, stock values, office water-cooler conversations, and beyond.

For good reason.

In case you aren’t familiar, let’s take a step back and do some explaining.

There’s a collection of drugs (most popular being Ozempic) recently discovered to have profound weight loss properties.

Although some more nuanced, these therapeutics are considered glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) agonists which is just a fancy way of saying they function like GLP-1 – a hormone naturally made in our gut.

GLP-1 is produced as we consume food to promote insulin production as well as trigger feelings of fullness. In addition, this hormone slows the process of digestion by decreasing gut emptying and gastric motility… further increasing satiety.

The first of these drugs was approved to treat Type II diabetes in 2005 because of its ability to promote insulin production and blood glucose control, yet these drugs have just recently started to be widely used for people who are overweight.

But how’d we get here in the first place?e