Some individuals who take Ozempic and Wegovy report it tamps down their cravings for alcohol, they usually’re consuming much less.
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Some individuals who take Ozempic and Wegovy report it tamps down their cravings for alcohol, they usually’re consuming much less.
lucentius/Getty Photographs
Through the COVID pandemic, J. Paul Grayson was hit with an avalanche of well being issues – hypertension, prediabetes and a coronary heart arrhythmia.
He additionally gained 40 kilos to his 6-feet 3-inches body. “I felt like my weight was getting uncontrolled,” says the 73-year-old retiree, who lives on a ranch in Oklahoma. “I needed to begin taking all these drugs that I by no means needed to take earlier than. I really felt fairly depressed about my well being.”
About six months in the past, Grayson started taking the favored weight-loss drug Ozempic. He knew the unintended effects may very well be tough, together with nausea, constipation, and diarrhea. However he thought it might be price it if he may stave off additional coronary heart issues by shedding the additional weight.
“Instantly, I began consuming much less and shedding weight,” he says. That was anticipated. However what Grayson hadn’t anticipated was that the drug additionally instantly altered certainly one of his different habits.
“I bear in mind going to dinner for the primary time [while taking Ozempic],” Grayson explains. “I ordered a beer, took a sip, and I could not end it,” he says. “You understand how typically you style a beer, and it is like, ‘Oh my God, this tastes so good that I need to guzzle it.’ Effectively, I did not really feel like guzzling. I simply actually felt like sipping it.”
And, as a substitute of getting a number of beers with dinner, Grayson stopped at only one drink.
J. Paul Grayson skilled an fascinating aspect impact when he began taking Ozempic: He misplaced his style for alcohol.
J. Paul Grayson
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J. Paul Grayson
J. Paul Grayson skilled an fascinating aspect impact when he began taking Ozempic: He misplaced his style for alcohol.
J. Paul Grayson
Up to now yr, prescriptions for each the diabetes drug Ozempic, and its weight-loss counterpart Wegovy, have skyrocketed, although every prices about $1,000 a month, and a few well being insurers just lately stopped overlaying them. Each medication comprise the identical energetic ingredient, semaglutide, which belongs to a category of medicine generally known as GLP-1 (a.ok.a. “glucagon-like peptide 1”). These medication regulate your blood sugar and make you’re feeling glad after consuming. Ozempic is accredited for treating diabetes and, in some circumstances, extra weight.
With the drug’s surge in reputation, docs and sufferers have begun to note a placing aspect impact of those medication: They seem to cut back individuals’s cravings for alcohol, nicotine and opioids. They might additionally cut back some forms of compulsive behaviors, corresponding to playing and on-line buying.
“There’s actually been a lot of scientific and anecdotal reviews coming in suggesting that folks’s consuming behaviors are altering and in some situations fairly considerably whereas taking [Ozempic or Wegovy],” says Christian Hendershot, a psychologist and dependancy researcher on the College of North Carolina.
He is main certainly one of six scientific trials now underway geared toward understanding how semaglutide could alter individuals’s consuming and smoking habits.
“All these reviews, for probably the most half, are anecdotal,” Hendershot provides. “On the similar time, it does look like there is a fairly sturdy sign right here.”
Scientists are hopeful {that a} new class of remedies for alcohol use dysfunction or smoking could also be on the horizon. Some docs have even began prescribing these medication for this particular function, despite the fact that proof from massive, randomized managed trials are nonetheless years away.
Stopping at only one cookie or beer
To many docs and sufferers, like J. Paul Grayson, Ozempic’s impact on alcohol got here as a giant shock.
“Earlier than Ozempic, I may eat an entire bottle of wine in a night with out making an attempt actual laborious, together with a bag of sweets,” he says laughing. “However with Ozempic, even one beer did not really feel good to me one way or the other,” he says.
“I had no concept this may occur,” he provides. “No one informed me something concerning the drug affecting alcohol, too.”
However for scientists who research GLP-1 medication, this placing aspect impact was precisely what they anticipated. “It is actually not shocking,” says pharmacologist Elisabet Jerlhag.
For greater than a decade now, Jerlhag and her colleagues on the College of Gothenburg in Sweden, have been determining in nice element how GLP-1 medication, corresponding to Ozempic, cut back alcohol consumption in rats.
She and different scientists have revealed almost a dozen research, exhibiting how these medication cease binge consuming in rats or mice, stop relapse in “addicted” animals, and general lower their consumption of alcohol. “So we see a discount by over 50%, which is sort of dramatic,” Jerlhag says.
Different research in animals have additionally discovered that GLP-1 medication cut back the consumption of nicotine, opioids, in addition to psychostimulants, corresponding to cocaine and methamphetamine.
So why would a weight-loss drug do that? Seems, these medication (in addition to the GLP-1 hormone) do not simply work on blood sugar. “Additionally they work in your mind,” says Dr. Lorenzo Leggio, who’s the scientific director of the Nationwide Institute of Drug Abuse.
“The mechanism within the mind that regulates overeating overlaps with these accountable for the event and upkeep of dependancy, together with alcohol dysfunction,” he says.
The function of dopamine
Research in animals, in addition to just a few in individuals, provide tantalizing clues to how this mechanism works for each meals and alcohol.
Think about for a second taking a chew of a chewy, chocolate cookie. It is buttery and really candy.
That first chew triggers the discharge of dopamine contained in the a part of your mind that controls your motivation, says neuroscientist Alexandra G. DiFeliceantonio, an assistant professor at Virginia Tech. “That dopamine basically tells you, ‘Hey, do this once more!’ Take one other chew.’ ” And so, you need one other chew. Perhaps even one other complete cookie. It is laborious to cease.
Now think about you are a beer lover and you are taking a giant gulp of a chilly IPA on a scorching day. It additionally triggers a dopamine spike within the motivation middle of the mind – identical to the cookie.
“Dopamine within the striatum [the brain’s motivation center] is the motivation and studying sign for every little thing. Not only for meals,” DiFeliceantonio says. “All addictive medication improve dopamine there. That is a typical factor.”
And so after the primary style of beer, the dopamine tells you, “Do it once more! Have one other gulp.”
However research have discovered that in animals and other people, GLP-1 medication cut back the discharge of dopamine on this area while you eat one thing candy and fatty, or while you eat alcohol. “The drug talks with our mind and says, ‘we have had sufficient meals right here. So let’s decelerate. Let’s have much less urge for food, let’s have much less meals. Much less alcohol,” says NIDA’s Leggio.
So you do not actually really feel like one other chew of cookie, or as J. Paul Grayson mentioned, “I did not really feel like guzzling. I simply actually felt like sipping it.”
Oftentimes, now, he would not even really feel like consuming in any respect. “Once I nonetheless had wine or chocolate within the fridge, typically I might assume, ‘Oh, I ought to have some wine. I ought to have some chocolate.’ However there simply wasn’t something that made me stand up and go to the fridge,” he explains.
The ‘horse has already left the barn’
Ozempic’s potential to cut back alcohol consumption is now so well-known that some persons are in search of out the drug to assist with their consuming, says Christian Hendershot.
“We’re additionally listening to about clinicians prescribing for that purpose,” he says. “In some ways that is actually form of the indication that the horse has already left the barn. That is one thing that is already showing to occur, whether or not we prefer it or not.”
However NIDA’s Leggio advises in opposition to this off-label use of Ozempic and Wegovy. “It is too early,” he says. Ozempic could not work in opposition to alcohol for everybody, together with individuals who haven’t got weight problems.
Up to now, there has solely been just one small randomized managed research, taking a look at whether or not one other GLP-1 drug may deal with alcohol use dysfunction in individuals typically, as in comparison with cognitive behavioral remedy. This drug, referred to as exenatide, is not as potent as semaglutide (Ozempic) at inducing weight-loss or penetrating contained in the mind. Within the research, the drug diminished consuming in individuals with weight problems, but it surely really elevated consuming in individuals who haven’t got weight problems.
“We do not know why,” Leggio says. One speculation is that the semaglutide induced individuals to drop some pounds despite the fact that they’d regular weight and that led them to hunt extra energy by means of consuming, Leggio says.
“However that is solely hypothesis,” he provides. “We have now to understand that no medicine goes to work for everyone, and it is essential to determine the sub-class of sufferers for who this medicine would possibly work.”
And he notes, ultimately, perhaps a more recent model of the GLP-1 medication would possibly work higher for treating addictions than diabetes.
Elisabet Jerlhag on the College of Gothenburg notes that folks with weight problems are likely to have much less extreme unintended effects whereas taking semaglutide than individuals who haven’t got weight problems. “With these medication there’s additionally a danger of creating pancreatitis,” she says. “An individual with alcohol use dysfunction could also be at [elevated] danger for pancreatitis. So a physician would want to observe that.”
However, when you’ve got diabetes and also you need to curb your alcohol consumption then positively speak to your physician concerning the choice of semaglutide, Leggio says. “Much more so when you’ve got weight problems and alcohol use dysfunction. Completely. Communicate together with your physician.”
‘Many days I do not drink in any respect’
Meg Johnston’s weight-loss medicine has diminished her need to drink. “Alcohol simply would not sound as appetizing or interesting,” she says.
Nicole Jackson/Meg Johnston
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Nicole Jackson/Meg Johnston
Meg Johnston’s weight-loss medicine has diminished her need to drink. “Alcohol simply would not sound as appetizing or interesting,” she says.
Nicole Jackson/Meg Johnston
That is precisely what Meg Johnston, age 37, did a couple of month in the past. Throughout COVID, she additionally gained weight. “I make this joke that meals was the one factor that introduced me pleasure,” she says. However she additionally drank rather more. “I might drink out of boredom, simply complete boredom.”
So she started taking semaglutide on the finish of June. Part of her objective was to curb consuming. “I hoped that I might be one of many those that the drug affected this manner,” says Johnston, who’s an actual property agent in Washington, D.C.
And certainly, the drug has not disenchanted her. “Many days I do not drink in any respect,” she says. “It is laborious to elucidate why. Alcohol simply would not sound as appetizing or interesting. And now my tolerance is decrease, too.
“This has been a welcome change for me,” she provides. “Throughout these first couple of weeks of taking the drug, I used to be very a lot centered on not vomiting and ensuring I proceed to have bowel actions. I simply knew alcohol was going to make me really feel horrible afterwards.”
