You have probably seen the photos. A coworker is a size smaller, a cousin says her hunger has gone quiet, a celebrity shows up to a premiere looking half her size. GLP-1 drugs are everywhere right now.
But the famous people who tried them are no longer only posting the good news.
A growing number are describing side effects they say caught them off guard.
Comedian Amy Schumer told The Howard Stern Show, in an interview reported by Fox News, that trying Ozempic about three years ago left her unable to get out of bed.
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"I was like bedridden, I was vomiting and then you have no energy," she said.
Schumer has since said she had a better experience on a different weight-loss drug.
She has a genetic variant that makes her unusually prone to nausea.
Not every celebrity story is a warning
Singer and actress Vanessa Williams has called the weight-loss drug Mounjaro a game-changer for managing her weight through menopause.
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Chrissy Metz, star of This Is Us, said that after starting a GLP-1 drug this year she finally got a break from the constant mental chatter about food.
Other accounts have been darker.
Podcast host Bunnie XO, the wife of singer Jelly Roll, told Fox News that an experimental GLP-1 family drug called retatrutide sent her into the worst suicidal depression she had experienced in years.
She has emphasized that this was her individual experience, and that many people on the same drug have reported no such effect.
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Side effects
The U.S. prescribing information for Ozempic lays out which side effects are documented and how common they are.
According to the Ozempic label on DailyMed, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain and constipation each affected at least 5 percent of patients in clinical trials.
Nausea was the most frequent. Between 1 in 6 and 1 in 5 patients on Ozempic reported it, compared with about 1 in 16 on a placebo, an inactive injection.
The label also carries a boxed warning. In studies in rodents, semaglutide caused thyroid tumors.
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The drug is not for people with a personal or family history of medullary thyroid cancer, a rare cancer of the thyroid gland, or an inherited condition known as MEN 2.
The same label notes cases of acute pancreatitis in patients on GLP-1 drugs, and instructs doctors to stop the medication if pancreatitis is suspected.
"Ozempic face"
The gaunt facial look many celebrities and TikTok users describe is not technically a side effect of the drug itself.
Dermatologists call it facial lipoatrophy, and it comes from losing body fat quickly, which also means losing the small cushions of fat in the cheeks and temples.
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According to Cleveland Clinic, rapid weight loss can lead to gauntness, sunken cheeks, new wrinkles and loose skin on the face and neck.
The clinic says the look will not fade on its own over time. If a person regains some of the lost weight, the face can fill out again.
To prevent it, the clinic suggests slower weight loss of about one to two pounds a week, along with enough protein and good skin care.
The FDA's Ozempic label is public and sets out the full warning list, including the thyroid and pancreatitis sections a prescriber is expected to review before writing a prescription.
This article is made and published by Ida-Marie Palm Varbæk, who may have used AI in the preparation.