Ozempic is a diabetes medication injected once a week. I’m in my first week since metformin is no longer performing well. What are your experiences with Ozempic, or those of your family member? Thanks.
Ozemic has done some weird things to me. When I first started taking it, I felt as though I had just eaten a Thanksgiving dinner earlier that day. I’d eat while feeling full, but I wouldn’t feel any more full once the meal was over. It’s an odd sensation. I also threw up a few times during the first few months. My stomach would just feel like something was sitting in there and I’d puke it all up. That doesn’t happen any more though. The weirdest thing to me was the eggy burps. I hardly ever eat eggs, but a side effect of the drug are eggy burps and that usually happens at the end of the week before I’m due another shot. I have trouble eating beefy meals as I feel so full. For example, I can only eat about half a hamburger now but I can still eat a whole chicken sandwich. It’s odd.
I don’t take Ozempic but I take Trulicity, and formerly Bydureon (switched because insurance made me). They are all the same class of drug.
I had the same experience as @Odesio - I felt very full all the time and often nauseous. If I ate enough sometimes there would be terrible pain. The only remedy for this is to eat less.
I’ve never had bariatric surgery but when I describe out loud how I have to eat now, it sounds like I have had bariatric surgery. I can only eat small amounts, I can’t eat much red meat or fat. I pretty much can’t handle fried foods whatsoever and the notion of eating creamy or cheesy foods turns me right off.
I got really used to not eating hardly at all and I wasn’t prepared for my appetite to come back, which it did at some point. It made me mad because I actually enjoy not having to take time to eat, and I didn’t have much food in my house. My appetite didn’t come back with a vengeance, mind you, I just found myself being hungry sometimes where before I was full all the time. Recently I’ve found that a new symptom of PMS for me is being hungry 
I’ve only lost about 30 lbs over 4 years or so, but my bloodsugar is really stable. I rarely ever have lows, but I had a lot of lows on Januvia (an oral medication I took prior to the injections). And I think it has helped with my insulin resistance - I don’t feel so wasted after activity anymore.
IIRC it took a long time for the nausea to go away for me. I don’t remember if I had the egg burps but I probably did for a bit. I just had to remind myself that the nausea would sometime stop, and unless I wanted to go full keto diet, I had just better suck it up and learn to live with the side effects of the shot!
Gastroparesis, a potential side effect of some drugs - your digestion slows down, the food does not get peristalted down your digestive track and it sits and ferments, hence eggy burps, and also your digestive system wants the food to exit the stomach, if it doesn’t go down, it will go up. [I had experience with this effect on Byetta, followed by Victoza, then with a tumor mostly blocking my digestive tract which has now been cut out]
Byetta was/is NOTORIOUS for causing nausea and vomiting, and a not-insignificant percentage of people refused to take it for this reason. Gastroparesis is also a symptom of advanced diabetes in some cases.
Semaglutide, the generic name for Ozempic, is also being marketed as Wegovy, 2.4mg weekly, for weight loss. Not surprisingly, it’s on back-order.
Maybe they think the weight will disappear like magic?
Well, I did lose about 100 pounds on 5FU … wouldn’t recommend stage 3 colorectal cancer, chemo and then chemo/radiation as a weight loss method. But it did melt the pounds off.
[actually it was the 5 months of diarrhea, nausea and vomiting that lost me the weight. I will comment, and I have done intense amounts of drug feedback to everybody I can think of - If the original kaopectate - kaolin and pectin in a vaguely vanilla mint flavored suspension - would have been the ONLY drug to supress the diarrhea. That diarrhea was not tons of peristalsis, which is what the modern chemical kapoectate and immodium treat. Kaolin-pectin works by thickening the chyme so it doesn’t romp through the system - when done incorrectly it will cause constipation because it will turn your poop into ‘cement’ but use properly, it will slow down the chyme and let what remains of the intestinal lining absorb nutrients and water from the waste stream.
That drug is still made in an animal format - which I would have almost considered doing, and I actually had kaolin [porcelain slip] and pectin in my pantry, and there are actually formularies online from back in the day of compounding pharmacies. Sigh.
[Upshot, chemo destroys the intestinal lining and any cell that is a fast reproducer, which is how it kills the cancer cells. Diarrhea is mechanically induced because not only does the lining no longer pull out the water, it actually seeps interstitial fluid into the waste stream because your gut is one long road rash that doesn’t clot. Yay.]
Thanks for the responses!
I just heard on the BBC, via PBS, that at least in the U.S., there is a proposal to make this drug OTC! Gee whiz, what could possibly go wrong with that?
(And that Elon Musk uses it.)
Gee, great idea for oh so many reasons, the least of which is that there’s still a world wide shortage and diabetics can’t get hold of it. I can’t get off the starter dose because I can’t source it.
Been using for a few years. No bad effects to report. Helped me lose a good 10-15 pounds.
My wife takes Ozemic.
No significant issues. She lost a few pounds.
There are side-effects, but there are consequences from diabetes. The medicine is better.
To the OP, see if you can handle some level of Metformin. It may not even out your sugar well
enough any more, but if you are one of the lucky majority without major symptoms, Metformin
brings many positive benefits. It is, many people suspect, a life-prolonging drug.
That last had not been demonstrated yet, Metformin’s problem is that it is generic and no drug company will pay for the studies to prove it’s long-term effects. But that is a rant for another thread.