Ozempic is a brand name of the prescription medication semaglutide, a treatment for type 2 diabetes and an anti-obesity medication. Semaglutide is a type of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist that acts on GLP-1 appetite and reward centres in the brain.
Ozempic makes people feel less hungry and reduces the reward experience of eating, making food cravings less intense. It also controls blood sugar levels by causing the release of insulin when blood sugar is too high.
Many people prescribed with Ozempic eat less food than before and, as a result, have a lower body weight. In the past two years, it’s become a well-known medication that is promoted across social media platforms, including TikTok. This has led to serious concerns about its potential for misuse among people with eating disorders.
Eating Disorders and Ozempic Misuse
Young people with eating disorders like anorexia nervosa are preoccupied with reaching a certain body weight or shape, even when it’s detrimental to their physical and mental health. They use disordered eating behaviours like restrictive eating and excessive exercise to try and change their shape and weight despite the harmful consequences.
Anorexia nervosa is often associated with a very low body weight. In reality, however, the majority of people with anorexia are at a normal or higher body weight. This is usually diagnosed as atypical anorexia.
Medications like Ozempic are frequently misused by people with eating disorders, especially when they take it without a prescription. Ozempic misuse can be dangerous to both their physical and mental health, reinforcing patterns of restrictive eating and causing malnutrition and harmful weight loss.
Ozempic also comes with the risk of side effects that can be dangerous, including dehydration and fatigue. This heightens the risk of Ozempic misuse. There is also still no clear evidence about its long-term safety.
Social Media, Ozempic, and Weight Loss Discourse
Posts, videos, and comments about Ozempic are all over social media. Most of this content promotes the medication and shares stories about weight loss. On Tik-Tok, the tag ”#Ozempic” has been viewed hundreds of millions of times.
Ozempic is also promoted by celebrities and advertised ‘off-label’ by weight loss programs.
Online discussions about Ozempic reinforce ideas that weight loss is a kind of ‘moral good’, justified by false conceptions of health and beauty. This discourse can have serious consequences for young people’s perception of themselves and their bodies.
Concerns about shape and weight and body dissatisfaction aren’t the cause of eating disorders. Eating disorders are a complex combination of social, emotional, and cognitive factors like life experiences, personality traits, ways of thinking, and interpersonal relationships. However, social norms about body shape and weight make young people much more vulnerable to developing disordered eating behaviours.
Ozempic, Diet-Culture, and “Healthism”
In Western societies, social and cultural norms typically endorse beauty standards centred around the ‘thin ideal’. These norms associate small body shapes with both beauty and success, increasing young people’s dissatisfaction with their bodies and incentivising disordered eating behaviours.
But beauty standards aren’t the only norms that promote ‘thinness’. Through diet-culture and other elements of health discourse, small bodies are often equated with healthy ones. Young people (and adults) are falsely told not only that small bodies are a requirement of beauty but also of good health. This is used to justify the idealisation of ‘thinness’ throughout different parts of society.
Within diet and weight-loss culture is an implicit endorsement of “healthism”. Healthism is a way of thinking that suggests an individual’s health is their personal responsibility. It places a kind of moral value on being healthy, implying that if someone has problems in their health, they have done something wrong or could have otherwise prevented it.
Healthism, however, overlooks the fact that most health problems are outside of an individual’s control. Health is influenced by many different factors, including genetics, upbringing, and environment. Different forms of oppression also have a big impact on health and restrict access to effective healthcare.
Together with diet culture, healthism encourages young people to idealise certain body shapes. They may feel like they have done something wrong if their body doesn’t match “healthy” ideals (which are often not healthy for most people). This reinforces experiences of body dissatisfaction.
Promoted as a ‘weight-loss medication’, discussions surrounding Ozempic often fit into the harmful discourses of both diet culture and healthism. Research has found that the way people discuss Ozempic on social media is similar to the discourse surrounding traditional diets.
However, discussions about Ozempic focus almost entirely on health as the justification for using the medication. While this may seem less harmful than the promotion of weight loss as a beauty ideal, it still idealises smaller bodies as a measure of success. This encourages a preoccupation with weight and shape that makes young people more vulnerable to eating disorders.
Ozempic and Binge Eating Disorder
When a person takes Ozempic, it interacts with their reward system, reducing the sense of reward that a person experiences when eating. This also impacts behaviours like emotional eating, when people use food to alleviate psychological distress.
Researchers are currently exploring whether Ozempic may support the treatment of binge eating disorder and improve symptoms like loss of control eating, guilt, and emotional eating. However, experts are also aware of the potential for misuse among people with eating disorders. This means that medication should only be used with close supervision of professionals and alongside psychological support.
The Wave Clinic: Specialist Recovery Programs for Young People
The Wave Clinic offers specialist mental health support for young people living with eating problems and other mental health concerns. We’re a Global Centre of Excellence for the treatment of eating disorders, offering a diverse selection of modalities led and delivered by experts from around the world.
We take a whole-person approach to mental health support, taking young people on a journey of personal growth. We focus on building self-confidence, developing skills, and continuing education so young people can lead fulfilling futures.
If you’re interested in finding out more about our programs, get in touch today. We’re here to support you.
