Ozempic decreases frequent thoughts about food – 7/4/2023 – Equilibrium

Until she started using the weight-loss drug Wegovy, Staci Klemmer’s days revolved around food. Upon waking up, she planned what she was going to eat. As soon as she finished lunch, she was already thinking about dinner. After quitting her job — as a high school teacher in Bucks County, Pennsylvania — she would often stop by Taco Bell or McDonald’s to shut out what she described as a voice chattering in her head 24 hours a day. Even when she was sated, she felt like eating.

Almost immediately after the first dose of the drug, in February, Klemmer felt the side effects: gastric reflux, constipation, nausea, fatigue. But the incessant thoughts about food, dubbed “food noise” (noisy food, in Portuguese) fell silent. She says it was like a switch had been flipped in her head.

“I don’t think about tacos all the time anymore. I don’t feel like eating anymore. Not even a little bit. It’s the weirdest thing.”

Andrew Kraftson, clinical professor at Michigan Medicine, says that in his 13 years of professional experience as a specialist in obesity medicine, his frequent patients say they can’t stop thinking about food. When he started prescribing Wegovy and Ozempic, an antidiabetic drug that contains the same compound, and patients started using the term “food noise” and saying it had disappeared, he understood exactly what they meant.

The term is gaining in popularity as interest in Ozempic and other injectable antidiabetics such as Mounjaro, which operate in a similar way, has intensified. Videos linked to explaining what it means have been viewed 1.8 billion times on TikTok. And some of the people who did get those drugs — despite persistent out-of-stocks and high prices — shared their stories on social media.

When the noise is losing volume

Wendy Gantt, 56, says she first heard the term “food noise” on TikTok, which is also where she first heard about Mounjaro. She found an online health platform and within hours received her prescription.

Gantt remembers the first day he started using the drug last summer. “It was a feeling of being freed from that constant cycle of thinking, ‘What am I going to eat? I’m never satisfied; there’s never enough.’ It was like someone had erased it all.”

For some people, the shortage of these drugs is testing what life can be like with and without frequent thoughts of food. For the last few weeks, Kelsey Ryan, 35, an insurance agent in Canandaigua, N.Y., has been unable to get the Ozempic she was prescribed, and the “food noise” is getting back to her.

It’s not just the everyday temptation of creamy ice cream. For Ryan, the noise also means a host of other food-related thoughts: internal machinations about whether or not she should eat in front of others, speculations about whether people will judge her for eating fried chicken or whether, in her case, ordering a salad, it will come across as trying too hard. For her, Ozempic, more than anything else, is a way to silence the noise of food.

“It’s a tool,” she says. “It’s not a magic medicine that gives people an easy way out.”

What causes ‘food noise’?

There is no clinical definition, but the experts and patients interviewed for this article agreed that the term epitomizes constant rumination about food. Some researchers associate the concept with so-called “hedonic hunger”, an intense preoccupation with eating for the purpose of pleasure, and have highlighted that it may also be a component of binge eating disorder, which is common but often misunderstood.

Experts in obesity medicine have been trying to better understand why a person might spend time ruminating about food, says Robert Gabbay, chief scientific and medical officer of the American Diabetes Association.

“It seems like this is innate in some people,” he says. Obsessive rumination about food is likely the result of genetic factors, as well as environmental exposure and learned habits, says Janice Jin Hwang, director of the division of endocrinology and metabolism at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

Why are some people able to ward off the urge to eat, while others get bogged down in food-related thoughts? That’s “the million dollar question,” says Hwang.

How do medications suppress thoughts?

The active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy is semaglutide, a compound that affects the areas of the brain that regulate appetite, says Gabbay. The substance also causes the stomach to empty more slowly, so that those who take the medicine feel quenched faster and longer. Satiety itself can soften the noise of food, she indicates.

Another theoretical explanation of what causes Ozempic to silence “food noise”: semaglutide activates GLP-1 hormone receptors. Animal studies show that these receptors are found on cells in regions of the brain that are especially important for motivation and reward, pointing to a potential way in which semaglutide could influence cravings. It’s possible, though not proven, that the same is true for humans, Hwang points out.

That would explain why people who take the drug say that food stops giving them pleasure – and sometimes alcohol too.

Researchers continue to investigate how semaglutide works, how it might influence aspects of brain function like this type of overthinking, and its potential use for other purposes, such as treating addiction.

Staci Klemmer says she worries about the potential long-term side effects of a drug she may be on for the rest of her life. But she considers that what she gets in return – the end of the noise of the food – is worth it.

“It’s worth facing all the bad side effects I might have, to enjoy what I feel now: not caring about food.”

Translated by Clara Allain