There's a shortage of diabetes drugs because of a TikTok weight loss trend

There's not a lot of advice I'd give out categorically, confidently, and in perpetuity. But I'm going to be brave, and I'm going to say one thing I will never regret: No one should ever trust a weight loss trend.

Right now, that trend happens to be medicines used to treat diabetes that also curb hunger: Ozempic and Wegovy. They are both made by Novo Nordisk. They're similar medications, semaglutide, but Wegovy is available in slightly higher dosages.

Elon Musk tweeted about taking Wegovy to lose weight. Andy Cohen tweeted about people taking Ozempic for weight loss. Some people on TikTok are attributing Kim Kardashian's supposed weight loss to the drug, despite Kardashian not saying anything about taking it. 

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"I have seen news about Kim Kardashian's body transformation over the past couple of months," one user says to the tune of nearly 600,000 views, 31.6 thousand likes, and more than 5,000 saves. Later, she lays out her theory: "I think Kim might have been on a GLP-1 semaglutide… In my opinion, this is purely speculation, it looks like it could be a possibility that Kim K is one of those celebrities [using a GLP-1 for weight loss]." According to TODAY, these drugs are in a class called GLP-1 receptor agonists. They work by mimicking how your body feels when you eat food.

The topic "Ozempic" has more than 300 million views on TikTok, with many users who say they're using it off label — for weight loss instead of for diabetes. Ozempic is also approved by the FDA for improving blood sugar control "in adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus when used in addition to diet and exercise."

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Wegovy for "chronic weight management in adults with obesity or overweight with at least one weight-related condition (such as high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, or high cholesterol)." That means people taking it for weight loss aren't taking it off label like they are with Wegovy's sister drug Ozempic. 

Both medicines are spoken about interchangeably online, each are intended to be taken along with a healthy diet and exercise plan, and they're both injections.

And, now, there's a reported shortage of the medicine for the people who actually need it. In August, the company wrote in a news release urging healthcare providers "to not start new patients on Wegovy." They stopped advertising and promoting it, and decided to "temporarily stop shipments of the first two dose strengths (0.25 mg and 0.5 mg) — all to minimize demand from new patients and increase the likelihood there would be enough product available in the market to meet the needs of current people taking Wegovy." The FDA lists the drugs as "currently in shortage."

If you feel like you’d like to talk to someone about your eating behavior, call the National Eating Disorder Association’s helpline at 800-931-2237. You can also text "NEDA" to 741-741 to be connected with a trained volunteer at the Crisis Text Line or visit the nonprofit’s website for more information.