The Great Ozempic Experiment

Millions of Americans are taking GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Zepbound for more than weight loss. As Julia Belluz reports in this interactive New York Times story, people are finding unexpected relief from a variety of diseases and conditions, including traumatic brain injuries, long Covid, arthritis, addiction, and irritable bowel syndrome. But these surprising results outpace science’s ability to explain them. With roughly one in eight Americans now having taken these drugs, a vast and unregulated medical experiment is already underway—fueled by Reddit threads, fitness influencers, and telemedicine companies—while the US medical system scrambles to keep up. (Subscription may be required.)

On Thanksgiving she ran a turkey trot with her daughters — her first race since the accident. She described the turnaround to me as “miraculous.” Like so many other people who are taking these drugs for intractable and varied symptoms, Ms. Schmidt had joined what we might call the great American GLP-1 experiment.

“There’s just so much medicine happening outside of the actual medical system,” said Dr. Beverly Tchang, an assistant professor of clinical medicine at Weill Cornell, who works as an adviser for the telehealth company Ro. “It’s happening within these telehealth companies, within the internet, over the gray market, and no one has any insight into it.”