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By: Donny Simcha Guttman
In recent years, the practice of people, especially pregnant woman, seeking anti-obesity drugs has increased. Semaglutides, developed originally for type-2 diabetic patients, has increasingly been in use. Shortage of brand-names and high prices has popularized people interested in the drug to pursue the anti-obesity drug from off-brands and compounding it with other drugs. Ozempic and Wegovy have recently been popularized due to the effective results. Recently, a NYC woman told the NY Post, on the recent fad that, ““You see people and they lost 30 pounds and have this face that is smaller. She believes many of the naysayers are “judgmental” and are “Ozempic shaming.” She originally requested from her doctor for a prescription due to weigh-gain from recent pregnancies. Due to the added weight, she claims she suffers with “a lot of pain” in her legs.
Her doctor though did not believe her insurance would cover the cost. After the doctor’s refusal, she googled “semaglutide New York”, and found Elite Health Center NYC. She said, ““It’s super shady, [but] legit enough. It was important to me that they had a real location. So I Googled them to see if they have a real storefront that they’re not, you know, somewhere else. [they] Seemed like they knew what they were doing. After, calling, she had a “super fast” phone call with a doctor, and was given a prescription that day. and that after filling out an intake form from them, she had a “super fast” phone call with a doctor and a prescription that same day. On the phone call she remarked, “The doctor just wanted to make sure I was healthy and didn’t have any kind of disease. He knew that I wanted the medication to lose weight, but he didn’t really ask if I had an eating disorder or things like that. He said I seemed like a great candidate. No medical labs or tests were ordered, she claimed.
Though, the fad of anti-obesity drugs continues, not all are convinced of the long-term consequences. Endocrinologist and director of Obesity Medicine at Northwestern Lake Forest Hospital in Illinois, Dr. Disha Narang also told the Post that semaglutide is “not FDA approved and we don’t have any data on long-term efficacy. Also, she remarked that the original developers that developed semaglutide, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, in response to the new cheaper brands and creative solutions “are going to be coming after a lot of these manufacturers that are making compounded substances. There are no randomized controlled trials defending that, nor is there any level of concrete data. She believes that prescribing compounded semaglutide is “unethical [and] not safe.”
Dr. Anthony Colantonio, a physician affiliated with Elite Health Center spoke to the Post about the new brands and methods saying that, “The compounded semaglutide that I prescribe through Elite Health Center is as safe as the Wegovy and Ozempic that I prescribe to other patients whose insurance company is willing to pay for it.” There are semaglutide compounded products out there that are either semaglutide salts or acetate. I don’t work with those compounds, I don’t prescribe those compounds. I prescribe semaglutide which is the exact same medication as Wegovy and Ozempic without the added marketing and research costs. In this time that we’re in, when Novo Nordisk has such a short supply of Ozempic and Wegovy.”
