Ozempic, a drug intended to treat type 2 diabetes, is increasingly being prescribed to help with weight loss, but should we be concerned?
The endocrinologist and director of the Professional Council of Diabetes Quebec, Rémi Rabasa-Lhoret, on the show “Le Bilan”, does not recommend its use outside of its primary usefulness.
“There are significant side effects and use outside of its framework, as a doctor and director of the board of Diabetes Quebec, makes me extremely uncomfortable,” he shares.
This drug helps in particular to control sugar levels, prevent cardiovascular disease and lose weight, by indicating to the brain that we are full sooner, causing us to eat less.
“It’s a great medicine for type 2 diabetes,” he says. When medication by mouth is no longer enough, we use it long before insulin.”
Its use for weight loss is gaining popularity in the United States, especially as it has gone viral on social media.
“It’s not something that is currently recommended in Quebec, and certainly not reimbursed by the RAMQ,” says the doctor.
However, according to Mr. Rabasa-Lhoret, Obesity Canada’s recommendations are proof of a usefulness for weight loss, but only within a very specific framework.
“There is a place for Ozempic, but only at significant degrees of overweight and obesity and often when it coexists with conditions like diabetes or cardiovascular disease. It is not impossible, but it is a limited place in a very precise and well-framed therapeutic arsenal.
Use outside this scope could expose patients to a number of risks.
“By putting up with this kind of thing, we are aggravating something that is very present in our society called eating disorders, that is to say having unrealistic and inappropriate expectations with regard to the loss of weight, he said. This desire to lose weight at all costs often leads to an impasse unfortunately.
In the majority of cases, patients who stop taking the drug regain the weight they lost.
“It is the case most of the time, he continues. We have to find a framework so that it is used in the right way, in the right people and not that it is something that we take as candy.
Its popularity has led to shortages in the United States as well as in Australia, which raises concerns that this is also the case in Quebec, thus depriving access to this drug for those living with type 2 diabetes.
Watch the full explanation in the video above.