“People on Drugs Like Ozempic Say Their ‘Food Noise’ Has Disappeared: For Some, It’s a Startling Side Effect”, 2023-06-21 ():
Until she started taking the weight loss drug Wegovy, Staci Klemmer’s days revolved around food. When she woke up, she plotted out what she would eat; as soon as she had lunch, she thought about dinner. After leaving work as a high school teacher in Bucks County, Pa., she would often drive to Taco Bell or McDonald’s to quell what she called a “24/7 chatter” in the back of her mind. Even when she was full, she wanted to eat. Almost immediately after Ms. Klemmer’s first dose of medication in February, she was hit with side effects: acid reflux, constipation, queasiness, fatigue. But, she said, it was like a switch flipped in her brain—the “food noise” went silent. “I don’t think about tacos all the time anymore”, Ms. Klemmer, 57, said. “I don’t have cravings anymore. At all. It’s the weirdest thing.”
Dr. Andrew Kraftson, a clinical associate professor at Michigan Medicine, said that over his 13 years as an obesity medicine specialist, people he treated would often say they couldn’t stop thinking about food. So when he started prescribing Wegovy and Ozempic, a diabetes medication that contains the same compound, and patients began to use the term food noise, saying it had disappeared, he knew exactly what they meant…Videos related to the subject “food noise explained” have been viewed 1.8 billion times on TikTok. And some of the people who have managed to get their hands on these medications—despite persistent shortages and list prices that can near or surpass a thousand dollars—have shared stories on social media about their experiences.
…She [Wendy Gantt, 56] can remember the first day she started taking it last summer. “It was like a sense of freedom from that loop of, ‘What am I going to eat? I’m never full; there’s not enough. What can I snack on?’” she said. “It’s like someone took an eraser to it.”
For some, the shortages of these medications have provided a test case, a way to see their lives with and without food noise. Kelsey Ryan, 35, an insurance broker in Canandaigua, N.Y., hasn’t been able to fill her Ozempic prescription for the last few weeks, and the noise has crept back in. It’s not just the pull of soft-serve each day, she said. Food noise, to Ms. Ryan, also means a range of other food-related thoughts: internal negotiations about whether to eat in front of other people, wondering if they’ll judge her for eating fried chicken or if ordering a salad makes it look like she’s trying too hard. Ozempic is more of a way to silence the food noise than anything else, she said. “It’s a tool”, she said. “It’s not like a magic drug that’s giving people an easy way out.”
…Ms. Klemmer said she worried about the potential long-term side effects of a medication she might be on for the rest of her life. But she thinks the trade-off—the end of food noise—is worth it. “It’s worth every bad side effect that I’d have to go through to have what I feel now”, she said: “not caring about food.”