Eating disorders rise amid popular weight loss medications Wegovy and Zepbound—Is there a link?
Abuse of weight loss drugs is nothing new, but “nothing compares to the phenomenon that we’re seeing right now with these GLP-1s,” one provider said.
Over the past six months, psychologist Tom Hildebrandt has seen an increase in patients with eating disorders who are taking popular weight loss drugs like Wegovy or Zepbound.
“They start using this drug and next thing you know, they’ve developed what looks very much like anorexia nervosa,” said Hildebrandt, who leads Mount Sinai’s Center of Excellence in Eating and Weight Disorders in New York City.
The blockbuster medications have been hailed as wonder drugs for their profound effects on diabetes and weight loss, but a growing number of doctors are concerned that the medications are triggering or worsening eating disorders in some people.
This class of drugs, called GLP-1 drugs, which also include the diabetes drugs Ozempic and Mounjaro, work by mimicking a naturally occurring hormone released by the gut called glucagon-like peptide 1, which regulates blood sugar levels and curbs hunger. In one clinical trial, people taking the highest dose of Eli Lilly’s Zepbound lost 21% of their body weight. (The weight tends to return when people stop taking the drugs.)
In some cases, a person’s brain may interpret such dramatic, sudden weight loss as starvation, Hildebrandt said, making people more obsessive about food. People who are taking these new weight loss drugs, he posited, may then find themselves compelled to further limit how much food they eat, even when it endangers their health.
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