The Ozempic Craze and the History Behind It

Why Ozempic Was SO Successful

Ozempic is marketed as an easy-to-use drug meant for patients with types 2 diabetes, with a side effect of weight loss. Being a weight loss drug, Ozempic affects the entire body, which means it has several unintended effects as well. But how did Ozempic become the 48th best selling drug? To understand the creation and success of Ozempic today, we first need to look back at Ozempic’s creation and how it exploded onto the market as one of the premier double purpose drugs.

To understand the culture behind why Ozempic was allowed to become so popular, it is vital to understand the culture behind obesity itself. For a long time, obesity was always thought to be a problem with the being. Even those in the scientific field hailed it as a behavioral problem, even though it is now actually considered a disease and should be dealt with as such. Being thought of as a behavioral problem automatically meant that obese people were stereotypes as people who lacked self-restraint and control and therefore should be ostracized. Ozempic offered these patients an unconventional solution: drugs. “Fix” your weight,” and your problems would be gone.

The Popularity of Losing Weight

Every drug has a purpose to treat a disease or condition. In marketing terms, every drug is designed with a market in mind, affected patients being the targets. Continuing the analogy, obesity has one of the largest markets; nearly 42% of Americans suffer from it, according to the New York Times. While most will never use a weight loss drug to deal with their condition, there is one group that uses it disproportionately: celebrities. The ideal physique of men and women in modern movies is demanded of actors on a time crunch. A gym simply will not cut it for them, and this is where anabolic steroids and weight loss drugs come into play. The widespread and common use of these drugs throughout Hollywood brought them into the mainstream. So called “miracle drugs” made it effortless to lose weight, with little short term losses.

Weight loss drugs have been in common use for nearly 100 years, but they were often avoided due to the numerous, dangerous side effects. Patients were at increased risk for cardiovascular conditions and the like. Celebrities, specifically actors, often were forced to use them when they had to get muscular in a time crunch and for millions of dollars.

How Ozempic and Novo Nordisk Became Juggernauts

In the 1980s, Dr. Joel Habener was busy studying treatments for type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is caused by high blood sugar levels which means frequent insulin injections for the affected. In the early 1980s, Dr. Habener found the GLP-1 hormone, which he thought, by targeting medications to tamper with the hormone, insulin injections could become a thing of the past. However, Dr. Habener was unable to solve a crucial problem: the hormone, when injected, was never able to reach the pancreas to increase insulin production.

In the early 2000s, research effectively halted on obesity, which had been declared unsolvable with drugs. However, a Danish company named Novo Nordisk would change everything, with its new drug. Victoza(liraglutide) was a drug targeting the GLP-1 hormone that Dr. Habener had researched for so long. It had one targeted effect: be effective for daily injections of GLP-1 to control insulin levels in diabetes patients. However, the drug had the unintended, slight effect of weight loss. Victoza would eventually set the stage for Ozempic much later.

Victoza was originally only set up for diabetic patients; even though was a side perk of the drug, Novo Nordisk had refused to get it improved in weight loss. Many of the common obesity stereotypes of the 20th century were firmly implanted in minds of Novo Nordisk’s executive officers.

In 2014, Victoza was approved as Saxenda for weight loss. Novo Nordisk’s diabetic drug had turned out to have multiple uses after all. They claimed the drug did not have the severe side effects like strokes and cardiovascular conditions as well. The success of Saxenda and Victoza in both the obesity and diabetes “markets” led to two new, more effective drugs based on the same GLP-1 hormone: Ozempic for diabetes and Wegovy for weight loss. The key difference being the dosage: the company had switched from once a day to once a week injections with its two new drogs.

The problem arose when Ozempic was released first. Ozempic was a smash hit for Novo Nordisk when it first hit the shelves: consumers had already started to inject the drug to massive weight loss before Wegovy was even released. Even though Wegovy is much more optimized for weight loss, with higher doses with the same weekly injection, the market had already been taken over by its sister drug.

The company fed into it, claiming in Ozempic’s commercials that it was effective in weight loss, even though that was not the reason it was approved for public use. In addition, an aggressive social media campaign led to higher Ozempic use. Over time, Wegovy made a comeback and is now outselling Ozempic, but the impact from the start still holds true.

Ozempic has become more than a drug; it has become a cultural phenomenon and a symbol for weight loss and obesity. Go out on the street, ask somebody which drug they know about more, Wegovy or Ozempic, and 9 times out of 10, it will be Ozempic. The story of Ozempic is a story not of scientific research and study, but of promotion and cultural impact. Obese people now can lose weight without raising a finger, and it is hard to overstate the impact weight loss drugs have had on the health industry.