- GLP-1 medications like semaglutide and tirzepatide can cause significant weight loss and help reduce inflammation, improve mobility, and calm persistent thoughts about food. Many people report life-changing results after years of unsuccessful dieting.
- A Healthline article on GLP-1 side effects by Mayim Bialik became our most engaged Facebook post of the year, as thousands of commenters shared serious side effects and life-changing results. Research is also increasingly linking GLP-1 to benefits beyond weight loss.
- Healthline editor Robin Hough talks with his mother, Catherine, who lost 56 pounds on tirzepatide, and a registered nurse who lost more than 50 pounds, about the benefits, side effects and cost of long-term treatment.
“Years of diets that worked for a few months, then put all the weight back and more. Now the food noise has calmed down,” one GLP-1 user shared.
In June, our brilliant news team published a story about actress Mayim Bialik and her difficult experience with GLP-1 side effects. It worked well, as most celebrity + health + human interest angle features we create tend to do with our audience (that’s all of you reading this!). This isn’t a massive viral hit, any way you look at it, but a strong performer on the traffic front.
Life in a busy newsroom continues.
Fast forward almost 4 months; our equally brilliant social media team posts the article on Facebook, starting with one of Bialik’s quotes from the article: “The GLP-1s have helped people in need. I’m sure of that. But no one talks much about what happens when things go wrong.”
The fuse was lit. Nearly 12,000 likes, 1,000 reposts, and 3.5,000 comments later, the team achieved by far their most engaged post of the year. The irony is not lost on me: Bialik’s quote, about how few people talk about side effects, sparked such a profound conversation on this very topic.
GLP-1 is an important topic for Healthline. They drive traffic, generate revenue, and provide our teams with rich, human-centered storytelling. Even so, no one predicted that the message would catch fire the way it did. According to our social team, several things add up: Mayim Bialik is a name our Facebook audience knows, the topic is one that almost everyone has an interest in, and a busy thread tends to be shown to more people, who then add more comments. That’s the hypothesis. What we’ve consistently found is that posts starting with a quote get more people talking than posts starting with a title. You may have noticed that this article takes the same approach.
We also know that social media comments sections aren’t always the most hospitable environments, especially in healthcare. What emerges from the majority of comments we have read is the constructive nature of the speech. People expressed deeply personal and often moving perspectives on the impact of GLP-1s on life (for better and for worse). In turn, they received equally balanced and thoughtful responses.
Many commentaries delve into Bialik’s experience, detailing long and difficult battles with a series of side effects. But many told the other side of the story: years of failed diets and battling chronic illnesses leading to discouragement, side effects that lessened over time, and life-changing results that were ultimately worth the cost.
The sentence that opened this article could have come from any of these commenters. This is not the case. It comes from Catherine Hough, 75 years old and living in London. Eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that she has the same last name as me – that’s because she’s my mother. She’s one of two people closer to the Healthline household who spoke to me for this article and whose stories echo the Facebook thread, with the good and the tough side by side.
Catherine was a hockey player and cross-country runner growing up, the type who could eat whatever she wanted without it showing. Then came the kids, and a weight that increased year after year, with decades of diets that “worked for just a few months to get back to my previous weight and then some.” At the end of 2024, after much research, she decided to try tirzepatide.
Since then, Catherine has lost 56 pounds. She says her joints hurt less, which she attributes to reduced inflammation. She is more mobile. The constant chatter about food has faded. She thinks more before eating now.
“I firmly believe that obesity is a disease and, in my case, certainly not the result of excess gluttony or laziness,” she says. “GLP-1s have greatly improved my health and self-esteem. After years of struggling with my weight, I finally found a way to solve the problem.”
Catherine will also tell you what it costs. Nausea. Constipation. Burps that taste of sulfur and difficult nights of indigestion. Initial hair loss which has since grown back, and sagging skin. Muscle loss. And he misses some of the true joy of cooking and eating.
But despite the obstacles in her journey, Catherine remains convinced that the benefits of GLP-1 for her life and health outweigh the drawbacks she has encountered. “I am aware that I will probably be taking this medicine for a long time, if not my whole life. It truly is a miracle drug.”
I also spoke to Ann Marie Maguire, AGNP-C, RN, TCTCN, a nurse practitioner specializing in transplantation and cell therapy, the sister of Christine Macguire, Healthline’s chief business officer, and someone who has lost more than 50 pounds since starting GLP-1 in 2022.
“I’ve struggled with my weight since my teens and always thought I should be able to manage it on my own. But in my 30s, my knees hurt just getting out of bed or walking to dinner. I realized how much my weight was affecting my quality of life. Starting a GLP-1 in 2022, alongside a healthier diet and exercise, made a huge difference. My only regret is not starting sooner,” Ann Marie said.
As a healthcare professional, Ann Marie also identified cost as a major factor regarding GLP-1 and its impact.
“There is understandable debate about the long-term use and cost of these medications,” she says. “But we also need to consider the health and financial burden of obesity, including cardiovascular complications, hospitalizations, surgeries and ongoing medications. The conversation about costs should consider the potential benefits of preventing or reducing these complications.”
Ann Marie highlights a frustration that many patients will recognize: Getting to a healthier weight may become the reason coverage is discontinued. “We don’t automatically stop blood pressure medications because a patient’s outcomes improve,” she says. Treatment may be what keeps the disease under control. Obesity, she argues, deserves the same approach. “Achieving a goal weight can mean treatment is working, and decisions about continuing it should reflect the patient’s needs, benefits and ongoing side effects. »
It is important to note that this article examines the experiences of only a handful of people among the millions now taking GLP-1. Like all medications, these medications are not suitable for everyone. Side effects are common; some of them can be serious, and the long-term impact as well as what happens when people stop are still being studied. Ultimately, your healthcare team, knowing your medical history, is a much better guide than a comment thread.
Yet the evidence now goes well beyond scale:
Stories like those of Catherine, Ann Marie, Mayim Bialik and those of the 3.5k commenters on the Facebook post are not proof that this will happen to you one way or another. But for many people, including my mother, these medications have changed what an ordinary day looks like and, in many cases, changed what their future may look like.
One of the most important pharmaceutical developments of the century so far? Difficult to argue with.
Robin Hough is Healthline’s editor-in-chief, and in addition to this regular Letter from the Editor column, he can be found every other Wednesday in our Healthline Wellness Wire newsletter.
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