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“Years of diets that worked for a couple of months, then gave all the weight back and more. Now the food noise has gone quiet,” a GLP-1 user shared.
In June, our brilliant News team published a piece about actor Mayim Bialik and her challenging experience with GLP-1 side effects. It did well, like many of the celebrity + health condition + human-interest angle features we create tend to do with our audience (that’s you all reading this!). Not a massive viral hit by any measure, but a strong performer on the traffic front.
Life in a busy newsroom went on.
Jump forward nearly 4 months; our equally brilliant social media team posts the piece on Facebook, leading with one of Bialik’s quotes from the article: “GLP-1s have helped people in serious need. Of that I am certain. But nobody talks much about what happens when it goes wrong.”
The fuse was lit. Nearly 12k likes, 1k reposts, and 3.5k comments later, the team had their most engaged post of the year by some margin. The irony is not lost on me that Bialik’s quote, about how rarely people talk about side effects, sparked such a deep conversation about that very thing.
GLP-1s are a big topic for Healthline. They drive traffic, they drive revenue, and they offer a rich seam of human-centric storytelling for our teams. Even so, no one predicted the post would catch fire the way it did. Our social team’s read is that a few things stacked up: Mayim Bialik is a name our Facebook audience knows, the topic is one where nearly everyone has a stake, and a busy thread tends to get shown to more people, who then add more comments. That’s the hypothesis. What we’ve consistently seen is that posts that lead with a quote get more people talking than those that lead with a headline. You may have noticed this article takes the same approach.
What the GLP-1 conversation on Facebook revealedWe also know that the comment sections on social media aren’t always the most hospitable of environments, particularly in the health space. What stood out about the lion’s share of the comments we read was how constructive the discourse was. People were leading with deeply personal and often moving perspectives about the life changing impact (for good and bad) of GLP-1s. In turn, they were met with equally balanced and thoughtful responses.
Many of the comments expanded on Bialik’s experience, detailing long and difficult battles with a range of side effects. But plenty told the other side of the story: years of failed diets and struggles with chronic conditions leading to despondency, side effects that went on to ease with time, and life changing results that were ultimately worth the cost.
My mom’s experience with tirzepatideThe line that opened this piece could have come from any of those commenters. It didn’t. It came from Kitty Hough, who is 75 and lives in London. Eagle-eyed readers will have spotted that she has the same surname as me – that’s because she’s my mom. She’s one of two people closer to the Healthline home who spoke to me for this piece and whose stories echo the Facebook post thread, with the good and the hard bits side by side.
Kitty was a hockey player and distance runner as a girl, the kind who could eat what she liked without it showing. Then came children, and a weight that crept up year after year, with decades of diets that “worked for a couple of months only to be back to my former weight and then some.” In late 2024, after a lot of research, she decided to try tirzepatide.
Since then, Kitty has lost 56 pounds. She says her joints hurt less, which she puts down to reduced inflammation. She is more mobile. The constant chatter about food has faded. She thinks harder before she eats now.
“I am a strong believer that obesity is a disease and in my case certainly not the result of overindulgence or laziness,” she says. “GLP-1s have greatly improved my health and self-esteem. After years of struggling with my weight, I have finally found a way to solve the problem.”
Kitty will also tell you what it cost. Nausea. Constipation. Sulfur-tasting burps and rough nights of indigestion. Initial hair loss that has since grown back, and loose skin. Muscle loss. And she misses some of the true joy of cooking and eating food.
But despite bumps in her journey, Kitty remains convinced that the benefits of GLP-1s for her life and health outweigh any drawbacks she’s experienced. “I am conscious that I will probably be on this drug for a long time if not for life. It is truly a miracle drug.”
A healthcare professional’s view on the cost of GLP-1sI also spoke to Ann Marie Maguire, AGNP-C, RN, TCTCN, a nurse practitioner specializing in transplantation and cellular therapy, the sister of Healthline’s Chief Business Officer Christine Macguire, and someone who has lost over 50lbs since starting GLP-1s in 2022.
“I struggled with my weight since my teens and always believed I should be able to manage it on my own. But in my 30s, my knees were hurting 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 healthier eating and exercise, made a tremendous difference. My only regret is not starting sooner,” said Ann Marie.
As a healthcare professional, Ann Marie also identified cost as a major factor that can’t be ignored regarding GLP-1s and their impact.
“There’s 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 cost conversation should account for the potential benefits of preventing or reducing those complications.”
Ann Marie points to a frustration many patients will recognize: reaching a healthier weight can become the reason coverage gets cut off. “We don’t automatically stop blood pressure medication because a patient’s readings improve,” she says. The treatment may be what’s keeping the condition controlled. Obesity, she argues, deserves the same approach. “Reaching a goal weight can mean treatment is working, and decisions about continuing it should reflect the patient’s ongoing needs, benefits and side effects.”
The bigger picture on GLP-1sIt’s important to note that this article looks at the experiences of only a handful of people out of the millions who now take GLP-1s. Like all drugs, these medications are not right for everyone. Side effects are common; some of them can be serious, and both the long-term impact and what happens when people stop are still being worked out. Ultimately, your care team, with knowledge of your medical history, is a far better guide than a comment thread.
Yet the evidence now reaches well beyond the scales: large trials have linked semaglutide to fewer heart attacks and strokes in people with heart disease and slower kidney decline in people with diabetes and kidney disease, and tirzepatide became the first FDA-approved drug for moderate to severe sleep apnea in adults with obesity.
Stories like Kitty’s, Ann Marie’s, Mayim Bialik’s, and those of the 3.5k commenters on the Facebook post aren’t proof of what will happen to you one way or another. But for a lot of people, my mom included, these drugs have changed what an ordinary day looks like, and in many cases changed what their future can look like.
One of the most significant drug developments of the century so far? Hard to argue with.
Robin Hough is the Editor-in-Chief of Healthline, and in addition to this regular Letter from the Editor column, he can be found every other Wednesday in our Healthline Wellness Wire newsletter.