What are ‘Ozempic babies’? Can the drug really increase your chance of pregnancy?
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Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide are taking drugs like Ozempic to lose weight. But what do we actually know about them? This month, The Conversation’s experts explore their rise, impact and potential consequences.
We’ve heard a lot about the impacts of Ozempic recently, from rapid weight loss and lowered blood pressure, to persistent vomiting and “Ozempic face”.
Now we’re seeing a rise in stories about “Ozempic babies”, where women who use drugs like Ozempic (semaglutide) report unexpected pregnancies.
But does semaglutide (also sold as Wegovy) improve fertility? And if so, how? Here’s what we know so far.
Remind me, what is Ozempic?
Ozempic and related drugs (glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists or GLP-1-RAs) were developed to help control blood glucose levels in people with type 2 diabetes.
But the reason for Ozempic’s huge popularity worldwide is that it promotes weight loss by slowing stomach emptying and reducing appetite.
Ozempic is prescribed in Australia as a diabetes treatment. It’s not currently approved to treat obesity but some doctors prescribe it “off label” to help people lose weight. Wegovy (a higher dose of semaglutide) is approved for use in Australia to treat obesity but it’s not yet available.
How does obesity affect fertility?
Obesity affects the fine-tuned hormonal balance that regulates the menstrual cycle.
Women with a body mass index (BMI) above 27 are three times more likely than women in the normal weight range to be unable to conceive because they are less likely to ovulate.
The metabolic conditions of type 2 diabetes and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) are both linked to obesity and fertility difficulties.
Women with type 2 diabetes are more likely than other women to have obesity and to experience fertility difficulties and miscarriage.
Similarly, women with PCOS are more likely to have obesity and trouble conceiving than other women because of hormonal imbalances that cause irregular menstrual cycles.
In men, obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome (a cluster of conditions that increase the risk of heart disease and stroke) have negative effects on fertility.
Low testosterone levels caused by obesity or type 2 diabetes can affect the quality of sperm.
So how might Ozempic affect fertility?
Weight loss is recommended for people with obesity to reduce the risk of health problems. As weight loss can improve menstrual irregularities, it may also increase the chance of pregnancy in women with obesity.
This is why weight loss and metabolic improvement are the most likely reasons why women who use Ozempic report unexpected pregnancies.
But unexpected pregnancies have also been reported by women who use Ozempic and the contraceptive pill. This has led some experts to suggest that some GLP-1-RAs might affect the absorption of the pill and make it less effective. However, it’s uncertain whether there is a connection between Ozempic and contraceptive failure.
In men with type 2 diabetes, obesity and low testosterone, drugs like Ozempic have shown promising results for weight loss and increasing testosterone levels.
Avoid Ozempic if you’re trying to conceive
It’s unclear if semaglutide can be harmful in pregnancy. But data from animal studies suggest it should not be used in pregnancy due to potential risks of fetal abnormalities.
That’s why the Therapeutic Goods Administration recommends women of childbearing potential use contraception when taking semaglutide.
Similarly, PCOS guidelines state health professionals should ensure women with PCOS who use Ozempic have effective contraception.
Guidelines recommended stopping semaglutide at least two months before planning pregnancy.
For women who use Ozempic to manage diabetes, it’s important to seek advice on other options to control blood glucose levels when trying for pregnancy.
What if you get pregnant while taking Ozempic?
For those who conceive while using Ozempic, deciding what to do can be difficult. This decision may be even more complicated considering the unknown potential effects of the drug on the fetus.
While there is little scientific data available, the findings of an observational study of pregnant women with type 2 diabetes who were on diabetes medication, including GLP-1-RAs, are reassuring. This study did not indicate a large increased risk of major congenital malformations in the babies born.
Women considering or currently using semaglutide before, during, or after pregnancy should consult with a health provider about how to best manage their condition.
When pregnancies are planned, women can take steps to improve their baby’s health, such as taking folic acid before conception to reduce the risk of neural tube defects, and stopping smoking and consuming alcohol.
While unexpected pregnancies and “Ozempic babies” may be welcomed, their mothers have not had the opportunity to take these steps and give them the best start in life.
Read the other articles in The Conversation’s Ozempic series here.
Karin Hammarberg, Senior Research Fellow, Global and Women’s Health, School of Public Health & Preventive Medicine, Monash University and Robert Norman, Emeritus Professor of Reproductive and Periconceptual Medicine, The Robinson Research Institute, University of Adelaide
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Eyes for Alzheimer’s Diagnosis: New?
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It’s Q&A Time!
This is the bit whereby each week, we respond to subscriber questions/requests/etc
Have something you’d like to ask us, or ask us to look into? Hit reply to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom, and a Real Human™ will be glad to read it!
Q: As I am a retired nurse, I am always interested in new medical technology and new ways of diagnosing. I have recently heard of using the eyes to diagnose Alzheimer’s. When I did some research I didn’t find too much. I am thinking the information may be too new or I wasn’t on the right sites.
(this is in response to last week’s piece on lutein, eyes, and brain health)
We’d readily bet that the diagnostic criteria has to do with recording low levels of lutein in the eye (discernible by a visual examination of macular pigment optical density), and relying on the correlation between this and incidence of Alzheimer’s, but we’ve not seen it as a hard diagnostic tool as yet either—we’ll do some digging and let you know what we find! In the meantime, we note that the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (which may be of interest to you, if you’re not already subscribed) is onto this:
See also:
- Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (mixture of free and paid content)
- Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease Reports (open access—all content is free)
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Rewire Your OCD Brain – by Dr. Catherine Pittman & Dr. William Youngs
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OCD is just as misrepresented in popular media as many other disorders, and in this case, it’s typically not “being a neat freak” or needing to alphabetize things, so much as having uncontrollable obsessive intrusive thoughts, and often in response to those, unwanted compulsions. This can come from unchecked spiralling anxiety, and/or PTSD, for example.
What Drs. Pittman & Young offer is an applicable set of solutions, to literally rewire the brain (insofar as synapses can be considered neural wires). Leveraging neuroplasticity to work with us rather than against us, the authors talk us through picking apart the crossed wires, and putting them back in more helpful ways.
This is not, by the way, a book of CBT, though it does touch on that too.
Mostly, the book explains—clearly and simply and sometimes with illustrations—what is going wrong for us neurologically, and how to neurologically change that.
Bottom line: whether you have OCD or suffer from anxiety or just need help dealing with obsessive thoughts, this book can help a lot in, as the title suggests, rewiring that.
Click here to check out Rewire Your OCD Brain, and banish obsessive thoughts!
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How To Build a Body That Lasts – by Adam Richardson
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This book is written on a premise, and that premise is: “your age doesn’t define your mobility; your mobility defines your age”.
To this end, we are treated to 328 pages of why and how to improve our mobility (mostly how; just enough on the “why” to keep the motivation flowing).
Importantly, Richardson doesn’t expect that every reader is a regular gym-bunny or about to become one, doesn’t expect you to have several times your bodyweight in iron to life at home, and doesn’t expect that you’ll be doing the vertical splits against a wall any time soon.
Rather, he expects that we’d like to not dislocate a shoulder while putting the groceries away, would like to not slip a disk while being greeted by the neighbor’s dog, and would like to not need a 7-step plan for putting our socks on.
What follows is a guide to “on the good end of normal” mobility that is sustainable for life. The idea is that you might not be winning Olympic gymnastics gold medals in your 90s, but you will be able to get in and out of a car door as comfortably as you did when you were 20, for example.
Bottom line: if you want to be a superathlete, then you might need something more than this book; if you want to be on the healthy end of average when it comes to mobility, and maintain that for the rest of your life, then this is the book for you.
Click here to check out How To Build A Body That Lasts, and build a body that lasts!
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You Are Not a Before Picture – by Alex Light
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It’s that time of year, and many of us are looking at what we’ll do in the coming days, weeks, and months to level-up our health. So… Is this a demotivational book?
Quite the opposite! It’s rather a case of an often much-needed reminder to ensure that our plans are really our own, and really are what’s best for us. Why wouldn’t they be, you ask?
Much of diet culture (ubiquitous! From magazine covers to movie stars to the models advertising anything from health insurance to water filters) has us reaching for “body goals” that are not possible without a different skeleton and genes and compromises and post-production edits.
Alex Light—herself having moved from the fashion and beauty industry into health education—sets out in a clear, easy-reading manner, how we can look after ourselves, not be neglectful of our bodies, and/but also not get distracted into unhelpful, impossible, castles-in-the-air.
Bottom line: you cannot self-hate your way into good health, and good health will always be much more attainable than a body that’s just not yours. This book can help you sort out which is which.
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Understanding Spinach Oxalates and Health
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small
❝Interesting, but… Did you know spinach is high in oxylates? Some people are sensitive and can cause increased inflammation, joint pain or even kidney stones. Moderation is key. My sister and I like to eat healthy but found out by experience that too much spinach salad caused us joint and other aches.❞
It’s certainly good to be mindful of such things! For most people, a daily serving of spinach shouldn’t cause ill effects, and certainly there are other greens to eat.
We wondered whether there was a way to reduce the oxalate content, and we found:
How to Reduce Oxalic Acid in Spinach: Neutralizing Oxalates
…which led us this product on Amazon:
Nephure Oxalate Reducing Enzyme, Low Oxalate Diet Support
We wondered what “nephure” was, and whether it could be trusted, and came across this “Supplement Police” article about it:
Nephure Review – Oxalate Reducing Enzyme Powder Health Benefits?
…which honestly, seems to have been written as a paid advertisement. But! It did reference a study, which we were able to look up, and find:
In vitro and in vivo safety evaluation of Nephure™
…which seems to indicate that it was safe (for rats) in all the ways that they checked. They did not, however, check whether it actually reduced oxalate content in spinach or any other food.
The authors did declare a conflict of interest, in that they had a financial relationship with the sponsor of the study, Captozyme Inc.
All in all, it may be better to just have kale instead of spinach:
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A Guide to the Good Life – by Dr. William Irvine
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“Living well” is a surprisingly underrated part of wellness. We spend much of our lives in turmoil. Some of us, windswept and battered by the storms of life; others, up in quietly crumbling towers, seemingly “great” but definitely not feeling it. Diet and exercise etc will only get us so far. What else, then, can we do?
For Dr. Irvine, the key lies in two main things:
- Deciding how we intend to live our life (and doing so)
- Remaining tranquil in the face of external stressors
In Japanese terms, these things can be seen in ikigai and zen, respectively. This book puts them in Western terms, specifically, that of Stoic philosophy. But the goals and methods are very similar.
Far from being an abstract tome of wishy-washy philosophy, this book offers down-to-earth practical exercises and easily applicable advice. There was even an exercise that was new to this reviewer who has been reading such things for decades.
The writing style is also, true to Stoic principles, unpretentious and simple. This is an easy book to read, while being nonethless very engaging from start to finish—and thereafter!
Bottom line: so far as we know, we only get one shot at life, so we might as well make it a good one. Applying the ideas found in this book can help any reader to live better, and take more joy in it along the way.
Click here to check out a Guide to the Good Life, and live your best!
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