{"id":29502,"date":"2025-06-12T09:00:20","date_gmt":"2025-06-12T09:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=29502"},"modified":"2025-06-12T09:25:16","modified_gmt":"2025-06-12T09:25:16","slug":"in-some-ozempic-households-the-weight-loss-is-contagious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=29502","title":{"rendered":"In Some Ozempic Households, the Weight Loss is Contagious"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Patients taking the drugs are finding their families are benefiting, too.<\/p>\n

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When Amy Kane started taking Mounjaro in 2022, she expected to lose weight \u2014 which she did, dropping more than 170 pounds.<\/p>\n

What Ms. Kane, a 36-year-old content creator in Chicago, didn\u2019t expect was for the effects on her health to be contagious. Soon after she started the medication, her husband and children began eating more healthfully \u2014 and then became more physically active, too.<\/p>\n

As medications like Ozempic transform the health of millions of Americans, some families are discovering a surprising side effect: family members who are not taking the drugs are changing their relationship with food and in some cases, losing weight as well.<\/p>\n

There isn\u2019t data yet to show how frequently this might occur, but medical experts have long observed similar effects with other weight-loss treatments, said Dr. Lydia Alexander, the former president of the Obesity Medicine Association. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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One study<\/a> of bariatric surgery patients found that two-thirds of partners lost weight within a year of their spouse\u2019s operation, with overweight partners showing the most significant changes. Another study<\/a> of participants with diabetes in a weight loss program found that spouses who weren\u2019t undergoing any treatment lost an average of nearly five pounds and consumed significantly fewer calories from fat. And anecdotally, providers around the country said they are already seeing a similar effect with the families of patients taking drugs like Ozempic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese medications don\u2019t just change appetite, they transform family dynamics,\u201d said Dr. Joey Skelton, professor of pediatrics at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. By 2024, about one in eight U.S. adults had taken Ozempic or a similar drug<\/a>, meaning tens of millions of spouses, children and other family members could also be experiencing some effect from these medications without ever taking them.<\/p>\n

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Patients taking the drugs are finding their families are benefiting, too.When Amy Kane started taking Mounjaro in 2022, she expected to lose weight \u2014 which she did, dropping more than 170 pounds.What Ms. Kane, a 36-year-old content creator in Chicago, didn\u2019t expect was for the effects on her health to be contagious. Soon after she started the medication, her husband and children began eating more healthfully \u2014 and then became more physically active, too.As medications like Ozempic transform the health of millions of Americans, some families are discovering a surprising side effect: family members who are not taking the drugs are changing their relationship with food and in some cases, losing weight as well.There isn\u2019t data yet to show how frequently this might occur, but medical experts have long observed similar effects with other weight-loss treatments, said Dr. Lydia Alexander, the former president of the Obesity Medicine Association. One study of bariatric surgery patients found that two-thirds of partners lost weight within a year of their spouse\u2019s operation, with overweight partners showing the most significant changes. Another study of participants with diabetes in a weight loss program found that spouses who weren\u2019t undergoing any treatment lost an average of nearly five pounds and consumed significantly fewer calories from fat. And anecdotally, providers around the country said they are already seeing a similar effect with the families of patients taking drugs like Ozempic.\u201cThese medications don\u2019t just change appetite, they transform family dynamics,\u201d said Dr. Joey Skelton, professor of pediatrics at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. By 2024, about one in eight U.S. adults had taken Ozempic or a similar drug, meaning tens of millions of spouses, children and other family members could also be experiencing some effect from these medications without ever taking them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29504,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29502"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29505,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29502\/revisions\/29505"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}