Yes, the Ozempic (and Mounjaro and Wegovy) face is real. But Ozempic benefits are real too.
Reevaluating Ozempic
The data are in and it looks like Ozempic-type medications benefit several health conditions, including diabetes, high blood pressure, and kidney and heart problems. Since these are serious conditions, it looks like the Ozempic type of medicine is here to stay.
What is Ozempic? It’s the brand name for a synthetic chemical, semaglutide, a chemically modified peptide, that can fool a receptor for the natural peptide. The receptor is called glucagon-like peptide receptor, or GLP-1, and semaglutide will make your body “think” that you just had a huge meal.
Semaglutide, sold under the brand names Ozempic, Wegovy and Rybelsus, is an antidiabetic medication used for treating type 2 diabetes and is now used as an anti-obesity medication. Because the medication is a peptide, it can’t be taken orally (it would be destroyed in the stomach) and must be injected. Once in the body, semaglutide increases insulin secretion and increases blood sugar disposal, improving glycemic control. Side effects include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, and constipation. But it does its job, it allows people to control diabetes type 2 and/or lose weight for as long as it is used. Stop using it and diabetes and/or weight will come back. But the overall benefits may well outweigh the problems, especially because the need to take other medications may disappear.
Ozempic face
What is Ozempic face? What celebrities don’t tell you is that while Ozempic will allow them to wear (and damage!) Marilyn Monroe’s famous dress in record time, you may end up looking like Brigitte Bardot after a lifetime of sun exposure.
You can read about weight loss and its effect on the skin in my blog about how “hard” diets will affect your skin. Whether your food intake is restricted because of bariatric surgery, or illness, or because you need to control diabetes, or because you want/need to lose weight, the body, and your skin, will see less food coming in. Your heart and lungs may see less food coming in, but they will still be a priority. Your face (and scalp, and hair) will not, starvation will set and you may start losing hair, and wrinkles will show up.
With the sudden loss of weight, and of nutrition reaching your skin, there are some facts that can’t be changed: you will likely lose a substantial amount of subcutaneous fat, and when you lose the plumpness that the fat gives you, the skin will show wrinkles a bit more. On top of that, your skin, a live organ in need of sustenance, will lack the energy and nutrition it needs to do its housekeeping: repair cells, synthesize proteins like elastin and collagen and lipids and hyaluronic acid, etc.
What you can do is protect your scalp and skin by feeding them topically with the nutrients and vitamins that they are not getting anymore from their usual sources.
I believe that in some circumstances hair loss and wrinkles are part of the price we pay for better overall health, and we may have to accept that, at least temporarily. However, once you know what the consequences are, it’s worth being prepared to ameliorate those consequences.
Ozempic body
For those taking this medication to lose weight, the effects on the skin may surprise them. Is your skin young enough to “shrink” as your weight goes down? If not, be ready to supply your skin with the nutrition and actives it will need to recover elasticity. Plastic surgery can cut excess skin, but unless your skin “functions young” it may not help much.
What Skin Actives can do for you?
Skin Actives has products that can provide nutrition to the skin and scalp, from simple minerals to complex growth factors. Think: you need amino acids to make collagen and elastin, essential fatty acids and cholesterol to protect cell membranes, including those mitochondrial membranes involved in energy production, and epidermal growth factor to “mandate” the synthesis of hyaluronic acid. And what about your scalp? Hair will fall off during hard diets unless you give the scalp the keratinocyte growth factor it needs to make hair and the amino acids that make up the hair protein. Remember your nails and toenails. Starvation is bad for any organ, but if you have to lose weight for any reason, you can prevent, or at least ameliorate, hair loss, wrinkles, and loss of skin elasticity as long as you provide nutrition topically.
Skin Actives products that can help
DISCLAIMER: These claims have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent any disease.
Hannah’s blog posts on diet and bariatric surgery
What bariatric surgery can do to your skin and hair – if you are not careful.
Bariatric surgery? Drastic diet? What about your skin?