Health
As GLP-1 Drugs Skyrocket in Popularity, Healthcare Workers Emphasize Need for Proper Use and Support
GLP-1 weight loss medications are soaring in popularity.
A KFF poll from November 2025 found nearly one in eight Americans are taking some form of GLP-1 medication.
Medications like Ozempic and Wegovy have been prescribed for patients to manage diabetes, obesity and other conditions. However, the soaring popularity of the drugs has some healthcare workers concerned over their accessibility to vulnerable populations.
Dr. Laura Farrington, an oncologist with the City of Hope Cancer Center Chicago, and Theresa Gentile, a registered dietitian and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, spoke with “Chicago Tonight” about the weight loss medications and their increasing usage.
How GLP-1s Work
“GLP-1s work in the body actually by a number of different mechanisms,” Farrington said. “GLP-1s work with your body’s metabolism in a way that it breaks down sugars, it slows down gastric emptying, so things that get into your stomach stay there longer and take a longer time to move through your GI track, which makes people full longer and less hungry.”
She also describes a complicated mechanism of actions taking place in the pancreas, stomach and brain. The medications work by resembling the GLP hormone that is produced in the gut to regulate blood sugar and appetite.
“It mimics like hormones in your body — so it does things like boost insulin, lower glucagon, slow digestion and reduce appetite,” Farrington said.
Impact on Patients
Gentile works as part of a team to treat her patients holistically, alongside primary care doctors, psychiatrists and other specialists.
She finds that GLP-1s help patients treat obesity and diabetes in a way that combats the stigma often associated with those conditions.
“I think there sometimes has been the stigma of lack of willpower, patients not following prescriptions, patients not following advice, but I think you know we can, you can see now that it’s not necessarily the case,” Gentile said. “These drugs are really miracle drugs for some people.”
The growing popularity of these drugs is an important way to break the stigma and treat obesity as a disease rather than just a matter of individual willpower, Gentile said.
Potential Risks
However, that popularity is not one-sided. As interest in GLP-1s increases, so too has accessibility to these medications, which for vulnerable populations, could be harmful.
A recent Washington Post report detailed how individuals with eating disorders have been able to attain GLP-1 medications online.
The story referenced a prospective article in the New England Journal of Medicine that estimated more than 420,000 people could develop an eating disorder with long-term use of GLP-1s.
While more research is required to fully understand the broader impact of GLP-1s on people’s mental health, the Post story follows several individuals struggling with various eating disorders who were able to attain weight loss medication with minimal screening.
Often, they receive prescriptions for these medications by lying on healthcare apps about their weight and symptoms.
This concerned both Gentile and Farrington.
“It would be great if these apps could pair you with a medical team and a physician and dietitian, maybe a mental health professional,” Gentile said.
She worries that with minimal supervision, patients could eat less than needed for adequate nutrition.
She adds that very quickly patients can have weakened immunity, disordered eating and weight regain because they lack a proper treatment plan.
Gentile added that culturally, the way that GLP-1s are being discussed in the mainstream media could also be triggering for those who struggle with sizeism, body image issues and eating disorders.
“There is now this trend of watching people who are visible in the media becoming smaller and smaller — these drugs, because they decrease the appetite and can decrease your weight, so largely and so drastically — it can reinforce like extreme restriction for some people — fear of eating,” Gentile said. “People can get obsessive about calorie counting.”
A large part of the work she does is to help patients recognize their own hunger and satiety signals, which can be impacted by these drugs.
“Mental health support can matter just as much as the medication itself,” Gentile said. “Especially for these people who are going through some of this thinking.”
For Farrington, patients without proper medical supervision could also run the risk of receiving compound drugs that are not FDA approved, which pose serious threats to their wellbeing.
“Another thing that scares me are that people are getting compounded GLP-1s, meaning there are pharmacies that are making these drugs and are compounding them with other things that don’t necessarily have to be regulated,” Farrington said. “There’s a lot of people out there that are getting a lot of garbage.”
She added that if patients have interest in taking these drugs, that it is necessary to talk to their primary care doctor to understand what options are available to them.
“It is very important to realize that these are not quick fix weight loss drugs,” Farrington said. “These are long-term medications to help with overall survival and to help with your cardiovascular fitness and so it is not something that you should be getting online from someone you meet that day.”
