I’ve been taking Ozempic to manage my TYPE 2 DIABETES BLOOD SUGAR. Some people have said, “YOU’RE SO LUCKY!!! You don’t have to worry about what you eat anymore!”
Reality, as usual, is just as much of a punch in the face as it can be about everything else: “‘This isn’t a magic bullet or pill,’ said Edward Matias, 45, a Connecticut resident who works in IT. ‘It’s not the fountain of youth. It takes work and commitment. If people are asking for this med because they want to lose weight and think they can eat anything at all, they’re in for a rude awakening.’”
I started taking Ozempic a year or so ago when my A1c kept climbing until it hit 8.2. It SHOULD be less than 6.1, so I had moved from “Hmmm…” to dangerous.
What’s it mean and why’s it important? First thing I found out it’s an average blood sugar level over the past two to three months. It’s figured out by determining how much of the hemoglobin (which hauls oxygen in your blood) is being screwed up by TOO MUCH sugar. The A1c is a measurement of how badly the hemoglobin is coated with sugar. The more the sugar coats the oxygen, the LESS oxygen your blood carries…the less energy you have. If your energy level drops too far, you die.
Pretty simple, huh?
So, Ozempic works by prodding the pancreas to release insulin to get the sugar to your muscles rather than storing it as fat and lowers glucose production in the liver, improving blood sugar control. For weight loss, it acts on the brain to reduce hunger and slows stomach emptying, which helps me feel full longer so I eat less, leading to weight loss. So, I NEED it to lower the sugar floating around in my blood – and I lose a few pounds on the side.
Who cares if there’s too much free sugar floating around my blood? Well, remember when you were a little kid and ate an entire box of your FAVORITE sugar0coated breakfast cereal WITH NO MILK? Sick to your stomach? Your head spinning, ears ringing.
Mom probably muttered, “If you do that again, you’re probably going into a sugar coma!” We all knew what a coma was – we’d been watching MASH or Marcus Welby, MD, or whatever other hospital soap opera Dad was watching while he was typing up his reports. It’s when someone is alive but pretty much looks dead.
It wasn’t a good thing. That’s what happens when your body can’t even control the amount of sugar (GLUCOSE, not like…table sugar!) in your bloodstream. Besides feeling crappy, it also does a number of your internal organs. You can be really thirsty or hungry; frequent peeing, headaches, blurred vision, constantly feeling worn out, (weirdly) pre-diabetics can experience weight loss, vaginal yeast, worse than normal infections, and infections ON your skin, and finally, you heal much slower from cuts, and cuts can turn into oozing sores. That’s only the beginning, diabetes can become MORE serious maybe even drifting into something called ketoacidosis: your blood to become acidic. DKA can also affect people who have undiagnosed Type 1 diabetes like vomiting, dehydration, abdominal pain, labored breathing or hyperventilation, rapid heartbeat, confusion and disorientation, and you can pass out.
LONG term: liver failure, kidney failure, vision failure, nerve damage, paralysis of your STOMACH!!!, heart disease, and stroke.
Continuing to take Ozempic, Mounjarno, and Wegovy are just brand names of semaglutide – which you can’t get as a generic yet. But maybe someday.
Because as far as I can tell, I’ll be taking this stuff until I die…
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/ozempic-what-its-like-to-take-for-years-rcna93921
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