Letter from the Editor-in-Chief: The Good and the Hard of Life on GLP-1s

GLP-1 medications such as semaglutide and tirzepatide have changed daily life for millions of people, though side effects are common. Photo by Getty

GLP-1 medications like semaglutide and tirzepatide can lead to significant weight loss and may help reduce inflammation, improve mobility, and quiet persistent thoughts about food. Many people report life changing results after years of unsuccessful diets.

A Healthline story on Mayim Bialik’s GLP-1 side effects became our most engaged Facebook post of the year, as thousands of commenters shared hard side effects and life changing results. Research also increasingly links GLP-1s to benefits beyond weight loss.

Healthline’s Editor-in-Chief Robin Hough talks with his mom, Kitty, who lost 56 pounds on tirzepatide, and a registered nurse who has lost over 50 pounds, about the benefits, side effects, and cost of long-term treatment.

“Years of diets that worked for a couple of months, then gave all the weight back and more. Now the food noise has gone quiet,” a GLP-1 user shared.

In June, our brilliant News team published a piece about actor Mayim Bialik and her challenging experience with GLP-1 side effects. It did well, like many of the celebrity + health condition + human-interest angle features we create tend to do with our audience (that’s you all reading this!). Not a massive viral hit by any measure, but a strong performer on the traffic front.

Life in a busy newsroom went on.

Jump forward nearly 4 months; our equally brilliant social media team posts the piece on Facebook, leading with one of Bialik’s quotes from the article: “GLP-1s have helped people in serious need. Of that I am certain. But nobody talks much about what happens when it goes wrong.”

The fuse was lit. Nearly 12k likes, 1k reposts, and 3.5k comments later, the team had their most engaged post of the year by some margin. The irony is not lost on me that Bialik’s quote, about how rarely people talk about side effects, sparked such a deep conversation about that very thing.

GLP-1s are a big topic for Healthline. They drive traffic, they drive revenue, and they offer a rich seam of human-centric storytelling for our teams. Even so, no one predicted the post would catch fire the way it did. Our social team’s read is that a few things stacked up: Mayim Bialik is a name our Facebook audience knows, the topic is one where nearly everyone has a stake, and a busy thread tends to get shown to more people, who then add more comments. That’s the hypothesis. What we’ve consistently seen is that posts that lead with a quote get more people talking than those that lead with a headline. You may have noticed this article takes the same approach.

What the GLP-1 conversation on Facebook revealed

We also know that the comment sections on social media aren’t always the most hospitable of environments, particularly in the health space. What stood out about the lion’s share of the comments we read was how constructive the discourse was. People were leading with deeply personal and often moving perspectives about the life changing impact (for good and bad) of GLP-1s. In turn, they were met with equally balanced and thoughtful responses.

Many of the comments expanded on Bialik’s experience, detailing long and difficult battles with a range of side effects. But plenty told the other side of the story: years of failed diets and struggles with chronic conditions leading to despondency, side effects that went on to ease with time, and life changing results that were ultimately worth the cost.

My mom’s experience with tirzepatide

The line that opened this piece could have come from any of those commenters. It didn’t. It came from Kitty Hough, who is 75 and lives in London. Eagle-eyed readers will have spotted that she has the same surname as me – that’s because she’s my mom. She’s one of two people closer to the Healthline home who spoke to me for this piece and whose stories echo the Facebook post thread, with the good and the hard bits side by side.

Kitty was a hockey player and distance runner as a girl, the kind who could eat what she liked without it showing. Then came children, and a weight that crept up year after year, with decades of diets that “worked for a couple of months only to be back to my former weight and then some.” In late 2024, after a lot of research, she decided to try tirzepatide.

Since then, Kitty has lost 56 pounds. She says her joints hurt less, which she puts down to reduced inflammation. She is more mobile. The constant chatter about food has faded. She thinks harder before she eats now. 

“I am a strong believer that obesity is a disease and in my case certainly not the result of overindulgence or laziness,” she says. “GLP-1s have greatly improved my health and self-esteem. After years of struggling with my weight, I have finally found a way to solve the problem.”

Kitty will also tell you what it cost. Nausea. Constipation. Sulfur-