GLP-1 agonists (Ozempic, etc.) to treat long-COVID?

@db72 where is she getting it for $50 a month. I currently am spending $150 a month.

@forest32 Ageless RX offers GLP-1’s and also does microdosing and I believe it’s 199 a month and $249 a month. I go through them for my low dose naltrexone for my Long Covid & ME/CFS.

I took a small dose of Zepbound last week for a long Covid and it's been the worst decision I have made. Everything is worse and feel dehydrated and much weaker just waiting for the stuff to dissipate. Think long and hard before taking this. Maybe insurance companies don't cover this for a reason for off label purposes. People have been hospitalized due to side effects.

I took half the minimum dose and I've had severe side effects and as weak can be considerably. These are very powerful drugs especially if you have long covid. I will not be continuing with this. If you must start with micro dosing which is not part of the script study. But with long covid everything affects different people differently and I hope it works for most people but not for me.

You can purchase a vial of Zepbound directly from the manufacturer and microdose from it. You do need a doctor's prescription to get the vial sent to you.

I'm about to discuss this with my doctor next week, pusuant to a long article about the drug in the NY Times.

I'm consulting my doctor about trying GLP1 next week. I'll post an update.

I am in a trial using GLP-1 for long covid through Scripts La Jolla. We have over 1000 if us in the study with half getting the drug and half getting the placebo. We are all at a high enough dose to know whether we are receiving the drug as some of us have no side effects (e.g. Placebo). Some people on the drug are better and some are worse. Those who had long covid affecting their blood pressure are not doing as well due the drug increasing blood pressure. Muscle loss has also been a concern as a good share of drug induced weight loss is lost as muscle and some could not afford the drug induced weight loss as they were already quite lean from covid. The side effects of nausea, loss of appetite, and diarrhea/constipation have also affected some long covid people significantly. But for the percentage that are reacting well, they are happy!

This study started at 2.5 mg and is working us up to 15 mg. I have seen other studies for long covid that are using microdoses which may be easier for us long covid folks to tolerate.

Thanks so much for the information. I will pass it along to my doctor!

I tried a small amount of tirzepatide a month ago; my doctor gave me a 2.5mg vial and I tried to microdose, using about a quarter of it. The side effects were intense. I couldn't sleep at all. The next morning I was so dizzy and fatigued that I couldn't get out of bed. My cats were frantic because I usually feed them earlier. Then came wild diarrhea, which calmed down in the following week.

The fatigue and dizziness improved a tad so I can drive to a local grocery store. But now I have absolutely no extra energy for an easy hike or anything else. Before I got sidelined by tirzepatide, I was able to do easy 1-2 hour walks. That is in the past. I was upset to have to cancel an appt. for moderate hyperbaric oxygen and red light treatment. I was too wiped out from the GLP-1 to drive a few hours for those treatments (including near and far red-light lengths), which really did help me feel better. I've noticed that if you mention on Reddit, for example, that you tried moderate hbot (1.3 x sea level atmosphere), someone will dismiss you by claiming that it's not effective unless you do 40-60 sessions in a hardshell, high-pressure chamber (at a pressure of 3x sea level).

The good news for me is that after the GLP-1 disaster, I bought a grounding mat, which is consistently helping my sleep. I no longer sleep 1-4 hours a night. More like 6-8 hours a night, no thanks to tirzepatide. Of course, other people may receive no benefit from grounding, which probably sounds woo-woo to many.

Yes, GLP-1s may help a lot of people, but for how long? We don't know the causes of Long Covid, let alone ME/CFS and autoimmune diseases. The hyping of these drugs reminds me of years ago, when various plaques were announced as the "causes" of Alzheimer's. Now researchers have broadened their explanations of how the disease develops. The current Long Covid buzz is about MCAS and GLP-1s. If someone isn't helped by LDN, antihistamines, nicotine patches or GLP-1s, are they out of luck?