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Stephen Fry is the latest celebrity to criticise weight-loss drug Ozempic, after the medication made him violently sick.

The Blackadder star was left vomiting up to five times a day after taking the medication in a last-ditch attempt to prevent weight gain.

As an “early adopter” of the diabetes drug, which has swept Hollywood and been promoted by the likes of Sharon Osbourne and Amy Schumer, the 66-year-old shared that at first he thought the results were “astonishing”.

“The first week or so, I was thinking, ‘This is astonishing. Not only do I not want to eat, I don’t want any alcohol of any kind. This is going to be brilliant,’” he said during a recent appearance on the River Café Table 4 podcast.

Fry, however, was forced to stop taking Ozempic after he began feeling “sicker and sicker”.

“I started feeling sick, and I started getting sicker and sicker and sicker,” he said. “I was literally throwing up four, five times a day and I thought, ‘I can’t do this.’ So that’s it.

“The new variant, Tirzepatide Mounjaro it’s called makes it even worse apparently.”

The comedian said he was in America at the time when he read about the medication, many years ago.

“I’m an early adopter of these things. I happened to be in America, and I’d read about it, and I asked my doctor in America, my physician as they like to call them, and he said, ‘I think I can get you some.’ He tried me on it,’” Fry said.

Fry took the drug many years ago as an ‘early adopter’ ( Getty Images )

According to The Mirror, Fry weighed over 290 pounds in April 2019. By August that same year, he had lost five-and-a-half stone due to Ozempic.

Many celebrities have commented on the use of Ozempic, with Celebrity Big Brother star Sharon Osbourne, 71, reporting she had “no regrets” about taking the drug although she feels she is now “too gaunt” and cannot put weight. Her daughter, Kelly Osbourne, incited fury after she said any critics of the drug simply “couldn’t afford it”.

Oscar-winning actor Kate Winslet is one of several celebrities to speak out against Ozempic, condemning the weight-loss medication as “terrible”.

Oprah Winfrey recently made headlines after she spoke about her own recent weight-loss journey in which she used a drug that she stopped short of mentioning by name. The talk show host did admit to using similar medication to Ozempic including Mounjaro injections.

Below, see some of the stars who have spoken about their dramatic weight loss transformations — and how they feel today.

Celebrities such as Eric Stonestreet , Kelly Clarkson , Kathy Bates , John Goodman and Adele have all publicly addressed speculation about their changing weight, and in many cases, shared a look at how they achieved the changes. Some stars have opened up about the use of medications that can aid in weight loss, including Mounjaro and Ozempic , and others have said their trimmer figures are purely through dietary changes and working out.

People can seek to lose weight for many reasons, all of them personal — but for celebrities, these journeys become public, as well. And these stars have recently spoken out about their own body transformations, whether they underwent them for health reasons or simply because they were ready for a change.

01 of 26 Jazz Jennings Jazz Jennings/Instagram In June 2025, the I Am Jazz star shared a few updates with fans on her Instagram: She’d walked across the stage at her Harvard graduation ceremony (though she has one more semester to go), and she had a “new look” after losing 100 lbs. The selfies she shared were a culmination of the work she’d been putting in over the past two years, a weight loss journey she had shared updates on along the way. “No matter my weight, I have always felt beautiful,” she said at one point. “However, losing this weight and prioritizing my health has created a shift within.”

02 of 26 Chrissy Metz Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic; Leah Puttkammer/FilmMagic The This Is Us star stepped out at the Variety Power of Women event in May 2025, showing off the results of a nearly 100-lb. weight loss, a milestone she revealed to the Daily Mail a few months earlier. “I want to age the best way that I can, and I want to be strong. And that’s really the impetus behind any of it,” she said of her decision to lose the weight. She shared that strength training had been a large part of her new routine, and added that she supported any method that people take to weight loss, including medication. “It’s something I feel like, it is so personal and I think it’s important to destigmatize anything,” she said of drugs like Ozempic. “But I also think it’s people’s personal decision to decide what it is that they want to do for their body. I think ultimately, at the end of the day, we all just want to feel good and feel good about ourselves.”

03 of 26 Jelly Roll Jelly Roll. Sara Kauss/FilmMagic; Arturo Holmes/Getty Jelly Roll started his weight loss journey in 2022, at 540 lbs.; by April 2025, he revealed he had lost nearly 200 lbs. as of April 2025, and hoped to lose another 100 lbs. “For the non-fluffy people in the world, I would give y’all some educational course here — to do all the fun stuff in life, you’ve got to be under 250,” he explained while on Jimmy Kimmel Live! “I want to skydive, I want to ride a roller coaster. I want to ride a bull.” So how has he dropped the weight? “Dude, listen. I’ve been thinking about ways to make it sound cool, but I can’t. I’m eating a lot of protein and vegetables and walking. That’s what I’m doing,” he told Kimmel. He also trained for a 5K and started a Facebook group to encourage others to do the same. “I wanna be on the cover of Men’s Health by March of 2026,” he said while on his wife, Bunnie XO’s, podcast in 2024, noting that it was the first time he ever publicly shared that aspiration. “That’s my new goal. I wanna have one of the biggest transformations.”

04 of 26 Lizzo Lizzo. Lizzo/Instagram (2) Lizzo started her “weight release journey” back in 2023, in an effort to improve her mental health. Over the years, the star has been vocal about loving her body at any size — and also intentional about making sure she doesn’t use toxic language that might be harmful to her younger fans. And while she hasn’t revealed the exact number of pounds she’s dropped, the work she’s been doing “very slowly” had led to a look that she’s been happy to show off on social media. In January 2025, she said she had reached her goal weight. “I did it,” she wrote in the caption on a photo. “Today when I stepped on my scale, I reached my weight release goal. I haven’t seen this number since 2014! Let this be a reminder you can do anything you put your mind to. Time for new goals!” And she continues to keep it real on the topic. “I’m not going to lie and say I love my body every day,” the singer told the New York Times. “The bottom line is, the way you feel about your body changes every single day. There are some days I adore my body, and others when I don’t feel completely positive.”

05 of 26 Remi Bader Remi Bader. Dave Kotinsky/Getty; John Nacion/WWD via Getty Remi Bader has had to clap back at critics who said her losing weight through bariatric surgery was taking the easy way out. “Don’t let anyone ever tell you surgery is the easy way out. I worked hard to get here and i’m forever proud of myself 🩷,” she wrote under a transformation video posted to Instagram showing her workout journey post-op. The influencer, who built her platform on embracing her curves, opened up to Self about her weight loss journey, telling the mag, “I loved being curvy my whole life; I just did. It was who I was… I will always believe that you could be a bigger size and be healthy and happy,” she told the outlet. “I was for a while, that wasn’t a lie. But there was a point when it shifted, and I became really unhappy.” She later told the outlet, “I was lost with my identity before… I wasn’t big enough at first and plus-size enough at first for the plus-size community. Then I became too big… for some brands even to work with. Now I’m too small? I actually don’t know where I’m supposed to be.”

06 of 26 Oprah Kevin Winter/Getty;Steve Granitz/WireImage After publicly struggling with her weight over many years in the public eye, in 2024, Oprah said that she had used weight loss medication and lifestyle adjustments to reach a weight she was happy with. Her health journey began after having knee surgery, which led her to make exercise and dietary changes — but she realized that medication could help her keep from “yo-yoing” as she had done in the past. “I realized I’d been blaming myself all these years for being overweight, and I have a predisposition that no amount of willpower is going to control,” she told PEOPLE. “Obesity is a disease. It’s not about willpower — it’s about the brain.” “The fact that there’s a medically approved prescription for managing weight and staying healthier, in my lifetime, feels like relief, like redemption, like a gift, and not something to hide behind and once again be ridiculed for. I’m absolutely done with the shaming from other people and particularly myself,” she said.

07 of 26 Whoopi Goldberg Jamie McCarthy/Getty;Amanda Edwards/Getty While discussing the ABC special Winfrey produced about the topic of weight loss medication on The View, Whoopi Goldberg told the audience she had lost weight herself with the help of Mounjaro. “I will tell you, I weighed almost 300 lbs. when I made Till,” said Goldberg of the 2022 film she acted in and produced. She added that she didn’t realize the extent of her weight gain until one day, “I saw me and I thought, ‘Oh! That’s a lot of me!’ ” She also urged compassion for anyone who has experienced weight gain or loss. “Maybe the key is to stop judging everybody,” she said. “My weight has come and gone and up and down, but it’s never been an issue for me because I don’t listen to what other people say about me so it has never been a problem … Everyone has something to say but no one said, ‘How you doing?’ Because it involves so many other things.”

08 of 26 Eric Stonestreet Eric Stonestreet. Duffy-Marie Arnoult/WireImage; Alexander Tamargo/Getty Eric Stonestreet was diagnosed with diabetes around the same time as he began filming his role as Cam on Modern Family, and at the time, he underplayed the seriousness of the condition. He admitted to feeling shame because of the diagnosis and hiding “injectables and pills” from his now-fiancée Lindsay Schweitzer, until a few years into their eight-year relationship. Still, it wasn’t until the death of his father, who also had diabetes, that Stonestreet got a wake-up call. “He passed away from leukemia, but the thing that was the most painful for him was his diabetic neuropathy. And I just decided, well, I can’t go down that road,” the actor explained to PEOPLE. Additionally, Stonestreet revealed that the thought of not being there for his and Schweitzer’s 13-year-old twin sons made him turn things around. “They’re her kids but I’ve known them since 3 so they’re my kids as well,” he said. “And just like every parent, I want to be around. So I just decided, I gotta stop this train from going that direction and reverse it a little bit as best I can.” The actor then got on Mounjaro, which he has been taking since 2022. “It’s a game changer,” he said. “It has just been incredible. It’s changed my lifestyle, changed my approach to eating, changed my approach to exercise.” He added that he wants to maintain those changes long-term: “Here these people have invented this incredible thing that clearly does its part. Now I need to contribute my part.”

09 of 26 John Goodman John Goodman. Mary Ellen Matthews/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty;Arnold Jerocki/WireImage John Goodman’s weight loss journey began back in 2007, and he has been on a steady path since. The actor, who first came to prominence in the late ’80s and early ’90s playing Dan Conner on Roseanne, has lost 200 lbs., thanks to a consistent healthy diet and workout regimen.

“I don’t want to be an example to anybody when the weight comes thundering back on — when I start eating Crisco out of the can with a spoon and a side of confectioner’s sugar,” he joked to AARP when speaking about what motivated him to stay the course.

10 of 26 Jim Gaffigan Jim Gaffigan. Dave Kotinsky/Getty;Todd Owyoung/NBC/Getty Jim Gaffigan lost 50 lbs. using Mounjaro — the brand name for tirzepatide, a prescription drug used to treat type 2 diabetes that also helps people lose weight. And though some aren’t as open about using the medication, Gaffigan has been very candid about his experience. “I had very low expectations because I did know someone that had tried it and they were like, ‘Oh no, I was just nauseous for a week,'” he told PEOPLE. “And then I thought my true joy of eating would overpower anything.” However, after his doctor asked if he’d considered the medication, the actor gave it a go. “She was like, ‘Well, some people are against it.’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t care, I’ll try it.’ My knees hurt and my cholesterol was kind of not great,” Gaffigan says. As for the stigma that may come with having used a weight-loss drug, Gaffigan has no qualms about it. “I almost thought it was kind of odd that people were resistant to talking about it. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it,” he said. “There’s people walking around that obviously do not have blonde hair — yet they do. I don’t think that’s weird, either. It’s just whatever gets you through.”

11 of 26 Fat Joe Fat Joe. Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage;Shahar Azran/Getty At his heaviest, Fat Joe weighed 470 lbs. However, after attending the funeral for Big Pun — who died aged 28, from a heart attack — the Bronx native knew he had to make a change. “I went to his funeral and I felt like Ebenezer Scrooge. Like, I seen me,” Fat Joe recalled. “And I’m looking at his little daughter. She was the same age as my daughter. I said, ‘You gotta lose weight; otherwise you outta here.'”

He has since lost about 250 lbs., thanks to a cleaner diet and Ozempic. “We just try to eat everything with the least carbs as possible…so we try to stay away from the bread, the pasta, the rice. That’s the smartest way to eat,” he told Us Weekly.

12 of 26 Kathy Bates Kathy Bates. Vinnie Zuffante/Getty;Amy Sussman/Getty Academy Award-winning actress Kathy Bates revealed she lost 100 lbs. over six years, but it was not all due to Ozempic. The actress first lost 80 lbs. through sheer changes to her lifestyle and diet, she told PEOPLE. She then dropped another 20 on Ozempic. “There’s been a lot of talk that I just was able to do this because of Ozempic,” Bates says. “But I have to impress upon people out there that this was hard work for me, especially during the pandemic. It’s very hard to say you’ve had enough.”

13 of 26 Dave Bautista Dave Batista. Ian West/PA Images/Getty;Amy Sussman/Getty As a former pro wrestler, Dave Bautista has been relatively in shape throughout his career. However, after bulking up to 300 lbs. for his role as Leonard in Knock at the Cabin, the actor went into serious shredding mode and dropped 50 lbs. using jiu-jitsu. “I put on all this weight for Knock at the Cabin. I was really big, like over 300 lbs.,” he said while on Live with Kelly and Mark. “I was struggling to lose the weight, so I brought a trainer — my buddy Jason Manly — over to Budapest with me while I was filming Dune,” he said. He added that the duo “did nothing but grapple, like for hours. And so I started shedding the weight off and I figured ‘I’ll just stick with it so I’ll get my brown belt.’“

14 of 26 Kelly Clarkson Kelly Clarkson. Robin Marchant/Getty; Gilbert Flores/Billboard via Getty While Kelly Clarkson has been more private about her weight loss journey, she did disclose that she’s taking “something that aids in helping break down the sugar,” because her body “doesn’t do it right,” and addressed the Ozempic rumors. “My doctor chased me for two years, and I was like, ‘No, I’m afraid of it. I already have thyroid problems.’ Everybody thinks it’s Ozempic, but it’s not. It’s something else.”

15 of 26 Adele Adele. Mark Larner/Avalon/Getty;FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Adele’s quest for better mental health led to her weight loss, though the singer stressed that wasn’t the end goal. She began working out as a way to manage her anxiety in 2018, and three years later, she was down 100 lbs. “It became my time,” she told Vogue of her intensive weightlifting and circuit training sessions at Heart & Hustle, a private gym in West Hollywood. “I realized that when I was working out, I didn’t have any anxiety. It was never about losing weight. I thought, If I can make my body physically strong, and I can feel that and see that, then maybe one day I can make my emotions and my mind physically strong.”

16 of 26 Khloé Kardashian Khloe Kardashian. Michael Tran/FilmMagic; Kevin Mazur/WireImage Perhaps no other Kardashian sister has had to deal with more public criticism about her appearance than Khloé Kardashian and the reality TV star has talked openly about how hurtful it’s been — as well as what now motivates her to stay in shape. The third Kardashian sister revealed she dropped 40 lbs. following her divorce from Lamar Odom, but has now turned her focus more on being healthy than obsessing over the number on a scale. “When I was bigger, if they had Ozempic, I probably would have tried it, cause I tried any other thing,” she said during an episode of The Kardashians. “I tried any fad weight loss trend except for the real thing that actually works, and that’s a lifestyle change.” “So I really want to encourage healthiness, and not about the number on a scale. I just think people should be active,” she said. “I don’t really care what your size is. You should just be healthy and stronger for yourself.

17 of 26 Rebel Wilson Rebel Wilson. Jeffrey Mayer/WireImage;Joe Maher/Getty Rebel Wilson’s desire to become a mother was the catalyst for her weight loss journey. The actress visited her fertility doctor back in 2019, who revealed she’d have a much better chance of harvesting and freezing her eggs if she lost weight. “He looked me up and down and said, ‘You’d do much better if you were healthier,’ ” Wilson told PEOPLE in 2022. “I was taken aback. I thought, ‘Oh God, this’s guy’s so rude.’ He was right. I was carrying around a lot of excess weight. It’s almost like I didn’t think of my own needs. I thought of a future child’s needs that really inspired me to get healthier.” She went on to lose 80 lbs. and welcomed daughter Royce Lillian in 2022.

18 of 26 David Harbour David Harbour. Katie Jones/Variety/Penske Media via Getty; NBC/Noam Galai/NBC via Getty Though David Harbour had fans swooning over his ripped physique in season 4 of Stranger Things, the actor said he doesn’t see himself dropping weight for a role ever again. Harbour lost 80 lbs. for season 4 of the Netflix show because his character, Jim Hopper, was held captive by Russians at a labor camp at the top of the season. To get the weight off, he took on intermittent fasting and pilates. “I lost about 80 lbs. from season three — I was about 270 [then], and when we shot [season four] I was around 190,” Harbour told British GQ. “I don’t think I’ll ever do that again,” he told the outlet. “I have this Santa Claus movie [Violent Night] … and I gained [it all back]. But now, yeah, never again. The prosthetics are too good.”

19 of 26 Billy Gardell Billy Gardell. Paul Archuleta/FilmMagic; Michael Tullberg/Getty Billy Gardell lost 150 lbs. after undergoing bariatric surgery, but the Bob Hearts Abishola actor says the procedure was just the beginning of his journey. “My suggestion to anybody who’s considering this is to study and really immerse yourself in the commitment it takes after the surgery to maintain this and take care of yourself,” he told PEOPLE. “If you’re not willing to make that commitment, don’t do the surgery. But if you are willing to make that commitment, then it’s been an incredibly healthy change for my life.” After going through a pattern where he’d “lose 30 lbs., gain 35 lbs., lose 30 lbs., gain 35 lbs.,” the COVID-19 pandemic made him realize he was more at risk of catching the virus because of his health. The thought of leaving his family behind gave him the jolt he needed to move forward with the surgery. “The idea of not being here for my wife or my kid motivated my change, motivated me into I will commit to whatever it takes to get healthy,” he said. “Sometimes you need help and you have to be humble enough to ask for help in order for that to happen.”

20 of 26 Al Roker Al Roker. RJ Capak/WireImage; Barry Brecheisen/Getty Al Roker famously underwent gastric bypass surgery back in 2002 after years of failed diets and health problems, and was able to drop more than 100 lbs. Twenty years later, the beloved weatherman looked back on his life-changing decision with a post on Instagram where he could be seen pulling out his old jeans — and showing how he could fit his whole body in just half of the pair. “Hard to believe it was 20 years ago today, I wore these size 54 Levi jeans to my #gastricbypass at 340 lbs. and here I am today,” Roker wrote. “It’s still a struggle but I’m never going back,” he vowed. “I have setbacks and struggle every day, but I never forget how far I’ve come.”

21 of 26 Jennifer Hudson Jennifer Hudson. Gary Gershoff/WireImage; Paras Griffin/WireImage Jennifer Hudson was a proud, full-figured woman when she came on the scene on American Idol back in 2004. However, she decided to make some lifestyle and diet changes and shed 80 lbs. as a Weight Watchers spokeswoman between 2010 and 2014. “I throw the pancakes across the room! I don’t let the food intimidate me,” she told Yahoo of how she keeps the weight off. “If it’s too much, I just get rid of it, but I make sure to watch what I put in my body. And I make sure I know what it is. It’s all about portions for the most part. I just take care of myself in that way, being more conscious. I don’t work out a lot, but I do like to be active. Simple as that.”

22 of 26 Shonda Rhimes Shonda Rhimes. Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic; Bryan Bedder/Getty Shonda Rhimes’ 117 lbs. weight loss was also inspired by the desire to be around for her daughters. While on the Ellen DeGeneres Show back in 2015, the Shondaland pioneer opened up about an eye-opening moment that spawned her journey. “I got on an airplane … it was a first class seat, you know, they’re bigger, and I was like: ‘This is going to be really comfortable,’” Rhimes recalled. “And I got in my seat, I took off my shoes, I took out my book and I went to buckle my seatbelt – and it wouldn’t buckle. And I thought to myself, ‘Well, something is wrong with this seatbelt, it’s broken.’ And it wasn’t the seatbelt, it was me.” She continued: “It really was about the fact that I have a 3-year-old, and a 2-year-old, and a 13-year-old, and I kind of wanted to be around for them, to be healthy.” “I’m super feminist, and I’m like, ‘Everybody should be whatever shape they want to be, how dare anybody tell anybody anything!’ ” she said. “And then I thought like, ‘I’m going to fall over, cause I don’t feel good.’ So it was really about that.”

23 of 26 Jacob Batalon Jacob Batalon. Jason Kempin/Getty; Maya Dehlin Spach/WireImage Jacob Batalon dropped 100 lbs. after realizing he couldn’t walk upstairs without being out of breath. “This one day I kind of just saw myself without a shirt on and it was just ridiculous,” he explained. “I could not believe I let myself get this far. That’s what sort of started it all.” The Spiderman actor enlisted the help of a trainer, began working out six days a week for about 90 minutes and switched to a plant-based diet and began losing weight in 2020.

24 of 26 Anthony Anderson Anthony Anderson. Jason Merritt/FilmMagic; Rob Kim/Getty For Anthony Anderson, being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes initially only led to some small changes in his lifestyle. “I started eating healthier and in moderation, but I was still sort of eating the same stuff that I’d been eating all my life,” he admitted to PEOPLE. But a new role made him change his tune entirely. “When I was cast in Law & Order, I decided to make a drastic change,” says Anderson. “I got more serious about my health and appearance — not from a vanity standpoint. I just started making healthier choices.” By 2014, he’d lost 47 lbs. and altered his diet. “I moved to a plant-based diet,” he told PEOPLE. “I’m vegan-ish — I’m not going to send anything back to the kitchen if some butter or cream found its way onto the plate.”

25 of 26 Missy Elliott Missy Elliot. Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic; Kaitlyn Morris/FilmMagic Missy Elliott was diagnosed with Graves’ disease in 2008, a thyroid condition which not only led to depression and anxiety, but a significant amount of weight loss as well. “There were physical changes, extreme headaches, extreme weight loss,” her friend Sharaya J. told Women’s Health of that difficult time in Elliott’s life. “What that does to a person, being a public figure and knowing people are looking, judging? That’s a tough thing.” These days, Elliott has said, she manages her condition with medication, diet and exercise. “Every day I wake, I’m blessed to be here and in good health,” she told PEOPLE in 2024. “I’m feeling so much better now … Every now and then you get a little ache in the leg or the knee, but outside of that, I feel good.”

Adele and more stars have shown off their wellness journeys on social media — and fans are loving their transformations.

Adele shocked Instagram users with a new photo in May 2020 as she rang in her 32nd birthday in a little black dress.

“When Adele and I started our journey together, it was never about getting super skinny. It was about getting her healthy,” her trainer, Pete Geracimo, wrote via Instagram at the time. “When 25 dropped and the tour announced, we had to get ready for a 13-month grueling schedule. In that time, she warmed to training and made better food choices. As a result, she lost considerable weight and people took notice.”

Kelly Osbourne’s fitness journey has been just as public. “I took more hell for being fat than I did for being an absolute raging drug addict,” she exclusively told Us Weekly in February 2010 after losing 42 pounds. “I will never understand that. … I’m really proud to look in the mirror and not hate every single thing I see.”

Scroll down to see more celebrity weight loss transformations:

CNN —

Joanie Knight has a message for anyone considering drugs like Ozempic or Wegovy, which have become popular for the dramatic weight loss they can help people achieve.

“I wish I never touched it. I wish I’d never heard of it in my life,” said Knight, 37, of Angie, Louisiana. “This medicine made my life hell. So much hell. It has cost me money. It cost me a lot of stress; it cost me days and nights and trips with my family. It’s cost me a lot, and it’s not worth it. The price is too high.”

Brenda Allen, 42, of Dallas feels the same way. Her doctor prescribed Wegovy for weight loss.

“And even now, being off the medication for almost a year, I’m still having a lot of problems,” Allen said. She said she was at urgent care recently after vomiting so much that she became dehydrated.

Emily Wright, 38, a teacher in Toronto, started taking Ozempic in 2018. Over a year, she said, she lost 80 pounds, which she’s been able to keep off. But Wright said she now vomits so frequently that she had to take a leave of absence from her job.

“I’ve almost been off Ozempic for a year, but I’m still not back to my normal,” Wright said.

The diabetes drug Ozempic, and its sister drug for weight loss, Wegovy, utilize the same medication, semaglutide. These and other drugs in this family, which includes medications like tirzepatide and liraglutide, work by mimicking a hormone that’s naturally made by the body, GLP-1. One of the roles of GLP-1 is to slow the passage of food through the stomach, which helps people feel fuller longer.

If the stomach slows down too much, however, that can cause problems.

Knight and Wright have been diagnosed with severe gastroparesis, or stomach paralysis, which their doctors think may have resulted from or been exacerbated by the medication they were taking, Ozempic.

Wright said she has also been diagnosed with cyclic vomiting syndrome, which causes her to throw up multiple times a day.

Emily Wright lost 80 pounds on Ozempic and now struggles with gastroparesis Courtesy Emily Wright

Allen doesn’t have a diagnosis for her stomach problems but said they started only after she was encouraged by her doctor to take Wegovy to lose weight. She is managing her ongoing nausea and vomiting with a medication called Zofran and prescription probiotics while she waits for more tests in October — the first available appointments she could get with specialists.

Doctors say that more cases like these are coming to light as the popularity of the drugs soared. The US Food and Drug Administration said it has received reports of people on the drugs experiencing stomach paralysis that sometimes has not resolved by the time it’s reported.

And last month, the American Society of Anesthesiologists warned that patients should stop these medications a week before surgery because they can increase the risk that people will regurgitate food during an operation, even if they’ve fasted as directed. Vomiting under anesthesia sometimes causes food and stomach acid to get into the lungs, which can cause pneumonia and other problems after surgery.

So far, extreme and unrelenting cases like these are believed to be rare, and they may be a result of the drug unmasking or worsening an existing “slow stomach.” Doctors say people can have a silent condition called delayed gastric emptying and not know it. There’s nothing on the drugs’ labels that specifically cautions that gastroparesis may occur.

In response to CNN’s request for comment, Novo Nordisk, maker of Ozempic and Wegovy, pointed out that drugs in this class have been used for 15 years to treat diabetes and for eight years to treat obesity, and they have been extensively studied in the real world and in clinical trials.

“Gastrointestinal (GI) events are well-known side effects of the GLP-1 class. For semaglutide, the majority of GI side effects are mild to moderate in severity and of short duration. GLP-1’s are known to cause a delay in gastric emptying, as noted in the label of each of our GLP-1 RA medications. Symptoms of delayed gastric emptying, nausea and vomiting are listed as side effects,” the statement said.

Gastroparesis can have many causes, including diabetes, which is a reason many people are on these drugs in the first place. Women are known to be at higher risk for the condition, too. In more than half of cases of gastroparesis, doctors are unable to find a cause.

“They may just be really unlucky,” said Dr. Michael Camilleri, a gastroenterologist at the Mayo Clinic, said of the people who shared their cases with CNN.

On the other hand, this is how the drugs work, although not many doctors or patients understand this or the problems that may follow, he said.

Camilleri received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to study how one of the first GLP-1 agonists, a drug called liraglutide, affects stomach function.

He recruited 40 obese adults and randomly assigned them to take increasing doses of liraglutide or a placebo, which had no active ingredients.

After five weeks, he had people in the study eat a meal laced with a radioactive tracer so he could see how long food stayed in their stomachs. People taking liraglutide had dramatically slowed digestion compared with those on the placebo; it took about 70 minutes for half the food they ate to leave their stomachs, compared with just four minutes in the placebo group. And that was just the average delay: In some patients on liraglutide, the time it took for half the meal to leave their stomachs was 151 minutes, or more than two and a half hours.

Camilleri said the group taking liraglutide lost weight, and the bigger the delay in food leaving the stomach, the more weight people seemed to lose.

Fortunately, people in the study seemed to adjust to the medication over time. After 16 weeks, people in the group taking liraglutide were clearing about half the food they ate from their stomachs in about 30 minutes, as opposed to seven minutes in the placebo group. Symptoms of nausea and vomiting seemed to ease, too.

“Unfortunately, there have not been these types of robust studies, and so the whole idea that this class of medications actually delays gastric emptying is not as well recognized,” Camilleri said.

“It is conceivable that some patients may have borderline slow gastric emptying and starting one of the GLP-1 agonists may precipitate a full-blown gastroparesis.”

‘How am I throwing up this much?’

Joanie Knight remembers exactly what she ate on her birthday in 2021. She ordered chicken fajitas at one of her favorite restaurants. She ate three skinny French fries and two or three pieces of chicken and then felt panic set in when she couldn’t swallow the food.

“It felt like it was stuck in my throat,” said Knight, who had been taking Ozempic for two years at that point and was already eating very little every day as a result. Her birthday dinner triggered a bout of violent vomiting.

“I thought, ‘I hadn’t eaten. How am I throwing up this much?’ ” she said.

She went to see a gastroenterologist, a doctor who specializes in stomach problems. They put a tube with a camera down her throat and into her stomach to see what the issue might be.

“They said, ‘your stomach is full of food,’ ” she said.

Normally, less than 10% of the food will be left in the stomach four hours after a meal. When that climbs to between 10% and 15%, it’s considered mild gastroparesis. Moderate gastroparesis is when 15% to 35% of food is left. Severe gastroparesis is anything over 35% after four hours.

A gastric emptying study — a test that measures how food moves through the stomach — put Knight in the severe category. She said she stayed nauseated all the time, no matter how little she ate, and took a prescription anti-nausea medication “like it was candy.”

Still, doctors didn’t connect her stomach problems to the Ozempic she was taking. Although the prescription information for the drug warns of nausea and vomiting, it mentions only that the drug causes a delay in stomach emptying as a warning that it might affect the absorption of other medications. It was almost four more months until a specialist took her off the medication.

Emily Wright, the teacher from Toronto, said Ozempic helped her shed about 80 pounds in one year, and she continued to take it to help manage her blood sugar, but she always felt sick. She said she vomited every day but kind of got used to it: She would wake up and throw up, and then her day would get better.

In clinical trials, nearly half of people, 44%, who took Wegovy reported nausea, and almost 1 in 4 reported vomiting; both are common symptoms of gastroparesis.

In the clinical trials for Ozempic, which is the same medication as Wegovy but given at a lower dose, 1 in 5 people reported nausea and 1 in 10 reported vomiting.

In September 2020, Wright had to be hospitalized for dehydration related to the vomiting, and that prompted her to push her doctors for more answers. A gastric-emptying study showed that she had gastroparesis. Her doctors put her on two more medications to try to help her manage her symptoms but didn’t take her off the Ozempic because they didn’t suspect it was contributing.

Diabetes can also cause gastroparesis, but that typically happens only in people who have had the disease for at least a decade and have chronically high blood sugars that have damaged the nerves that control the stomach.

Both Knight and Wright say their doctors dismissed that possibility in their cases. “Everybody said there’s no way it’s diabetes,” said Wright, who had been diagnosed with diabetes for only five years when she developed gastroparesis.

In September 2022, her vomiting got much worse. Standing in front of her classroom, Wright said, she began having burps that smelled so strongly of sulfur and rotten eggs that the kids began to comment on it. “What is that? Where is it coming from?” they asked.

Then, instead of just vomiting the food she’d recently eaten, Wright noticed that she was throwing up food she’d eaten three or four days prior.

Another gastric emptying test showed her condition had deteriorated.

“Then the GI doctor said, ‘Well, I’ve been seeing a lot of clients coming in with full stomachs on endoscopy who are on Ozempic. So let’s try taking you off the Ozempic,’ ” Wright said.

Both Knight and Wright said they got some relief after coming off the medication, but their problems continued.

Now, Wright said, instead of throwing up a meal she ate several days ago, she mostly vomits food she has eaten recently.

For people with gastroparesis — from any cause — these stories are the norm. It takes a steep mental and physical toll on people who live with it.

Knight eventually had stomach bypass surgery. It’s similar to the technique used for weight loss, but it can also be a treatment for severe cases of gastroparesis. She said it has allowed her to eat some of her favorite foods again, like a few bites of pizza or chicken.

“Previously, I was on an extreme amount of vitamins because I wasn’t eating. Now I can eat enough that I’m not malnourished,” Knight said.

Wright said she’s just hoping her condition will improve with medications and time.

“We don’t know when we’re gonna get better. I think that’s the hardest part,” she said. “Like if you could give me like a year or two years, I would have something to hope for.”

Weighing benefits and risks

Drug regulators say they have received reports of stomach paralysis among patients taking GLP-1 agonist drugs.

“The FDA has received reports of gastroparesis with semaglutide and liraglutide, some of which documented the adverse event as not recovered after discontinuation of the respective product at the time of the report,” the agency said in a statement to CNN.

The reports have been submitted through the agency’s publicly accessible adverse events tracking system, and the FDA said there’s not always enough information in those reports to properly evaluate them.

The FDA said it has been unable to determine whether the medications were the cause or if the gastroparesis may have been caused by a different issue.

“Gastroparesis can be a complication of diabetes that is related to long-standing or poorly controlled disease, further complicating the ability to determine what role the drugs played in the reported events,” the agency said.

Asked whether doctors and patients should be warned about the risk for people who are know to have slow digestion to begin with, the FDA said the benefits of the medication may still outweigh its risks, even for this group.

“Regulations pertaining to drug labeling state that a drug should be contraindicated only in those clinical situations for which the risk from use clearly outweighs any possible therapeutic benefit. Only known hazards, and not theoretical possibilities, can be the basis for a contraindication,” the agency said.

The FDA said people with gastroparesis weren’t excluded from clinical trials of these medications, and the benefits for diabetes and weight management “may outweigh the risks in some patients with gastroparesis or delayed gastric emptying.”

Doctors who are experts in treating gastroparesis say they’re hearing more stories like these as greater numbers of people try the drugs.

“Gastroparesis or delayed gastric emptying from the GLP-1 agonists definitely does happen,” said Dr. Linda Nguyen, who specializes in the treatment of this condition at Stanford University.

What seems to be unusual about cases like Wright’s and Knight’s, Nguyen said, is that they didn’t improve after they stopped taking the medication.

“In my experience, when you stop the GLP-1 agonist, the gastric emptying improves, and it gets better,” said Nguyen, who is also a spokesperson for the American Gastroenterological Association.

Concern for surgery

Anesthesiologists say there are real hazards involved with stomach paralysis on these medications, and doctors and patients need more information about the risks.

Dr. Renuka George, fellowship director of regional anesthesiology at the Medical University of South Carolina, recently tweeted a photo of the stomach contents suctioned from a patient who had fasted as directed but was taking a GLP-1 agonist for diabetes. The stomach, she said, was basically full, even though the person had followed all the surgical prep instructions to the letter.

George explained that this is a cautionary tale.

“This has become more, I guess, front and center for anesthesiologists, simply because aspiration is a big concern,” she said.

George explained that the stomach and esophagus can handle the acidic digestive juices that mix with food. Lungs can’t.

“Lung tissue is fragile and precious,” George said. “If anything goes into the lungs, at best, it’s a cough; at worst, you end up on a ventilator for an extended period of time.”

She said that as more and more people take these medications, with little information about the stomach slowdown that comes with them, they may not know to tell their doctors.

“The big concern is if we have patients that aren’t aware of this and don’t tell their anesthesiologists because not everybody wants to advertise that they’re on a weight loss drug, right?” she said. “So that becomes a problem because they’re not fasted appropriately.”

The American Society of Anesthesiologists is advising doctors to have patients stop these medications for one week prior to surgery to prevent aspiration, but President Dr. Michael Champeau said they aren’t sure what the right amount of time to fast or stop the drug would be.

“When we issued this guidance, we issued it on very limited scientific evidence,” Champeau said. These kinds of studies — on the delay in stomach emptying — just haven’t been done, he said.

He said their experts felt that stopping it one week in advance, for people taking it weekly, would be reasonable in the near term.

George said she was aware of ongoing studies to try to learn more about this complication.

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“There’s a lot of research underway. I have a feeling that we’re going to see a lot of publications in the next few years regarding this,” she said.

Until more is known, George said, people need to be open with all their doctors about taking any drugs.

Knight, the gastroparesis patient in Louisiana, said people need to carefully consider the risks.

“I accepted that the medicine was working for me. I had a major side effect from it that altered my life course. Now I feel like my best option is to try to warn people whenever I can,” she said.

Nguyen, the Stanford doctor, said patients need to pay attention to the side effects. If you vomit once or twice, that might be normal, but persistent vomiting is not.

“They should be evaluated. Consider reducing the dose or stopping the medication,” she said.

“If your vomiting is affecting your hydration or you are having to take other medications to treat the side effects of this medication, then I think it’s time to reconsider.”

When neuropathy signs and symptoms began to appear, the Leave It to Beaver star received an unexpected diagnosis. This is how he saved his own life.

He’ll always be known as “The Beaver”—and that’s just swell. “It’s something I’m very proud of,” says actor Jerry Mathers, 62, of portraying Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver, the adorable kid America loved to watch get into scrapes and out of them. Leave it to Beaver originally ran from 1957 to 1963 and has aired in reruns ever since. Along the way, the classic sitcom has become one of the most iconic TV shows of all time.

Young viewers learned a few lessons from the way “The Beav” handled himself. We can still learn a lot—about how to greet health challenges with a positive attitude—from Mathers. As the host of a new patient-education video and guidebook for the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) Foundation, he’s spreading awareness about neuropathy, a painful neurologic condition that affects millions of Americans, including Mathers.

His health problems began in the 1990s. After starring in the sequel TV series The New Leave It To Beaver, Mathers branched out into other professional opportunities. “I bought a few companies,” he says, “one of which was a catering business. We were famous for a 60-foot-long dessert table.” Soon enough, the sweet temptations proved too much for Mathers to resist. “I put on about 70 pounds,” he says.

That’s when he started noticing strange sensations. “I had the feeling of people sticking pins in my feet,” says Mathers. “I thought it was from being so overweight.”

Around that time, Mathers became friendly with his father’s neurologist, Meril Platzer, M.D., member of the AAN. (His dad had Alzheimer’s disease.) “She noticed how much weight I was putting on,” Mathers recalls. “She told me, ‘You better go get a physical.'”

He resisted, thinking, “I feel good!! I’m living the good life!!” But she was persistent, offering Mathers a free checkup. “I thought I would go in there and everything would be fine.” Unfortunately, the checkup revealed that Mathers had diabetes. The sensations in his feet were from diabetic neuropathy.

Diabetic Neuropathy

Neuropathy, often referred to as peripheral neuropathy, “is a sometimes-painful impairment of sensation that typically affects the lower legs but can also affect the hands,” explains John Markman, M.D., director of neuromedicine pain management and associate professor at the University of Rochester School of Medicine in Rochester, NY. Many people with neuropathy also develop muscle weakness.

Neuropathy can be caused by injury, infection, various metabolic problems, or—most commonly—diabetes. Because of the way neuropathy affects nerves, people with the disease can experience numbness—as if they are wearing gloves and stockings when they’re not—or tingling. “It can feel like you are walking on wool,” says Stanley Mirsky, M.D., clinical professor of metabolic diseases at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York, NY, and co-author of Diabetes Survival Guide (Ballantine Books, 2006).

As a result, neuropathy can interfere with a person’s ability to walk. “It’s hard to know where your feet are in space,” says Dr. Markman.

Jerry Mathers embodied an American ideal in Leave it to Beaver from 1957 to 1963. Now he is an example for his contemporaries confronting diabetes and neuropathy.

Although some people only experience neuropathy as tingling or numbness, others also feel painful sensations. “The pain may be worse at night and disrupt people’s sleep,” Dr. Markman says. The disease can also be dangerous: People with diabetes often “lose the ability to distinguish potentially destructive injury to their feet. They can burn or cut their feet and not be aware of it, which can predispose them to more serious infections,” Dr. Markman says. “And chronic pain or numbness can impact a person’s ability to concentrate and enjoy things,” he notes.

Mathers’ symptoms were at their worst “when I was sitting and watching TV, and at night when I was in bed,” he recalls. It made sleeping difficult. “It’s an excruciating pain,” he says.

Diabetes is “the most common known cause of neuropathy, by far,” says Dr. Markman. “About a quarter of people with type 2 diabetes have evidence of nerve damage at the time the diabetes is diagnosed.” Once known as adult-onset or noninsulin-dependent diabetes, type 2 diabetes is a chronic condition that affects the way the body metabolizes sugar. Neuropathy is sometimes the first sign that someone may have diabetes, but it can also surface once someone has lived with diabetes for quite a while.

Diabetes “commonly affects the nerves,” says Dr. Markman, although it can affect many different organ systems. Scientists don’t understand exactly how diabetes causes neuropathy, but “we have some strong ideas,” Dr. Markman says. Most likely, diabetes has a harmful effect on the relationship between small blood vessels and nerves and impairs the ability of nerves to repair themselves, he says.

Ultimately, Mathers was able to control his neuropathy by controlling his diabetes. He was inspired to take charge of his health when his doctor first diagnosed him with diabetes. “She asked me, ‘Would you like to see your kids get married, and one day hold your grandkids?'” recalls Mathers, who has three children. “I said, ‘Of course, that’s every father’s dream.'” She told him that if he didn’t do something about his diabetes, he’d be dead in three to five years.

Controlling His Diabetes

Mathers walks about five miles every day—usually on a trail near his house, which is along the Santa Clara River in California.

Often, the first advice doctors give people with diabetes is to embrace exercise and adopt a healthy diet. According to Dr. Mirsky, these are “the most important things” a person can do to help get diabetes under control. In his book, Diabetes Survival Guide, Dr. Mirsky provides many simple dietary guidelines, such as “no double starches.” “If you have bread, don’t have a potato.” He also urges patients to try a combination of aerobic exercise, such as walking or jogging, and non-aerobic exercise, such as weight-training.

Mathers now walks about five miles every day—usually on a trail near his house, which is along the Santa Clara River in California: “I see little animals like rabbits and coyotes. I go early in the morning, around 5:30 a.m., and I find it really clears my head,” Mathers says.

He also completely changed his eating habits for the better. “Before, when I went out to a restaurant, I chose the king-sized portion. I thought, ‘Oh, I’m getting a great deal.’ But now I control my portion sizes.”

It can be a challenge to overcome long-held notions about eating, the actor admits: “If it’s in front of me I tend to eat it. My generation was always taught to clean our plates, because our parents came out of the Great Depression. If you cleaned your plate, you got dessert. Well, that’s not the best way to teach kids!!”

For breakfast, Mathers usually has oatmeal with flaxseed, raisins, wheat germ, and walnuts; and for lunch, a salad. “For dinner, I eat a protein, maybe a baked potato, and a lot of vegetables. I buy frozen vegetables and put them in the microwave,” Mathers says. “I went to Jenny Craig because I knew I needed professional help. And what they taught me was portion control—that for a person of my size and weight, I was eating too much. I needed to increase the amount of exercise I did and decrease my caloric intake.”

The happy result of Mathers’ hard work? He’s lost 70 pounds and dramatically improved his diabetes. Years ago, Mathers had been on the dangerously high end of the hemoglobin A1C test, which evaluates the severity of a person’s diabetes.

Now he registers a much healthier 6.1, which is in the pre-diabetic range—and only one-tenth of a point higher than someone who does not have diabetes. He is no longer on medication for the disease.

“I will always have a propensity to diabetes. But before, I had very little time to live, and right now I am listed as pre-diabetic,” Mathers says, pride in his voice. Among the many health benefits he has enjoyed since he got his diabetes under control: He no longer has neuropathy.

Although Mathers stopped experiencing the symptoms of neuropathy once his diabetes improved, that’s not always the case. “It can happen,” says Dr. Mirsky, “but that’s not the norm.”

“Sometimes you have an irreversible form of neuropathy,” Dr. Markman says, but “most experts believe controlling one’s diabetes will decrease the progression and the severity of neuropathy symptoms.”

From the Kid Next Door to Everyman

Mathers has lectured all over the country about his health struggles and, in many ways, he’s the perfect person to do so: Five decades ago, Mathers represented the typical 1950s American kid; today he represents millions of older Americans living with conditions such as diabetes and neuropathy.

One important difference between the America of Leave it to Beaver and today is that today’s children are more sedentary than children in generations past. As a result, they face increasing rates of obesity and diabetes.

“We wanted to get out of the house, go out and play cowboys and Indians or ride bikes,” says Mathers. “I think it’s a shame that a lot of kids go home, do their homework, and then sit in front of a computer or a television for the rest of the day.”

Mathers has been as busy as, well, a beaver in recent years, starring in Hairspray on Broadway and in a modern version of Cinderella, produced by the makers of American Idol, in Los Angeles. But he’s also been working as a national spokesman for the Partnership For Prescription Assistance, which helps get medication for people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford it. “It’s a safety net for people who have chronic diseases and are uninsured,” says Mathers.

Fortunately, Mathers no longer needs medication himself. “If The Beaver did something right, he was always rewarded,” says Mathers of his character’s onscreen adventures. Perhaps the same could be said of the way that the real-life Mathers was rewarded after all his hard work—with good health. “He should be congratulated, because he did the right thing,” says Dr. Mirsky. “He saved his own life.”

Treatments for Neuropathy

Doctors categorize treatments in one of two ways: options that try to control the underlying problem causing the neuropathy (such as controlling the blood sugar levels of people with diabetes); and those that aim to provide symptomatic relief from the pain and discomfort that the neuropathy causes.

When trying to control the painful symptoms of neuropathy, doctors often prescribe medications such as certain tricyclic or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) antidepressants, “which work in the central nervous system and affect the experience of nerve pain,” says Dr. Markman. Other options are seizure medications such as gabapentin (Neurontin) or pregabalin (Lyrica). For patients with more severe pain—the kind that prevents them from working or sleeping—”we often use stronger pain medications, like tramadol, or other opioid medications that are in the morphine family,” Dr. Markman explains.

Medication is not a magic bullet when it comes to neuropathy, experts say: Some patients will only feel partial relief of their symptoms. But, says Dr. Mirsky, “Medication seems to help a lot of times.”

Patients can also make helpful changes to their lifestyle. “Things like smoking may make this problem worse,” says Dr. Markman. “And we try to prevent people from injuring themselves because they have a loss of ability to sense hot or cold or pain.” For example, wearing special socks and shoes to protect the feet can be very helpful.

Neuropathy: The Basics

WHAT IS IT? According to the National Institutes of Health’s MedlinePlus, peripheral neuropathy is a problem with the nerves that carry information to and from the brain and spinal cord to the rest of the body. This can produce pain, loss of sensation, and an inability to control muscles.

“Peripheral” means nerves further out from the center of the body, distant from the brain and spinal cord (which are called the central nervous system). “Neuro” means nerves, and “pathy” means abnormal.

WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS? Neuropathy is often experienced as burning, tingling, numbness, or painful sensations in the feet or hands. Some people also experience muscle weakness.

WHAT CAUSES IT? Neuropathy can have different causes, including Lyme disease, HIV, alcoholism, tumors, exposure to toxins, and injury. Some neuropathies are inherited and some have no known cause. But the main cause of neuropathy is diabetes (called diabetic neuropathy).

According to the American Diabetes Association, diabetes does not seem to be inherited in a simple pattern, but some people are born more likely to get the disease. Although type 1 and type 2 diabetes have different causes, two factors are important in both. First, you must inherit a predisposition to the disease. Second, something in your environment must trigger diabetes. In most cases of type 1 diabetes, people need to inherit risk factors from both parents. Type 2 diabetes has a stronger link to family history than type 1, although it, too, depends on environmental factors. To better understand how someone develops this disease, learn about the genetics of diabetes.

WHAT ARE THE CURRENT TREATMENTS? Neurologists try to treat the underlying problem causing the neuropathy, such as controlling the blood sugar levels of people with diabetes. Other treatments—including medications such as gabapentin, pregabalin, amitriptyline, duloxetine, and others—can provide symptomatic relief from pain and discomfort. Lifestyle changes, such as eating nutritiously, exercising, not smoking, and wearing protective socks and shoes, can also be helpful.

More Information on Peripheral Neuropathy and Diabetes

“Peripheral Neuropathy: The Basics” from Brain & Life

Diabetes Survival Guide by Stanley Mirsky, M.D., and Joan Rattner Heilman. Ballantine Books (Paperback) 2006. 336 Pages

Diabetic Nerve Pain: A Guide for Patients and Families Video hosted by Jerry Mathers