What is ‘Ozempic personality’? What we know about the emotional flattening reported by some users

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Dasgupta also highlights the complexity that can come with rapid weight loss. “People go on (GLP-1s) to improve their diabetes control, or reduce their blood pressure and maybe lose weight. But when your body changes quickly, that’s an adjustment, and there’s good literature on that.”

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Depending on how quickly people lose weight, their reactions may be different. “For example, in the bariatric surgery literature, they talk about people having to have support to deal with having a different body, and what does that mean? And even when people respond positively, the person may think, ‘Oh, so you didn’t think I was great before, and now suddenly you think I’m amazing.’ So there are all kinds of conflicts that could come from that.”

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For some people, the transition can be complicated, but then there are others who report being delighted they can move more easily and are freed from “food noise.” As with “Ozempic personality,” “food noise” isn’t a scientific term, but evidence is building. A 2025 study published in Nature defined it as “persistent thoughts about food that a person perceives as unwanted or distressing, and that may cause social, mental or physical problems.”

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“Some people feel like … they have that overdeveloped food-seeking behaviour, which was probably very adaptive when food environments were scarce, but now it’s distracting because there are stimuli everywhere,” says Dasgupta. “So, when they get these medications, they feel like, ‘Ah, I can think about something else. I’m not worrying about food.’”

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Some experts have suggested that the “Ozempic personality” phenomenon may be due to the effect on dopamine, part of the brain’s reward system. Maybe, says Gerstein. But at this point, any explanations are just hypotheses.

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There are receptors throughout the body for GLP-1s, and science doesn’t know all of the possible effects they could have. “Anybody can come up with an explanation,” he adds. “I don’t think it really helps. The question for a patient is, ‘How are you feeling on this drug?’ If you’re not feeling well, then let’s talk about adjusting the dosage. Let’s see what happens. Do you feel better or not?’ And that’s just talking to your patient and having a discussion and doing what’s best for them. But that’s very different than saying in a sweeping statement that, ‘People who get this experience this.’ I would never say that, because we don’t know.”

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Studies into the effects of neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, could certainly be done, says Dasgupta. “It’s an interesting theory, but we haven’t even established that (‘Ozempic personality’) is an entity of itself. So there’s room to sort that out.”

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GLP-1s have been shown to reduce appetite. Whether they could act on other cravings isn’t clear, but it could be a possibility, Dasgupta suggests. Then there’s the chance that feeling unwell is contributing to the emotional flattening some people are reporting. Dasgupta estimates that roughly 20 per cent of patients on GLP-1s stop taking them because of nausea. “If I’m nauseous, and not feeling good, well, I’m not really feeling enthusiastic about doing anything.”

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She recalls a patient taking Metformin, a widely used medication for type 2 diabetes, who was convinced her abdominal discomfort was due to the drug. It could have been, says Dasgupta, but ended up being cancer. “I’m not letting any drug off the hook, semaglutide or otherwise. It’s good to think, ‘What are the side effects of the drug?’ But you have to think of all the possibilities. That’s what we do in medicine.”