Drug addicts like Ozempic say their “food noise” has disappeared

As interest in Ozempic and other injectable diabetes medications like Mounjaro, which work in similar ways, has increased, that term has gained popularity. Videos related to the topic “food sound explained” have been viewed 1.8 billion times on TikTok. And some people who have managed to get their hands on these drugs – despite persistent shortages and list prices that can approach or exceed a thousand dollars — have shared stories on social media about their experience.

When the food sound fades

Wendy Gantt, 56, said she first heard the term food sound on TikTok, where she had also heard about Mounjaro. She found a telehealth platform and got a prescription within hours. She can remember the first day she started it last summer. “It was like a sense of freedom from that loop of, ‘What am I going to eat? i am never full; there isn’t enough. What can I snack on?”’ she said. “It’s like someone took a gum out of it.”

For some, the shortages of these drugs have provided a test case, a way of seeing their lives with and without food noise. Kelsey Ryan, 35, an insurance broker in Canandaigua, NY, hasn’t been able to fill her Ozempic prescription for the past few weeks and the noise has crept in again. It’s not just the appeal of soft serve ice cream every day, she said. Food noise also means a range of other food-related thoughts for Ms. Ryan: internal negotiations about whether or not to eat in front of other people, wondering if they’ll judge her for eating fried chicken or if ordering a salad seems like she tries too hard. Ozempic is more of a way to silence the food noise than anything else, she said.

“It’s a tool,” she said. “It’s not like a magic drug that gives people an easy way out.”

What causes food noise?

There is no clinical definition for food noise, but the experts and patients interviewed for this article generally agreed that it was shorthand for constant worrying about food. Some researchers associate the concept with “hedonic hunger,” an intense preoccupation with eating food for the purpose of pleasure, noting that it can also be part of binge eating disorder, which is common but often misunderstood.

Obesity medicine specialists have been trying to better understand why a person might spend some time worrying about food, said Dr. Robert Gabbay, chief scientific and medical director of the American Diabetes Association. “It seems like some people are a little bit more wired this way,” he said. Obsessive worrying about food most likely stems from genetic factors, environmental exposure and acquired habits, said Dr. Janice Jin Hwang, chief of the division of endocrinology and metabolism at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.