Aileen Maritato had a secret.
She would go to bed at night, fall asleep and then wake up in the morning to find her kitchen spread with remaining snacks – together with a very bewildered husband.
He knew it He Was not the perpetrator, so he put his wife under supervision.
He discovered that every night around 3 o'clock in the morning the 60-year-old mother of two was crossed down to devour everything she could get from sandwiches with peanut butter to gold viscrackers and even blueberries.
But she had zero memory of it.
Maritato is not formally diagnosed with a sleep disorder, apart from insomnia, but believes that she has nocturnal sleep -related eating disorder (NSred), a parasomnia (sleep associated with abnormal behavior) that affects almost five percent of American adults.
She was prescribed the sleeping medication Ambien, as well as an antidepressant, to improve her sleep and mood. But the damage has been done.
Sickness of the extra weight she had won at her 5'2 ”frame from her sleeping bings – she was about 150 pounds – she took drastic action to throw it off.
Aileen Maritato, 60, ran two miles every other day, ate well and injected semaglutide weekly, but she had trouble losing weight
On 5'2 ”and around 145 pounds, Mrs. Maritato's BMI was 28, two points lower than the required level for insurance coverage for weight loss injections. So she had to go private
She ran almost two miles with her dogs every other day, recorded more whole foods in her diet and, especially, injected herself every week with a composite formulation of Semaglutide – which some people have called 'Frankenzempic'.
This is the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy for weight loss, also known as GLP-1 drugs after the naturally occurring hormone that slows the stomach so that people feel fuller for longer, stabilize blood sugar levels and solidify the appetite.
'I stopped eating sleep about six months ago, but my weight did not come down. So, I thought, let me try one of these compound things, because everyone else is so successful, everyone losing weight on GLP-1, “she told the Daily Mail.
Yet her weight barely conveyed.
“I may have lost 2 pounds in the first month and then my weight was just maintained,” said Maritato.
This was far from the amazing results she had seen in celebrities, her own family members and in clinical tests with an average loss of 20 percent of a person's body weight.
The matte weight loss made the side effects-bine constant stomach complaints, nausea and diarrhea-nog more unbearable.
Maritato now fears that she might have dosed herself with an ineffective drug that “makes someone in his basement.”
She is one of the millions of Americans who take or have taken what is known as 'composite' GLP-1's.
Maintenance medicines are tailor -made medicines that are made at specialized pharmacies and marketed as the same active ingredients as the FDA approved drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy. However, their specific formulations are not first assessed by the agency.
The so -called 'Frankenzempic' comes in bottles that a patient is obliged to be with a syringe itself (the brand name versions are in pre -filled injectable pens).
Comparative pharmacies will often add a solvent to thin the active ingredient in a desired concentration, for example, sterile water-while while buffer solutions are maintaining the correct pH and preservatives such as benzyl alcohol The bacterial growth in multi-dose bottles occur. (Stabilizers such as sugars or antioxidants protect the drug against breakdown and tonic regulators such as sodium chloride ensure that the solution is compatible with the body.)
The advantage of these composite weight loss formulations is that they are considerably cheaper than brand products such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro, etc. that can cost around $ 1,000 per month.
However, because they are not regulated by the FDA in the same way as medicines for brand names, the compound medicines can run the risk of messing around or not-approved changes. The FDA also has no supervision of where or how they are prepared.
Shockingly, from 2018, about 10 deaths and 100 hospital admissions were in the US from 2018, associated with the use of off-brand, composite semaglutide, according to Novo Nordisk, the manufacturer of Ozempic and Wegovy.
Weight loss injections are usually inserted into a person's belly. A short needle is injected and medicines are distributed from a plunger
Maritato was prescribed a composite combination version of Semaglutide and Tirzepatide (the active ingredient in Mounjaro) via an online platform that is popular for providing composite versions of generic Viagra. It has not returned the request of the Daily Mail for comments.
The non-brand vials cost around $ 400 per month instead of $ 1,200 for a pre-filled pen version of a brand.
The medicine seemed to suppress Maritato's appetite, but she believes that she was eating so little that it delayed her metabolism.
“I'm not a big eater,” she said. 'I probably eat around 800 to 1000 calories a day. If I were to become more active, I think I would have lost weight. '
But Maritato also wonders if she could have got a placebo instead of the real thing.
“I weighed myself every week and I saw no significant loss or profit.”
Instead, her weight remained stable in around 145 pounds.
At 5FT 2 with a BMI of 28, Maritato was considered overweight instead of obese. Her goal was a loss of about 15 pounds.
She thinks this can be a contributing factor. Many of the people she has seen lose waste on GLP-1 injections were much heavier.
'If someone wanted to lose 100 pounds, and they lost it in a year, they really succeeded. But for people who try to lose only 20 or 10 pounds, it just didn't seem that effective. I think the medication might work better for people with a faster metabolism or more fat cells. But I'm not sure about science behind it, “she said.
“It was almost as if I got a placebo, but I did have side effects, although that could have been psychological,” she went on.
The exact number of Americans who uses composite semaglutide (and other compound drugs for weight loss) is unclear. However, estimates suggest that up to 20 percent of the Semaglutide regulations, especially during shortages of brand pricks, can be composite versions.
If up to 12 percent of American adults takes one of these medicines, this can be equal to more than six million people.
Mrs. Maritato took the medicine from 15 August to 15 November, but has since stopped. Her weight has not changed
Ozempic, the first of the new generation GLP-1 drugs, was developed for people with type 2 diabetes and/or suffers from obesity.
The broader role as a 'miracle' weight loss medicine for mass and the development of similar drugs is more recently and caused a sensation when the Jabs came on the market.
The rich and celebrities were the first to realize the potential of the medicines as a painless, almost immediate solution for unwanted kilos.
This caused long -term shortages, which meant that people who would take medical benefits from the medicines could not always gain access because supplies had broken up.
When compiling an off brand, formulation of the weight loss, the pharmacist regards the dosage and ingredients and ensures that the end product is uniform in strength.
In July 2023, however, the FDA reported to receive several side effects, some who require hospitalization, coupled with dosing errors with composite Semaglutide injectable products.
There have also been dosage errors, which resulted in negative reactions to the medicines that require hospitalization.
The FDA has marked concern about some compounders that use salt forms of semaglutide, such as Semaglutide sodium or acetate, which differ from the active ingredient used in approved medicines and lack of established safety and effectiveness data.
It may simply be that Maritato is one of the estimated 20 percent of patients who do not respond well to the medicines.
But she believes that if she had taken the brand version of the medicine – for example Wegovy or Mounjaro – they would have seen better results.
“I didn't fail anyone if they get the brand name from the pharmacy, so now I wonder if the off-brand stuff is actually effective,” she said.
“I have been pretty consistent in doing what I do, but this had no effect on me at all.”
'You don't know who makes it, you know? There are no [the same] Quality controls [as] With the FDA, so it may be that someone makes his basement, “she added.
She says she was trying to gain access to a brand name version of Semaglutide. She has comorbidities that would benefit from treatment with the medication, including underlying high blood pressure and kidney disease.
But her insurance provider, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, would not cover the costs because her BMI was two points lower than the required level for insurance coverage.
Faced with constant pressure to reduce the costs of the medicines to increase access to those who would benefit from it, Eli Lilly reduced the price of his GLP-1 Zepbound by almost 50 percent in August 2024 to compete with off-brand versions.
It now sells for $ 399 to $ 549 monthly, a decrease of $ 1,059.
In November, the BIDEN administration also proposed a new rule that expanded Medicare and Medicoid coverage with GLP-1's for weight loss, but it is unclear whether President Donald Trump will continue.
Aileen Maritato did not give up. This spring she is planning to return to her doctor for primary care – not an online pharmacy – to ask that he will appeal against the refusal of the insurance company.
A 2021 study showed that about 49 percent of health -related denial problems are successful.
“It is absolutely worth trying,” she says.
