Featured Image Credit: Getty Stock Images
Topics: Sex and Relationships, Ozempic, Health
Britt Jones
A woman who chose weight loss jabs after all else failed, revealed that it ended up costing her sex drive.
Christine Smith-Reed, a salon owner from Columbia City, had tried it all in a bid to lose weight – but was never successful in keeping the pounds off.
One in 10 Americans are apparently unhappy with their weight, per a Gallup poll, and when nothing seems to work, trying weight loss drugs seems like the natural order of things.
So, like many other people who are using new drugs to lose weight, Christine decided to take a chance on tirzepatide, which is the active ingredient in some GLP-1 drugs.
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However, while it did take away some weight, it also snatched her sex drive.
“All of a sudden, I couldn’t care less about sex,” she told The Post of her changing libido once on the weight loss jabs.
Christine, who has been married to her hubby for 17 years, admitted that sex looked a lot different, and it impacted her relationship too.
She explained that once she began her new weight loss journey, she could no longer climax without ‘a lot of effort’, and she no longer could participate as normal.
“I would participate, but I definitely wouldn’t climax, or if I did, it took a lot of effort. And I feel guilty for that because it isn’t due to poor performance on my husband’s part,” she said. “It’s literally that something is wrong with me.”
“When you go from having a very active sex life to having a nonexistent sex life, there was a lot of silence,” Christine added, explaining that this ended up causing an emotional impact too, telling the outlet. “There were cold shoulders. There were hurt feelings — probably from both of us.”
Despite people revealing that GLP-1 medications were the reason for their increase in sex drives, it can also have the opposite effect.
Dr. James Simon, a reproductive endocrinologist, OBGYN and clinical professor at George Washington University, explained to The Wall Street Journal: "These drugs do work in the same places that pleasure and sexual interest are located in the human brain—male and female."
So, depending on the individual, it might cause them to increase their sex drive or lower it.
But thankfully, after switching to a maintenance dose after having lost weight, she said things took a turn in the other direction.
“It’s not like [my sex drive] went into overdrive, but I had no problem achieving orgasm. And that happened more than once,” she said. “It was like coming up for air when you’ve been drowning. Like I’m not broken.”
UNILAD reached out to Eli Lilly for comment, with a spokesperson telling us: "Mounjaro (tirzepatide) should only be used when prescribed by a licensed healthcare professional, and prescriptions should be fulfilled and supplied by registered pharmacies or providers. We encourage patients to consult their doctor or other healthcare professional to discuss any possible side effects they may be experiencing and to ensure that they are getting genuine Lilly medicine."