Trish Webster, an Australian mother, died from a “gastrointestinal illness” which her husband says came from Ozempic.
Of course it is horrible when anyone dies unexpectedly. Then to die while taking a medication that was supposed to help them has to be even worse.
It’s important to know there is more to this story.
The Culprit: Stacking Ozempic and Saxenda
Stacking is when you take two or more similar medications to get more intense results. The term comes from body building:
A stack is a common term in a bodybuilder’s vocabulary and it refers to using more than one supplement to speed up the fulfilment of the bodybuilder’s fitness goal. A bodybuilder might be bulking in his off-season, with an agenda to increase his strength and size. …the supplement stack is going to make it easier for them to achieve their goal.
I came across it when I was looking to see if I could take my leftover Trulicity during the same week as my Mounjaro. The answer was no.
Mrs. Webster was stacking Ozempic and Saxenda; taking them both at the same time.
The Hypothetical You Stacking
So, say you got the idea that if one is good, two is better and decided to take two GLP-1s at the same time. Even if you took the two different ones a few days apart, that is still considered stacking.
(Taking a GLP-1 one week and a different GLP-1 the next is considered “alternating” and not unheard of, even by doctor’s instructions. However, the main reason this is done is cost and availability of the primary GLP-1 medications.)
Perhaps when you were taking one of the GLP-1 meds, you didn’t have any GI side effects. Perhaps you did. Perhaps when you took the second one, more GI issues surfaced and you began to feel poorly. But you really wanted to look great for that High School Reunion, so you kept stacking the meds. You started barfing. A lot. Having diarrhea. A lot. Cramps. Inability to move around as much because you were in so much pain. But damn, that HS Reunion is only a week away. Just a few more days. (And besides, aren’t you losing weight when you poop and barf anyway?)
And then you die from a gastrointestinal illness.
Hypothetical Why’s
Maybe because you took two GLP-1s at the same time, your guts slowed to an incremental crawl with digestion. If you kept eating and the food in your body was not flowing out, perhaps it was getting stuck somewhere. Maybe when you had diarrhea, you thought food was going through and weren’t terribly worried. Maybe when you were throwing up a lot, but not much came out, you didn’t realize food was stuck in the pipeline somewhere. Or several somewheres.
Maybe it was an ileus… your colon holding the stuck food unable to move its way out.
Maybe you had abdominal or intestinal adhesions from a prior abdominal surgery (cesarean, gastric bypass, hernia repair, gallbladder removal, appendectomy, etc.) and didn’t know it and when your food backed up in your intestines, the adhesion squeezed around it, killing the bowel and then you. Maybe you did know you had adhesions, but didn’t tell your GLP-1 prescribing doctor. (It is not a contraindication, but something for the prescriber to be aware of.)
Maybe the food clogged so much that your intestines ruptured causing a gastrointestinal perforation, spilling everything out into your abdomen, infecting, then killing you.
Hypothetical Choices
Stacking doesn’t seem like such a dandy idea now, does it. If one is great, two can kill you.
If you are so sick it worries your partner, get thee to the hospital!
If you are so sick you can’t eat, get to the hospital.
If you have constant diarrhea, vomiting, or inability to eat or drink, get to the hospital.
These are not times to “call your doctor.” These are signs your body is in crisis. Don’t wait until you are near death. They will run tests and do some imaging and maybe they will roll their eyes and say you are just fine… go home. At least you will know you did the right thing. At least you will be alive.
And lastly, do not repeat the action that caused all of this distress in the first place.