08/08/2025
Ozempic for Kids?
Why This Could Be the Biggest Medical Gamble of Our Time
The drug that’s sweeping Hollywood is now in children’s medicine cabinets—and no one’s talking about the long-term risks
Today’s guest feature comes from Helene Leeds, MS—a nutrition expert and co-founder of Step It UP. With over 30 years of experience in nutritional psychology and lifestyle medicine, Helene has helped countless families reverse chronic illness through real food, movement, and emotional healing.
Ozempic for Kids? We Need to Talk.
Let’s begin with what everyone’s avoiding:
Children are now being prescribed Ozempic (GLP-1 agonist) for obesity at an alarming rate and 82% of polled parents are open to it.
Not just adults. Not just celebrities. Kids.
If that sentence doesn’t make you pause, it should.
Because while our country faces a real and rising crisis of childhood obesity, the rush to medicate it with powerful GLP-1 agonists like Ozempic may be one of the most consequential public health experiments of our time—and one we don’t fully understand.
Here’s what’s happening. And what every parent needs to know.
Obesity Is Real—and It's Hitting Our Kids Earlier
Childhood obesity is not a vanity issue. It’s a multi-system crisis with long-term consequences for heart health, fertility, mental well-being, cancer risk, and lifespan.
According to the CDC, more than 1 in 5 children in the U.S. are obese. That number has been steadily climbing for the last 30 years. What used to be considered adult onset diseases (Type 2 diabetes), fatty liver, insulin resistance, polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), and even early onset cancers are now common in children and teens.
Obesity changes brain chemistry, emotional regulation, and reward systems. It disrupts hormones and fertility. It impairs the gut microbiome, inflames the body, and derails a child’s sense of self-worth.
We’ve lived this.
My daughter Penelope weighed over 320 pounds at age 15. Today, she is 160 pounds lighter. She didn’t lose it through surgery or drugs, she did it through whole food, real movement, support, accountability, emotional healing, and developing sustainable habits. But it wasn’t easy, and it took education, and time.
So when we hear doctors prescribing (GLP-1 agonist) for children under the age of 12 and teens, we get it.
We understand the desperation. We understand the hope.
But we also understand the science, and what’s missing. If you are a parent and need help, please reach out to me.
Why Are Doctors Prescribing Ozempic (GLP-1 agonists) to Children?
Short answer: they want to help.
Long answer: the system doesn’t incentivize them to do anything else.
The current medical model does not incentivize long-term lifestyle interventions. Doctors have 10–15 minutes per visit. Insurance doesn’t reimburse for health coaching, cooking classes, or food-as-medicine protocols. Their coverage for a nutritionist session doesn’t cut it. So they do what they can. And GLP-1 agonists like Ozempic, Wegovy, Saxenda, and Mounjaro are FDA-approved for diabetes, and doctors are quick to prescribe.
Parents need to smarten up.
According to studies funded by Novo Nordisk, children lost weight while on semaglutide (the active compound in Ozempic and Wegovy) over the course of a year.
But here’s the problem: What happens next?
Because these medications were never studied long-term in children. And the adult data raises red flags.
What the Long-Term Data Shows (and Doesn’t)
Let’s be clear: GLP-1 agonists work short term but the solution is not sustainable and there is a cost.
Here’s what we know:
Most of the weight comes back after stopping the drug. A 2022 JAMA study showed that participants regained two-thirds of the weight lost within a year of stopping semaglutide.
The gut is permanently altered. GLP-1s slow gastric emptying, sometimes so severely that people experience vomiting, nausea, and malnutrition. A 2023 study published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology raised concerns about intestinal pseudo-obstruction in some users and some have had their colons removed as a result.
Hormonal systems are disrupted. GLP-1 agonists interfere with appetite regulation hormones, insulin signaling, and reproductive hormone pathways. In rodent studies, prenatal exposure to GLP-1s has been associated with developmental issues in offspring—including nervous system dysregulation.
Fertility may be impacted. A 2024 study in Frontiers in Endocrinology found that GLP-1 receptor agonists may alter the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis—raising questions about long-term reproductive health, particularly for adolescent girls whose cycles are still developing. This is SERIOUS.
We don’t know the full effects on children. The longest pediatric trial of semaglutide lasted just 68 weeks—and was funded by the drug manufacturer. No study has followed teens for 5, 10, or 20 years after taking these medications. There is no generational data on fertility, microbiome inheritance, or brain development.
And yet… we're prescribing it anyway. I do not want my child to be tested on, do you?
Are We Treating the Problem or Creating a New One?
Here’s the hard truth, GLP-1 drugs don’t teach children how to eat. and live healthy lifestyles. They don’t model nourishment, play, or joy. They suppress appetite, encourage malnutrition, but they don’t rewire addiction, the do not fix their guts, nor do they rehabilitate natural hunger cues.
These drugs do not solve the root of your child’s problem.
And when a child grows up on medication as a substitute for a healthy lifestyle, what happens to them when they become an adult?
If we teach our children that they need a drug to manage their body, how will they trust that their body can heal?
We Can Do Better (And We Must)
There are natural interventions that are powerful, safe, and free.
The science is clear:
Real food reduces inflammation. Ultra-processed food drives 70–80% of childhood obesity. A 2020 BMJ study found that kids who eat more whole foods (vegetables, legumes, fish, fruit) have lower BMI, better mood, and improved insulin sensitivity—even without calorie restriction. Stimulating natural GLP and restoration through dietary interventions with nutrient dense foods, protein and vegetables is a must at every meal.
Daily movement resets metabolism. Just 20 minutes of daily physical activity improves leptin and ghrelin regulation—two hormones critical for hunger and satiety.
Sunlight boosts mitochondria. Morning sun exposure helps regulate circadian rhythm, reduce cortisol, and improve melatonin production—improving sleep, reducing cravings, and resetting metabolism.
Emotional regulation is essential. Childhood weight gain is often tied to loneliness, disconnection, or emotional disregulation. Teaching kids tools like journaling, breathwork, movement, or nervous system grounding helps address the deeper drivers of disordered eating.
This is not fantasy. This is common sense and science.
It’s not instant.
But it’s real. And it works.
What Parents Deserve to Know
If you're a parent considering Ozempic for your child, here’s what you deserve to be told—by your doctor, your school, and your government:
This drug was not designed for children.
The long-term effects are unknown.
Weight regain is common after stopping.
Fertility and hormonal function is disrupted.
Your child’s gut function is permanently changed.
Lifestyle interventions are free, effective and safe.
You have options.
The Solution is Trust
This is not about being anti-medication.
It’s about being pro-informed consent.
We believe in science. But we also believe in questioning it when the system incentivizes profits over safety.
Ozempic might seem like a lifeline. But until we have long-term, independent research on the effects of these drugs on children’s development, fertility, microbiome, and mental health, we urge caution.
More than that, we urge action.
We urge schools to remove ultra-processed food from cafeterias.
We urge pediatricians to demand insurance coverage for lifestyle medicine.
We urge parents to model joy, not fear, around food and movement.
We urge transparency on how much money the manufactures of these drugs are spending on research, lobbying and paying doctors to promote these drugs to children.
And we urge medicine to remember something it seems to have forgotten.. healing takes time. Health is built and modeled by us (parents), not bought. That children are not experiments.
We’re not just shaping our children’s bodies, we are shaping their futures.
Let’s do it wisely.
Helene Leeds, MS
Co-Founder, Step It UP
Mom. Researcher. Nutritionist. Advocate.
