Semaglutide is known as a weight loss and diabetes medication. But recently, there have been published studies showing evidence that the medication offers health benefits in many other ways — particularly when it comes to lowering cardiac risk and what are known as “major adverse cardiac events” (MACE) such as a stroke, heart attack, or heart failure.

• The New England Journal of Medicine published a study in December 2023 entitled “Semaglutide and Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction and Obesity.“ The study found that semaglutide led to “substantial reductions in symptoms, physical limitations, and body weight among patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction and obesity.”
• In a 2021 study, which was a meta analysis, one of the major findings was a reduction in major heart events relative to placebos in diabetic patients.
• In another study called “Semaglutide Effects on Cardiovascular Outcomes in People with Overweight or Obesity,” researchers looked at 17,604 patients who were not diabetic, but overweight or obese. This was a double blind multi-center placebo trial (mean BMI = 33; mean age = 62). They found a relative risk reduction of 20% in the semaglutide group.

This cardiovascular reduction is great. Semaglutide effects are equivalent to other long-standing interventions, like statins. What is unclear is whether the improvement is equal to what you would see with weight loss for any reason, or if somehow it is better because of something inherent to the GLP1 agonist. Bariatric surgery has been shown to improve cardiac risk due to the significant weight loss. So is this why semaglutide helps? It is unclear if semaglutide offers some other benefit in heart disease events over the weight loss catalyzed by semaglutide. That will need to be observed in future studies.

We at Biohackr Health are fans of semaglutide. We have treated hundreds of patients and seen their improvements in how they feel, how they look, and their labwork. Now we know semaglutide helps lower your risk of cardiac events — that is amazing. Regardless of whether the cardiac risk improvement is simply due to the weight loss or some other effect, semaglutide can be super effective for weight loss in areas where people have been stuck — menopause, recalcitrant weight loss, obesity — and is much less invasive than bariatric surgery. Come in for treatment with our team, who has a lot of experience with semaglutide, knows how to titrate and adjust it, and will help you with testing and evaluation.