Is there really an Ozempic baby boom? The unexpected ways GLP-1s could influence fertility.

The path to fertility care is further complicated by how doctors approach weight. Jacquelyn Gill, a paleoecologist at the University of Maine in Orono who is in a larger body, sought help with fertility after struggling to conceive for a year in 2014. The first doctor she saw, she says, told her, “why don’t you take a year, lose as much weight as you can, and then come back and we’ll talk.” They didn’t even perform any tests.

Gill, then 33, says she was offered no other guidance beyond diet and exercise. “You want people to be healthy,” Santoro says, “but are we stressing women out by forcing them to lose weight and to go on a pretty rigorous weight-loss protocol that’s actually not helping?” GLP-1 drugs may offer a more effective alternative, she says, promoting weight loss with less psychological strain.

Still, research remains scarce. “There are zero. Let me repeat that, zero studies looking at the impact of GLP-1 receptor agonist, and anything related to fertility or menstruation and women without PCOS,” says Zaher Merhi, a reproductive endocrinologist with Rejuvenating Fertility Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Online, he notes, people often assume the drugs improve fertility. “There are anecdotal stories, ‘Oh my friend took it and got pregnant the next month,’ and stuff like that,” he says. “I think we’re craving something that’s really magical, right?”

But studies of pregnancies and hormones aren’t enough to prove a connection, he says. He wants to see “the ovarian function and egg quality, or uterine function and biopsy of the lining. I’m talking about the cellular level, not just the hormonal level.”

Do GLP-1 drugs affect male fertility, too?

It is all too easy to focus entirely on female anatomy when thinking about fertility. But “about half the time there’s difficulties in an infertile couple, it is a male factor that’s leading that,” says Michael Eisenberg, a reproductive urologist at Stanford Medical School. Most conditions that harm overall health also affect male reproduction, he explains. Diabetes, for instance, can reduce semen quality and impair sexual function, while high blood pressure can have similar effects.