Millions of Americans are turning to GLP-1 medications for weight loss, but as the drugs become more popular and more options emerge online, the Washington Poison Center says it is seeing a sharp rise in calls involving the medications.<\/p>\n
Between January and September 2026, the center received 543 calls involving GLP-1 drugs, double the 272 calls it received during the same period in 2025.<\/p>\n
The calls range from medication errors involving approved drugs to concerns about unregulated products being sold online.<\/p>\n
For Hayley Lithwick, GLP-1 medication was life-changing, but her experience also shows how quickly things can go wrong.<\/p>\n
“I was over 300 pounds before, and it really helped me a lot to lose a lot of weight and gain confidence,” Lithwick said.<\/p>\n
Lithwick said she had struggled with her weight for much of her life. After asking a doctor about GLP-1 medications, she started taking Zepbound and began losing weight.<\/p>\n
“I was not feeling as hungry. I was, you know, working out more,” she said.<\/p>\n
But after changing jobs, Lithwick lost her insurance coverage for the medication and could no longer afford it. As she began gaining weight back, she started looking for another option.<\/p>\n
“I decided to go on the gray market and buy retatrutide,” she said.<\/p>\n
The website Lithwick used explicitly warned that the product was “not for human or veterinary use, consumption, or application.”<\/p>\n
Still, Lithwick placed an order, paying about $200 for what she believed would be a month’s supply.<\/p>\n
When the package arrived, she found vials of powder inside.<\/p>\n
“I was so confused. I was like, what is this?” she recalled.<\/p>\n
Lithwick said the shipment came with no instructions. She turned to the internet to figure out how to mix the powder herself, a process normally performed by pharmacists in a sterile setting.<\/p>\n
“I was very sketched out, but I kind of felt that there wasn’t really a choice because I didn’t want to gain all this weight back,” she said.<\/p>\n
Then she began feeling sick.<\/p>\n
“I was sweating a lot. I had nausea… upset stomach,” Lithwick said. “I was just feeling really, really sick, and my heart was beating really, really fast.”<\/p>\n
She said the experience was frightening enough that she considered going to the hospital.<\/p>\n
Poison center warns about unregulated products<\/p>\n
The Washington Poison Center says it is concerned about calls involving retatrutide.<\/p>\n
“It’s really not supposed to be sold. It’s not sold for human consumption,” Jimmy Leonard with the Washington Poison Center said.<\/p>\n
Leonard described retatrutide being sold online as a research chemical and warned that consumers may have no way of knowing exactly what they are receiving or injecting.<\/p>\n
“We have some that potentially [are] contaminated with other products that can cause really bad, potentially liver failure or other end-organ damage,” Leonard said.<\/p>\n
Medication errors drive calls involving approved GLP-1s<\/p>\n
The problem is not limited to experimental or unregulated products.<\/p>\n
The Washington Poison Center says calls involving approved GLP-1 medications are also climbing as the drugs surge in popularity.<\/p>\n
Leonard said medication errors are the most common reason people call. Those errors can occur when people start a new medication, increase their dose, or share medication with someone else.<\/p>\n
“The usual issues are the tenfold overdoses, where people say, ‘I was supposed to start on 0.25 milligrams, and then I accidentally took 2.5 milligrams,'” Leonard said.<\/p>\n
Those mistakes can lead to significant vomiting and an inability to keep liquids down.<\/p>\n
“You can be without food for a while, but it’s if you can’t tolerate fluids [that] are really the major issue,” Leonard said.<\/p>\n
‘I feel a lot better now’<\/p>\n
Lithwick later determined she likely doubled her intended dose when she mixed and injected the retatrutide.<\/p>\n
Despite what happened, she said she remains grateful for how GLP-1 medications have changed her life.<\/p>\n
Lithwick has lost about 200 pounds.<\/p>\n
“I feel a lot better now than what I felt before, that’s for sure,” she said.<\/p>\n
Eli Lilly is developing retatrutide and plans to seek FDA approval next year.<\/p>\n
Watch KIRO 7 News live at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday for the full story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Millions of Americans are turning to GLP-1 medications for weight loss, but as the drugs become more popular…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[103,61,60,371],"class_list":["post-675360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-medication","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-medication"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}