AI scans 400,000 Reddit posts to flag overlooked GLP-1 side effectsby University of Pennsylvania edited by Sadie Harley, reviewed by Robert Egan By using AI to analyze more than 400,000 Reddit posts, Penn researchers have identified patient-reported symptoms associated with GLP-1s, the popular weight-loss and diabetes drugs semaglutide and tirzepatide, that may not be fully captured in clinical trials or regulatory documents. The new study, published in Nature Health, covers more than half a decade of posts from nearly 70,000 Reddit users and highlights two main classes of symptoms that warrant further study: reproductive symptoms, including irregular menstrual cycles, and temperature-related complaints, such as chills and hot flashes. "Some of the side effects we found, like nausea, are well known, and that shows that the method is picking up a real signal," says Sharath Chandra Guntuku, Research Associate Professor in Computer and Information Science (CIS) at Penn Engineering and the study's senior author. "The underreported symptoms are leads that came from patients themselves, unprompted, and clinicians could potentially pay attention to them." "Clinical trials generally identify the most dangerous side effects of drugs," adds Lyle Ungar, Professor in CIS and a co-author on the study. "But they can fail to find what symptoms patients are most concerned about; even though social media is not necessarily representative, a large collection of posts may reflect additional concerns." The researchers caution that their findings are not causal. "We can't say that GLP-1s are actually causing these symptoms," notes Neil Sehgal, the study's first author and a doctoral student in CIS advised by Guntuku and Ungar. "But nearly 4% of the Reddit users in our sample reported menstrual irregularities, which would be even higher in a female-only sample. We think that's a signal worth investigating." Studying social media for healthIn 2011, Ungar participated in one of the earliest efforts to mine online, user-created content for information about drugs' adverse effects. "Online patient communities work a lot like a neighborhood grapevine," says Ungar. "People who are living with these medications are swapping notes with each other in real time, sharing experiences that rarely make it into a doctor's office visit or an official report." In the years since, social media use has only grown, making data from these platforms increasingly promising as a source of information about the side effects of medications, even as the platforms themselves have made accessing the data more difficult. (Guntuku has also published research on strategies for adapting to changes in platform access.) "Clinical trials are the gold standard, but by design, they are slow," says Guntuku. "This is not a replacement for trials, but it can move much faster, and that speed matters when a drug goes from niche to mainstream almost overnight." Leveraging AI to analyze social mediaUntil now, the most challenging part of this process, which Guntuku calls "computational social listening," has been scale. Because users vary in how they describe their symptoms, the effort required to map individual social media posts to language in the Medical Dictionary for Regulatory Activities (MedDRA), which clinicians use to describe symptoms, limited the amount of data this approach could handle. Now, large language models like GPT or Gemini have enabled the systematic analysis of social media posts at an unprecedented scale. "Large language models have made it possible to do this kind of analysis much faster with a level of standardization that could be difficult to achieve before," says Sehgal. Unreported symptomsWhile the population the researchers studied is admittedly not representative—Reddit users are younger, more likely to be male and disproportionately based in the United States—the symptoms described in their collective accounts largely match the known side effects of semaglutide and tirzepatide: about 44% of users in the study described at least one side effect, most commonly some form of gastrointestinal distress. What stood out was the nontrivial percentage of users who reported symptoms that may not be fully reflected in current drug labeling or routine adverse-event reporting. Nearly 4% of users who reported side effects described reproductive symptoms, including menstrual changes such as intermenstrual bleeding, heavy bleeding, and irregular cycles. Others reported temperature-related complaints, such as chills, feeling cold, hot flashes, and fever-like symptoms. In addition, fatigue ranked as the second most common complaint among Reddit users, despite reaching reporting thresholds in relatively few clinical trials. "These drugs are thought to work by engaging part of the brain called the hypothalamus, which helps regulate a wide variety of hormones," says Jena Shaw Tronieri, Senior Research Investigator at Penn's Center for Weight and Eating Disorders and a co-author of the study. "That doesn't mean the medications are necessarily causing these symptoms, but it could suggest that reports of menstrual changes and body temperature fluctuations are worth studying more systematically." Future directionsIn the near term, the researchers hope their findings will encourage clinicians and researchers to take a closer look at the side effects patients are discussing online. "They're clearly on patients' minds, and that's worth paying attention to," says Sehgal. The team also hopes to expand the work beyond Reddit and beyond English-language communities to test whether the same patterns appear across different platforms and populations. "We don't really know yet whether what we're seeing on Reddit reflects the experience of GLP-1 users globally, or whether it's particular to the kind of person who posts on Reddit in the United States," Ungar says. Ultimately, the researchers believe this kind of rapid, AI-assisted social media analysis could become a useful way to spot early warning signs around emerging drugs and wellness trends. For substances that trend quickly online, especially those sold in loosely regulated or unregulated markets, like injectable peptides, patient discussions on platforms like Reddit and TikTok may offer one of the earliest clues to what users are actually experiencing. "The whole point of this kind of approach is that it can move quickly, and that's exactly when it's most valuable," says Guntuku. ARTICLE SOURCE: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-04-ai-scans-reddit-flag-overlooked.html
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The last six months I have tried to eat to hit a protein target. Still strict carnivore (18-19 months) but eating pretty much more than I want each day to have enough protein for muscle growth. The proteins went up, and I didn't hit the fat targets, so I had some stiff and hard stools. I increased the fat to catch up to the proteins and help with the stools as well. In turn, so my diet has not been 'eat when hungry-eat til full' for the last six months or so.
After six to 12 months on carnivore my cholesterol dropped a few points but took a significant bounce up at the 18-month mark. I was expecting an increase with the sheer amount of food I was eating but I didn't expect the numbers to jump this much.
May thru November 2024 May 2025 November 2025
Total Cholesterol 239 212 274
LDL 185 150 164
HDL 37 39 55
Tri-G 49 43 41
My total weight loss of carnivore has been 95-96lbs and in the last couple months I gained 12-15 pounds bouncing around the 215-mark for the most part. The weight gain I expected as the lifting has become more and more a part of my day to day. I am stronger now than I can even remember (never was much on lifting) and the energy levels are still that constant/ability to keep going since early on with carnivore. I feel just as good now as I did six months ago. I had a great visit with my neurologist yesterday. (He is moving back home to Alabama so I quipped that carnivore was going to run him out of business. He replied, "I hope so".) He told me of all his NMO patients I have made the biggest turnaround and went from ho-hum numbers 18 months ago til now. All my markers are within limit is with the exception of one. I started carnivore 18 months ago, so I let people draw their own conclusions. (LOL, preaching to the choir in a forum such as this). My blood sugar crept up a little. My day-to-day over the last six months moved from the low 80's to touching the low 90's every now and then. Yesterday it was 94. Blood pressure was 100/58 before the infusion and 98/54 afterwards (laying in a recliner for five hours).
Even with the cholesterol making a jump this is how I judge my health. When I first started the infusions I was 310+lbs and was on a dumpster diet. After each infusion I would be wiped completely out. The 45-minute ride home felt like hours. I hit the recliner for a stretch then to bed really early. restless sleep all night and pretty much flat the next day. Fast forward from 18 months ago, yesterday I saw the Neurologist at 8AM, started the infusion at 9AM (use to be six hours at 310 pounds but now 5 hours at 220) and I was home by 3PM. The ride home was a simple ride home and I ate bacon, sausage and eggs mid-afternoon. I went outside and busted/split just about a Toyota truck full of red oak from two trees we had taken down last week. Fed all the animals as it got dark and back in the house. I went to bed at 9 and now I am up at my normal 3AM time frame. I checked out the forum and now off to the gym to be one of those 4AM weirdos (LOL).
I'm going to call that progress, maybe with a chunk more of fat running free in my bloodstream, but over the last 18 months, progress the same.
I don't think we make progress over months/years without stacking up a bunch of day-to-day wins.
Hope all is well with you and yours.
Scott