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Ozempic, Wegovy and all those crazy, vivid dreams: Is there a connection?

If you’ve taken Ozempic for weight loss or Wegovy for diabetes management, you may have noticed some of the more common side effects, such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and loss of appetite.

But many users have also reported a lesser-known reaction: vivid or intense dreams.

The medications, both semaglutides, appear to inject some added excitement (for better or worse) into some people’s sleeping hours.

One Ozempic user shared on Reddit that during the second and third weeks of taking the medication, she began having vivid dreams and nightmares.

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"Killing my cats, cheating on my husband, husband cheating on me. Old friends I haven't spoken to in years in my dreams. So odd. I also had a dream so real I woke up and grabbed my phone to make sure it wasn't real," she said.

Another person wrote, "My dream tonight was that someone was attacking people in the mall and I tried to use some kind of portal or time travel to get out of there."

Many also claim to be able to remember their dreams in startling detail after waking.

"Pretty much every night I remember them now and I used to just sleep like a rock and not remember anything," one person said.

Animals coming back from the dead, a T-Rex dinosaur wandering through the house, drowning children and more — these are some of the intense dreams people have shared.

These types of "crazy" dreams are not unique to Ozempic. They can be caused by a variety of factors, including changes in sleep patterns, stress, medications and medical conditions, according to Dr. Laura Purdy, a board-certified family medicine physician in Brentwood, Tennessee.

"However, some patients have reported that their dreams became more vivid or unusual after starting treatment with Ozempic," she told Fox News Digital. 

"One theory behind this side effect is that Ozempic can affect the levels of certain hormones in the body, including glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1)," Purdy explained. 

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"GLP-1 is a hormone that helps regulate appetite and blood sugar levels, and it is thought to play a role in sleep regulation as well."

While there is no definitive explanation for why Ozempic might cause crazy dreams, Dr. Purdy said it’s important to note that the side effect is generally mild and does not pose a significant health risk.

"If you are experiencing crazy dreams while taking Ozempic, it is important to talk to your health care provider," she recommended. 

Doctors "may be able to adjust your dosage or recommend other strategies to help manage this side effect."

In addition to the more common side effects of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and constipation, in rare cases semaglutides can cause more severe issues, such as pancreatitis or thyroid cancer, the doctor warned.

"It is important to monitor your symptoms closely and notify your health care professional," Purdy said.

Those who are interested in taking Ozempic or Wegovy and are reading the "official" list of potential side effects won’t see anything noted there about dreams. 

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"‘Abnormal dreams’ was not a commonly reported adverse event during the clinical development programs of Ozempic or Wegovy, and therefore is not listed as a potential side effect in the product prescribing information of these two medicines," said Allison Schneider, director of media relations and issues management for Novo Nordisk, the New Jersey-based company that makes the medications, in a statement to Fox News Digital.

During the clinical trial program, Schneider said the rate of reports of "abnormal dreams" was <0.1 per 100 patient-years of exposure. 

(If 20 patients participated in a study on semaglutide use for five years, the study would have involved 100 patient-years.)

In later reports received by Novo Nordisk in 2022, Schneider said that "abnormal dreams" were reported. 

"However, since these adverse events are reported voluntarily from a population of uncertain size, it is not possible to reliably estimate their frequency," she told Fox News Digital. 

"Novo Nordisk does not have all information pertaining to the patients' treatment plans, concomitant medications and medical conditions," she also said.

"Therefore, it is not possible to establish a cause-effect relationship between the products and the adverse event in question."

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Wildfires may threaten inpatient health care facilities in many California counties, study says

As Californians look forward to the summer to enjoy the sunny weather and blue waters, they are now accustomed to something else lurking in the background: the threat of wildfires.

Out-of-control wildfires don’t just ravage forests and destroy homes — they also may impact the care of patients in hospital facilities as well as other on-site health-care focused facilities.

A group of researchers found that roughly half of California’s total inpatient capacity is within one mile from a high fire threat zone (FTZ), according to a new study published in American Journal of Public Health, a monthly peer-reviewed public health journal. 

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The state of California "is experiencing an intensifying wildfire crisis," said the study's authors. The group included Neil Singh Bedi, Caleb Dresser, Akash Yadav and others. 

Bedi is with the Boston University School of Medicine in Boston. Dresser is with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School in Boston and Yadav is with the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard University T. H. Chan School of Public Health, also in Boston.

"Of the 20 largest wildfires in the state’s history, all but three took place in the past two decades, with seven [wildfires] occurring in 2020 and 2021," the wrote. 

They raised significant concern especially about Northern California, where two of the state’s largest fires burned over a million acres over the past several years.

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Human-caused climate change has doubled the cumulative forest fire area from 1984 to 2015 — a trend experts expect to continue due to warmer weather and drier landscapes, according to previous research.

"This study shows the importance of planning for the future in the face of climate change," Dr. David Dowdy, an epidemiologist and professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, told Fox News Digital. He was not part of the study.

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The wildfires not only threaten the physical structure of the health care buildings — but may also disrupt operations and the access of individuals to care, the researchers found.

Wildfires were responsible for 18.4% of hospital evacuations in the United States since 2001 — with some California hospitals in Sonoma County requiring more than one evacuation in the same fire season, according to the study. 

The authors used publicly available data from the California Department of Health and Human Services (CAL FIRE) to analyze how close the state’s inpatient health care facilities were to fire threat zones (FTZ). 

The study authors reviewed data updated as of October 2022 for licensed inpatient facilities that treat patients for longer than 24 hours.

CAL FIRE risk stratifies the state into six FTZ categories — not mapped, low, moderate, high, very high and extreme — depending on how likely a fire is expected to occur in that area and the potential behavior of that fire.

After including a total capacity of 214, 358 inpatient beds across 3087 facilities in their analyses, the researchers found that 50% of total inpatient capacity (107, 290 beds) were within 0.87 miles of a high FTZ and 95% of capacity (203, 665 beds) within 3.7 miles of a high FTZ. 

They also noted that half the total inpatient bed capacity is within 3.3 miles of a very high FTZ and 15.5 miles of an extreme FTZ.

"We found that a high percentage of inpatient health care facilities in California are at risk for potential operational disruption or evacuation from wildfires," the authors concluded.

"In many counties, all health care facilities may be at risk," they added.

The research is based on current risk exposure according to CAL FIRE data; but the study's authors did not perform climate change scenarios to assess future fire risk, which is likely to exceed current risk levels in many locations.

They also note that they did not evaluate the structural characteristics of the health care facilities and the degree of fire protection in the environment surrounding the facilities, such as the amount of vegetation in the area. 

The researchers caution that health care facilities that are not close to a FTZ still may be affected by wildfires if those facilities lack significant "fire suppression capabilities" and other features like back-up generators, which the authors also did not assess.

Patients in general hospitals are of "particular concern," the study indicated.

That's because of the difficulties associated with evacuating hospitalized patients, the limited numbers of other facilities that can assume their care and the loss of emergency care services when they’re temporarily closed due to wildfires.

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Patients in long-term care facilities, such as nursing homes, are also at high risk during evacuation, as previous research shows an increase in mortality after forced evacuations.

Special populations with behavioral health needs, such as involuntarily hospitalized patients, require additional security safeguards, complicating the evacuation process.

"Evacuating an entire hospital would be a very dangerous operation — for example, you may have people on ventilators whose lives would be put at risk if they had to move to a different facility," Dowdy told Fox News Digital.

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"As we plan for our response to wildfires, hospitals need to be high on the list of priorities," he added.

"And as the risk of wildfires increases over time, we need to consider how we protect people who are medically very vulnerable," Dowdy also said. 

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Dog flu adapts in the direction of being able to infect humans, Chinese study says

Dog flu has shown adaptations that allow the virus to recognize a human-like receptor, according to a Chinese study, possibly indicating it may be closer to infecting humans.

A receptor is a molecule inside or on the surface of a cell that binds to a specific substance and causes an effect in the cell.

By studying biological characteristics of H3N2 canine influenza viruses isolated worldwide over the period of a decade, researchers at China Agricultural University and other institutions found that the viruses became able to recognize the human-like SAα2,6-Gal receptor. 

In addition, the viruses showed gradually increased hemagglutination – a reaction that causes clumping of red blood cells in presence of some enveloped viruses – acid stability and replication ability in human airway epithelial cells and acquired a 100% transmission rate via respiratory droplets in testing using ferrets.

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Epithelial refers to the cells that line both the internal and external surfaces of the body.

Out of more than 4,100 dogs with signs of respiratory illness from nine provinces of China, 5.63% were positive of H3N2 infection, indicating the average positive rates for each year swabs were collected – from 2012 to 2019 – increased from 1.98% at the start of collection to 10.85% at the end, including a sharp increase in 2016.

In addition, six dogs were intentionally infected with the known flu strains of H3N2 and each was merely mildly unwell. The most serious symptoms included a fever, sneezing and coughing.

Nearly all dogs are susceptible to canine flu infection, with the viruses believed to spread mainly through respiratory droplets produced during coughing and sneezing or through contact with contaminated surfaces.

"A noteworthy observation was the number of human-like amino-acid substitutions that had gradually accumulated during the evolution of H3N2 CIVs in dogs and increased significantly after 2016," the study explained. "These results indicated that H3N2 [canine viruses] may have increased their adaptability to humans during their evolution in dogs."

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The authors also found that human populations lack immunity to H3N2 canine influenza viruses – with preexisting immunity from seasonal human viruses unable to provide protection against H3N2. 

"Our results showed that canines may serve as intermediates for the adaptation of avian influenza viruses to humans," the study said. "Continuous surveillance coordinated with risk assessment for [the viruses] is necessary."

H3N2 avian influenza viruses were transmitted to dogs in the mid-2000s. Spread to cats from infected dogs has also been reported. Notably, there are vaccines to protect dogs against canine flu that are available in the U.S.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that, to date, there is no evidence of the spread of canine influenza viruses from dogs to people and there has not been a single reported case of human infection with a canine influenza virus in the U.S. or worldwide.

In 2016, the agency used a risk assessment tool to evaluate the potential pandemic risk of such viruses and found it to be low.

"However, influenza viruses are constantly changing and it is possible that a canine influenza virus could change so that it could infect people and spread easily between people," the CDC said. 

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ChatGPT found to give better medical advice than real doctors in blind study: ‘This will be a game changer’

When it comes to answering medical questions, can ChatGPT do a better job than human doctors?

It appears to be possible, according to the results of a new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, led by researchers from the University of California San Diego.

The researchers compiled a random sample of nearly 200 medical questions that patients posted on Reddit, a popular social discussion website, for doctors to answer. Next, they entered the questions into ChatGPT (OpenAI’s artificial intelligence chatbot) and recorded its response.

A panel of health care professionals then evaluated both sets of responses for quality and empathy.

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For nearly 80% of the answers, the chatbots won out over the real doctors.

"Our panel of health care professionals preferred ChatGPT four to one over physicians," said lead researcher Dr. John W. Ayers, PhD, vice chief of innovation in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at the University of California San Diego.

One of the biggest problems facing today’s health care providers is that they're overburdened with messages from patients, Ayers said. 

"With the rise in online remote care, doctors now see their patients first via their inboxes — and the messages just keep piling up," he said in an interview with Fox News Digital. 

The influx of messages could lead to higher levels of provider burnout, Ayers believes. 

"Burnout is already at an all-time high — nearly two out of every three physicians report being burned out in their jobs, and we want to solve that problem," he said.

Yet there are millions of patients who are either getting no answers or unsatisfactory ones, he added.

Thinking of how artificial intelligence might help, Ayers and his team turned to Reddit to demonstrate how ChatGPT could present a possible solution to the backlog of providers’ questions.

Reddit has a "medical questions" community (a "subreddit" called f/AskDocs) with nearly 500,000 members. People post questions — and vetted health care professionals provide public responses.

The questions are wide-ranging, with people asking for opinions on cancer scans, dog bites, miscarriages, vaccines and many other medical topics.

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One poster worried he might die after swallowing a toothpick. Another posted explicit photos and wondered if she’d contracted a sexually transmitted disease. Someone else sought help with feelings of impending doom and imminent death.

"These are real questions from real patients and real responses from real doctors," Ayers said. 

"We took those same questions and put them into ChatGPT — then put them head to head with the doctors’ answers."

After randomly selecting the questions and answers, the researchers presented them to real health care professionals — who are actively seeing patients.

They were not told which responses were provided by ChatGPT and which were provided by doctors.

First, the researchers asked them to judge the quality of the information in the message. 

When assessing quality, there are multiple attributes to consider, Ayers said. "It could be accuracy, readability, comprehensiveness or responsiveness," he told Fox News Digital.

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Next, the researchers were asked to judge empathy.

"It's not just what you say, but how you say it," Ayers said. "Does the response have empathy and make patients feel that their voice is heard?"

ChatGPT was three times more likely to give a response that was very good or good compared to physicians, he told Fox News Digital. The chatbot was 10 times more likely to give a response that was either empathetic or very empathetic compared to physicians.

It’s not that the doctors don’t have empathy for their patients, Ayers said — it’s that they’re overburdened with messages and don’t always have the time to communicate it.

"An AI model has infinite processing power compared to a doctor," he explained. "Doctors have resource constraints, so even though they're empathetic toward their patient, they often zero in on the most probable response and move on."

ChatGPT, with its limitless time and resources, might offer a holistic response of all the considerations that doctors are sampling, Ayers said.

Vince Lynch, AI expert and CEO of IV.AI in Los Angeles, California, reviewed the study and was not surprised by the findings.

"The way AI answers questions is often curated so that it presents its answers in a highly positive and empathetic way," he told Fox News Digital. "The AI even goes beyond well-written, boilerplate answers, with sentiment analysis being run on the answer to ensure that the most positive answers are delivered."

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An AI system also uses something called "reinforcement learning," Lynch explained, which is when it tests different ways of answering a question until it finds the best answer for its audience.

"So, when you compare an AI answering a question to a medical professional, the AI actually has far more experience than any given doctor in relation to appearing empathetic, when in reality it is just mimicking empathetic language in the scenario of medical advice," he said.

The length of the responses could have also played a part in the scores they received, pointed out Dr. Justin Norden, a digital health and AI expert and a professor at Stanford University in California, who was not involved in the study.

"Length in a response is important for people perceiving quality and empathy," Norden told Fox News Digital. "Overall, the AI responses were almost double in length compared with the physician responses. Further, when physicians did write longer responses, they were preferred at higher rates."

Simply requesting physicians to write longer responses in the future is not a sustainable option, Norden added.

"Patient messaging volumes are going up, and physicians simply do not have time," he said. "This paper showcases how we might be able to address this, and it potentially could be very effective."

Rather than replacing doctors’ guidance, Ayers is suggesting ChatGPT could act as a starting point for physicians, helping them field large volumes of messages more quickly.

"The AI could draft an initial response, then the medical team or physician would evaluate it, correct any misinformation, improve the response and [tailor it] to the patient," Ayers said.

It’s a strategy that he refers to as "precision messaging."

He said, "Doctors will spend less time writing and more time dealing with the heart of medicine and elevating that communication channel."

"This will be a game changer for the patients that we serve, helping to improve population health and potentially saving lives," Ayers predicted.

Based on the study’s findings, he believes physicians should start implementing AI language models in a way that presents minimal risk.

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"People are going to use it with or without us," he said — noting that patients are already turning to ChatGPT on their own to get "canned messages." 

Some players in the space are already moving to implement ChatGPT-based models — Epic, the health care software company, recently announced it is teaming up with Microsoft to integrate ChatGPT-4 into its electronic health record software.

Ayers said he is aware people will be concerned about the lack of regulation in the AI space.

"We typically think about regulations in terms of stop signs and guard rails — typically, regulators step in after something bad has happened and try to prevent it from happening again, but that doesn't have to be the case here," he told Fox News Digital.

"I don't know what the stop signs and guard rails necessarily should be," he said. "But I do know that regulators could set what the goal line is, meaning the AI would have to be demonstrated to improve patient outcomes in order to be implemented."

One potential risk Norden flagged is whether patients’ perceptions would change if they knew the responses were written or aided by AI. 

He cited a previous study focused on mental health support, which found that AI messages were far preferred to human ones.

"Interestingly, once the messages were disclosed as being written by AI, the support felt by the receiver of these messages disappeared," he said. 

"A worry I have is that in the future, people will not feel any support through a message, as patients may assume it will be written by AI."

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Dr. Tinglong Dai, professor of operations management and business analytics at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School in Baltimore, Maryland, expressed concern about the study’s ability to represent real scenarios.

"It is important to note that the setting of the study may not accurately reflect real-world medical practice," he told Fox News Digital. 

"In reality, physicians are paid to provide medical advice and have significant liabilities as a result of that advice. The claim that AI will replace doctors is premature and exaggerated."

While there are numerous unknowns, many experts seem to agree this is a first-of-its-kind study that could have far-reaching implications.

"Overall, this study highlights the new territory we are moving into for health care — AI being able to perform at the physician level for certain written tasks," said Norden. 

"When physicians are suffering from record levels of burnout, you see why Epic and partners are already planning to incorporate these tools into patient messaging."

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Be well: Floss your teeth daily for better heart health

Less plaque, fewer cavities and healthier gums may be the more obvious benefits of flossing your teeth — but did you know it could also lower your risk of heart disease?

"There are a lot of studies that have talked about — at least for periodontal disease — the connection between gum disease and heart health," said Sasha Ross, DMD, a periodontist for Cleveland Clinic. 

Gum disease can cause high blood pressure and lead to inflammation and bacteria in the heart, research has shown, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

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"There’s really a very strong association between the two, where patients who have periodontal disease are at a much greater risk for having heart disease, stroke or other issues like that," Dr. Ross also told Fox News Digital.

Some 43% of adults 30 and older have some type of gum disease, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

For adults 65 and older, that number rises to 70%.

Some people are more susceptible to complications even if they brush and floss every day, while others can do the bare minimum but have no issues at all, Dr. Ross pointed out. 

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Those who have heart valve disease are at a higher risk, according to Dr. Marietta Ambrose, assistant professor of clinical medicine at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.

"The bacteria that live in your mouth when you have gum disease can cross into your bloodstream, enter the heart and directly infect the vulnerable heart valves," she said in a 2022 article on Penn Medicine’s website. 

"That’s especially concerning in our patients who have artificial heart valves."

People should brush their teeth at least twice a day and floss once a day, either before or after brushing, says the American Dental Association (ADA).

Some signs of flossing negligence include bleeding or swollen gums, plaque buildup, cavities, loose teeth, bad breath and gum recession, Dr. Ross said.

"I think a lot of people are never taught how to properly floss and what kind of floss to use, so at one of these visits we can work with you and show you how to do it," she said. 

"Then just make it part of your daily routine. I say it’s really good to floss once a day, ideally at night before you go to bed."

For those who are unsure about the proper way to floss, Dr. Ross recommends using a water pick or special brushes designed to clean between the teeth.

For best results, here are specific flossing instructions, as shared by Healthline.

Break off around 18 to 24 inches of floss. 

Wrap it around both middle fingers and hold the floss taut.

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Glide the floss up and down between each tooth. 

Avoid pulling the floss up into the gums, as this can cause bruising or injury.

As the floss reaches the gums, curve it slightly to allow it to clean the space between the gums and the tooth.

For each tooth, use a new, clean section of floss.

In addition to regular brushing and flossing, visit a dentist regularly and limit sugary foods and drinks to protect dental health, the ADA recommends.

To read more pieces in Fox News Digital's "Be Well" series, click here.

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