That's ok, I fully understand how it all just runs together.

You're right that Wegovy and Ozempic are the same thing, the dosages are just set up differently for WL and T2. Zepbound (Mounjaro) has a little something extra in it that Wegovy/Ozempic doesn't have, but still with the with dosages being set depending on whether it's prescribed for T2 or WL.

If what you're seeing is mostly the online sellers and not legit Novo Nordisk ads (Keep in mind that shady sellers will have zero concerns about using the name and logo of a legit company), chances are what's being sold is not the real thing. I know you've talked about "compounded" versions, but I'm sure you also know that unscrupulous scammers are just out to make a buck any way they can - they could sell you vials of plain tap water and claim it was one of those drugs (at a bargain price!), they wouldn't care which version they're supposedly selling you or whether you want it for diabetes or for weight loss.

And since they don't care what it is they're actually selling you or why, they don't care who they sell it to either - adults, children, senior citizens (who can't get WL drugs on medicare), anorexics who obviously don't qualify for a legitimate Rx for it, but are looking for a way to cut their calorie intake even more, someone who has decided that if it works for humans, lets give it to the overweight dog or cat to help them lose weight... I can imagine all kinds of situations where someone would be gullible enough to buy it from a shady online source.

The same sort of thing happened when Homeopathic HCG was taken off the market (because it did not meet the Homeopathic Pharmacology guidelines for homeopathic products). Within weeks there were all these online "physicians" who would prescribe injectable HCG after about a 2 minute online interview. Whether they sent the person the real thing or not didn't matter - the ones they were selling it to were willing to pay for it.

The diet industry has always been big business - and there's a scammer ready and willing to sell it to the gullible.

____

But back to actual doctors prescribing the legit stuff for children, I really think it's a matter of desperation.

There's so many obese kids, and these kids are developing serious obesity related medical conditions - T2 is especially disconcerting since it's something they never saw happen in previous generations.These kids need to lose weight. They need to get their blood sugar under control. They desperately need to get their appetites under control.

And of course they're not educating them about what constitutes a diet that will truly lower your blood sugar and help you lose weight - not that most kids would be likely to adhere to a truly LC diet anyway. And unfortunately most parents would be willing to make too many exceptions to that LC diet, or consider it just too difficult to deal with preparing LC meals or limiting what their kid eats, when it's so much easier to just give them a pop tart for breakfast, send Lunchables to school, and pick up nuggets and fries for dinner.

So they're back to the drug route to help the kids lose weight.