Elle and Yahoo may earn commission from links in this article. Pricing and availability are subject to change
“Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links.”
In April, the drug company Eli Lilly received a request that’s since made headlines. A “well-connected” 79-year-old man asked to be granted early access to an experimental drug through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s “compassionate use” program an investigational and highly potent weight-loss drug (allegedly more powerful than Ozempic, Wegovy, and the like). The person was rumored to be none other than President Donald Trump
Trump’s administration denies these claims, calling them “sick and deranged” in a post on X. But Trump wouldn’t be the first powerful person to want to try retatrutide (colloquially known as “reta” on certain corners of the internet). Braden Peters, better known by his pseudonym Clavicular, called it “the ultimate good” in a now-deleted YouTube video, and said that he takes it as part of his routine. Andrew Huberman called it a “trillion-dollar drug” during an appearance on the TBPN podcast, and posted on X that “all the celebs [are] now getting that Retrutatide look.” (Lean and toned.) And the subreddit r/retatrutide has 194,000 weekly visitors, who swap stories about how they obtained the drug and what their progress is like. Fans buy it on the gray market since it has yet to be approved by the FDA. (They warn each other to refer to it in code and not to speak to any media.) If hype is to be believed, taking reta is akin to the Super-Soldier Serum in the Marvel Universe that gave Captain America his powers.
Advertisement
People are willing to go to great lengths to try it for themselves—they’re buying it through WhatsApp and Discord, and even trying to get it shipped in bulk from China. Some compounding pharmacies can make it, though the FDA issued a warning in June against such actions. The agency warned telehealth companies for marketing retatrutide, pharmaceutical ingredient distributors for selling the substance to compounders, and outsourcing facilities for repackaging retatrutide. The safest way to obtain the drug right now is through a clinical trial.
You might be wondering why people (including even teens) are lining up for an unapproved weight-loss drug when plenty of other options exist. If you listen to the rumor mill, the reason is clear: Retatrutide doesn’t just work better than medications like it, it also might be the next big thing in longevity. Many believe that the medication won’t just help you lose weight—it also may have benefits for things like metabolic liver disease, inflammation, and overall wellness
What makes retatrutide different from other GLP-1s? Like the other similar drugs before it, retatrutide is also an agonist, which means that it binds to cell receptors that control certain actions in the body. Ozempic is a single agonist, which means that it mimics one hormone: glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), which signals to your body that you feel full after a meal, according to New York physician Alexander GolBerg, MD, DO. Tirzepatide, or Mounjaro, is a dual agonist, meaning that it also works on GIP receptors. “That helps with diabetes, and it also helps take away some of the nausea side effects with that type of drug,” says Phuong Vo, MD, lead physician at Medici, a concierge clinic dedicated to longevity. Retatrutide goes one step further: It’s the first triple agonist, meaning it works on GLP-1, GIP, and glucagon.
“The addition of glucagon is the trifecta,” says New York plastic surgeon David Shafer, MD. Glucagon goes beyond working on receptors that make you feel full—it actually stimulates your metabolism. “Glucagon uniquely helps the liver release energy stores,” says Vo. “Patients with fatty liver disease could see shrinkage there. It also increases fat oxidation, which is a fancy medical terminology for mobilizing the fat in order to be used by our cells or mitochondria, and turns it into energy molecules.” GIP and GLP-1 receptors work to increase satiety, increase insulin sensitivity, and lower blood sugar, while the glucagon receptor helps your body burn fat, even while you’re not moving, according to Vo. For this reason, a phase 3 trial shows that retatrutide patients are losing up to 30 percent of their body weight (other GLP-1 drugs hover somewhere around 15 to 20 percent). Prior to this, the only way to lose that much weight would be through bariatric surgery.
Advertisement
But besides burning fat at rest, are the benefits purported by looksmaxxers and longevity chasers real? Vo cautions that the drug is still too new to know, but retatrutide does seem to be able to help curb inflammation, though it’s not clear how exactly it works yet. “Your blood sugars are lower, and we know that sugar can be very inflammatory if there’s excess in your blood,” she says. “We have seen in the data that even without significant blood sugar lowering, there seemed to be some sort of anti-inflammatory effects, so we don’t really know the mechanism yet, but some people do microdose it for autoimmunity.” Shafer himself has made the switch to retatrutide after taking other GLP medications and plateauing. “Personally, I see a slight difference, but not like this wow factor above and over other ones.”
And for all of its upsides, retatrutide may have major side effects to be aware of—partly because it works so well to shed excess weight. One study from May in the European Journal of Clinical Pharmacology found that patients on retatrutide were more likely to report dysesthesia, which is the medical term for strange sensations on your skin. “About 20 percent are getting weird sensory issues, like their skin feels off, or their hands or feet are falling asleep,” says Vo. “The theory is the rapid weight loss around the fat pads and around the nerve sheets may be causing this weird sensation due to the shifts in fat.” Aside from sensory issues, retatrutide has similar side effects to other GLP drugs—nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and constipation.
Retatrutide is still undergoing its phase 3 trial. Once that’s done, it can officially be submitted to the FDA for approval, a process that typically takes 10 to 12 months. If all goes well, it should be available to the public—under a doctor’s supervision—in 2027 or 2028. But for now, anyone taking retatrutide is getting it from, at best, a clinical trial and, at worst, the black market. “You want to do this under medical supervision,” says Shafer. “All these yahoos online-order things on the internet and inject themselves. That’s where people are going to have problems. These are highly effective things, but they can’t be viewed as a vitamin or supplement; they really should be viewed as a medical intervention.”
Once it does become a medical intervention, will retatrutide make Ozempic, Wegovy, and the like irrelevant? Each doctor agrees that the answer is no. It all depends on what your body reacts to best. “The body doesn’t like sudden changes,” says GolBerg. “Our body is a very complex system; everything is interrelated.” Even Shafer, who has already been taking retatrutide (under a clinical trial), wouldn’t prescribe it to his patients immediately. “I would tell people to start with the more studied and more widely available ones first,” he says. “There’s no reason to go directly to reta.”
Advertisement
And while retatrutide has potential for metabolic health, inflammation, and weight loss, there’s still a lot to learn about the substance before calling it a life-extender. “We were really hopeful about metformin back in the day,” Vo cautions. “They thought metformin would be a longevity drug, and it really turned out that when they did a big trial on it, although it decreased the risk of worsening of diabetes, it didn’t change the mortality endpoint after long-term study.” Retatrutide could be bigger than metformin—but until it’s gone through the necessary approval channels, it’s best to hold off on buying it from your cousin’s plug on Discord.
