About Semawise
Plain-English, evidence-based answers about semaglutide.
Who writes this
Sofia Mendez — Patient Education Editor
Sofia Mendez writes Semawise. She came to semaglutide as a patient rather than a professional — she has taken it herself, titrated through the dose schedule, and dealt with the nausea, the plateaus and the cost arithmetic that the marketing pages skip.
Since finishing college she has tracked the telehealth programs and compounding pharmacies that sell GLP-1 medication in the United States: what they charge, what that price actually covers, which state boards they are registered with, and — the question almost none of them answer voluntarily — which pharmacy physically fills the prescription. That last question is the reason the Provenance Register on this site exists. Of the 54 programs tracked, 13 name the pharmacy that fills a prescription before a patient pays. "Unstated" is published as a finding rather than left blank.
Her work on Semawise is the reading nobody enjoys doing: pulling the current FDA label, checking a claim against the STEP, SUSTAIN and SELECT trial data rather than the press release, re-checking published prices, and reading the terms under a $99 headline to find the twelve-week commitment. Every factual claim in a guide is tied to a cited primary source, and what the randomized trials actually proved is kept separate from what is only marketed.
Sofia is not a clinician, and nothing on Semawise is medical advice. It is patient-to-patient education, sourced to primary research and official labeling — take any decision about starting, stopping or changing a medication to a licensed clinician who knows your history.
How a claim gets on this site
- Primary sources only. Every factual claim is tied to a peer-reviewed study or official FDA labeling, cited inline and listed at the foot of the guide. Not a press release, and not another website’s summary.
- Trials are separated from marketing. What STEP, SUSTAIN and SELECT actually measured is stated as such, and kept apart from what a program advertises.
- Prices are quoted as published, and dated. Every provider price carries the date it was last checked, because a GLP-1 price that is six months old is usually just wrong.
- Drawbacks are named. Every provider we review carries at least one specific, named trade-off — including the ones that pay us.
- Corrections are welcome. If a number here is wrong, tell us and it gets fixed and re-dated.
The full policy is on our editorial policy page.
The Provenance Register
The question that started this site is the one telehealth programs answer least willingly: which pharmacy actually fills your prescription? The Provenance Register tracks it for every program on our roster — whether the pharmacy is named before you pay, what facility class it is, and whether a certificate of analysis can be obtained. It is a disclosure ledger, not a ranking, it carries no affiliate links, and the data is published openly under CC BY 4.0.
How the site is funded
Semawise earns a commission when a reader signs up with some of the programs we list. That pays for the research and it is disclosed on every page that carries such a link. What it does not do is change a verdict: partners are named as partners, their drawbacks are printed alongside everyone else’s, and our cheapest-first ranking is sorted on published price whether or not the top row pays us. The detail is on our disclosure page.
Contact
Questions, corrections, or a claim you think we got wrong? Email ask@semawise.com and a real person will read it.