In the United States, most GLP-1 patients are women, and one in five women between 50 to 64 has used one. Almost incidentally, these drugs have done something decades of public health messaging could not: forced a clinical conversation about women's bodies, metabolism, and nutritional needs into the center of mainstream medicine. If you’re reading this here you likely know how badly women's health has been undercounted for the past 30+ years. Now the GLP-1 shift is opening up a gap most of the market has yet to price.
I’ll start with the biology. Depending on the trial and how body composition is measured, between 25-40% of the weight lost on a GLP-1 comes from lean mass, not fat. For a 33-year-old man that’s a clinical footnote, but for a 55-year-old woman it’s something else entirely. Bone density is also where evidence is starting to arrive. A 2026 study followed 255 GLP-1 users at increased fracture risk; 92% of them were women with an average age of 64, against matched controls. Both groups had significant declines in bone mineral density at the total hip and femoral neck, of similar magnitude. In the GLP-1 group, weight loss was directly associated with bone loss at both sites. Among those without diabetes, total hip loss was significantly greater in the GLP-1 group.1
So what? This woman is already losing bone density and muscle, her estrogen is falling (which compounds both), and she’s now on a drug that speeds up the lean-mass loss further. Within a year of starting therapy, deficiencies in iron, vitamin D and B vitamins are widely reported. Watch what happens when they stop the drug too. In the STEP 1 trial extension, patients regained about two thirds of the weight they lost within a year of coming off GLP-1s (with similar changes in cardiometabolic variables)2
Not enough has been built for this patient. New platforms are being built and others are attempting to pivot towards the category. But most today aren’t tailored to this combination of muscle loss, bone loss and hormonal transition, and the needed off-ramp when the GLP-1 prescription ends. The default answer of a generic women's multivitamin addresses none of it. This is a real clinical population moving through the system right now, and it’s one of the strongest signs that women's health can no longer be treated as separate from metabolic and nutritional medicine.
This logic also runs deeper than GLP-1s. The wellness model that carried women's health for two decades (broad “women 50+” positioning, one nutrient per formulation, thin evidence and a retail shelf), is being squeezed by biomarkers, published data, and outcomes that either show up or do not. In supplements, direct-to-consumer acquisition costs have risen sharply over the past two years, and retention hasn’t moved with them. In Recurly's 2026 benchmark of 76 million subscribers, 52% of consumers cancelled at least one subscription in the past year simply because they were not using it. Without real IP the moat collapses to brand and shelf space, a game the incumbents win.
Platforms behave differently, and that’s important to internalize if you are building or backing. They reach diagnosed, engaged users. Their recommendations come from clinicians rather than influencers. They generate longitudinal outcomes data that sharpens the product and deepens the moat over time, and their revenue increasingly runs through employers and payers rather than a monthly subscription. Once a platform is embedded in telehealth workflows, records and benefits, it starts being infrastructure. Standalone products can still work, but platforms compound.
At PeakBridge we invest in the people transforming food, nutrition and health. Women’s health is where that convergence is now most visible and least served. The biology here obviously hasn’t changed; what has is that data, regulation, capital and clinical infrastructure are finally moving toward it at once. The category built on that convergence will be one of the more consequential opportunities in healthcare over the next decade, and it will be built by the people who saw it clearly first.
Dr. Gali Artzi is Partner and CTO at PeakBridge, a $260M venture capital firm investing across food, nutrition and health, with 36+ portfolio companies from seed to Series B. She holds a PhD in immunology and spent 15 years leading R&D, innovation, and commercialization at global ingredient companies, taking products from lab to market. She has worked on transactions from both sides of the table, including large-scale M&A and IPOs, and sits on several PeakBridge portfolio company boards. For more, visit https://peakbridge.vc/.
Peakbridge is a proud sponsor of Women's Health Week Europe, looking to meet with innovators and investors in this space. If that’s you, grab your ticket to meet them at the Emirates Stadium, London, on 7-8 October and register for WHW Europe below.
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1Liu et al., "Skeletal Effect of Semaglutide and Tirzepatide in Patients with Increased Risk of Fractures," Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, Vol 111, Issue 7, July 2026
2Wilding et al., "Weight regain and cardiometabolic effects after withdrawal of semaglutide: the STEP 1 trial extension," Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, Vol 24, Issue 8, 2022. https://dom-pubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dom.14725
