One of the biggest wellness buzzwords of 2025 is microdosing, especially in the GLP-1 world. But depending on where you stand, it can mean wildly different things. Wellness culture is framing it as a longevity shortcut. Aesthetic clinics use it to describe a softer, maintenance-level dosing regimen. Celebrities and influencers toss it around as a coy way to say they’re “not really on Ozempic.” Meanwhile, physicians watching the narrative spiral say the term has drifted far outside anything supported by research.

Ahead, experts are weighing in about what microdosing actually means—and what it doesn’t.

Featured Experts

• Eduardo Grunvald, MD is an internist and obesity medicine specialist in San Diego 
• Purvisah Patel, MD is a board-certified dermatologis in Germantown, TN
• Rocio Salas-Whalen, MD is a board-certified endocrinologist in New York

Why the Messaging Is Confusing

While microdosing for longevity has been a recent headline, for obesity experts, the idea that microdosing GLP-1s could extend lifespan or “optimize” health has no scientific footing. “There really is no evidence for any of that,” says San Diego obesity specialist Eduardo Grunvald, MD. He explains that the only proven benefits come from significant weight loss or from treating conditions already studied. “GLP-1s are not wellness supplements,” he adds. “They’re medications to treat a chronic metabolic disease.”

Some physicians say longevity isn’t even the reason their patients are asking about microdosing. Inside aesthetic offices, the discussion looks very different from the biohacking chatter circulating online. Rather than slowing down aging, many patients simply don’t want or need dramatic weight loss, says Germantown, TN dermatologist Purvisha Patel, MD. She says she has been using low, widely spaced doses for patients in perimenopause, those with high cortisol or those who want mild appetite support without the intensity of higher doses. “I truly think we are overdosing the GLP-1s,” she says. “You can microdose very safely for a very long time.” For these patients, she explains, microdosing is about tolerability and personalization.

Why Clear Definitions Matter

New York endocrinologist Rocio Salas Whalen, MD says much of the confusion comes from people calling therapeutic starting doses “micro.” “If you are taking 0.25 milligrams of semaglutide or 2.5 milligrams of tirzepatide, you are not microdosing,” she says. “You are using a therapeutic dose.” She explains that true microdosing happens below those amounts and is appropriate only in specific cases, such as adolescents who are extremely sensitive or adults who maintain results on very low doses. And when it comes to longevity, she is unequivocal. “It is not for longevity.”

Why Longevity Claims Need Stronger Data

Dr. Salas Whalen emphasizes that any longevity conversation must be rooted in who these medications have actually been studied in. “We need studies in healthy individuals,” she says. “A normal BMI says nothing about body composition.” Nearly all of the whole-body benefits circulating online—such as better inflammation markers, improved cognition or lower cardiovascular risk—were observed only after obesity or type 2 diabetes improved. “If someone already has low visceral fat and good muscle mass, we do not know what a microdose would even do,” she says. “Right now, what people are calling longevity is really just disease improvement.”

This is where microdosing starts to split in two directions. For some patients, it’s a thoughtful, clinically guided approach. For others, it has become a glossy umbrella term that promises more than it can deliver. Physicians say the real concern isn’t the milligram amount, but the mythology forming around it.

While some physicians remain optimistic that GLP-1s may eventually play a role in healthier aging, experts agree we can’t call microdosing a longevity tool until the data fully support it.