Speaking on Lorraine, TV doctor and celebrity guest editor of Live to 100, Dr Amir Khan, has warned about the dangers of misusing diabetes drug Ozempic as a diet aid.
Celebrity Jeremy Clarkson has recently written in his Sunday Times column about using the injectable drug in a bid to regulate his appetite, lose weight and hold off diabetes. In fact, the drug and its variants are regarded as an open secret in Hollywood, where celebrities are said to use it to help weight loss.
Writing in Sunday Times column, the former Top Gear star said: “I can open the fridge, where there’s half a chicken and a juicy bottle of rosé, and I want neither… Of course, I’ll have to insert some balance in the future, or I’ll, you know, die. But for now it’s tremendous.”
Dr Amir Khan explained that the drug reportedly reduces appetite: “It is a once weekly injection and a hormone that our guts naturally produce – it sends messages up to the pancreas to start producing insulin. But one of the side effects is it slows down the movement of food in the gut so you stay fuller for longer and you don’t have much of an appetite. That means you eat less which results in weight loss.”
Ozempic, Ryblesus and Wegovy are all brand names for a compound called semaglutide, typically used as a diabetes medication. It can come in the form of a weekly injection, administered in the stomach, thigh or arm, or a daily oral tablet.
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At the recent Critics Choice Awards, comedienne Chelsea Handler hinted that many celebrities were taking the injectable. “Like when celebrities joke they lost weight by drinking water, but really it’s because everyone’s on Ozempic,” she said. “Even my housekeeper’s on Ozempic.”
The drug first gained attention as a weight management tool after a University College London study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, found that 35 percent of people who took it for obesity lost more than a fifth of their total body weight.
Prescription
But speaking on Lorraine, Dr Amir Khan explained that there are potential side effects, and that he thought the drug should be available on only on prescription. “With any drug, any medication, and this is medication, there are side effects,” he said. “The common ones are nausea, vomiting, feeling bloated, diarrhoea, but in some, more serious, cases it can cause inflammation of the pancreas, that’s pancreatitis.” He added: “It can even cause kidney failure, so really it should only be available on prescription. I do prescribe it to my patients living with type 2 diabetes, but it’s very carefully monitored. It is not just given online.”
Ozempic is not approved by either the NHS or the FDA as a weight loss treatment, or to ‘ward off’ diabetes, only for treatment of Type 2 diabetes. Despite this, there are some reports that interest surrounding the drug as a weight loss aid is thought to have caused a shortage for those needing the medication for diabetes.
On Instagram, Jameela Jamil, who is well known for her public condemnations of controversial weight-loss advertisements, expressed her concerns with those who are using the diabetes medication for “weight loss only”. “I have said what I have said about the potential harm of people using the diabetes medication for weight loss only. I fear for everyone in the next few years. Rich people are buying this stuff off prescription for upwards of $1,000. Actual diabetes are seeing shortages. It’s now a mainstream craze in Hollywood,” Jamil wrote. She shared her concerns that the trend will “end the same way we were told opioids were safe,” with the actress claiming that there is “little to no discussion of the side effects in any advertising online”.
Other celebrities such as influencer Remi Bader have spoken out against the use of the medication. The TikTok star revealed that she gained “double the weight back” after she was prescribed the drug for her pre-diabetes, insulin resistance, and weight gain issues.
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