Kris Jenner, 67, looks thinner than usual in tank top… after Kim, Khloe accused of using Ozempic

Over the summer I was lucky enough to be invited to a 60th birthday party where the after dinner entertainment was a private performance by one of the UK’s biggest male pop stars. More eye-catching than the actual show, though, was how incredible that star looked. He was only a shadow of his former self, leaping across the stage in a silver catsuit. His secret? Semaglutide, or Ozempic as it’s branded, a new diet drug that everyone — but everyone, baby, including one of the world’s most famous supermodels — is apparently taking.

Originally developed to treat type 2 diabetes, it is used off-label (for a purpose other than that for which it was approved) in both the US and UK to treat obesity. In research conducted by billionaire manufacturer, Denmark-based pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, patients lost an average of 17 percent of their total body weight over 68 weeks. This compares to five to nine percent for “old school” anti-obesity drugs such as metformin.

Only available in the UK on the NHS if you have type 2 diabetes, Ozempic can be obtained through a private doctor and if you are willing to take it without medical supervision – not recommended by doctors (see panel) – you can get it online through various weight loss programs. It is sometimes taken in tablet form, but more often as an injection.

As might be expected, Hollywood has known about Ozempic for much longer than we have. Variety magazine recently joked that the drug deserved its own thank you speech at the Emmys because so many stars on stage had clearly taken it. Elon Musk raved about his more potent sister drug, Wegovy, on Twitter; Rumor has it that Kim Kardashian used semaglutide to lose 16 pounds to fit into Marilyn Monroe’s dress for the Met Ball. On TikTok, the hashtag #ozempic has been viewed more than 285 million times.

Thanks to the hype, demand has spiked, creating shortages on both sides of the Atlantic, with a backlash against influencers and celebrities gobbling up supplies for desperate diabetics. As might be expected, Big Pharma has come up with an alternative – tirzepatide (brand name Mounjaro), manufactured by Eli Lilly – but it has yet to be approved by the US Food & Drug Administration for weight loss.

Novo Nordisk issued a statement saying stocks will be replenished by the end of the year, but it hasn’t allayed concerns. At least two middle-aged male friends who started using it in September are confused because they were caught shortly before the holiday season. As a private London GP remarked to me, ‘It’s like the HRT panic last spring.’

So what exactly is this drug? Semaglutide belongs to a class called GLP-1 agonists, which not only regulate blood sugar but, as was discovered about a decade ago, also mimic the gut hormones that regulate our appetite – the ones that tell the brain when we’re hungry or full . There are side effects, of course: acid indigestion, nausea, worsening of IBS symptoms and fatigue (but much less than previous GLP-1 agonists like Saxenda), as well as pancreatitis, gallstones and, at very high doses, it has caused thyroid tumors in rats . Meanwhile, if you stop using it, the effect disappears immediately and in some cases it does not work at all.

“I would describe semaglutide as an example of very smart science,” says leading consultant endocrinologist Dr Efthimia Karra from her private practice on Harley Street in London. But it’s not a panacea for everyone. About a fifth of users do not respond to it. This is because the human body prefers to gain weight, so when you lose weight, the body will do everything it can to get back to its highest BMI. The heavier you are, the harder it is to lose weight. If a patient hasn’t made any progress in three months, I’ll take him off.”

Banker’s wife Laura, a native New Yorker in her mid-50s who had floated for decades, started using it in January. “The Paleo diet, 5:2, CBT, NLP, boot camp, diet delivery services – I’ve tried them all,” she says from her family home in Hampshire, “and I’ve always yo-yoed right back.” After my last annual checkup, I seriously considered giving up. Then my doctor suggested semaglutide.”

After only a month she noticed that her clothes were looser. From that moment on, the weight started to fall off. “The strange thing was that I didn’t eat anything else. I just ran out of seconds physically and the idea of ​​pudding after a full meal had lost its allure.’ Three months later, she’s two stone lighter – although she occasionally suffers from heartburn if she eats late at night or drinks alcohol – and when we spoke in the fall, she was looking forward to another stone by Christmas. to be lost.

“There’s a nagging voice telling me it’s both risky and lazy to take a weight loss drug, and I’m afraid it’ll all pile up again when I stop taking it.” But if so, I’ll seriously consider taking it indefinitely.”

The private general practitioner in London, Dr. Martin Galy, has been prescribing semaglutide for about a year for clients who are unable to lose the weight they gained during menopause. He has seen it also have a transformative effect on much younger women suffering from polycystic ovary syndrome. “PCOS patients are difficult to treat, and you can imagine how body image plays a very important role when it comes to self-esteem.”

But according to Tom Sanders, professor of nutrition and dietetics at King’s College London, it’s not a panacea. Commenting on a study on semaglutide published in 2021 in The New England Journal of Medicine, he says, “The challenge after weight loss is to avoid gaining weight again,” he wrote. It may prove useful in the short term, but “public health measures that encourage behavioral changes, such as regular exercise and moderating dietary energy intake, are still needed.”

That said, given our rising national obesity statistics and the escalation of accompanying health problems like heart failure, cancer and obstructive sleep apnea clogging hospital beds, we’re going to need something. Semaglutide may be the rich person’s drug, but could it be approved for more widespread use? Time will tell.