I lost three stone on Ozempic – but there are risks everyone should know about, writes JOHANN HARI

In the winter of 2022, the global pandemic finally seemed to be passing, so I went to a party in London for the first time in two years. I was feeling schlubby and slightly self-conscious, having gained 14 stone since the world stopped.

The party was hosted by an Oscar-winning actor, and I was surprised no one else had arrived. Everyone looked like their own Snapchat filter. Their cheekbones were higher, their stomachs tighter. I bumped into an old friend and said to her in a sort of embarrassed mumble that I suspected everyone was really doing pilates during lockdown. She laughed and stared at me, surprised that I didn’t know what was really going on.

She pulled up a photo on her iPhone of a light blue plastic tube of Ozempic with a small needle in it. My weight has fluctuated several times in my life, from slightly underweight to obese.

My first instinct was to resist Ozempic: I’ll go on my millionth diet and get there myself, I thought, without the risky option of medication – even though I had to admit to myself that it seemed to be getting harder as I got older. But there was one thought I couldn’t shake. I realized that I had just gotten older than my grandfather could ever get: he died of a heart attack at age 44.

My father had serious heart problems that required surgery, and my uncle died from it. The science is clear that obesity significantly increases your risk of developing heart disease, diabetes, cancer and dementia. By some calculations it is the largest preventable cause of death.

So I reluctantly decided to try these drugs – privately paying £300 a month for them (although it is available on the NHS) – and at the same time take a deep dive into the science of them, spending a year teaching over 100 people interviewed. experts and others around the world, from Iceland to Minneapolis to Tokyo, who told me that we now have a new wave of drugs that are causing a staggering amount of long-term weight loss.

In early 2023, two days after I first pricked myself with Ozempic, I opened my eyes and immediately felt that something was strange. I silenced my alarm and lay there for five minutes, trying to figure out what it was. I felt very slightly nauseous, but it wasn’t serious. If it had happened on a normal day, it wouldn’t have stopped me from doing anything. So it wasn’t.

It took me a moment to realize what it was. I always wake up hungry, but that morning I had no appetite at all. It was gone.

I got out of bed and went through my normal morning routine in North London on autopilot. I left my apartment and went to a local cafe run by a Brazilian woman named Tatiana, where my order is always the same: a large, toasted sandwich, filled with chicken and mayonnaise.

As I sat there reading the newspapers, the food was placed in front of me and I looked at it. It felt like I was looking at a block of wood. I got four bites and couldn’t eat anymore. It felt like the shutters had been pulled down because of my appetite and now only tiny flashes of light could get through. I was about 80 percent less hungry than usual, and went from eating 3,200 calories a day to about 1,800.

The feeling of mild nausea continued to stir and recede, only disappearing completely after almost a year. I lost three stone in those twelve months and my BMI went from obese (shown in a menacing red on the NHS map) to healthy (a lovely soothing green).

We know that if you reverse obesity, you dramatically improve health. For example, after the dramatic weight loss resulting from bariatric surgery, a study of more than 15,000 people found that the risk of dying from coronary heart disease fell by 56 percent, and the risk of dying from cancer fell by 60 percent.

These effects are so dramatic that in the seven years after surgery for people who have been severely obese, the chance of dying from any cause decreases by 40 percent.

The evidence emerging from this study appears to be that both drugs and surgery are moving people in the same direction: one study found that they reduce the risk of heart attack or stroke by 20 percent. I kept thinking about my grandfather and kept pricking myself. The weight fell away so easily it almost felt like magic.

But I kept asking myself: Can it be that easy? Can you really get all these benefits without any side effects? In the past, other weight-loss drugs were launched with similar fanfare, but ultimately had an unforeseen terrible effect on health, causing them to be withdrawn.

Most scientists I interviewed are convinced that these new generation drugs are generally safe, because they have been used to treat diabetes for more than fifteen years, without many negative effects – this is an important point. But studying the science has taught me that there are actually several significant potential risks associated with these medications – Ozempic and the other medications in the same class – that should be taken seriously.

During development, it was discovered that when these drugs are given to rats, they are much more likely to develop thyroid cancer. That’s why a group of French scientists started investigating whether this could also be the case in humans.

Jean-Luc Faillie is professor of medical pharmacology and toxicology at the University Hospital of Montpellier. He explained to me that France has one of the largest medical databases in the world, so they went back and analyzed the data of all patients with type 2 diabetes who had taken these drugs for one to three years between 2006 and 2018. compared these patients with a group of diabetics who had not used them.

Their findings were startling.

He said: ‘We show that there is an increased risk of about 50 to 75 percent of developing thyroid cancer.’ He told me it’s important not to misread this. It doesn’t mean that if you take the drug you have a 50 to 75 percent chance of developing thyroid cancer; it means that if you take the drug, your chances are 50 to 75 percent higher than if you had not taken it. In general, the risk remains small even if you take these medications.

Nevertheless, Professor Faillie added: ‘In epidemiology in general, a 50 per cent increase is quite something.’ When I raised these concerns with the companies making the drugs, they pointed out that the European Medicines Agency is not convinced by this evidence.

Other experts expressed concerns. Some are concerned about the consequences for pregnant women, because animal research has shown birth defects. Others are concerned that people often lose a lot of muscle mass due to these medications. If that happens, you may become less mobile as you age and be more likely to be injured if you fall. Others are still concerned that people taking these drugs may eat so little that they become malnourished.

The more I looked, the more I realized there are no easy answers here. You must compare the potentially serious risks of taking these medications with the dangers of continuing to be obese. For example, the medications may pose a risk of an increase in thyroid cancer, but persistent obesity carries a high risk of an increase in developing many different types of cancer.

Some of my friends kept asking me: why don’t we choose the less risky third option, which is to lose weight by dieting and exercising? We all know people for whom this has worked. But when I looked at the science, I discovered that the truth is that they are a small minority.

Professor Traci Mann of the University of Minnesota has conducted some of the most detailed research on dieting and found that after two years of starting a diet, you weigh an average of two pounds less than when you started. “It seems like they work for the initial weight loss, and then it comes back,” she told me. Other scientists explained why.

When you diet, your metabolism slows down and you crave fattier and higher-sugar foods. Professor Giles Yeo, obesity researcher at the University of Cambridge, said: ‘Your brain hates it when you lose weight. It will drag you kicking and screaming back to where you were.” I felt like such a failure because I had lost my own personal diet wars, but it turns out I was completely typical.

So here we are faced with an unpalatable choice. This does not have to be the case for our children and future generations. There are big changes we can make now to prevent them from facing this dilemma, and I have seen these implemented in countries like Japan, where obesity rates are low.

For a start, we could ensure that all children at school receive fresh and nutritious food. But it will take time, leaving many of us trapped in this difficult decision.

After a year of research into the risks, my weight has stabilized and I have decided to continue using Ozempic. Since most people gain back the weight they lose when they quit, I plan to continue using this for the foreseeable future.

But I’m 45, I don’t have thyroid cancer in my family and there’s no chance of getting pregnant. Others will have to weigh the many competing risks for themselves and come to their own conclusions.

Anyone who says this is easy or that there is an obvious choice that suits everyone is not being honest. We must recognize the complexity of the situation we find ourselves in. These medications are not a magic solution, nor are they a magic trick. They are a hatch for people who are stuck in the trap and see no other way out. Every escape route carries a risk, but so does staying trapped in obesity forever. I have made my choice. Now every other overweight person will have to make theirs.

How Ozempic is right

$556 billion: the 2023 market value of Novo Nordisk, the Danish company that makes Ozempic. Denmark’s gross domestic product was $400 billion last year.

$13.9 billion: The amount earned from Ozempic sales in 2023 (66% of which were in the US).

27.8%: the proportion of the UK population that is obese.

15%: The average body weight loss after one year.

£6.5 BILLION: How much Britain spends each year on treating obesity-related conditions.

Magic pill by Johann Hari out May 2 (Bloomsbury, £20). To order a copy for £17 until May 5, visit mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937. Free UK delivery on orders over £25.