DR MAX PEMBERTON: I took Ozempic to regulate my urge for food and located it had one other unimaginable side-effect

There is no such thing as a doubt that new weight reduction medication like Wegovy are revolutionising our remedy of weight problems. After years of failing to assist deal with the weight problems epidemic, medication lastly has one thing to supply sufferers which seems to be efficient.

Extra medication to compete with Wegovy — which accommodates semaglutide, the identical energetic ingredient discovered within the kind 2 diabetes medicine Ozempic — are on the way in which, with Mounjaro already out there from some pharmacies.

But this isn’t the one factor these medication may have the ability to assist with. There’s rising proof that the group of medicines that Wegovy and Ozempic belong to, known as GLP-1 agonists, may also assist individuals with different issues, resembling decreasing their alcohol consumption.

I’ve even had first-hand expertise of the impact Wegovy has on individuals’s need to drink alcohol, as I’ve taken it. I’ll clarify why, as somebody who has by no means been obese, I ended up taking it.

A number of years in the past, I fell on cobblestones and broke my foot. It was a sophisticated fracture and, after 5 operations and specialist physiotherapy, I used to be nonetheless in ache once I walked.

Proof means that the group of medicines Ozempic belongs to – GLP-1 agonists – may also assist individuals with decreasing their alcohol consumption 

New weight reduction medication resembling Wegovy are revolutionising our remedy of weight problems

My surgeon steered I might strive progress hormone injections and I discovered a physician who prescribed them. Inside weeks, the ache had gone and I used to be in a position to stroll with out limping for the primary time in two years.

However at a price. I developed an insatiable urge for food. After a meal, I nonetheless felt ravenous, and will eat loaves of bread — sure, plural — as a snack.

The physician thought this side-effect would seemingly enhance over time, however within the meantime he might give me an injection to curb my starvation. It was semaglutide — the energetic ingredient in Wegovy. I took it for about eight weeks at a low dose and it labored a deal with.

However then I seen one thing actually odd. The medicine not solely stops you feeling hungry (in actual fact, it makes you are feeling fairly satisfyingly full, even while you’ve eaten little or no), it makes chocolate, cake and different treats appear, properly, much less of a deal with. They only lose their enchantment.

And it wasn’t simply meals — it was alcohol too. I don’t drink a fantastic deal, however even a glass of wine with dinner would go completely untouched. It merely had no enchantment. It’s laborious to explain, however that little rush of enjoyment while you take a sip of alcohol wasn’t there. It was like ingesting water.

Since then, a number of obese associates have been on Wegovy and reported the identical factor occurring. Individuals who’ve beforehand loved a drink can, all of a sudden, take it or depart it.

And it’s not simply alcohol. One affected person, who would use cocaine often, commented that she’d seen she now not wished to the touch it in any respect. And a affected person who had issues with playing instructed me how being on Wegovy appeared to have cured him.

‘I feel such medication [Wegovy and Ozempic] maintain the important thing to serving to individuals lastly get on high of their weight and enhance their relationship with meals,’ says Dr Max

Now, I ought to emphasise these are anecdotal stories and Wegovy will not be licensed to be used within the remedy of habit or dependency. Nonetheless, this impact has actually made medical doctors that these medicines may need a task exterior weight administration.

In a sequence of case research printed within the Journal of Medical Psychiatry in November 2023, sufferers who had an issue with alcohol and had been prescribed both Ozempic (which is licensed for diabetes) or Wegovy (which is similar medicine however for weight reduction), reported there’d been an incidental discount of their alcohol consumption.

This was so marked that, in follow-up, the sufferers’ ingesting had modified to the extent that they had been now not classed as having an issue with alcohol.

So how can one thing that helps you reduce weight additionally cease you wanting alcohol? It’s a query that has intrigued medics and scientists.

We all know that these medicines don’t simply curb starvation, in addition they work on the mind’s reward pathways. Because of this meals resembling cake and chocolate, which stimulate these pathways, can lose their enchantment for individuals who take certainly one of these medication.

However these reward pathways are additionally concerned in a number of different issues, together with these regarding habit and compulsive behaviours like playing.

GLP-1 medicines cut back the discharge of dopamine — a key chemical in reward pathways — and due to this fact cut back the thrill individuals get from beforehand ‘rewarding’ behaviours resembling over-drinking. I’ve nice hopes for these medication.

For now, although, they’re extremely useful for many who battle to regulate their meals consumption and are obese or overweight — notably, I feel, those that use meals as ‘reward’.

I feel such medication maintain the important thing to serving to individuals lastly get on high of their weight and enhance their relationship with meals.

I really feel so passionately about this that, final week, I launched a start-up that gives this medicine as a part of an internet weight administration programme. Sufferers can full an internet session and, if eligible for the programme, they are going to be despatched Wegovy on to their door.

Setting this firm up has been an actual labour of affection. There are (fairly rightly) a number of rules round prescribing over the web and we wished to make sure that we had been totally compliant. There have been a number of hoops to leap by means of.

However I feel it’s been price it, as a result of if we might help individuals enhance their relationship with meals, their bodily and psychological well being will enhance too.

A number of individuals actually battle to reduce weight by means of weight-reduction plan and train alone — however till now we had little else to counsel.

Now, lastly, we now have one thing to supply that may make all of the distinction.

Getslimmr.co.uk

The King is alleged to be discovering peace amongst 5,000 ‘therapeutic yew timber’ on his Norfolk property following his most cancers analysis. Connecting with nature has been proven to assist individuals really feel brighter, much less anxious, assist rest and supply them with one thing to deal with exterior their analysis and remedy.

We’re not all ADHD like Sheridan 

Sheridan Smith, 42, has revealed she’s simply found she has ADHD. She joins a protracted checklist of celebrities additionally recognized with it. She has stated it ‘helped make a number of sense of issues’ in her life.

I’m happy for Sheridan, however do fear there may be an epidemic of over-diagnosis of the situation. We’re dashing to pathologise each little idiosyncrasy, to medicalise issues and struggles.

Over the previous few years, the standards for assembly a analysis for a lot of psychological well being issues, together with ADHD, has been widened and widened. It means increasingly individuals are being classed as having the situation.

Labelling can have a dramatic impact on how individuals view themselves and the efforts they make to alter their behaviour. Too typically, a analysis signifies that individuals really feel they now not must take accountability for his or her actions: labelling them on this approach removes their incentive to work to alter their lives.

Sheridan Smith, 42, has revealed she’s simply found she has ADHD

Six in ten individuals suppose social media has had a unfavorable impact on British kids, a survey has discovered. Certainly the burning query is: have the opposite 4 out of ten misplaced their minds? 

Trying on the horrific instances of bullying, harassment, grooming and tragic suicides because of social media, it appears unattainable to not conclude that these platforms that foment hate and body-shaming have a unfavorable impact on kids. That’s why I again the marketing campaign to ban smartphones for under-16s.

There will probably be resistance from social media corporations who make obscene quantities of cash by getting children to click on and like, nevertheless it’s telling that so many Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs are refusing their very own kids smartphones. They aren’t ready to take dangers with their very own kids. Simply different individuals’s.

Dr Max prescribes… 

Might a whiff of vapour rub assist remedy melancholy? Scientists put ahead the idea after a examine on the position of smells in treating low temper. Researchers requested individuals to smell aromas, like cinnamon, espresso, lavender and vapour rub, and consider an related reminiscence. This helped individuals entry constructive recollections — stopping unfavorable ideas.

Vapour rub