Journalist and Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight-Loss Drugs author Johann Hari is opening up about the benefits and concerns surrounding Ozempic. Based on his personal experience with the popular weight loss drug, the 45-year-old writer is sharing what he learned. Johann was prescribed the drug semaglutide, which is sold under the brand name Ozempic, in 2023 when he weighed 203 pounds and had a body fat percentage of 32%.
As a someone whose grandfather died of a heart attack at 44, uncle died of a heart attack in his 60s, and father who underwent a quadruple heart bypass in his 70s, the writer believed the weight-loss drug would be a way to lower his risk for heart disease.
Johann became aware of the effects of the drugs a couple of days after his first dosage. "I woke up and I thought, 'There’s something weird. What is it?' I couldn’t figure out what it was," he explained to Today.com. "And then I suddenly realized I had woken up and I wasn’t hungry. That had never happened to me."
"My appetite was just dramatically dialed down from that point on," he continued. "I was so much less hungry than I’d been before. I felt very full, very fast." He ended up losing 42 pounds with Ozempic and its sister drug Wegovy. Both have the same active ingredient of semaglutide.
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In his new book, Johann breaks down what he found out about GLP-1 medications in his new book about weight loss drugs. "In my lifetime, we’ve had an explosion of obesity that’s unprecedented in human history. We’ve been physically altered by processed and ultra-processed foods, which have completely taken over our diet and are unlike the food that human beings ate before us. This food is undermining our ability to ever feel full," he said to Today.com. "The second experiment I’m part of is these drugs. They give you back your sense of being full. But they bring with them some risks as well."
When asked what potential risks worry him the most, the writer said the main active ingredient is what raises a concern. "Semaglutide has only been used for a bit more than two years now for people with obesity. We don’t know the long-term effects of taking them," he explained. "There’s a concern that maybe they’ll have some effect that we just don’t know in the long term."
"For myself, the one risk that I didn’t see coming was the psychological effect. That was really strange," he continued. "For the first six months I was taking the drug, I was getting what I wanted — I was losing loads of weight, my back pain went away, all sorts of good things happened."
"But I didn’t actually feel better in my emotions. If anything, I felt slightly worse. I realized it was about my inability to comfort eat, and how bad that was making me feel," Johann said. He went on to explain that Ozempic stopped him from using food as a coping mechanism.
"The side effects were not terrible, but they were uncomfortable. They gradually diminished over four months," he shared. "The day after I would inject myself once a week, I would feel a bit sick. It’s pretty mild. I had one of the less common side effects — some people feel their heart beats faster. It’s hard when your heart is racing to not feel anxious because your body’s like, something is wrong. So that was, for me, the most unpleasant side effect."
But even with the side effects he experienced, Johann has also gotten benefits from taking the drug. "I want to stress that I experienced a lot of benefits from this drug. I went from eating 3,200 calories a day to 1,800 calories a day and not feeling hungry." He plans to continue taking Ozempic "because of the heart attack risk in my family, for me personally, the benefits of these drugs outweigh my very real concerns about the long-term effects."
*Disclaimer: The advice on LittleThings is not a substitute for consultation with a medical professional or treatment for a specific condition. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat a health problem without consulting a qualified professional. Please contact your health-care provider with questions and concerns.
