‘Tis the season for emergency room visits after inappropriately using Ozempic to lose weight for the summer.
“Drugs including Ozempic and Wegovy should only be used by people prescribed them for obesity or diabetes,” Stephen Powis — the national medical director of NHS England, the country’s publicly funded healthcare system — urged last week at a conference in Manchester.
“I’m worried about reports that people are misusing them — they are not intended as a quick fix for people trying to get ‘beach body ready,’” added Powis, per The Times of London.
Semaglutide — sold under the brand names Ozempic and Wegovy — mimics GLP-1, the hormone the body naturally produces after eating. Users feel fuller for longer.
4% of US adults admitted in a July 2023 survey to using a prescription drug to lose weight, while one in 10 confessed they had stopped taking this type of medication.
One doctor warned that “young, beautiful girls” are landing in UK emergency rooms “almost every shift” after lying about their weight while buying Ozempic online.
Most of these retailers do not require an in-person examination, noted medical experts, who cautioned about the dangerous potential side effects of illegitimately obtaining Ozempic.
“Sadly we are seeing serious, life-threatening complications including inflammation of the pancreas gland and alterations in blood salt levels in these patients, who were not aware of the risk they were taking,” said Dr. Vicky Price, a consultant in acute medicine and president-elect of the Society for Acute Medicine.
“There is a need for urgent regulation and control of access for weight-loss drugs online to avoid more patients becoming unwell,” Price continued.
In one case, a girl who was “not at all” overweight, yet was able to purchase Wegovy online, arrived in the emergency room.
She was “feeling unwell, like she was going to pass out and couldn’t stand up. She was really struggling to eat,” one doctor described.
She was treated for starvation ketoacidosis, a potentially life-threatening condition where the body breaks down muscle to use as fuel after running out of fat.
