News Spotlight: Blasting the flab one jab at a time

Our fascination with weight loss isn’t new - dating back to the second century AD when Greek physician, Soranus of Ephesus, introduced an ‘elixir of laxatives and purgatives’. Since then, countless remedies have been created, from the infamous ‘Phen-fen’ of the 1990s to today’s buzzworthy GLP-1 receptor agonists, or ‘fat jabs.’

With promises of losing up to 15% of body weight, it is no surprise that these injections have become so popular. Side effects such as nausea, vomiting, and diarrhoea don’t seem to put people off, with drugs.com user reviews rating them at a promising 7.5–8.5/10.

In a recent Sky News Article, Simple Online Pharmacy, a top retailer of the drugs, stated that its 200,000 customers have collectively lost 600 tonnes of weight. The equivalent of 4 blue whales, 85 London double-decked buses, 100 African elephants or 8,500 people. The retailer also claimed that obesity rates in the UK have peaked and should decline over this next year, a bold hope given that over a 27% of the UK population is obese.

As with most weight-loss ‘cures’, they should be used alongside a healthy diet and exercise. However, if people can lose weight whilst chomping down on their favourite takeaway and kicking their feet up on the sofa, will they even bother to make healthy lifestyle changes, and could their health ultimately suffer? Or maybe their weight loss will kickstart a better lifestyle? We are hoping for the latter.

With this development in tackling obesity, the challenges will now include how to support people losing weight on these drugs, making healthy lifestyle choices, using the drugs responsibly and, at some point, stopping using them.

We have seen weight loss treatments come and go over the past few decades and whilst ‘fat jabs’ appear to be gaining popularity, whether they will be a heavyweight game changer or just another flash in the pan remains to be seen.