Ozempic Expert: Ozempic Increases This Disease By A Factor Of 9! They're Lying To You About Ozempic Side Effects & What It's Doing To Our Brains! - Johann Hari

Steven Bartlett (0:00)

We've not spoken for two years, but I have to say, you look remarkably different.

Johann Hari (0:05)

So I lost three stone in a year, and there's a secret to that, Steven.

SPEAKER_3 (0:09)

Johann Hari, the bestselling author who's using his own body to unearth the extraordinary benefits and disturbing risks of the new weight loss drugs.

SPEAKER_4 (0:19)

Ozempic, it is literally the hottest drug in the country right now.

Johann Hari (0:23)

I really worry about the risks of these drugs. You're nine times more likely to get this particular condition, which is excruciatingly painful. And these drugs are working very hard on key parts of your brain. In fact, there are 12 significant risks and we'll get into that. But it seems extraordinary that we've reached the point where we would inject ourselves with a potentially risky drug to stop us from eating. And we've had 40 years of relentlessly promoting diet and exercise as the only solutions. And only 10% of people really do lose huge amounts of weight on diets and keep it off. But now we have the most effective tool for self starvation human beings have ever come up with. When I started taking the Ozempic, I was literally 80% less hungry than I normally am. These drugs really do massively reduce or reverse obesity. And a few years from now, we'll have 50% of the population taking it. It's the new miracle drug. Now, this is when I go through the 12 big risks, some of which have not really been explained to the public. So within a year of stopping, you regain 70% of the weight you've lost. Muscle mass loss is a real problem. There's concern that it may be causing suicidal feelings. And then there's one of the really big risks. And it's absolutely grim beyond belief. And that is...

Steven Bartlett (1:34)

Johann, we've not spoken for two years. But I have to say, you look remarkably different.

Johann Hari (1:42)

It's a secret to that, Steven.

Steven Bartlett (1:44)

Really?

Johann Hari (1:45)

We can dig into, yeah.

Steven Bartlett (1:47)

What is the secret?

Johann Hari (1:49)

So for me, it started, it's a kind of weird story. It started in the winter of 2020 So it was that weird period when kind of the world was opening up again after the pandemic. And I gained a lot of weight in lockdown, like loads of people. And because of that kind of weird moment of reopening, I went to a party for the first time in like, I don't know, a year and a half, two years. And it was a party thrown by a kind of famous Hollywood actor. And on the way there, I remember thinking, this is going to be kind of funny because all these Hollywood people are going to put on weight as well, right? They're going to have gained weight. What are they going to look like? So I remember getting there, looking around and having this really weird feeling because it's not just that they hadn't gained weight. Everyone was gaunt, right? Like everyone looked like their own Snapchat filter. Like they had like higher cheekbones. They looked cleaner and clearer and sharper. And I was kind of wandering around feeling a bit like, oh shit. And I bumped into a friend of mine on the dance floor and I said to her, what? It looks like everyone really did do Pilates during lockdown. And she laughed and she looked at me and I sort of looked at her and she said, well, you know it wasn't Pilates, right? And I sort of looked at her blankly and she pulled out her phone and she showed, she Googled the image and she showed me an Ozempic pen. I didn't know what it was. And I said, what are you talking about? She said, it's a drug. Everyone here is on this drug, right? Not just the stars like their wives, their agents, their agents, kids, everyone.

And I've been really thrown. And then over the next few days, I read a lot about these new weight loss drugs. And I've never, I don't remember ever coming across a topic where I felt so deeply conflicted from the very beginning and that conflict remained all the way through, right? The subtitle to my book is The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight Loss Drugs. And that's even right from the start, I was aware that was the tension. So the benefits are kind of obvious, right? You know, I'm older than my grandfather ever got to be because he died of a heart attack. Loads of the men in my family get really fat and die of heart attacks. My uncle died of a heart attack. My dad had a lot of heart problems. There's a lot of evidence that obesity unfortunately does cause a whole range of health problems, over 200 diseases and complications. There's a lot of evidence these drugs really do massively reduce or reverse obesity. The average person who uses them, Ozempic, Wigovy, loses 15% of their body weight in a year. With the new generation of drugs, the next ones that are coming down the line, the average person loses 24% of their body weight. It's staggering. It's just below bariatric surgery. So I could see the obvious health benefit. And I could see that the alternatives that most of us have been pursuing, diets, have not worked well for most people. But at the same time, I thought, I had so many doubts straight away. I thought, well, we've seen this story before. There have been lots of miracle diet drugs that have been announced. They caused dramatic weight loss at first. And we always discover some horrendous side effect that causes catastrophic outcomes that mean the whole thing has to be pulled. I thought that. I thought, well, we know what causes obesity, right? The reason obesity has massively increased is because of a complete change in the food supply. We eat completely different food to what our grandparents ate. We need to deal with that, not kind of drug everyone. I also thought, well, what will happen to people with eating disorders when they get hold of this? What will this do to the kind of positive changes that were happening and accepting a kind of broader range of weights? So I was really deeply conflicted. So to really get to the bottom of this for my magic pill, I spent a year taking the drugs and going on this big journey all over the world, from Reykjavik in Iceland to Minneapolis to Tokyo, to interview the leading experts in the world on these drugs, the biggest supporters, the biggest critics, all sorts of kind of alleys and avenues that follow from them. And at the end of it, it's really weird. I know far more than I did before, and I know far more about the benefits and risks, and I know far more about what this is going to do to the culture, and it will be massive.