Can you imagine getting Ozempic from the fridge at breakfast time – not to beat yourself up, but your child?
Or, letting your teenager inject themselves, perhaps as a special, end-of-exam, because they encouraged you to make them look “beach-body ready” for their 16th Birthday party in Ibiza? You may send them to school feeling nauseous, because of the slimming jab, but you know it will stop them eating – and get them off your back for a while.
I can only imagine the level of pester power we parents will be hit with by kids who love Ozempic if it is ever made available as a weight-loss treatment. But I myself would not give my children if you paid me.
According to a recent study in the United States, the number of children on weight loss drugs is increasing – significantly. Researchers at the University of Michigan and Yale have revealed that the monthly prescriptions of GLP-1 drugs – including Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro – for 12 to 15-year-olds have shot up, from 8,700 in 2020 to a staggering 60 in 2023. That’s an increase of about 600 percent in three years.
And this is not limited to America, either. “Promising” NHS-linked drug trials have opened the possibility of Ozempic-style injections available to young people looking to lose weight.
But, in my mind, the possibility of children regularly taking Ozempic should stop us in our tracks.
I understand childhood obesity is a real issue that needs to be addressed. My heart goes out to those parents thinking of weight loss pills as medicine, or as a way to prepare beforehand. Who doesn’t want to end their child being bullied for being overweight on the playground – or stop a frustrating family argument about their child’s diet?
But, as someone who took Ozempic, I worry that if kids start taking weight loss pills, they may be on it for life.
The weekly jabs have even been hailed as a weight loss miracle, with overweight patients able to lose up to a fifth of their body weight within the first year of treatment, as happened to me. But we still don’t know about long-term safety.
And what about “Ozempic rebound”? Some research has shown that about one in five people who come out of it will regain all, or even more, of the weight they lost. Once you start spending £160 a month on jabs, can you stop?
So would I let my children, Lola and Liberty – now 8 and 6, respectively – take Ozempic if, one day, they begged me? The simple answer is no. It’s not about the practice of childhood medicine that gives me pause like my experience: I know the side effects of these weight loss drugs can be addictive.
Ozempic really worked for me. What stopped the conversation was “I’m hungry”. A skinny pencil seemed like a good idea when, after two pregnancies and years of comfort eating, I piled on the pounds. When my cholesterol rose to dangerously high levels, my Doctor told me to lose weight.
The method of weight-loss jabs seemed to be the answer – until I reached a good weight and tried to stop. When the usual hunger came back, I was afraid that I might regain all the weight I had lost. I found the medicine, maybe I would do it again.
Others, like Sharon Osbourne, have had the opposite problem, losing so much weight that they find it difficult to regain the weight.
With that in mind, it scares me that my kids might one day ask me for an Ozempic, not a Furby Interactive, for Christmas. But it has become a habit among most of the adults that the behavior will trickle down to our children.
I already have one eye on Lola, who has an insatiable desire for chocolate. What happens when she’s a teenager and gets laughed at in the netball row because she hasn’t lost her weight? Shall I agree? Will I be tempted to let him try it if it helps his self-esteem – like it did for me after I lost two stone?
Nope. My advice is, unless you are overweight, don’t let your child near Ozempic. It’s a hard rollercoaster to get off.