Why I’m Not Even Slightly Shocked That Weight-Loss Jabs Might Be Causing Mayhem!
Because nothing says ‘modern medicine’ quite like losing ten pounds and gaining a newborn.
I hate to sound smug. Really, I do. I hate to say, “I told you so.” Honestly. I’ve got more restraint than a monk in a brewery. So allow me, if you will, to just raise one single eyebrow and mutter, “Well, what did you expect?”
Because the big news this week is Mounjaro, the latest in the long line of so-called “miracle” weight-loss jabs; might be stopping the contraceptive pill from working. Yes. That’s right. Your skinny jab could be making you skinny and a mum. At the same time. Which is quite a surprise when all you wanted was to fit into your wedding dress without cutting off circulation to your internal organs.
Now, I don’t want to make light of this. Truly, I don’t. No one wants an unexpected baby. Least of all one that may arrive with the chemical equivalent of a pharmaceutical roulette wheel spinning through its development. I hope, with every fibre of my overfed being, that none of these children come to any harm. But come on, has anyone ever created a drug that fiddles with hormones and didn’t end up with a list of side-effects longer than the instruction manual for a nuclear submarine?
We’ve all gone mad. Proper, yoghurt-knitting, kombucha-brewing mad. Somewhere along the line, people stopped believing in the oldest, dullest and most effective truth in health; you get out what you put in. Want to lose weight? Eat less. Move more. Don’t deep-fry cheese and call it lunch.
Instead, we’re jabbing ourselves with the biochemical equivalent of wishful thinking, expecting a miracle cure that’ll melt the flab off faster than a kebab in the Sahara. Because taking a weekly injection sounds easier than not eating six Twix bars before breakfast.
Now, surprise surprise, this miracle jab might be scrambling your contraceptive pill and ushering in what experts are calling a “baby boom”; because your jab decided to moonlight as a fertility drug when no one was looking.
I’ve been suspicious of these jabs from the start. You know this if you have been reading my previous columns! Because I know what people are like. Give them a shortcut and they’ll take it, even if it ends at the edge of a cliff. If someone told the general public that a quick injection could also make you fluent in French, cure your acne and fix your Wi-Fi, they’d queue round the block and hand over £200 a month without reading the label.
So now we’ve got the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (which sounds like a place where fun goes to die) telling us that women on Mounjaro should probably not rely on oral contraception. That they should consider barrier methods. I assume this means condoms, not building a moat around your bedroom. They say this might be because the drug affects hormone levels or because it causes such impressive levels of vomiting and diarrhoea that your contraceptive pill doesn’t stand a chance of being absorbed before it exits stage left at high velocity.
At this point, if Mounjaro could just be honest and say, “Warning, may make you skinny, sexy and simultaneously knocked up,” that’d be helpful.
I get it. I really do. Honestly I do. Losing weight is hard. It’s boring. It takes ages. It requires turning down sticky toffee pudding, and that’s never easy. I lost six stones the hard way. But there’s something deeply satisfying about achieving it yourself. Like fixing a leaking tap without calling a plumber. Or growing your own tomatoes. Marking your own bread, you get the idea. You get to feel smug without the need for injections, diarrhoea, or accidentally creating a baby.
Because here’s the real truth, we’ve become a generation that thinks everything can be solved with a pill, jab, or smoothie made from something that tastes like the contents of a lawnmower bag. Depressed? Take a tablet. Tired? More tablets. Overweight? Here’s a jab. Soon we’ll have one for ironing your shirts and assembling IKEA furniture.
But this isn’t a dig at those who genuinely need help. Not everyone can just jog their way to a six-pack. Some people are dealing with serious health issues and for them, GLP-1 drugs are a medical godsend. But for the rest of us, the ones who’ve simply eaten their way through the cheese aisle at Tesco, maybe, just maybe, we ought to consider using our legs more and our credit cards less.
So what now? We’ve got over a million people in Britain sticking themselves with these jabs, buying them from websites that also sell CBD for dogs and Botox gift vouchers. So when it all goes wrong, who’s left holding the baby? Quite literally?
Empathy, yes. Blame? No. But surprise? Not a chance.
We’re meddling with nature, chasing shortcuts like kids in a sweet shop and then looking shocked when it turns out the sweets were full of dynamite. Let’s just hope the only thing these “Ozempic babies” inherit is good health, my looks and not their parents addiction to quick fixes.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to do something truly miraculous, skip my morning croissant…
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Chris Geiger, Author of The Cancer Survivors Club.
Daily Dose of Disbelief!
Bsky: @chrisgeiger.com
Bsky: @thecancersurvivorsclub.com
Bsky: @dailydoseofdisbelief.com
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