Wes Streeting’s jabs are no panacea – my own experience of Mounjaro was miserable
It was the insistent questioning of my four-year-old grandson that goaded me into it. “Why is your tummy so big” he asked with a faux innocence belied by the knowing look in his eye.
A good observation and an even better question, I thought, and resolved to do something about it. I am not a massive eater or drinker and never snack but getting weight off as you get older is hard.
Think about it. From the age of 20 you only needed to accumulate one pound a year to be three stone heavier in your 60s. Holding back that one pound is possible only with constant dieting or inherited serendipity.
My father was the same weight throughout his life well into his 80s and he ate like a horse so there was no genetic predisposition to gain weight, just a more indolent lifestyle, much of it spent sitting at a computer for hours on end. Let’s face it, years of heavy lunching as a political journalist didn’t help either.
I have lost weight many times through various diets – 5:2, Atkins, 18-hour fasts etc – but never stuck with them because as I shed the pounds I did not want to be on a permanent diet, which is essentially what is needed.
So when these magic weight loss drugs came onto the market I became interested, especially when I saw the effects on people who had taken them, both friends and colleagues. Some had lost two or three stones in as many months. A miracle!
I did some online research and ordered a batch of tirzepatide, an injectable drug produced by the US pharma giant Eli Lilly and marketed under the brand name Mounjaro. It was remarkably easy to obtain given that I am not obese (though the absurd BMI rating might suggest otherwise) and nor do I have diabetes or any pre-diabetic markers judging by annual blood tests.
Questions were asked, a judgment reached by “a team of clinical experts” and the drugs were on their way, while £220 went flying out of my bank account for one month’s supply. They are not cheap and are only available on the NHS to those who have been referred to specialist clinics,
Mounjaro is the weight loss drug that Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, is now proposing to hand out to unemployed people who are so obese they cannot get out of the house. All I can say is that it had the opposite effect on me. I was so sick – I will spare you the details – that I couldn’t go to the office for days.
When the initial effects subsided and I increased the dose marginally for the second stage of injections I was sick again and gave up. I certainly lost weight but only because I could not eat anything, which I suppose is the point. For people who do not get these side effects (which, to be fair, are well advertised) Mounjaro and the other drugs like Wegovy are no doubt life changing.
Are they the answer to the obesity crisis as Mr Streeting hopes? There will be a “nanny state” backlash against his proposals but he is surely right to say this problem needs to be tackled or our health and care systems, already teetering on the brink of disaster, will be pushed over the edge.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the state prescribing a preventative drug – statins are now available free for over 60s in a bid to reduce cholesterol levels. So many ailments are connected to obesity, from diabetes and heart disease to failing joints that need replacing, that the cost of treatment is rising to unsustainable levels. Mr Streeting has made his pitch not just on health grounds but on the impact on worklessness.
Writing in this newspaper he said the cost to the NHS was £11 billion while illness from obesity “causes people to take an extra four sick days a year on average, while many others are forced out of work altogether.” About 40 per cent of the NHS budget is spent on preventable health conditions, a figure forecast to reach 60 per cent by 2040.
“The long-term benefits of these drugs could be monumental in our approach to tackling obesity. For many people, these jabs will be life-changing, help them get back to work and ease the demands on our NHS,” Mr Streeting wrote. It seems to work since the obesity rates in the US, where weight loss drugs are more widely distributed, are declining for the first time, even if they remain higher than 10 years ago.
It is extraordinary to think that in the three decades after the NHS was established hardly anyone was overweight. People were slimmer even if they ate well because they moved around more. Until relatively recently you could not spend hours slumped in front of a TV or a screen playing computer games – because they didn’t exist.
The type of work that many people did in the now defunct industrial sector involved more activity than now, houses were not centrally heated so calories were used up just keeping warm and there were few tempting snacks around. A packet of Smiths crisps with a little blue bag of salt was about it.
Nowadays, entire supermarket shelves are groaning with every imaginable variety and flavour of calorie-laden comestible. Fizzy drinks are also a menace judging by the contents of people’s supermarket trollies. Moreover, whoever it was who said “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” has never tried a bacon roll.
We are always being told that we should not judge or “fat shame” people for the bad choices they make, yet this is a public health issue that cannot be ignored since we all pay for the consequences through our taxes either for medical care or welfare benefits.
Here is yet another modern paradox – obesity is greater among poorer people who theoretically should have less money to buy food, especially the takeaways delivered to your door so you don’t even have to go and get them and the processed meals that are more expensive than cooking for yourself.
The biggest issue of all is overweight children who are often seen with obese parents who think over-feeding them is a sign of parental affection. When I was at school, a long time ago, admittedly, hardly any pupils were fat.
Mr Streeting said the injections should not be seen as an alternative to changing unhealthy lifestyles – but that is exactly what a lot of people hope they are, an easy way of doing something that is otherwise difficult. After my bilious experience with Mounjaro, it’s back to the 5:2 diet, for a few weeks at least.