Johann Hari nonetheless remembers the unusual sensation he felt two days after he first injected himself with Ozempic.A health care provider prescribed the drug for weight reduction — a well-known aspect impact of the Kind 2 diabetes therapy — in 2023 when Hari weighed 203 kilos and had a physique fats proportion of 32%.Hari’s grandfather died of a coronary heart assault at 44, his uncle in his 60s, and his father underwent a quadruple coronary heart bypass in his 70s. Hari didn’t have diabetes and was cautious of weight-loss medicine realizing that previous choices “all the time turned out to be a catastrophe,” he says. However weight reduction with Ozempic appeared like a approach to decrease his personal coronary heart illness danger.He observed the drug’s impact a few days after his first dose.“I wakened and I assumed, ‘There’s one thing bizarre. What’s it?’ I couldn’t work out what it was. After which I all of the sudden realized I had woken up and I wasn’t hungry. That had by no means occurred to me,” Hari, 45, a journalist who lives in London and Las Vegas, tells TODAY.com.“My urge for food was simply dramatically dialed down from that time on. I used to be a lot much less hungry than I’d been earlier than. I felt very full, very quick.”Johann Hari earlier than and after he misplaced 42 kilos with Ozempic and Wegovy. His guide “Magic Capsule” explores the dangers and advantages of weight-loss medicine.Courtesy Johann HariHari in the end misplaced 42 kilos with Ozempic after which its sister drug Wegovy, which has the identical lively ingredient, semaglutide, and is particularly authorized for weight reduction.He got down to discover out all he might about GLP-1 drugs — which mimic at the very least one hormone produced by the intestine to sign fullness — in his new guide, “Magic Capsule: The Extraordinary Advantages and Disturbing Dangers of the New Weight-Loss Medication.”Hari shared his insights in an interview with TODAY.com. His solutions are edited and condensed for readability:TODAY: You name these weight-loss medicine “a mass experiment, carried out on thousands and thousands of individuals, and I’m one of many guinea pigs.” Why?Hari: I’m a part of two experiments, not only one. I used to be a part of the experiment that made us a lot extra overweight. And now I’m a part of the experiment that’s reversing that utilizing medicine.In my lifetime, we’ve had an explosion of weight problems that’s unprecedented in human historical past. We’ve been bodily altered by processed and ultra-processed meals, which have utterly taken over our weight loss plan and are in contrast to the meals that human beings ate earlier than us. This meals is undermining our potential to ever really feel full.The second experiment I’m a part of is these medicine. They offer you again your sense of being full. However they convey with them some dangers as properly.What potential dangers fear you essentially the most?Semaglutide has solely been used for a bit greater than two years now for folks with weight problems. We don’t know the long-term results of taking them. There’s a priority that possibly they’ll have some impact that we simply don’t know in the long run.Skilled’s take: Dr. Christopher McGowan, an weight problems drugs specialist in Cary, North Carolina, says that when sufferers ask him whether or not it’s protected to take Wegovy for years, he tells them there are not any long-term research on it. However he notes that GLP-1 drugs have been used for greater than a decade to deal with Kind 2 diabetes, “so we do have a really reassuring monitor file basically with these drugs,” McGowan beforehand informed TODAY.com.Dr. William Yancy, medical director of the Duke Way of life and Weight Administration Middle, in Durham, North Carolina, added that after reviewing the analysis, he’s comfy prescribing Wegovy realizing {that a} affected person might need to take it for years or a long time.“We’re all the time accumulating data and so that might change down the street, however at this level we have now sufficient info to contemplate this as a long-term therapy,” he informed TODAY.com.Requested if Wegovy is protected to take long-term, Novo Nordisk, its maker, tells TODAY.com GLP-1 medicines resembling semaglutide have been used to deal with Kind 2 diabetes for greater than 18 years, and for the therapy of weight problems for eight years.”Semaglutide has been extensively examined in strong medical improvement applications, massive actual world proof research and has cumulatively over 9.5 million affected person years of medical expertise,” the corporate says in an announcement.”Novo Nordisk stands behind the security and efficacy of all of our GLP-1 medicines when they’re used as indicated and when they’re taken underneath the care of a licensed healthcare skilled.”The corporate additionally says it work carefully with the U.S. Meals and Drug Administration to constantly monitor the security of its medicines.RecommendedTODAY: What particularly bothered you?Hari: For myself, the one danger that I didn’t see coming was the psychological impact. That was actually unusual. For the primary six months I used to be taking the drug, I used to be getting what I needed — I used to be shedding a great deal of weight, my again ache went away, all types of excellent issues occurred. However I didn’t really really feel higher in my feelings. If something, I felt barely worse. I spotted it was about my lack of ability to consolation eat, and the way unhealthy that was making me really feel.I went to KFC in Las Vegas and I did what I might have accomplished earlier than I used to be taking Ozempic — I ordered a bucket of fried hen. I had one of many hen drumsticks, and I all of the sudden thought, “I can’t eat this.” On Ozempic, you’ll be able to’t overeat. You’ll vomit. I bear in mind a voice in my head going, “You’re simply going to must really feel unhealthy, then.”You can now not use meals as a stress coping mechanism?Precisely. That may be a bumpy adjustment course of for lots of people. It could actually convey to the floor the deep underlying emotional the reason why you ate within the first place.I spotted how a lot of my consuming was about the necessity to consolation myself — stuffing myself to calm myself. And I couldn’t do this once I was on Ozempic.The psychological results made me need to cease taking it, however one in every of my mates mentioned to me, “Yow will discover a greater approach to take care of your feelings than overeating.””It is a very unusual feeling having eaten a lot all my life and having so not often felt full to have this expertise of feeling full so rapidly and simply not eager to eat a lot,” Hari says. “It was fascinating and unusual.”Courtesy Kathrin BaumbachYou say you skilled “surprisingly persistent” unwanted side effects. What had been they?The unwanted side effects weren’t horrible, however they had been uncomfortable. They steadily diminished over 4 months.The day after I might inject myself as soon as every week, I might really feel a bit sick. It’s fairly delicate. I had one of many much less frequent unwanted side effects — some folks really feel their coronary heart beats sooner. It’s laborious when your coronary heart is racing to not really feel anxious as a result of your physique’s like, one thing is unsuitable. In order that was, for me, essentially the most disagreeable aspect impact.I need to stress that I skilled quite a lot of advantages from this drug. I went from consuming 3,200 energy a day to 1,800 energy a day and never feeling hungry.Editor’s notice: The U.S. Meals and Drug Administration label for Ozempic states that in placebo-controlled trials of 0.5-1 milligrams of the medicine “resulted in a imply enhance in coronary heart fee of two to three beats per minute.”Do you propose to maintain taking Ozempic indefinitely? Sure, due to the guts assault danger in my household, for me personally, the advantages of those medicine outweigh my very actual issues concerning the long-term results. Research present that Wegovy (which comprises the identical lively ingredient as Ozempic) reduces coronary heart assault or stroke danger by 20%.You must weigh two units of dangers — the dangers of weight problems towards the danger of those medicine. Weight problems makes virtually all of the well being circumstances we concern extra possible — coronary heart illness, stroke, dementia, most cancers.Skilled’s take: When contemplating taking weight-loss medicine resembling Wegovy and Zepbound, each particular person must weigh the risk-benefit to themselves, together with how continued weight problems will have an effect on their well being, Dr. Beverly Tchang, an endocrinologist and weight problems drugs doctor at Weill Cornell Drugs in New York, beforehand informed TODAY.com. She’s an advisor for Novo Nordisk, the pharmaceutical firm that makes Ozempic and Wegovy.“For lots of my sufferers, I do know they’ve struggled with weight problems for all of their childhood and maturity already, and the advantages outweigh the dangers as quickly as they begin the medicine,” Tchang mentioned.Are these medicine actually “magic,” as you name them in your guide title?There are 3 ways these medicine could possibly be magic. The primary is the obvious: They might simply clear up the issue. There are days when it looks like that. My entire life, I’ve overeaten. Now, I inject myself as soon as every week and I don’t overeat. It looks like magic.The second means it could possibly be magic is rather more disturbing. It could possibly be like a magic trick. It could possibly be that over time, the dangers related to these medicine outweigh the advantages. I don’t rule that out.The third means is, I believe, the more than likely. Take into consideration the tales of magic, like “Aladdin.” You discover the lamp, rub it, the genie seems, grants your needs, and your want comes true — however by no means fairly in the way in which that you simply anticipated.The medicine are such a robust software. They’ll have large and unpredictable results — constructive and detrimental. That’s why we have to take a beat and actually take into consideration this unimaginable revolution that’s hitting us.A. Pawlowski is a TODAY well being reporter specializing in well being information and options. Beforehand, she was a author, producer and editor at CNN.