Exclusive:
Lana Hart, 29, has given a searingly honest account about why she turned to weight loss injection Mounjaro amid a national clampdown on rogue online sellers
Since Lana Hart was 13 years old she has thought about food daily.
By the age of 29 she had gone through Slimming World five times but often fell into binge eating. She admits she had developed an unhealthy relationship with food and alcohol before one particular trip to Barcelona last year triggered a relapse. Lana, a mental health worker from Bristol, explained: “Since the age of 13, I’ve thought about my diet, it’s my ‘Roman Empire’. I’ve never been able to regulate my eating. It’s always been a losing battle. I couldn’t figure out what hungry felt like. When I was a teenager, my weight would fluctuate. I’d lose a stone then put on two. My weight would yoyo-up and down.”
The Mirror is publishing Lana’s account on the day of a national clampdown following fears weight loss injections are being abused. The jabs slow digestion and reduce appetite by mimicking the glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) hormone which regulates hunger and feelings of fullness.
The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) has told online pharmacies they can no longer prescribe the weekly injections after reading a patient questionnaire, and instead must verify whether a user is actually dangerously overweight. The new clampdown applies to online pharmacies, not the drugs’ manufacturers. It comes after England’s top doctor Sir Stephen Powis warned appetite-suppressing jabs should not be used just to get people “beach body ready” as they can come with dangerous side effects.
Jabs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro were originally approved just for Type 2 diabetes but are now approved on the NHS for people who are obese and have other health problems as a consequence. They became popular globally after celebrities including Sharon Osbourne, Elon Musk and even ex-PM Boris Johnson boasted about buying them privately for weight loss. People who are not obese are buying them online and huge demand has led to global shortages.
The NHS is rationing weight loss jabs starting with the most dangerously overweight because it lacks capacity to provide the personalised counselling which clinical trials have shown are essential for sustained weight loss.
Without proper personalised support GLP-1 injections can see users lose a lot of weight but also lose muscle mass as well as fat. If they stop the injections because the side effects become too much, or they can no longer afford them, then they often pile the fat back on. But muscle muscle mass does not return. This leaves people much weaker and with less muscle with which to burn calories so that losing weight in future is much harder.
Lana Hart says that previous attempts at keeping weight off were unsuccessful and she had been frustrated by the “dismissive” attitude of her GP who would offer generic advice like “eat less, move more”. Since her trip to Barcelona last year Lana started taking Mounjaro which she purchased privately via digital weight loss platform Juniper from mid-August. At the time she weighed 16 stone 11.5lbs and now weighs 14 stone 2lbs. She checks in weekly with a health coach, has cut down on takeaways and now enjoys home cooking.
Lana said: “Food used to control me but now it doesn’t. Juniper has wiped that bad history with food, my relationship with food and alcohol is much better and I can see where I used to go wrong. My health coach has been absolutely amazing. We talk most weeks and they check in on my weekly goal. I knew I needed help with the actual process and that I’d failed before because I didn’t have anyone to lean on.”
Mounjaro had previously only been approved by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) on the NHS for some people with Type 2 diabetes. Now it has received a draft recommendation on the NHS for patients with a body mass index (BMI) of 35 with at least one obesity-related condition. This is known as obesity class II where everyday movements are much more strenuous and the risk of secondary diseases is increased significantly. Anyone with a BMI over 30 is considered obese.
Juniper told the Mirror its prescribing process currently involves an optional consent form to allow them to inform a patient’s GP that they have started taking the weight loss injections. It added that this will become mandatory in light of the new General Pharmaceutical Council guidance.
Kevin Joshua, clinical lead at Juniper, said: “Juniper welcomes today’s announcement from the General Pharmaceutical Council to implement strengthened guidelines for the prescription of weight loss medications by online pharmacies. Weight loss medications like Wegovy and Mounjaro have shown significant promise in aiding weight loss and improving overall health, but they must be prescribed and managed with patient safety at the core.
“Much of the guidance released today is aligned with our existing clinical government approach at Juniper. Alongside consultations with trained prescribers, questionnaires and image submissions, our clinical auditing team conducts on average 6,000 audits per month to ensure safe prescribing on the platform.”
