World leading experts on obesity tell the Mirror why diets almost always fail eventually and why appetite-suppressing drugs offer hope – but come with big risks
Millions of people on weight-loss injections are being warned that they could suffer long-term damage if they do not adjust their eating and exercise habits while they shed the pounds.
Experts say proper advice must be provided to users otherwise they risk malnutrition, muscle wastage and loss of bone density if they rely solely on the jabs. A major European obesity conference in Istanbul issued a “consensus statement” outlining huge concerns about GLP-1 drug use without proper diet and exercise.
The document, co-authored by 26 top obesity experts, warned that users will become malnourished if they continue with junk food diets but just eat less of it. The document outlines how it is vital that jab users eat enough quality protein and do weight-bearing exercise, as research presented at the conference showed around a third of weight lost on jabs can be non-fat mass – mainly muscle and bone density.
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If people stop taking them they often pile the fat back on but never regain muscle or bone. Co-author Dr Laurence Dobbie, population health expert at King’s College London, said: “To protect dietary quality we need to prioritise nutrient-dense foods, ensuring appropriate protein, fibre and fluid intake.”
Regarding exercise, he said: “The primary, most crucial component is resistance training, aiming for two to three bouts per week. Secondary to this is 150 to 300 minutes a week of aerobic exercise… all movement is beneficial.”
This advice on a more balanced approach comes as one expert said that some users may have to stay on the jabs for life to avoid piling the pounds back on because their “brains are broken”.
Pioneer Professor Louis Aronne, of the Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, said overeating the processed, high-calorie food that leads to obesity causes permanent damage to the brain so patients struggle to feel full again, even after losing weight.
He spoke to the Mirror at the European Congress on Obesity in Istanbul, saying: “Obesity is a disease and something gets broken in your brain. It starts from eating fattening food, but then something physical causes their weight to not want to go down again. When they try to eat less, there is a vigorous counter response by your body that makes you think you’re starving to death.”
But, the injection, which will soon be available in pill form, can still be “gamechanging”. The weekly jabs mimic a hormone called GLP-1 which makes people feel full sooner.
People have lost up to a fifth of their body weight. Some 2.5 million Brits take the jabs, mainly via expensive private prescriptions, but questions remain over how to safely keep the pounds off in the long term, and limit the potentially negative long-term issues.
There are concerns that the NHS does not have the capacity to provide this essential support and people are increasingly sourcing cheap weight loss drugs from unlicensed sellers online. Professor Jason Halford, former president of the European Association for the Study of Obesity, said: “The problem in the UK is that drug companies are investing, but it’s whether our health service is fit for purpose, and it’s by and large not.”
An NHS spokesman said: “Weight loss medicines already play a vital role in helping many people lead healthier lives…The NHS remains committed to ensuring access is based on clinical need, and we continue to explore innovative ways to scale this up safely so that more people can benefit, as well as offering a wide range of other support for people to lose weight.”
Prof Aronne, who has been researching the human appetite since the 1980s, believes weight loss pills could eventually be given to healthy weight young adults to stop them becoming overweight in the first place – similar to how hypertension drugs are prescribed as a preventative measure.
He said in a previous interview: “A daily pill – it’s treatment for life. For hypertension, it’s treatments for life, you take a pill every day. Diabetes you hope to take a pill for life and the diabetes doesn’t come back. The beauty of treating obesity is you are treating all of these things.”
Both Prof Aronne and Prof Torekov have received extensive research funding from pharmaceutical firms which made GLP-1 drugs. And both acknowledge there are concerns around their widespread use.
