Doctors have hailed an A-lister favoured Ozempic ‘hack’ that promises to keep weight off for good, while minimising the chance of nasty side effects.
Called microdosing, it sees patients take 10 per cent of the typical dose of branded diabetes and weight loss drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro.
The goal is to reap some of the weight loss benefits of the drugs without suffering significant side-effects, like nausea and hair loss. Microdosing is reportedly used by some members of the Hollywood elite.
But there is a growing interest in microdosing weight loss drugs outside of celebrity circles. Some medics say they now have hundreds of patients currently following the trend.
However, other experts warn microdosing the jabs remains untested and patients who DIY their dosage may inadvertently contaminate the drug — as spare medication is left lying around in vials, and is therefore at risk of accumulating bacteria.
Dr Craig Koniver, a family physician in Charleston, South Carolina, said he currently has 200 patients microdosing weight-loss jabs.
He told Medscape that the exact amount taken varies by patient with the aim of low, but sustained, weight loss.
‘Our goal is 2 pounds (0.9 kg) of weight loss a week or less,’ he said.
Medics say an A-lister ‘trick’ that uses drugs like Ozempic to keep weight off, while minimising the risk of side effects, can work
Dr Koniver said his female patients are typically given 1.5mg of tirzepatide daily, the active ingredient in Mounjaro, while men get between 1.8 and 2mg.
A maximum dose of the drug is roughly 15mg per day.
He also said that some patients do not microdose with the aim of losing weight, but instead use it to maintain their new, trim shape after using standard higher dose injections.
Dr Koniver added microdosing weight-loss medications wasn’t a silver bullet and he still advised all patients to make lifestyle changes, such as cutting portion sizes.
Another medic advocating the potential benefits of microdosing is Dr Rekha Kumar, an obesity medicine specialist at Weill Cornell Medicine, New York City.
She said microdosing the jabs, which belong to a class of medications called glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists, could help stave off weight-related conditions while minimising the risk of side effects.
However, other medics warn using the drugs outside of the dosage tested in clinical trials must be approached with serious caution.
They say microdosing is essentially a medical ‘wild west’ with no hard evidence to prove the drugs have significant benefit at such low doses.
Some experts are also worried about the methods microdosing patients use to work out how much medication to take.
Dr Sarah Stombaugh, an obesity specialist in Charlottesville, Virginia, said she’s heard of patients injecting the standard dosage jabs into vials and then creating their own microdoses from this supply.
She warned: ‘This is both technically difficult and has a significant risk of contamination.’
Dr Wendy Denning, a private GP in London who prescribes drugs like Mounjaro, previously told MailOnline that the long term consequences of using the jabs, even at microdosing levels, are still unknown.
‘We won’t know the long-term effects of these drugs for another five or 10 years, so people purely taking them for weight loss really need to think hard about doing even small doses indefinitely,’ she said.
Both Novo Nordish, which makes Wegovy and Ozempic, and Eli Lilly, which makes Mounjaro, discourage microdosing with the former firm calling the practice a ‘misuse of our products’.
However, anecdotal reports from patients and their medics suggest it can work.
Tyna Moore, an American naturopathic doctor, went viral on social media for advocating microdoses of Ozempic.
She claims doing so alleviated her anxiety and depression, and reduced chronic pain she suffered as a result of psoriatic arthritis.
‘GLP-1s have benefits that have nothing to do with weight loss,’ she said. ‘Hundreds of people are reaching out to me, telling [me about] changes in their health.’
About half a million Britons are now thought to be using weight loss jabs, which can help them lose up to 20 per cent of their body weight in just a few months.
The drugs have been hailed as a huge breakthrough in the battle against obesity.
However, a number of concerning risks and side effects have been associated with their use, including a potential higher risk of thyroid cancer.
A Mail on Sunday investigation last month revealed almost 400 patients had been hospitalised — some with life-threatening complications — since the rollout of the jabs in the UK.
Like any medication, the jabs are known to cause side effects that vary in both frequency and severity.
Other reported problems include constipation, fatigue, stomach pain, headaches and dizziness.
Bizarre symptoms, such as hair loss, have also been reported among some patients.
Doctors have also long told how they are treating increasing numbers of slim women who end up in hospital after falsely telling online chemists they are overweight to pass eligibility checks.
Under NHS guidelines, only patients who have a body mass index (BMI) of over 35 and at least one weight-related health problem like high blood pressure, or those who have a BMI of 30 to 34.9 and meet the criteria for referral to a specialist weight management service, should be prescribed Wegovy.
Only patients with a BMI of more than 35 and at least one obesity-related health problem can get Mounjaro.
Ozempic is a dedicated type 2 diabetes medication.
