Just before we start, this episode does contain some language and some topics that you might find difficult to listen to. So do please check the show notes before tuning in.

When you think about these drugs, you've got to think about two sets of risk.

There's the risks of being obese, and there's the risks of the drugs.

The way we eat, process and ultra-process food food has profoundly changed our bodies and our minds in ways that never happen for human beings essentially before your lifetime and mine and that's put us in a trap. These drugs are a trapdoor. They're a risky, rusty trapdoor.

Some of us I think should go through them and some of us shouldn't, but we are in a trap.

So are weight loss drugs like a Zempick a magic pill for our health and longevity

while international best-selling author Johann Hari has been finding out.

This is the Lizzo Well Being Show, the podcast helping us all have a better second half.

I'm Lizzo, and I'm sure as you know by now I am on a bit of a mission to find ways for all of us to thrive in later life by investing in our

health and our well-being today. Well in 2023 Johann started to inject himself once a week with a Zempik.

Predictions suggest that he won't be alone.

In a few years, one in four of the British population

is predicted to be taking these kind of weight loss drugs. I know several of my

friends already on it and have seen the dramatic weight loss photos of

recently skinny celebrities talking about this too. So is it all too good to be true? What is the true cost to our health here?

A cost that perhaps goes beyond the fat loss benefits. Our weight loss drugs a magic pill for obesity? Something that we know

increases our chances of diabetes, cancer and early death? Or are we opening a

Pandora's box of unknown adverse effects?

Well, these are the questions and more that Johann asks in his new book.

It's called Magic Pill.

His search for answers has taken him to Iceland, to Minneapolis, to Tokyo all over the world in fact,

and he's found that along with the drugs undoubted weight loss benefits come 12 potential risks. Well what looks pretty certain is that these drugs are going to challenge everything we know about so much here, shame, willpower and our very health.

...