The UK may have reached peak obesity and rates could start falling rapidly later this year, Sky News has been told.
Data collected by one of the biggest online sellers of weight loss jabs suggests that so many people are now taking effective medication that the inexorable rise in obesity could start to reverse.
According to Simple Online Pharmacy, which has access to wholesale figures, 500,000 people in the UK are currently taking either Mounjaro or Wegovy – and they can expect to lose 15% to 20% of their weight over a matter of months.
Rebecca Moore, the company’s chief operating officer, said: “Our projections are that around a million people will reverse their obesity in a year.
“We should be at the point now, we believe, where we’re starting to see rates decline.
“We would not be surprised if by the end of this year we’ve seen a really significant decline in obesity.”
The company has supplied the drugs to 200,000 people, who have collectively lost 600 tonnes of their weight.
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Demand for medication is growing by 10% to 40% month-on-month, and the company has had to build a walk-in fridge to store enough medication to supply 400 patients an hour.
“The narrative has really shifted in the last few months,” said Ms Moore.
“People are recognising that obesity is a lifelong chronic condition. They’re recognising that this medication is a once-in-a-generation revolutionary technology.
“People are much more open to it and I expect that next year there will be another huge surge in growth.”
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Latest NHS figures show 27% of adults in England are obese, up from 15% in 1993.
Rates have started to plateau in the last couple of years as public health measures such as the sugar tax take effect.
But there are indications that obesity jabs have already begun to reverse obesity in the US and the same is likely to happen in the UK.
Around 95% of all patients using the medication are buying it privately, at a cost of around £150 a month.
Access on the NHS is poor, with research by Sky News showing just 800 patients had been prescribed Wegovy in specialist clinics four months after the rollout started in December 2023. That’s just 6% of the expected number.
And last month the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) bowed to demands from the NHS to restrict access to Mounjaro to just 200,000 of 3.4 million eligible patients over the first three years of the rollout.
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Sarah Le Brocq, founder of All About Obesity, sits as a patient representative on the NICE committee.
She said it was “hugely frustrating” that so many patients in need are being denied treatment.
“It’s not the NHS’s fault that they can’t fund these drugs,” she said.
“They need to have that money coming through [from government] because they can’t take it from cancer and put it into obesity.
“We are going to have tiered access. The wealthy can be healthy, but people who really need treatment can’t have it.”
Angela Chesworth had to do a ‘clinical trial’ of treatment on herself to prove to the NHS that the drugs could stop agonising abdominal pains that she suffered several times a week.
Her consultant had agreed that her extra pounds were pulling on scar tissue from previous stomach surgery, but he was powerless to prescribe the treatment.
But since the summer, when she started weekly injections of Mounjaro, she has only had a couple of abdominal cramps and the NHS has now agreed to fund treatment.
“When you know there’s something out there that can help you, but you can’t have that help because of money or somebody who makes the rules, you feel worthless,” she told Sky News.
“Come and live in my shoes and see how I am and see how it affects me and then tell me I’m not worth the money.
“You want me to be part of society, you want me to do a job, you want me to expand the economy?
“I needed help, so it was very frustrating to be told no. And especially by the medical professionals.”
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Her husband, Paul, is still having to buy his supply privately, despite being on the cusp of type 2 diabetes. After three months of treatment, he has lost two stone and is now healthy.
“I want to be healthy as long as I possibly can,” he said.
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“For the last 15 years of his life my dad did not have good health or a good quality of life. He wasn’t able to get up in the morning quickly and ended up on a mobility scooter because he couldn’t walk far.
“All those things I want to try and avoid.”
The Department of Health said new drugs recommended by NICE need to be funded from existing NHS budgets. A spokesperson added: “We are also acting to tackle [obesity’s] causes, shifting our focus from treatment to prevention as part of our 10 Year Health Plan.”
