Sharon Osbourne has spoken candidly about the side effects she experienced after turning to diabetes medication Ozempic in order to help her with weight loss.
Osbourne recently appeared on Bill Maher’s podcast, “Club Random,” where she discussed how she lost weight while taking the controversial injections.
“You have a weight problem and you’ve tried everything, and then somebody says take this injection and you’re going to be skinny,” Osbourne said.
Ozempic, which is typically used to treat type 2 diabetes, is an injection to the stomach, thigh or arm that is meant to help lower blood sugar by helping the pancreas produce more insulin. Recently, the injection has also been prescribed as a weight loss method.
While speaking to Osbourne, Maher said he would personally be against putting any type of “foreign substance” into his body, which turned him off from the drug. He specifically called trying to lose weight a game of “always playing the odds,” a sentiment that Osbourne agreed with.
The 70 year old went on to share her experience with Ozempic, with the former TV star revealing that she was constantly nauseous the first few weeks of taking the drug, but that her symptoms gradually improved.
“For me, the first few weeks was f*****g s**t because you just throw up all the time. You feel so nauseous,” Osbourne said. “After a couple of weeks it goes.”
After this time period, she said the nausea was gone and she “felt nothing”. Osbourne also revealed she took the medication for four months and was able to lose 30 pounds.
Even though she is no longer taking Ozempic, Osbourne said she is still feeling the effects of it, including it being difficult for her to feel hungry because Ozempic suppresses a person’s appetite.
“I’ve been off it for a while now. Your stomach shrinks,” Osbourne said, while noting that she never considered herself to be an overeater, but still felt she had a weight problem.
When she spoke on the UK’s The Talk back in May, she admitted to feeling sick from a weight loss drug but didn’t specify that it was Ozempic.
“I was very sick for a couple of months,” she said on the talk show. “The first couple of months, I just felt nauseous. Every day I felt nauseous, my stomach was upset, whatever.”
However, Osbourne also explained how effective the drug was for her despite the sickness it caused. “I’ve just shoved two chips in my mouth, while we had the break, and I eat normally now, and I haven’t put on a pound. Nothing.”
The heavy metal singer’s wife is just one of many celebrities that have admitted to taking Ozempic.
Amy Schumer admitted to taking the drug too, but also revealed that she’d had to stop over how sick it made her. “I couldn’t play with my son,” she said on Watch What Happens Live in June. “I was so skinny and he’s throwing a ball at me and I couldn’t.”
At the time, Schumer went after celebrities who lie about using weight loss drugs, alleging it’s not true that a person can see such drastic results just by “eating smaller portions”.
“You are on Ozempic or one of those things or you got work done. Just stop. Be real with the people. When I got lipo, I said I got lipo,” she said.
Amid an increase in popularity of the drug, more potential side effects have come out regarding Ozempic. Last month, two people reported their “stomachs are paralysed” after taking the drug.
The two women have since been diagnosed with severe gastroparesis, a disorder that slows or stops the movement of food from the stomach to the small intestine, per the Mayo Clinic.
