Now I'm going to be talking to you about another medication for obesity called Semaglutide or Wegovy.

Semaglutide contains a hormone that we all produce when we eat and tells our brains to feel full. Therefore, by giving you this medication, we trick your brain into thinking it is full.

And therefore, you eat even less than you might be eating now.

It is a very safe medication in terms of effectiveness.

We don't know how well it will work for you when we start. But we know whether it works for you after the first 3 to 4 months of treatment.

If you have not lost weight, we stop the medication and consider another option.

If you have lost weight, it means you are a responder to the medication and two more things.

You will continue to lose weight for the first 12 months of your treatment, and then the weight loss will stop and plateau.

When you reach that plateau, you mustn't stop the medication because if you have to maintain that weight you have lost, you need to continue taking the medication long-term.

And we know this medication is effective and safe even if you take it long.

The side effects include nausea being the commonest, constipation or diarrhoea.

These side effects initially occur when you start the medication for the first few weeks, possibly months, and there will disappear entirely in nine out of ten people who manage to continue taking the medication longer-term without suffering from complications or side effects.

We must be aware of only two uncommon side effects and complications.

The first one is Gallstones. Gallstones can appear and cause inflammation of the gallbladder after any treatment, which is effective for weight loss.

But even if you are unlucky to get gallstone disease, we stop the medication, and there are no long-term consequences.

The same applies to another very rare complication of Semaglutide that we will call pancreatitis. So that happens in less than 3/1000 people who get the medication, And the difference here is that pancreatitis causes abdominal pain.

If that happens, you need to see a medical person. In the improbable event that it does happen, you may need to be admitted to the hospital for a day or two.

However, the excellent news is that when we stop the medication, the pancreas that it disappears, and there are no long-term consequences whatsoever.