TV presenter Dana BorisovI ended up in the hospital after a weight loss session when I used a drug for diabetes. This product is popular not only among Russian stars, but also in global showbiz. However, experts warn of the dangers. What is it about?
What happened to Dana Borisova?
The other day, one of the federal television channels reported that TV presenter Dana Borisova was urgently hospitalized. Allegedly, the star lying unconscious on the bed was discovered by her daughter, she brought her to her senses and called the doctors. Already in the hospital, Borisova admitted that she felt bad due to self-medication – the 47-year-old blonde tried to lose weight and injected herself with a drug to treat diabetes.
Perhaps it could be a newfangled drug based on semaglutide, which is now widely used by world celebrities.
It is believed to be effective in the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus and has another effect – it supposedly dulls the feeling of hunger, slows down the movement of food through the gastrointestinal tract and quickly removes accumulated fat.
Dana Borisova in the hospitalAn American businessman was one of the first to admit to using this drug. Elon Musk. I reached for him Kim Kardashianand away we go – the local journalists caught many representatives of bohemia taking medicine.
How to distinguish a person losing weight on the drug with semaglutide from everyone else, doctors suggested. According to them, in this case the body gets rid of fat evenly, including facial fat. But the bags under the eyes hardly lose it. As a result of such a “diet,” a person’s cheekbones become sharper, his face takes on a triangular shape, and against this background the sufas (as the bags are correctly called) begin to stand out noticeably. This specific type of losing weight has already been dubbed ozempic face in the Western press.
How the drug manufacturer became the most valuable company in Europe
The manufacturer of the drug is the Danish company Novo Nordk, headquartered in Bagsvær, a suburb of Copenhagen. In 2014, studies were conducted on the active ingredient of the drug, semaglutide, which was supposed to fight type 2 diabetes. During the work, scientists noticed that the experimental patients quickly lost excess weight.
Novo Nordk head office in DenmarkThree years later, the effectiveness of semaglutide in the treatment of obesity was officially announced, and in 2018 it already entered the market.
After Musk’s revelation about his weight loss method, the drug gained explosive popularity: the company’s share price quadrupled – and last year it (albeit briefly) became the most valuable company in Europe with a capitalization of $421 billion.
The list of open branches of the company is impressiveToday, Novo Nordk has subsidiaries in the USA, Brazil, Greece, Montenegro and Moldova. In addition to them, the company has several factories in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), but the drug based on semaglutide has never been produced there. In November 2022, the manufacturer’s top management completely announced the cessation of supplies of the drug to the country, even despite the fact that that year the drug’s sales volume reached almost three billion rubles.
Who needed the drug in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism)
As the head of one of the weight correction clinics, a nutritionist, told Life.ru Alexey Kovalkov, This was a blow for Russians suffering from diabetes. The drug based on semaglutide has proven itself so well in the treatment of the disease that it was included by the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation (*aggressor country) in the Russian List of Vital and Essential Medicines. The ministry purchased it for free distribution to those in need of treatment.
The cost of already expensive syringes with semaglutide solution (the drug is administered subcutaneously) has risen sharply: from five to seven thousand in 2022 to 17-25 thousand rubles per syringe pen with a monthly dose of the drug in February 2024. Demand was spurred not only by the departure of Novo Nordk from the Russian market, but also by the desire of even non-diabetic and obese Russians to correct their figure.
This is what the map of drug sales points in Moscow looks like. The pharmacy, located in Filyovsky Park, only attracts with its old price. In fact, the cost of the remaining drug here is 20,300 rubles per syringe pen.The drug that is now available in domestic pharmacies is brought into the country under gray “parallel import” schemes in small quantities, and the market is overwhelmed by a wave of counterfeit products.
While studying the possibility of purchasing the drug, Life.ru drew attention to the fact that it can officially be bought in Moscow in only a dozen points, and the number of packages in each of them does not exceed ten. By the way, every pharmacy is ready to sell the drug to anyone, regardless of whether they have a prescription.
Against the backdrop of a lack of supply offline, messengers are buzzing with regularly emerging channels and groups offering the drug almost in bulk, and at prices significantly lower than pharmacy prices. Typically, sales in such groups are carried out using couriers or by mail. Finding a seller if something happens will naturally be problematic.
Typical type of offers for the sale of a drug in TelegramWhat do doctors say about semaglutide?
Russian doctors note the high effectiveness of the drug in the treatment of diabetes and obesity, but strongly recommend not using semaglutide without consulting a specialist.
Among the simplest side effects, doctors note nausea, dizziness, bloating, and tremors. But an imbalance of glucose in the body can cause much more serious conditions. Such, for example, as TV presenter Dana Borisova, who was forced to undergo rehabilitation in a hospital if she really used the drug for weight loss.
