THROWING up for the third time in just 10 minutes, Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace thought she was dying.
Unable to lift her head from her pillow, the reality star had spent three days in bed “comatose.”
Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace is warning people to be careful with weight loss jab scams[/caption]
The reality star thought she was dying after buying it off the black market[/caption]
Now she is urging people to not get tempted to do the same as her with the price hikes[/caption]
But the 46-year-old former Big Brother star felt she couldn’t call for help after being too embarrassed – she had just taken a dose of a weight-loss jab she bought off the black market.
The terrifying ordeal began when Aisleyne, grieving the loss of two loved ones, turned to food for comfort and gained weight.
“I was eating my feelings, so I gained loads and loads of weight and I wasn’t really thinking straight,” she says speaking on Good Morning Britain.
“I just followed my friend, she was in a WhatsApp group and she bought the stuff. I just thought, okay, I’ll just go for it.”
She knew the choice was risky, but others she knew were using the black market jabs.
“Because other people were using it that I knew, I just thought I’d be fine. I wasn’t thinking straight at the time.”
The jab arrived in a box with ice packs, but without any medical paperwork – a warning sign Aisleyne says she now regrets ignoring. “I look at it now and think, what was I thinking?”
After her first dose, she felt fine. But the second dose hit her hard.
“[My reaction] was so bad. I was in my bed for three days. I was in and out of consciousness. There were bags of vomit. I was in such a bad place, my vision was blurry. It was really, really scary,” she says.
Despite her worsening condition, Aisleyne refused to call for an ambulance or seek medical help, overcome with shame.
“I just thought, how can I use the NHS resources for something that I have inflicted on myself? I thought, no, I’m just going to lay here.”
Aisleyne kept her ordeal secret for months.
“I didn’t go public ’till months and months later because I was so mortified,” she says.
“I was really embarrassed that I did something so stupid.
“It was a really foolish thing to do, and I want people to know to never do that, and don’t copy me. I thought I was going to die.”
The former Big Brother star has been left with blurred vision[/caption]
Aisleyne feared she was going to die after using the botched fat jabs[/caption]
Aisleyne is no stranger to plastic surgery, having gone under the knife for a £10,000 Brazilian butt lift, liposuction, Botox, fillers and a breast augmentation with size 900CCC implants – which is the largest you can get in the UK.
But she admits her latest quest for body perfection nearly cost her her life.
Like thousands of women who are targeted hourly on social media with ads selling Mounjaro, or Ozempic, Aisleyne believed what she was buying was safe.
This is an issue for many people as fake accounts have become widespread on social media, with chancers on the black market posing as professionals and selling weight loss jabs that aren’t regulated.
In September last year, explosive demand and high prices for weight loss and diabetes drugs fuelled a criminal effort to package autoinjector pens containing other substances, such as insulin.
In 2023, the US Food and Drug Administration announced that they had seized “thousands” of fake Ozempics.
That same year, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) also confirmed a number of potentially fake Ozempic pens in the UK.
The MHRA warned that buying a prescription-only medication online without the prescription poses a direct danger to health – this came after they received reports of a number of people having been hospitalised after using potentially fake pens.
Additionally, further analysis found the needles from the samples are counterfeit – as the sterility of the needles cannot be confirmed, which presents an increased risk of infection for patients.
Aisleyne was targeted by adverts on Instagram that look similar to this[/caption]
An advert which looks similar to a the mounjaro and wegovy adverts[/caption]
Aisleyne resorted to buying counterfeit slimming jabs on Instagram after she too was targeted by adverts when she found herself in a “dark place” last year.
In quick succession, her best friend Femi died of a heart attack, and her nephew Jordan sadly passed away three months later in his sleep.
Speaking previously to Fabulous, she says: “I was in a really bad place mentally having lost the two closest people to me, and I was eating my feelings. I couldn’t stop eating high fatty food like cheese.
“I ended up putting on two stone in weight. I wasn’t leaving my house and I was inhaling food.
“I hated my body. Then I came across these weight loss jabs online, and I thought I’d just go for it.”
Ozempic is a prescription injectable medication used to treat type 2 diabetes in adults. It is also known by its generic name, Semaglutide.
It helps lower blood sugar by helping the pancreas make more insulin.
While not approved for weight loss, it can reduce appetite and slow down how quickly the stomach empties.
I often get people and accounts messaging me directly saying that they sell it
Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace
It has risen in prominence as a weight loss aid after celebrities including Oprah Winfrey, Sharon Osbourne and Amy Schumer admitted using it.
Aisleyne found a “practitioner” selling Semaglutide on Instagram and says she didn’t consider the dangers.
“I just thought they must be the same as what the NHS prescribes, just different packaging. I was so naive,” she recalls.
“I often get people and accounts messaging me directly saying that they sell it.
“This specific user was a private account in the UK and a few friends of mine had gone to them.
“And because I looked at her account and saw she was qualified in aesthetics, I thought it should be fine. How wrong I was.”
Aisleyne came across a private Instagram account that claimed to be selling Ozempic[/caption]
Aisleyne was advised to use the lowest dose for four weeks and then increase it “if needed”[/caption]
Aisleyne paid £300 for four syringes, which she injected once a week for eight weeks.
According to click2pharmacy, the cost of Semaglutide per month can vary based on the dosage prescribed, but on average can cost, £229.99 over a five month period.
She was advised to use the lowest dose for four weeks and then increase it “if needed.”
“I had just started taking it around my nephew’s funeral in August, and I was on them for two months.” she explains.
“At first, I was scared, but then I thought to myself, it’s like fasting as you skip meals because it suppresses your appetite, and fasting is supposed to be good for you – so I stuck with it.
“For the first couple of weeks, I thought it was great. I had loads of energy. I wasn’t overeating, and when I did eat, it was healthy, like high protein foods, vegetables and meat.
It was absolutely petrifying, and I knew I needed to call 999, but I couldn’t move my body or even see anything
Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace
“I wasn’t starving, so I didn’t reach for the bad quick foods; I was more conscious about it. I wasn’t having any side effects, so I just continued.”
Aisleyne quickly went from a size 14 to a size eight, and her weight dropped from 12.5 stone to 9 stone.
“Obviously having the weight drop off me felt great, especially as I barely did anything,” she recalls.
But at the end of the second month, she took a turn for the worse.
She says: “I was sick and suffering from diarrhea for four days, whilst not eating or drinking. If I had a sip of water, I would throw it up straight away.
“It was absolutely petrifying, and I knew I needed to call 999, but I couldn’t move my body or even see anything.
Aisleyne quickly went from a size 14 to a size eight[/caption]
It was the second month that Aisleyne’s symptoms appeared to worsen[/caption]
She hadn’t worked out for a year due to grieving loved ones[/caption]
“My vision was so blurry, and my body had gone limp. I didn’t even have the energy to even think; it was like I was in a coma, where I’d just wake up to be sick and then fall back to sleep again.”
Aisleyne knew she needed to seek medical advice but felt too embarrassed to go to NHS doctors because she felt her condition was self-inflicted.
“I was battling with myself, and I didn’t know what to do because I was too embarrassed,” she says.
Instead she took electrolytes and coconut water to re-hydrate herself, and slowly she began to feel normal again.
But to this day, Aisleyne continues to experience side effects including her right eye being blurry, as well as further weight loss up until December.
She says: “Months later, even though I stopped taking it, the weight was still dropping off me for weeks afterwards.
“And now even still to this day, my right eye is still blurry. I also keep getting migraines.
This is why girls turn to the black market, and so it’s important to get the message out
Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace
“I definitely took a bad batch as I don’t know anyone else who has suffered the same – it’s been absolutely horrific.
“I saw my surgeon and told him about my sight he looked at my eyes and said to go to see optician once I was home but to be honest I still haven’t.”
Due to the dramatic weight loss, Aisleyne was left with sagging skin – and so she booked herself in for a £12,700 neck, jowl and boob lift with Dr Orman at the Trio Clinic, to get rid of the excess skin that was left behind.
“After waking up in a haze and losing all this weight, all I could see was skin as it hadn’t had a chance to snap back,” she says.
“It was like taking the air out of a balloon and it was all saggy.
“Obviously my implant was up high, and my natural boob had just sort of depleted and was down the bottom.
“Then my face just got saggy.”
Aisleyne is now back to her normal weight of 10 stone, and is currently recovering from her surgery.
The reality star booked herself into surgery having been left with saggy skin[/caption]
She spent £300 on the ‘black market’ Ozempic[/caption]
On fake jabs, she warns: “I don’t want people to make the same mistake as I did.
“It is so easily accessible, and I should hope that if I had gone through the NHS I wouldn’t have been prescribed it because I wasn’t diabetic.
“This is why girls turn to the black market, and so it’s important to get the message out.
“Every other celebrity is just walking around looking skeletal, glorifying it, but it’s not a good example for young kids.
My warning is don’t do it. Get into the gym. Have a healthy lifestyle
Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace
“I’m not squeaky clean myself, but I think where health‘s concerned, it’s really important to get the truth out, and especially don’t go on the black market for it.”
She is now urging others to be vigilant before jumping the gun and getting these weight-loss jabs.
More importantly, she wants those thinking about it to seek medical advice first.
Aisleyne says: “My warning is don’t do it. Get into the gym. Have a healthy lifestyle.
“I know it’s boring and it sounds long, but nothing is worth losing your life, your sight or your faculties over.”
‘Godzilla’ of fat jabs
Dr Mitra Dutt, a GP from Lloyds Pharmacy Online Doctor, says: “Mounjaro works by activating two hormonal receptors (GIP and GLP-1), which enhance insulin production, improve insulin sensitivity and work to decrease food intake.”
Saxenda, which contains the active ingredient liraglutide, is another weight loss jab that’s been available on the NHS since 2020.
While Mounjaro is hailed as the “King Kong” fat jabs, a new weight loss drug dubbed “Godzilla” looks set to displace it.
Containing the active ingredient retatrutide, slimmers trying the drug lost up to 29 per cent of their weight in less than a year.
By comparison, trial results showed semaglutide, known as Ozempic, could lead to 15 per cent weight loss and tirzepatide, aka Mounjaro, to 23 per cent.
Retatrutide acts on three different receptors in the brain, “turbocharging” calorie burning while dulling hunger pangs.
Existing weight-loss jabs only suppress appetite, whereas the new treatment also speeds up metabolism.
The new drug is still undergoing clinical trials so it’s not yet known if it will be made available on the NHS.