Danielle Mason has revealed her experiences with a weight loss jab that made her so anxious she nearly called an ambulance because she thought she was going to die.

The actress and presenter, 41, began using the Mounjaro (Tirzepatide) medication after being prescribed it by an online doctor over Christmas in a bid to drop a few pounds – but found her symptoms debilitating.

She shared her experience on TikTok saying she was baffled why so many had found it had helped them. 

Mounjaro – which she says she paid £150 for – is a prescription-only treatment for weight loss and type two diabetes. It comes as a weekly self-injectable pen. 

She captioned the TikTok saying: ‘Not for me! #weightlosstip #mounjaro #anxiety #fyp.’

‘I want to talk about the Mounjaro jab. Why is it that all I’m seeing is people on TikTok saying how amazing it is!? Because I had such a rubbish time on it.

Danielle Mason has revealed her experiences with a weight loss jab that made her so anxious she nearly called an ambulance because she thought she was going to die

The actress and presenter, 41, began using the Mounjaro (Tirzepatide) medication over Christmas in a bid to drop a few pounds but found her symptoms debilitating

‘I took all my vitamins on the side of it but I had no personality and it was the most depressed I have ever been in my whole life and everything felt boring to me.

‘Can anyone actually relate with this? Am I the only one that finds the weight loss pens not good? As a woman anything for weight loss you get excited about even though my boyfriend prefers me curvy.

‘You get a buzz off losing weight it’s just a girls thing but why are people raving about this pen that made me feel the worst I’ve ever felt in my life.’

She continued: ‘On the days I would actually do the jab I would end up with the worst anxiety to the point I wanted to call an ambulance out because I felt like I was going to die. I’ve never had such anxiety and panic attacks back to back.

‘I’m so confused like are people promoting this pen? Like I’m baffled. From me taking it as a guinea pig because I wanted to have a go – it was absolutely horrendous. I’ve only just come back to myself now.

‘Mentally my head was like in overdrive and then I went and stupidly jabbed it again and I was just so poorly with it.’

Danielle added to MailOnline that it annoys her that other people that have used the jabs aren’t often honest about it.

The comments under her post were mixed with some saying they had experienced similar mental health problems after taking it while others praised its effectiveness. 

Many celebrities have been open about their experiences – good and bad – with weight loss jabs since they have taken the medical world by storm. 

Danielle posed in a Sєxy swimsuit this week after the ordeal (seen right last October)

She shared her experience on TikTok saying she was baffled why so many had found it had helped them

She said in her video: ‘On the days I would actually do the jab I would end up with the worst anxiety to the point I wanted to call an ambulance out because I felt like I was going to die’

The comments under her post were mixed with some saying they had experienced similar mental health problems after taking it while others praised its effectiveness

Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace recently revealed her experience after taking fake Ozempic injections purchased on the black market.

The former Big Brother contestant turned to the controversial weight loss jab after gaining two stone in weight following the death of her best friend Femi in 2024. 

Aisleyne, 46, admits she was in a ‘dark place’ before inadvertently using a counterfeit version of the drug – initially developed as a treatment for diabetes – and struggling with awful side effects.

She told Closer magazine: ‘I won’t lie, and I’m not proud, but I bought Ozempic injections from the black market… I must have had a dodgy batch because my body reacted so badly.

Read More Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace says she almost DIED after buying counterfeit Ozempic on the black market while ‘in a dark place’ following the death of her closest friend

‘For three days, I thought I was going to die. I was in my bed, waking up vomiting, suffering with diarrhoea and falling asleep again. At one point, I had three bags of vomit by my bedside.

‘Frighteningly, I started losing my vision, my eyes were going blurry, and I couldn’t even see my phone. I had no idea what was going to happen to me.’

Despite being in a poor state of health, she felt ‘too embarrᴀssed’ to seek urgent medical attention.

The TV personality added: ‘I wanted to go to A+E, but I couldn’t drag myself there because I was too embarrᴀssed to say what I’d done.

‘I felt guilty over wasting NHS resources when I’d done this to myself.’ 

Aisleyne described the ‘horrific’ ordeal as the most serious health issue she has ever been through, and has pleaded for people to not buy anything off the black market.

She said: ‘My message is do not do it.

‘Don’t cut corners with your health, and don’t buy stuff off the black market because you don’t know what’s in it.

‘It’s the most horrific health issue I’ve ever been through, and I will never do it again.’ 

It comes after last year Danielle got engaged to her garden landscaper partner Lee Dopson.

Back in May, Danielle announced on Instagram that she was engaged after accepting her Lee’s proposal during a romantic boat ride off of the Greek island of Lefkada.

The actress shared selfies of herself, her fiancé, and her gorgeous ring, to announce the news.

It comes after last year Danielle got engaged to her garden landscaper partner Lee Dopson (seen after proposal) 

It comes after Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace recently revealed her experience after taking fake Ozempic injections purchased on the black market (pictured left in 2024, right in 2023)

Danielle captioned the exciting post: ‘I said yes. Thank you @pipisboats and @crystalwaterslefkada now let’s celebrate and get wedding planning!’

Lee and Danielle had been dating since 2023.

The couple both have children from previous relationships, with Danielle sharing Rudy, 12, and Delilah, 10, with her ex-husband Tony Giles.

The former Page 3 model is the younger sister of EastEnders legend Jessie Wallace (Kat Slater).

Danielle and Jessie have famously feuded on-and-off for the best part of two decades and were last seen together in 2017.

The truth behind new diet drug craze – Hollywood is hooked on it, and social media is fanning demand for the latest weight-loss ‘miracle’

Over the summer I was lucky enough to be invited to a 60th birthday at which the after-dinner entertainment was a private performance by one of the UK’s leading male pop stars. More eye-popping than the actual show, though, was how incredible said star looked. He was a mere shadow of his former self, prancing around the stage in a silver catsuit. His secret? Semaglutide, or Ozempic as it is branded, a new diet drug that everybody – but everybody, darling, including one of the world’s most famous supermodels – is apparently taking. 

Originally developed to treat type 2 diabetes, it is used off-label (for a purpose other than that for which it was licensed) in both the US and the UK to treat obesity. In research conducted by its billionaire manufacturer, the Danish-based pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, patients lost an average of 17 per cent of their overall body weight over 68 weeks. This compares with five to nine per cent for ‘oldschool’ anti-obesity drugs such as Metformin. 

Only available in the UK on the NHS if you have type 2 diabetes, Ozempic can be obtained through a private doctor, and if you are willing to take it without medical supervision – not recommended by doctors (see panel) – you can get it online through various weight-loss programmes. It is sometimes taken in tablet form but more commonly as an injection. 

Originally developed to treat type 2 diabetes, Semaglutide is used off-label. It has been branded as a new diet drug that everybody is apparently taking

Predictably, Hollywood has been aware of Ozempic for a lot longer than us – Variety magazine recently quipped that the drug deserved its own thank-you speech at the Emmys, as so many stars on the podium had obviously been taking it. Elon Musk raved about its more powerful sister drug, Wegovy, on Twitter; Kim Kardashian, it is H๏τly rumoured, used semaglutide to lose 16lb in order to fit into Marilyn Monroe’s dress for the Met Ball. On TikTok the hashtag #ozempic has had more than 285 million views. 

Thanks to the hype, there has been a surge in demand, causing shortages on both sides of the Atlantic, with a backlash against influencers and celebrities hogging supplies ahead of desperate diabetes sufferers. Predictably, Big Pharma has come up with an alternative – tirzepatide (brand name Mounjaro), manufactured by Eli Lilly – but it has yet to be approved by the US Food & Drug Administration for weight loss. 

Novo Nordisk has issued a statement to say its supplies will be replenished by the end of the year, but it hasn’t quelled anxiety. At least two middle-aged male friends of mine who started using it in September are getting themselves in a twist about being caught short before the holidays. As one private London GP remarked to me: ‘It’s like the H RT panic last spring.’ 

So what exactly is this drug? Semaglutide belongs to a class called GLP-1 agonists, which not only regulate blood sugar but, as was discovered about a decade ago, also mimic the gut hormones that regulate our appeтιтes – the ones that tell the brain when we are hungry or full. There are, of course, side effects: acid reflux, nausea, exacerbation of IBS symptoms and fatigue (but much less so than in earlier GLP-1 agonists such as Saxenda), as well as pancreaтιтis, gallstones and, in very high doses, it has caused thyroid tumours in rats. Meanwhile, when you stop using it the effect wears off immediately and in some cases it won’t work at all. 

‘I would describe semaglutide as an example of very smart science,’ says leading consultant endocrinologist Dr Efthimia Karra from her private practice off London’s Harley Street. ‘But it is not a panacea for everyone. Around a fifth of users do not respond to it. This is because the human body favours weight gain, thus when you lose weight the body will do anything to revert to its highest BMI. The heavier you are the harder it is to lose weight. If a patient has made no progress in three months, I will take them off it.’ 

Banker’s wife Laura, a native New Yorker in her mid-50s who had hovered between decades, started using it in January. ‘The Paleo diet, 5:2, CBT, NLP, bootcamp, diet delivery services – I’ve tried them all,’ she says from the family home in Hampshire, ‘and I’ve always yo-yoed right back. After my last annual checkup I seriously contemplated giving up. Then my doctor suggested semaglutide.’ 

After only a month she noticed her clothes had become looser. From then on, the weight started dropping off. ‘The strange thing was, I wasn’t eating anything different. I just couldn’t physically have seconds any more, and the idea of pudding after a full meal had lost its allure.’ Three months on, she is two stone lighter ‒ though occasionally she suffers heartburn if she eats too late at night or drinks alcohol ‒ and when we spoke in autumn, she was looking forward to losing another stone by Christmas. 

‘There is a niggling voice that tells me it is both risky and lazy to take a drug to lose weight, and I worry that it will all pile on again if I stop taking it. But if it does, I will seriously consider taking it indefinitely.’ 

Private London GP Dr Martin Galy has been prescribing semaglutide for about a year to clients who cannot lose the weight they gained in menopause. He has seen it have a transformational effect, too, on much younger women who suffer polycystic ovary syndrome. ‘PCOS sufferers are difficult to treat, and you can imagine how body image plays a very important part when it comes to self-esteem.’ 

But according to Tom Sanders, professor of nutrition and dietetics at King’s College London, it is not a magic bullet. Commenting on a study on semaglutide published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2021, he says, ‘The challenge post-weight loss is to prevent a regain in weight,’ he wrote. It may prove to be useful in the short term, but ‘public health measures that encourage behavioural changes such as regular physical activity and moderating dietary energy intake are still needed’. 

That said, given our rising national obesity statistics and the escalation in accompanying health issues such as heart failure, cancer and obstructive sleep apnoea clogging up hospital beds, we’re going to need something. Semaglutide may be the rich person’s drug today, but might it be approved for more widespread use? Only time will tell.