{"id":447040,"date":"2026-02-01T10:49:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T10:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/447040\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T10:49:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T10:49:09","slug":"do-natural-ozempic-pills-really-work-i-tried-them-heres-what-happened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/447040\/","title":{"rendered":"Do \u2018natural Ozempic\u2019 pills really work? I tried them \u2014 here\u2019s what happened"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am a 26-year-old man who works in fashion. A little subtext for this sentence: in the GLP-1 injectable era in which we live, almost everybody I interact with either a) fat jabs themselves \u2014with Mounjaro, Wegovy, Ozempic<\/a> \u2014 you name it, b) has recently stopped jabbing themselves, for whatever reason, and is now regaining, or fearing they will regain, the weight they shed or c) keeps themselves up at night wondering whether they really should just give in, start jabbing themselves and kick the extra pounds their Third Space<\/a> membership simply cannot push. The front rows in Paris had halved in dress size back in September 2023, so by now these conversations have become pretty tedious.<\/p>\n

That was up until this month, however, when a grand discovery flipped the monotonous chatter on its head. That is when I \u2014 someone who naturally has a slim enough build to reject the jabs, but with the odd bulging pocket of excess body I wouldn\u2019t mind ditching \u2014 took the plunge, and began ingesting eight \u201cnatural Ozempic\u201d pills, from Elcella, a day. I\u2019ve been truly shocked by the results.<\/p>\n

Before we get to the nitty-gritty detail, though, some science. Elcella was founded in 2024 by Dr Madusha Peiris and Dr Rubina Aktar, both researchers at Queen Mary, University of London. They have developed specially formulated capsules which, unlike other supplements, make it all the way to your colon rather than breaking down in your stomach. The colon is home to the enteroendocrine cells, known as L-cells, where appetite-regulating hormones such as GLP-1 and PYY are produced.<\/p>\n

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(Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Due to poor western diets, Aktar says, \u201cour L cells are really sleepy, so you need to kickstart the system\u201d. Each Elcella pill is designed to do just that: they contain a mixture of linseed, coconut and MCT oils to reboot L-cells.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019ve done in the lab, and we\u2019ve spent over a decade doing this, is trying to find the correct formulation to activate those cells in a potent way, so that maximum amount of hormones are released, which can signal to your brain that you\u2019re feeling full,\u201d she says. Surely, I thought, this can\u2019t work?<\/p>\n

A marathon, not a sprint<\/p>\n

After Christmas I unscrewed the first of three tubs which make up Elcella\u2019s phase one \u201cawaken\u201d process, lasting 12 weeks. An in-house trial of 51 people following this programme found a 94 per cent improvement in appetite control, an average weight loss of six kilograms and an average reduction of seven centimetres in waistline circumference.<\/p>\n

I was instructed to gulp down four of the pills \u2014 clear, plastic-looking, the width of a Biro, slightly longer than my thumb and filled with yellow oil \u2014 three to four hours before lunch, and again before supper. The aim of this is to get my L-cells functioning and suppress the appetite naturally before meals. It is followed by phase two, \u201csustain\u201d, where you halve the dose for 12 more weeks, and three, \u201cmaintain\u201d, which halves them again \u2014 and \u201ccan be taken lifelong\u201d.<\/p>\n

A week in \u2014 that\u2019s more than 120 pills \u2014 and I was ready to flush the rest down the loo. I hadn\u2019t noticed any difference. It was only Aktar\u2019s words that kept me persevering: \u201cRemember it\u2019s not a sledgehammer approach, and it\u2019s not a magic pill. You don\u2019t lose this much weight overnight.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the dosage of artificial GLP-1 jabs increases over time, leaving a cliff-edge problem when you come off them, Elcella builds<\/a>. It is, to use the team\u2019s slightly off-putting phraseology, \u201ca journey\u201d.<\/p>\n

I am now four weeks in and the results \u2014which I started to see after only two-and-a-half weeks \u2014 have been staggering. I feel I should feel hungry, to the point my stomach actually rumbles, yet my head and stomach feel disconnected in a way they never were before.<\/p>\n

Of course, I do still eat, but where once I would have gobbled down portions of pasta or Itsu curries and systematically scraped the sides, now I only get halfway through. I\u2019m still hungry enough to eat in the evening \u2014 and enjoy doing so \u2014 but choose smaller portions than I would have before. I have noticed a generally slimming effect, which I am sure would be exacerbated with exercise and a more focused nutritious diet \u2014 next on my list. A pair of trousers, tight when I bought them two years ago and which last year I had resigned myself to being completely unwearable, now fit.<\/p>\n

Waist not, want not<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most important thing is that people (in our consumer trial) lost centimetres off their waistline,\u201d Aktar says. \u201cThat is really important to us because the fat that you store around your abdomen, scientifically it\u2019s called visceral fat. It\u2019s an active type of fat. It\u2019s bad for your metabolic health. And men did better than women, and that\u2019s probably because of the nature of the way we store and lose weight.\u201d<\/p>\n

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(Getty Images)<\/p>\n

While they await more clinical trials to back up their findings, anecdotally Aktar says the first users of Elcella have been reporting better sleep, more controlled energy levels, better skin, hair and nails and improvements to gut health. \u201cHopefully in the summertime we\u2019ll have that data to publish,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

In conversations with friends, there is great excitement around the prospect of Elcella being a good, natural \u201cGLP-1 exit strategy\u201d, as Dr Aktar puts it \u2014 a route for those ready to pack away the pens, but worried about undoing the work.<\/p>\n

As for the price, it costs \u00a3535 for the initial 12-week programme and half that for phase two. So no, it\u2019s not a steal \u2014 but compared with Mounjaro, which in the UK generally costs between \u00a3150 and \u00a3350 for a four-week supply, it isn\u2019t far off, and promises to be more sustainable. \u201cWe\u2019re working with the same hormones as the injectables but we\u2019re getting your body to naturally produce that in order to optimise your own physiology,\u201d says Aktar. Well, colour me a biohacker<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I am a 26-year-old man who works in fashion. A little subtext for this sentence: in the GLP-1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[78032,49,48,184346,84,184347],"class_list":["post-447040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-appetite-control","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-enteroendocrine-cells","tag-health","tag-rubina-aktar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}