How Semaglutide Supports A Healthy Lifestyle

Foreign. Charles Moak with Allure Medical. And I want to talk to you about the weight loss drug that was really taking the country by storm. It's called WeGovy, W E G O B Y or the direct brand name is Wegovy, and the generic name is semiglutide. And the drug first came out as a diabetic drug that copied some principles and effects of a drug called Metformin that's been around a long time. And we know that metformin does things for diabetes, makes people healthier. It actually extends their life to some degree. They have a longer health span and helps people lose weight. But the dose you need to lose weight might be a little higher than a lot of people can tolerate. Then he came out with a new class of drugs called GLP1 inhibitors, and, I'm sorry, agonists. And they simulate an effect of the metformin on your brain's desire to eat carbohydrates and also improves your body's sensitivity to your own insulin. And as a result, their diabetes would get better. But the other thing that happened is they saw that on the diabetes form of the Wegovy brand drug, it's got a different name, people lost weight more than they did typically with diabetes. So the manufacturer did a study for 68 weeks, a little over a year, and they split people up into a placebo group where they're taking fake shots and then the Wegovy shot. And basically it starts out with a small dose, and you increase the dosing over about 17 weeks until you're on full dose. And that's because there's gi, like nausea and vomiting that can occur if you start out too high. And they found that at about 14 weeks, people lost about 8% of their body fat or their weight. So somebody weighed 200 pounds, that'd be 16 pounds. And if they weighed, sorry, at 20 weeks, they'd lose about 10%. So now they're up to 20 pounds in it. If they weighed 200, 200 pounds, and then at 68 weeks, they lost about 18%, so about 36 pounds. And that's a substantial result. But what's interesting is they were told to go on a diet where they restricted their calories by 500 calories a day and exercise 150 minutes a week, which would be like 30 minutes a day, five days a week of walking. And the people in the placebo arm were supposed to do the same thing. They really didn't lose much weight, about eight pounds. And the people on the drug lost in the mid-30s, if they were 200 pounds, they lost 18% of their body fat. So substantial difference between placebo and a drug. We want to know that the drug actually works. And this has been the strongest weight loss drug to date, even though there might be other drugs coming out somewhere in the future. But the drug companies modus operandi and what they did in the study, they asked people at the 68 weeks, a certain percentage of people to stop taking it, stop exercising and go back to their old eating habits. And they found that half em got the weight back in the next year. So it's still pretty good. Half em kept it off, kept some something substantial off, at least 5% weight off. But then why would we want people to go back to eating an American diet? Well, because drug company wants to enrich themselves on having you on a drug forever. And their whole method was to treat obesity or overweight like a disease that you have to manage with the drug chronically. And the company makes money every single month. And the cost of this drug is about sixteen hundred dollars a month. So at first I was not very interested in talking about the Wegovy drug. It is very, very expensive. And the mode was to get people on a drug for the rest of their life. And at allure, we try to get people healthier, try to get people to change their lifestyle, and we do things to help them lose weight in the short term, to get them that boost. But I really want to focus on how do we not eat like an American anymore, How do we not do unhealthy lifestyle habits, how can we change ourselves so that way we're not having a chronic condition that's managed with an expensive drug. So no doubt the drug works. It does help you lose weight. And virtually everybody lost weight in the study. So something unique happened. The drug was such a big blockbuster that the company ran out. So if you want to start on Wegobi right now, you can't. They're out. They don't know when that will resume. So that's what we do know, probably will resume sometime later this year or maybe next year. And even that happens, they'll be able to keep up. We don't know. Well, that allowed compounding pharmacists to start making a generic version of the Wegobi called semiglutide. Additionally, they add a little vitamin B12 to it. That seems to reduce the nausea and vomiting associated with starting with too high of a dose. So now the cost is cut down dramatically. It's dramatically cheaper, at least for the short term. So we're offering people that want to take the WeGovy, the generic version that's compounded with a similar dosing regimen, slightly different drug, has got the added B12 to it, and then some lifestyle interventions so you can take control of your own weight and your own health to try to get off the medicine and not consider that this is something you have to live with the rest of your life. So I'm going to talk to you about what we think will most likely benefit people to get the weight off and keep it off without having to take the drug forever. So first off, the first thing is you can't think you can continue to eat like an American and not look like one. And the average American is overweight or obese. And this is just a reality. We're eating too much and we're eating really unhealthy foods. That's step one. So the diet that seems lifestyle intervention that works the best for weight loss generally is what's called a Mediterranean diet. Now, I'm going to spell it out for you. You can Google that. You'll see Mayo Health and Harvard Health, they all talk about the Mediterranean diet. But here's this in a nutshell. They eat very little land animals, so it might be a little bit chicken. There's virtually no red meat, mostly fish. And they're eating fish a few days a week, not every day, and one meal a day. And then they're eating vegetables, fruits, nuts, plant oils such as olive oil and whole grains, legumes, which are beans. No processed foods. So no regular enriched bread, no snack bars, no potato chips. They do eat plenty of potatoes. So vegetables, fruits, whole foods and olive oil. Very little animal based products. So fish and a little bit of poultry, but really no red meat. The second thing I want you to know about is that your gut microbiome, the bacteria in our gut, determine whether or not we will be thin or, or overweight. And we can manipulate those. There's been trials with probiotics that might help somewhat. But there's two things called prebiotics. They're, they're specific types of fibers that the good bacteria in your gut eat. And again, we'll give you links to this. But the two that we like that we know that work are called galactyl oligosaccharide, this one, and beta thylakoids. Now the beta thylakoids is from spinach and the galactoligosaccharides from different kinds of legumes. These are things you can start out the galactoligosaccharide very slow because it's really kind of strong for your stomach. You might get a little bit of that stomach if you take too much. The, the green powder, the thylakoids, you can start on a normal dose right away. And typically people might do this, a little shot of low sugar orange juice and make it not taste so, so spinach like so Mediterranean diet prebiotics, the thylakoids and galactyligosaccharide. And the last one is very interesting. So there's been a few studies on this. They're randomized, controlled studies. These are what we consider the gold standard in healthcare. They showed that extra virgin olive oil, extra virgin olive oil taken at about a tablespoon and a half a day, a tablespoon and a half a day helps reduce weight when compared to any other type of oil in the diet. So that's one study I'll talk to you about is a study where they had women that were postmenopausal and they were about 50s and they wanted to lose some weight and they put them on an energy restricted diet of reduced calories by 500 a day, a little bit of exercise. In group one, they gave them a tablespoon and a half of olive oil hidden inside of a little breakfast drink. In the other group, they gave them a different type of plant oil hid inside of a breakfast drink. And then they had somebody that didn't take any of the oils. And the women who drank the olive oil in addition to their regular dieting, they lost 80% more weight in the six in the five or six months. Can't remember how long it was. 80% more weight than the women that did not take olive oil. Now extra virgin olive oil, you should look that up a little bit. There's a lot of counterfeit olive oils because they come from different countries where they mix oils in it to make more money. You'll be safe if you get olive oil from Chile, Australia or the United States that they were made in these countries we have strict requirements of what constitutes olive oil. The most likely to be counterfeited are from Greece and Italy because they actually source their olives from other countries that they mix soybean oil, stuff like that into it. And there's a few tests you'll read about, you know, refrigerating and like that. I'm not going to recommend you do it. Just get a olive oil that's sourced from one country and it's one of those three countries or one that you've done on your own. Research and find out that they're, they're well sourced, typically like a Kroger's brand or Costco brand like Kirkland. They will, they will check the source of their own oils before they sell them. So those are the few steps. So we want you to be on this medication. If you choose to go on this medication, why don't you be onto it for a short period of time, not the rest of your life like it was designed to do. It's designed to be on the rest of your life treated like hypertension. But we know hypertension can be cured by changing your lifestyle as well. So in the three to six months, the cost is really limited. Eventually they'll be, the company will be caught up and they'll be making it and they'll be able to, you know, sell you, sell you the branded version. Again, it's about $1,600 a month. Be good to save that money and spend it on something else. So in three to six months, you should be able to lose, you should be able to lose 10% or more of your body weight. And if that's where your goal is, maybe even more than that, if you do something more aggressive with your diet, lifestyle, and then see about weaning off the medication, there's no withdrawal effect. And see if you've changed your lifestyle sufficient that you're just on your own, you've changed your relationship with food and exercise. Thank you.