The Risks of GLP-1 Medications like Ozempic or Wegovy

Hi and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donni Wilson, and in today's episode, I'm really looking forward to introducing you to Marcel Pick. She's a functional medicine practitioner, a nurse practitioner who specialized in Women's Health since 1983. And she's written books related to women's health, adrenal health, as well as weight and nutrition. And right now she's here to talk with us about her, her latest interest and passion of helping people to understand the risks of using the latest medications that are being developed to help with weight loss. But Marcel Pick has a lot of concerns about these medications because they are so new and, and not well understood and, and to. They're not really under addressing the underlying cause, which is metabolic inflexibility. Thank you so much for joining me today, Marcel. I can't to dive into this topic more with you and really thank you so much for everything you've contributed to functional medicine over the years, all of your work, all of your research, you have this passion for helping people that I really appreciate. And tell us, like, how did you, how did that passion bring you into this area of really helping people to not just go for the quick fix when it comes to weight loss? What brought you to this area?

Well, you know, it's always our own journey, isn't it? You know, certainly for me, it was when I was doing all the programs out there, following them to a T, not being able to lose weight when I wanted to. I thought, you know, there's a bigger problem here. Some of it has to do with food sensitivity, some has to do with, you know, ghrelin and leptin. If you have leptin resistance, you never know when you're full. And I think that's probably why I got so interested in it. Then I also realized that all the programs out there, their statistics long term are terrible. Most of the programs, weight loss, drugs perhaps, are in this category. We'll have to wait and see. Have a 95% failure rate. If we're lucky, we can say maybe 90%. So that means 10% of people that go on any weight loss program gain the weight back. So my question was always, what are we missing? How are we, why are we not putting these pieces together and what do we need to do? And the two big things that happen for people is they're hungry on food plans and they have cravings and it doesn't take the noise of that food away. So I got very creative to kind of create something that I think is an option for people. But it was my frustration and my patients that were like, you know what? I want to go out with my friends. I want to do things, I want to do that. And the other part to all of this is the food industry is not our friend. We know that they spend billions, not millions, billions of dollars, unprocessed foods. Now what are they trying to do? If you have a. Let's do a potato chip, I bet you can't eat just one. You might eat the whole bag. That's on purpose. I bet you don't just have one Oreo, you might have five or six. And so what I'm here to tell people, it's not your fault. This is very, very much a different shift that happens because when we eat a food 40 milliseconds, that has translated to brain. So we have neurotransmitters that are turned on or off. So when we're eating a lot of processed foods, that means foods of different shapes. You know, when you look at cereals, they're different shapes or food that won't survive on the. Or that survives on the counter. If you put a bag of Doritos and you tighten it up and you put the bag really tight, you can have it in two weeks. And staying tastes pretty much the same. Those are the processed foods. And that's, I think, one of the big contributing factors to why people can't stop particular foods. And they crave them more and more.

Now with the weight loss drugs, I'm excited because what we're finally starting to say is it isn't your fault. But let's pull back the layers and find out why. Because people have. They're hungry and they have cravings. And here's the irony. They're hungry because of the processed foods, because they're going to. As the movie Supersize Me showed, you can go from skinny to having 20 or 30 pounds in six weeks and crave the foods because you're added so many processed foods. So we see from the weight loss medications now, which is great news, that we've got a society with some issues around food. We have a society with issues that do want to lose the weight. They didn't know how. And this was their final, final answer. Oh, thank God I'm not thinking about food all the time. The problem is we're eating the same food.

So let's get into even more detail with this. And thank you so much for really summarizing that well and saying because so many people are struggling with, hey, I wanna lose, maybe they wanna lose ten pounds, maybe they wanna lose fifty pounds or a hundred pounds. And maybe they feel like they've been trying everything. You know, maybe they feel like they've already been trying to exercise and maybe trying some diet changes. And yet they're like, hey, I'm really stuck and I'm not able to lose this weight. And they wanna lose the weight maybe for health reasons, but other reasons as well. And what we're seeing now is all kinds of advertisements for these new, kind of new on the, on the street medications, like Ozempic, for example. And you can tell us more about them, where they might be injections. And now, as you mentioned to me, there's now an oral one. What's happening with these medications? How are they working? Why are people turning to them as a solution?

You know, the, the reality is that we have a big propul. We have a problem in our population. 93% of the entire population of the United States is what we call metabolic inflexible. Meaning they might have high blood pressure, they might have high cholesterol, they might have tri. High triglycerides, they may have high insulin levels or insulin resistance. You know, when they really don't have that ability to just kind of stop with foods, they might have leptin resistance, they may have a high grin. Hunger hormone. All of these contribute to our health long term. So if we say that 93% of the population patient is unhealthy metabolically, we're going to probably die younger than our parents did. That's not a good thing.

Because this.

Contributes to other health issues. Right? It's contributing to heart disease, dementia.

Absolutely, absolutely. And also we have people with high blood sugars, but we also know years before their insulin levels were elevated and nobody was kind of looking at that, and then all of a sudden their blood sugars are up. By then we've had some more physiological changes that have happened in the body. We know that the percentage is about 40%, maybe even higher now in many of the states are obese. Now that's interesting, because when you are obese, we know that the fat cells increase inflammation. They act like an endocrine organ. So they also contribute to being more hungry. They also contribute to you being more what we call leptin resistance, that you don't have a stop.

Noise in your head. I'm full. I don't want to have any more food. I do genetic testing and I can see the number of people have this particular problem. Well, if that's the case, then we need to have them have more vegetables, to fill themselves up, to eat a little bit slower, to breathe in between eating, to help them have that stop, I'm full kind of mechanism in their body. But the problem now with the weight loss drugs is it's very seductive. Oh my God. I can finally have something that helps me with my cravings. But actually that may not help. It doesn't really help with cravings. It helps you feel full and it does that by decreasing stomach emptying. Now if we do we think about the long term effect of what that's going to do. We don't have any studies long term for people if they start the weight loss medications and stay on them for good. We don't have studies to support that. We haven't because they're brand new. They're brand new. So the new medication that came out today, that's a pill that surpasses the medication Wegovy. So let's talk about, you know, kind of semi glutide. So we use Ozempic and that's been used for diabetics. It was renamed Wegovy, same medication and that's used for people for weight loss. The difference is it's a higher dosage. Now we've got the new medication today. It's a brand new medication that I've heard of just today hot off the press. And the weight loss was double that of wegovy in the 12 weeks. Now there were 16 people in that study.

Only 16, only 16.

What we do know is that in five weeks after stopping the medication, the shots for now, the appetite comes back. Within a year, two thirds had gained that weight back. So what it looks like from the studies is if you are going to be on the medication, lose the weight, you're going to have to stay on it long term. So my question is what are the side effects? Well, we know that there's some basic side effects. 50% of them have nausea, vomiting, they might be kind of on the toilet, especially if we increase the dose.

50% is a lot.

Yes, it is. But some people are so motivated, they just want to get the weight off and they'll do what they need to do. We also know that many people are still staying with the same diet that they had before. They're not necessarily increasing their fruits and vegetables. They're not necessarily, they're eating, you know, I'll eat less french fries, I'll have less fried food, I'll have less of that dessert. And they do because their stomach is full faster, because it decreases stomach emptier well, what is that going to have for implications long term? We all in functional medicine talk about the microbiome and we talk about how important it is to really maintain that healthy microbiome. What else do we know is happening? We know that there's 55 lawsuits right now for increased suicidal ideation. So people that have a mental health, you know, concern around depression, we have to really, really carefully screen them. We also know that gastroparesis is another significant problem that has also happened and that's what the first lawsuit was about. We also know for some they've had paralytic ileus, which is paralysis obviously of the intestine with significant, you know, effects. Now we are seeing many, many people very happy. They're losing all kinds of weight. But when we get to the problem of if they stop the medication and they haven't made very significant lifestyle changes, they're going to gain the weight back.

And then you're right back where they started from before the medication.

Correct. And 50% lose muscle mass. That's very hard to come back unless we say to them, you absolutely need to have significant amounts of protein, 100 to 100 grams depending upon your weight. We need to make sure that you're getting significant amount of protein every day that you're exercising and do weight training exercise. Now, am I completely someone that says absolutely never, never, never? No. In circumstances that may need to be if somebody's 150 pounds overweight and we need to get them there, but somebody has to be coaching them and working with them and give them an alternative so they don' to stay on that medication for the rest of their lives. We have to find other solutions. We know that GLP is increased with bitters, so we use more bitter foods in our diet.

I've done a lot of detoxes over the years and many of them made me feel a lot worse. Not only that, but I've had a lot of patients come in and tell me how after doing a detox, they have a stomach ache and headache and they can't see sleep and they're feeling anxious. And I'm like, I can't just recommend that my patients do a program that's going to make them feel worse. So I finally decided to design my own detox program. It's a 14 day detox program. That's not like other detox programs out there in several ways. One is that I'm focused on helping you to get the toxins out in a safe and effective way using nutrients, antioxidants and supporting our natural detoxification pathways in the body. Also I'm helping you to decrease your exposure to toxins by learning the ways that you've been exposed to toxins and how to change your day to day lifestyle to decrease your toxins over time. And I'm helping you to look not just at chemical environmental toxins but also emotional and energetic toxicity. And yes, it's possible to accomplish all of this in 14 days. I have so many patients who have done the 14 day detox and report back to me how much better they feel. And I think it's also because I help you to know what to eat. You are getting adequate food that tastes good plus protein shakes that I developed that are good for your body, that your body knows how to use these nutrients and take them in and use them to help you safely detoxify without feeling worse. Also I help you to balance your blood sugar levels, get better sleep and introduce things to like meditation, biofeedback and other types of stress recovery into your day to day routine. So I just am so excited about it. I want to make sure you know about this 14 day detox. I'm going to put the link, you can find it at Dr. Donnie.com forward/detox-program but I'll also put the link below so you can find the 14 day detox program@drdani.com I look forward to guiding you through this detox so that you can actually feel better on your way to better health here. We're using these medications to slow the stomach emptying by stimulating glp. But there's other ways we can stimulate GLP and slow stomach emptying without relying on a medication with side effects and temporary benefits. Yeah.

The other part that concerns me also is that we're never talking about the kind of emotion behind all this. And if we're able to understand, if we look at the ACE study that was done in 1998 and we looked to see it was started by looking at women that were overweight. They were by Dr. Felitti. What happened with that is that many of them dropped out even though they were losing weight. And the question was asked by Dr. Felitti, how old were you? And he wanted to say, what he wanted to say is how old were you? And what he said instead is how much did you weigh when you're first sexually active? The answer was 30 pounds. That brought up much inquiring into are these women sexually abused? And the answer was yes, about 80% of them had been. So there started the ACE study. The ACE study was done with 16,000 men and women to look to see if we had adverse events as children. Did it impact our health long term? The premise was yesterday's yesterday. For God's sakes, don't worry about it. The answer was, oh, my God. The higher your ACE score, the higher your risk of obesity, heart disease, early death, metastatic cancers, so on. So we know there's a direct relationship and no one is talking about this connection. And if we don't get to that, we're never going to be able to have people be whole and healthy and understand that there is. Is it all in your head? No, because these are unconscious thoughts. But helping people see all these connections. And also we know the neurotransmitters are intimately connected here. Serotonin is produced in the gut. We're seeing that these medications, because they also affect brain, are helping with depression. So we see now all these connections. But is Ozempic, is WeGovy, is this new pill going to be the answer? And my response is no, because we don't know what else is at play here. If someone has to do it and they say, I really just want to do it for 12 weeks, I'm going to change everything in my life. I promise. I promise I'll look deep at these pieces. Absolutely. However, there's going to be the end of this, which is what happens when you get off the medications. And what else don't we know? What else don't we know?

What are we going to find out in five years or ten years that way? And it's. And to really, I think more than anything of the message of, hey, before you decide to put anything into your body, to understand the risks and what really how it works and if you're going to do it, how to get the most benefit out of it and not become reliant on it. And like you're saying, to be able to stop and say, you know, like, instead of what we've the kind of the myths of weight gain. Right. The myth is it's our fault and there's nothing we can do. And it's all about just starving ourselves or exercising more. And we're saying, hey, no, we need to stop and look more closely and understand maybe this stress from childhood is playing a role in what you're experiencing with your weight today. And there's things we can do about that. Even though the stress happened in your childhood, it doesn't mean you can't do anything about it. There's so much we could do. And I love to talk about this, Marcel. I mean, and you and I both have a common love for helping with adrenals and as you mentioned, neurotransmitters and these. Anyone who isn't familiar with this, please, I encourage you to listen and read and learn more from us because to just know that there's so much we can do to help your hormones, your neurotransmitters and your subconscious to heal, even from childhood drama, so that we're actually getting to the bottom of why these weight gain patterns are there instead of just relying on the quick fix, which thank you so much for raising your concerns about that and really helping people to be more informed about that decision. Do you mind if we go more into. Because I know you talk so much and are sharing about other solutions, like to give people even more idea of. Okay. If I want to, yes. I'm going to go into looking at stress from my past and I'm going to. And I'm going to make sure my hormones and if I have nutrient deficiencies, address them. But what else can we do to support our metabolism, to address this metabolic inflexibility so that we don't have to be stuck anymore?

It's many, many layers. So looking at adrenal function, if you have an enormous amount of stress and your cortisol production is way too high or low, that's going to affect your hormones, it's going to affect your thyroid, it's going to affect your gut, it's going to affect your immune system. So it's intimately connected to our health. Also. Food sensitivities. You can have food sensitivities. I have a weight loss program using homeopathics that work just like Ozempic, which is so wonderful for my patients because they feel like I don't worry about food anymore. But I put on an elimination diet. So they very clearly see. Is dairy a problem? Is gluten a problem? Are grains a problem? Is alcohol a problem? Is, you know, is sugar problem? Because we get off all of those things and then when they reintroduce them back, they're like, wow, I was using a collagen powder. I had no idea that that was contributing to the weight gain. So that we're all different. And I think that's the beauty of understanding, is what works for you may not work for me. And we have to understand that we need to have personalized medicine that really looks at you as an individual. Our gut microbiome is enormous here. I see lots of people with Parasites and worms and candida mold is a huge problem for people. Lyme is a huge problem for people. Epstein Barr connected with Lyme. Oftentimes, those two actually impinge people's ability to lose weight. So when we kind of get to those pieces, then we can start to understand it. The other part is that some people have a very.

I would say, inflexible metabolic system in that they're very resilient and they don't mean need many calories to survive. And that oftentimes is a generational issue. So those people we have to work a little harder with to really gain that back by oftentimes having them do breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner snacks more often to really slowly increase because so many women have starved themselves to get the weight off. And it hasn't worked. It's not going to work because the body's going to go, okay, I'm fighting for every last calorie. I can't do this. And so there's. You have to look at the individual to see where do we need to intervene here and how do we need to do that? And more exercise is not the answer for some people. I have somebody in my program who was doing two hours a day of exercise and points and calories and macros, and I, I did this with her, and she got down 46 pounds in 12 weeks and feels amazing. So it is possible, once you kind of figure out the pieces to the equation, to do this.

I completely agree. I, I see the same things in the cases that I work with and, and I, and I see how, you know, of course, because we're taught, oh, if I exercise more or if I starve myself more, which is. Which I'd love to get, if you don't mind your input on, on intermittent fasting, because sometimes, like anything, right, we can push it too far, and then it becomes a stress and works against us. What do you see with that?

I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, I think intermittent fasting for some people is fantastic. Meaning that we know, when we look at the science that actually helps us age much better by decreasing the calories, decreasing the amount of time that we're eating. But honestly, I can tell you that some women don't do well with it. And I think people have adrenal issues. They're the ones that have the biggest problem because they're, you know, we don't want them to have breakfast, maybe even snacks in between higher protein, less carbohydrates, and certainly no sugar. So the reality is each person's a little different. So if, am I willing to go on and say to you, everyone should do intermittent fasting? I'm not going to say that. However, we do know scientifically that it really does help with, with health long term and aging well.

And I think it's, it's exactly what you're saying, which is like, how do you find what's right for you as an individual at this point, point in your life and this, the state of your adrenal function, which when we refer to the adrenals, we're really saying the how optimal is your cortisol level? If your cortisol is too high or low, as you mentioned, then, then we're not, you're not going to be able to get the benefit out of some of these other things. It's right up the cortisol first and then be like, okay, now can I go do exercise a little bit more or differently? Can I fast a little bit longer or differently? And, and, and, and to have guidance along the way. So, and this is where, you know, like, I'm so glad for the different resources and tools that you're providing to help people with this, with this weight loss journey. Maybe could you share a little more about what you have upcoming? Because now for helping people.

So I have a podcast and, you know, you can follow me especially. I'm going to do probably something today or tomorrow looking at the newest medication and what do we really know about 16 participants to glean information is probably not enough. And also I've got a summit coming up and the summit will be in July. And the summit's going to be looking at, I've got 42 speakers and probably five bonuses on looking at what do we know about metabolic inflexibility? What do we know about what you need to do as an individual to really help your health long term? My goal is we need a healthier population and people need to get educated about all the pieces to the equation. I'm hoping to get a bonus also on the food industry because that's the biggest unfortunate player in here. People do not know what's in the particular food that they're eating that's contributing to them being more hungry or wanting that food over and over again.

Yeah, that's, that's so even just when you say that, I'm hoping listeners kind of stop for a second and think, you know, what is it that you may be eating every day that you keep finding yourself going and buying and eating and thinking, oh, I just, I can't Imagine life without this and you're thinking it's like, okay. But when you take a closer look, you know, you might find, wow, is it triggering inflammation in some way? Is there some hidden sugar or sweetener or, or even coloring or preservative that I didn't realize? Right. That's like ending up causing issues, hands down.

You know, if I had anything to say to people, I say, just stop sugar, you know, it's toxic, in my opinion. We always want to have a little bit more. It increases serotonin temporarily, but then you have a bottoming out effect of the blood sugar. So if you could just look at ingredient, you know, of anything you're eating and see if sugar's in there at all and look at what the sugar content is, just say, okay, let me start there. Let me just take sugar out of my diet and then maybe I'll look at the other processed foods that I have and I'll, maybe I'll stop that or I'll stop this. Those are the places to start and you to sometimes do baby steps. You know, we can't change everything overnight. It didn't happen overnight. But just know that unfortunately, the food that we eat affects our physiology in a major, major way.

Well, and of course, the, the, the food industry wants to sell more, so they're going to, they want it to cause cravings so that we keep buying it, and they want it to trigger the neurotransmitters that make us want it. And so really we have to start thinking for ourselves and for our own health and for our own bodies and say, wait a minute, what am I actually putting in my mouth? And what am I putting in my body? And is it really serving me? Right? That's what I hear you saying overall, hands down.

And the other thing that I want to say is I think people don't understand that these medications now, the weight loss medications, physicians actually get something when they prescribe them. And I think you, you know that as well as I do, but that's, that's not wonderful in terms of patience in general. And the food industry is also not our friend. It is not their job to make sure we stay healthy. It's their job to make money.

So how do we become our own best health advocate? And we can do that by learning more, which is why I'm so glad people are listening in. And I encourage you to go listen, Go listen to Marcel's podcast and listen into her summit so that you have information to make better decisions for your decisions for yourself and your health before you end up finding out, oh my gosh, I'm already down this path. Even if you've already taken Ozempic or one of these other medications and you're like, yep, it happened to me, I lost weight, then I gained it back and now you're, now you're listening to this video. Please know that there's still help, that still these approaches that we're talking about can still help reset your metabolism that is doable and possible so that you don't have to be forever relying on these medications and quick fix approaches that are not really helping for your long term health.

Absolutely couldn't agree with you more.

Oh my gosh. Is there anything else you'd like to share, Marcel, before we wrap up?

Yeah, and there is one thing some of the most recent studies looked at. If we Even in our 70s, change our diet and really pay attention to our health in a different way, can it increase our life expectancy? And the answer is a big yes. So we have data to really support that, that changing our diet from 55 to 75, that age range can actually improve life expectancy and health, the parameters, pretty significantly. So we are pretty excited about that data because it doesn't mean when you start. It does mean you do need to start though, but it doesn't matter when you start.

Don't give up. Like don't ever give up. It's too late or whatever. So if you're, if you still listen, just know it's never too late. These are things we can address and there's help to address it. And so thank you so much for everything you're doing related to this and, and I'm so glad to get to connect with you here. So thank you for joining me at How Humans Heal.

All right, awesome. Thank you very much.

And thank you everyone for listening in. And make sure to submit your comments or questions and subscribe so that you don't miss the next episode of How Humans Heal. I'll see you then. Thanks for listening to How Humans Heal. If you liked this episode, leave a rating and a review. And for more resources, visit drdani.com.