MTC Weight Loss Program Webinar

Hi, you guys, I'm McCall McPherson. I'm excited you're here. I just finished a workout, so we're casual with this. I'm still in my workout clothes. I wanted to take you guys through some honestly really exciting information about our weight loss program. Okay. If you don't know me, I am a PA and I'm the founder of Modern Thyroid Clinic. I'm also the person that really started our weight loss program and initiated it, really created it a little over a year ago. And I am so incredibly proud of what we built and what we've created in the lives that we have absolutely changed. What I think is very unique and I think makes our program stand above so many others is I am seeing the vast majority, pretty much everyone, ubiquitously, that go on these medications are kind of being prescribed it, and then they're like, good luck. You're kind of on your own, you know, and that really, the goal of the program was to make people feel and have them be supported and educated and build a little community around this. So. And I think we've really successfully done that. So, you know, that really is a big goal of our program, is for you guys not to be left alone. You have touch points constantly where you can get help. If you need help, you can ask questions. You have resources, you have other community members if you want to pull information and lean on each other. So it's pretty, pretty fantastic. The other goal of the program, obviously, for me, being in the thyroid sector, metabolic issues and the inability to appropriately influence your weight is an issue that truly, even in my sector of thyroid, where I can. You know, at Modern Thyroid Clinic in general, we can proudly fix people's thyroid conditions when no one else can. But weight was a big struggle because of all the metabolic damage that takes place over years of hypothyroidism. So my goal too, in creating this program is I want to have an answer to weight loss resistance for all of these people and women who put in all this effort. They eat well, they exercise, and they can't lose weight. I think we've really successfully created that too. And then I found an infinite amount of other benefits along the way to these classes of medications that we'll talk about. So those are kind of my goals of the program that I wanted to share with you. I also want to educate you on who this program serves. Like, who is this for and who is it not for? So the people that it's for, I think the people that it serves best are the people that I just described. People who already have motivation and have taken action to. To have a pretty clean lifestyle. I think it best serves people who put in effort, but they're not getting the results that they need. Of course, like this serves diabetics and pre diabetics and all of that. Yes, but that's kind of a different subsector of people. The people that join our weight loss program are people generally who don't qualify for insurance coverage for these medications or who are not chronically obese, who don't have 85 pounds to lose. They might have 10 or 20 pounds to lose or 40. But less weight than this extreme. Yeah, that, that. Those are my favorite people to bring into this program because it's just life changing for them. The people who. And then, you know, the people who this program doesn't really serve are the limitations really of, you know, what are the contraindications to this class of medication? And those are definitely type one diabetics on insulin. They are people who are pregnant who are breastfeeding or acutely planning to get pregnant. I like to make people wait at least two months after they stop the medication to get pregnant. So anyone who's actively pregnancy planning, I don't like to get into the program. It is not for people who have a history of medullary thyroid carcinoma or multiple endocrine neoplasia. You. It's a contraindication if you've had pancreatitis in the last six months. I screen for people if they have had pancreatitis in the last 18 months. Also a family history of medullary thyroid carcinoma is a contraindication. There's a lot of gray lines around other thyroid cancers, so there are no formal contraindications for those. And that really is done on a case by case basis. I am hearing so many thyroid cancer doctors who tell even some of my patients who are post thyroidectomy who had thyroid cancer they don't have a thyroid gland anymore, but they would like to start this program or this class of medication. Over and over I am hearing doctors say, absolutely, do it. Now, I can't speak to you in your case that, you know, you would need to clear that with your own cancer physician. But that is what I'm hearing, which is really exciting to me because I do agree myself much of the time. Let's see, I'm trying to think if I left anything out and I don't think it is. I also think this program is not for people who are not willing to use it to implement really Good habits. Okay. I think you have to take this time that you get this boost in your ability to influence your weight and fully take advantage of it from a weight perspective. Sure, sure. But also for setting yourself up for long term success as well, because it is such a perfect time to do that and it is so much more, I don't say easy, but it's met with so much less resistance. Like you don't have to control, control, control all the time, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year kind of thing. So I did want to share a little bit with you all about what I have seen over the last year at Modern Thyroid Clinic with our weight loss program. And then I kind of want to talk about risks, benefits, alternatives and that kind of thing. Also what I'm seeing, you know, at Modern Thyroid Clinic. So the beneficial pieces that I am seeing are obviously weight loss, like we can get that one out of the way. So these, these medications are almost comparable to bariatric surgery. The average weight loss over 26 months is or three years, excuse me, the three year mark is about 22ish percent, give or take, depending on which medication. Bariatric surgery is 26% at three years. So pretty impressive. There is no other. Yeah. Before I talk about what I've seen, let's talk about how these medications work. Let me back up a second. So there is no other weight loss medication in history that elicits that kind of a profound weight loss. So it is pretty fascinating. The mechanism of action for these medications are one, you know, it will slow gastric emptying, meaning the food that you eat stays in your stomach longer, keeps you full longer, gives you feelings of satiety longer. So inherently you eat less. Right. So there's a caloric deficit piece to this. It also influences your neurochemistry to make you crave less, so you have less cravings for food, for alcohol, for nicotine. Now there be these drugs are being studied for addiction across the board because of its influence on addictive tendencies in our, in our system. So that's another way it also sends signals that tell you you're full faster during your meal. So again, there's this mechanism of caloric restructure, restriction or reduction from that. The other thing that it does is if we think about your blood sugar, like if we think about it as you know, this is an optimal range in here. What happens with these meds is when your blood sugar raises above that optimal range, your body elicits a response to pull out excess blood sugar. And neutralize it. Okay, so again, this is how you don't store fat. When you don't have excess blood sugar, that then becomes fat stores and you remove that excess blood sugar. It's another mechanism for weight loss. Okay, so a few different things are going on. Physiologically, it is not simply caloric restriction. Absolutely not. So and with those neurochemical changes, those shifts and those patterns that your body is triggering and then your body's responding to, you get this also change in your biochemistry of your ghrelin, your, your hormone that regulates your hunger pattern, your leptin, your hormone that tells you you're satisfied and you don't need any more food. Like these hormones begin to shift their pattern that can oftentimes carry on in very much improved ways even after you stop the medication. So kind of cool, you know, it is a non stimulant based medication. Previous, many of the previous weight loss medications are stimulant based, Meaning a lot of the time what we're doing is we're sort of compromising people's health while they're on weight loss medications so that they can lose weight and get to the end result where their health can potentially be better. But we're making that sacrifice during the process to get them to this point. The cool thing about these medications is that people are getting healthier while they are on these medications. So, you know, it really is a completely different mechanism. And I want to dig into that too. That's part of kind of what I'm seeing in my clinical practice. But so understand that this is not. These medications, I believe in the future will not even only be given for weight loss, they will be given for so many other things because the impacts that they have on all forms of your health are so, so huge. So I'll talk about those now. Let's, let's kind of dig into what I'm seeing and then what research kind of says. And I have to tell you, new, new research studies are coming out all the time, literally every other week about these medications and their benefits. Okay, so if we start with what research says, obviously, you know, they reduce your diabetic markers, your pre diabetic markers, so they reverse insulin resistance and loss of that potency of your blood sugar metabolism, which especially for my people at modern thyroid clinic, that is the core mechanism of action of weight gain is this loss of metabolic potency. And even when their thyroid function is perfect, they still have to rehabilitate that loss of potency. And it is a painfully slow and extremely frustrating process. So, yeah, so really, really a pretty cool, you know, thing. Other benefits of these medications is, you know, while people are losing weight and their metabolism is improving, the goal always with my patients on the program is you are not on this program forever. Like, nor do I think most people need to be on these medications forever outside of diabetes, etc. So that the goal is when you come off of these medications, you're able to more easily and appropriately maintain your weight. Lots of other studies are going on for these medications as well. I've seen studies where it's adjunctively used with cancer treatment to improve outcomes. I read a study last week that said it's being treated for heart failure to actually increase people's ejection fraction the amount of blood that their heart is able to push out because their heart is under less stress. A study came out in August 2023 that said, oh, well, now we've studied these medications and there's a risk reduction in heart attack and stroke that's over 20%. And immediately I always have people come back to me and they say, well, of course, like, these people lost weight. Of course they have a risk reduction in heart attack and stroke. And you guys, like, I can't scream this loud enough. It is not because of their weight loss. So I am seeing markers for heart attack and stroke likelihood in the future be reduced in the first three months before people have even lost substantial weight. Certainly not enough to elicit the kind of responses I'm seeing that show that risk reduction. And research had previously already said that before this most recent study came out. So I had gone into our program already looking for that. Also, like in all death, mortality, risk reduction, people die less while they are on these medications. Whether it's from heart attack, stroke, whether it is from getting hit by a bus, doesn't matter. People die less when they're on GLP1s. So for whatever that's worth, let's talk a little bit about what I'm seeing. So I am obviously seeing massive weight loss in people that literally could not lose weight no matter what they did. And I'm talking about, I have too many women to count that, for example, eat paleo or do the whole 30 perpetually, that exercise five or six days a week or four to six days a week, that see a nutritionist that do that, do everything. Like, I cannot as a human being ask this other human being to do more. It is not fair, it's not reasonable, it's not right. These people are putting tremendous effort into their weight and they Cannot maintain, and sometimes they continue to gain. And I see those people lose weight, which for me is very, very exciting. I also see in, we do pretty thorough lab work before people start our program and every three months during, so I get measurable data to see someone's progress. So obviously we are seeing reductions in their blood Sugar, their hemoglobin A1C. We are seeing their insulin become more sensitive, their, their metabolic potency heal and become more, more sensitive. I'm seeing cholesterol reduce. One of the most profound things that I have really potentially ever seen in medicine is the response that's elicited with GLPS, GLP1s on what's called your hemoglobin A1c. So your hemoglobin A1c is an. Excuse me, not hemoglobin A1c, HSCRP. This lady needs more coffee. Your HSCRP is an inflammatory marker. So it tells me really about systemic inflammation, cardiac levels of inflammation. But it is also used as a risk stratifying number to predict in your future the likelihood you will have a cardiovascular event like a heart attack and stroke. They divide that risk in low risk, 0 to 1, average risk, 1 to 3 or elevated risk, 3 and above. And in three months time on these medications, I am seeing people go from extreme risk. Like, I mean like 100% certainty these people are going to have a cardiovascular event in the future. Like their, their CRP is 35 to 1 or 2 or 0.4. Like I've seen someone go from 35 to low risk. I've seen someone go from 23 to low risk, 17 to low risk, 13 to low risk. And those numbers are like extreme high, you know, not. That doesn't even take into account all the people that have gone from four to one. So there is nothing else that I could do or that I think other people could do in medicine to elicit that kind of a reduction in someone's crp. And I have to emphasize this again, if we're thinking about this as your risk for cardiovascular event or heart attack and stroke, it is not due to weight loss. I am seeing this number reduce before people lose weight because I think these meds are massively reducing people's inflammation. People consistently report feeling less inflamed. Their joint pain goes away, they're less puffy, they're less swollen, they're less reactive to food. I have a, I have seen a study and I have a patient with colitis, intestinal colitis, gone. She's had it since she was like 5 years old. She hasn't had a flare since. She's been on the medication from, like, the second weekend, I'm seeing Hashimoto's antibodies reduced again. That's driven so much by inflammation. So consistently, I'm seeing these people's antibodies reduce more and more and more. And then really, the most surprising thing that I am seeing that I didn't really expect going into this. I had read the data, read the research, knew kind of what scientific things to expect. But, you guys, the thing that I'm seeing that blows my mind all the time and that I hear from women literally every day is the food freedom that comes. Because. So at least my patients in modern thyroid clinic, right, in the thyroid sector, specifically, that I did this with a year, for a year, before we expanded it to people outside of our patients, they have been having to overly restrict to maintain their weight. Not at my advice. I don't ever ask people to do that. But they wanted to be able to maintain their weight. They couldn't. And the lengths they had to go to were unrealistic, unfair, unsustainable. But so many of them were doing it because they had no other choice. And so they got into this cycle that food is bad. I feel guilty when I eat. I feel ashamed. I beat myself up. Their whole framework in their minds about food is in this negative construct. And I am seeing women get freed from that so much because they can eat normal food and not gain weight. They can eat normal food and lose weight. They can eat food and not feel guilty and ashamed. And then when they come off of the program, they don't have to overly restrict anymore because their metabolism is functioning at a better level. So again, it breeds this food freedom that people are experiencing that is just really, really profound. So that has been like, honestly, like a sacred journey for me to be on with these people. So trying to think. Let me think what else I wanted to talk about. I do want to talk about risks, benefits, alternatives. So we talked about kind of the benefits. The big thing I want to highlight for you is cardiovascular deaths are the number one killer for both men and women alike. Cardiovascular events kill more people than all forms of cancer combined every year. Okay, I'm going to repeat that. Cardiovascular deaths, heart attack, stroke, kill more people than every kind of cancer combined every year. That's a lot of people, right? And to reduce those people's risk measurably in research by 20% is there is nothing else that replicates that. There's no other pill, there's no diet, there's no lifestyle. I mean, over years maybe, but there's nothing that can elicit that sort of a response so quickly. So it's a very big deal. And I think the sad part about this whole movement of these medications is the negative propaganda almost that is shared constantly in the media and the fear that is spread. It's like a new fear based topic every two weeks in the media about these medications. Meanwhile, we are missing huge, huge opportunities to save lives, save quality of lives and save, save longevity of people's lives. You know, initially it was this risk for thyroid cancer. People you know the risk for thyroid cancer don't go on it. If you have a thyroid problem, if you have Hashimoto's, you can't take these medications. Like where were these people pulling this information from? Not about the thyroid cancer, but like if you have a thyroid problem, you can't take these medications. No, that's absolutely inaccurate. So can these medications theoretically is really what this is because it's not shown in human studies, you know, definitively at all. Can it propagate medullary thyroid carcinoma? Maybe, like there's some question to that. A medullary thyroid carcinoma is one of the rarest forms of thyroid cancer. It accounts for, for 3% of thyroid cancer cases. So I want you to understand what a rare diagnosis that is at modern thyroid clinic. Out of thousands and thousands of people, I think I have two or three with a history of medullary thyroid carcinoma. So again, it is very, very rare. And let's say, you know, we. Everything in medicine is about risk versus benefit. Okay? So we weigh this maybe theoretical risk for medullary thyroid carcinoma maybe to a risk reduction of 20% of the number one killer of men and women in the country. How do those weigh out for you? Every person has to weigh those out individually. Right? Now, if you've had medullary thyroid carcinoma or your mom had medullary thyroid carcinoma, obviously that risk benefit analysis changes. But for the vast majority of the population, I think it's pretty clear that if we want to mitigate risk for something, in my opinion, it should be for cardiovascular disease. So that is my opinion. So that was the first big thing. And then it was gallbladder and pancreatitis. Okay? So any time you lose weight, period, you're at an increased risk for gallbladder and pancreatic. Pancreatic issues or pancreatitis. So period, doesn't matter if you're losing weight from this medication or you're losing weight from diet and exercise, you're at an increased risk. So again, we're skewing this conversation in a way to make this negative. Then most recently it was, oh yeah, then it was ozempic face. Right. Like we're really far stretching, reaching here. I, I'm not seeing any of that in my practice. So I, that's all I can say. Again, anytime you lose weight, anytime you lose facial fat, your facial fat is what one keeps you from getting wrinkles to, gives you a youthful appearance and doesn't. And keeps your skin from sagging because it's full. So if you lose weight, doesn't matter how you lose weight, things are going to start sagging again. Cost benefit analysis, risk benefit analysis. Which do you prefer? Right. The other one, the other benefit I didn't mention that I forgot was nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. So this is like reversing that. Basically it's just casual as a side effect. Huge portion of our population has non alcoholic fatty liver disease and we're just over here reversing it passively with this medication without people even having to pay attention. So yeah, pretty cool. Oh yeah, the last one was gastroparesis. Big, big push in the media for fear around that one. We haven't had a single episode of that. I have a health coach, Sally that partners with me on the program who you guys will meet if you pursue the program, who is incredible. She ran a separate very large semaglutide based weight loss program at the same time I ran ours for the last year. And so she also has data from a pretty large pool of people, zero issues with gastroparesis. And then obviously the nausea vomiting thing. Right. So that's also really blown up in the media. I can't tell you how many social media comments of people that have never been on this medication, but they're like, oh, I just hear, I would never do that. The nausea, the vomiting is just so terrible. So I want to talk about the realistic side effects that we've seen. Realistic side effects are dehydration is the number one side effects period. Because as you lose your drive and your neurochemical message to eat, you also lose your neurochemical message to drink. And so you lack thirst and so people are getting dehydrated. So you have to intentionally drink a lot of water. With dehydration comes constipation. So we use supplements for that. Obviously we emphasize hydration, that kind of thing. Nausea, vomiting and even like gastroparesis. All the things, In my opinion and what I see in our practice is so many of these side effects that people experience that diminish their experience on the weight loss medication are dose dependent. Okay, Meaning they're at too high of a dose. And what happens if you get Ozempic? We go the Manjaro approved under insurance, which is the vast majority of the way most people are doing this. Our program is different, and I'll talk about that lastly. But it is a preloaded pen, injectable pen, and you cannot adjust your dose. Your dose is set. It comes in a month supply. Everyone has the same dose. And that's just not really how most medication works for people. People need individualized dosing, but that is not accessible at this point. With these prescriptive medications that are covered under insurance, you have to follow standardized dosing. The way that we do our program is our medication is compounded and ours is compounded. The mainstay of our program is based around semaglutide or the generic form of Ozempic and WeGovy. We compound that with a com peptide called NAD. So NAD is something that's found endogenously in our body. It basically is this intermediate energy source for like literally every reaction that has to take place in our body. It's anti inflammatory, it's cognitively protective. It's just generally anti aging. It helps slow the breakdown of your body over time. After 30, we get very steep, steep declines in NAD production and accessibility in our body. The best way to get NAD is to get an IV. And those are six to 800 a pop. So very, very expensive. The second best way to get mad is an injection. So you get that literally built into your Sony glutide. So it's like a bonus. But with compounds, in my opinion, they are so much better. Why? Because we can tailor your dose and administration for you. So if you start the program on the lowest dose of medication and you're like, oh, I got so sick, I was really, really nauseous or I had diarrhea, I don't like how it made me feel. Usually side effects peak 24 hours after you take the medication. And usually 24 to 48 hours is when they're the highest. What we do is we say, okay, well either A, we're going to reduce your dose next week, or B, we're going to split your dose and you're going to do half on, let's say a Monday and half on a Thursday. So you never peak as high. You peak twice in a less of an intense way. Let me close this. My native person's backyard making noise. It's also casual around here, isn't it? Yeah, we're all friends, so. Yeah. So we can adjust that without a compound. Again, you can't split your dose. You can't adjust the dose. You can't increase or decrease faster or slower depending on your response. So in my opinion, compounds are the only way to go. Unless you are diabetic and you, you know, need obscenely high doses of medication or you have to be on it forever. And then it's like, get it approved by your insurance and hope that you don't get the really bad side effects. What else? Oh, the other, you know, the other thing I want to say about compounds is there was another push in the media of, oh, my gosh, these compounds are so bad, they're having serious side effects and it's not okay. Yeah, no, that's like, there's a very, like, the type of compounds they were talking about are like maybe 1% of compounds that are likely direct to consumer, meaning you go buy the stuff on the black market. Who knows where it came from? It's not being regulated. It's not being tested. The compounding pharmacies that we use and most clinicians that use these types of medications are extremely rigorously controlled that it takes them five years to get approval to make injectable medications. They're called a sterile compounding pharmacy. They're not like your regular compounding pharmacy down the street. I would say maybe 2 to 5% of compounding pharmacies are sterile compounding. It's very, very rare. It's a very difficult process to get approval from the government to allow them to do this. So these are not just Joe Schmo making injectable medications. They're rigorously, rigorously analyzed and held to a very, very high standard. So we do not use the kind of compound that contains salt that, you know, the FDA came and spoke out about. That was really in the media about the negativity about it. No, we use very high quality compounds. And in my opinion, it is infinitely better of an experience for you all than regular GLP1. That's. So I hope that helps your. I hope that answers a lot of your questions. You know, big picture with our program, there's a few things I'm not going to include pricing here because it'll be on the website. The things that come with the program are we take you through a course week by week. It's like me teaching you how to inject your medication and how much to do and what to expect. And here's a list of supplements if you're having side effects. So you have like step by step weekly instructions. Two, you have access to a private email for our weight loss participants. Three, we have a weekly meeting on Thursdays that you can get questions answered. It's a group setting, which is the best because you guys learn off of each other. You don't have to have your video on, you don't have to have your mic on. You can show up, people show up at their office and leave it background and just listen. You can type in questions. If you have questions and you don't want to speak. We have a private Facebook group that's just for our participants and you guys can connect with each other. You can connect with us, you can rewatch the weekly videos in case you miss them. And then lastly, Sally, our health coach, does a weekly lab analysis. So if you want to compare your starting labs to your three months labs, see how things look as time progresses, she will go over that with you. During that process, we're also able to see, hey, it looks like you know you've met your goal weight. When it comes to thinking of ending the program, you know you've met your goal weight. Your labs look like you are set up for success in terms of being able to maintain your weight loss. You've achieved metabolic sensitivity. Sally goes through all of that with you so that when you come off of the program, you have a high, high success rate. We do not have people gain weight after they stop the program. I think I've had two people do it. Literally both of them came to me and they were like, McCall, it was so my fault. Like, I just started eating carbs and sugar during the program because I could and lose weight. And then I continued after I got off the medication and guess what? They gained weight back. Of course, this isn't like some forever miracle thing, right? But most people do not gain weight. Now we have very specific parameters that we are looking for that tell us you will be successful coming off. So yeah, again, that was another big media push. Oh, these people need to be on it forever. They gain twice the weight, they gain twice the weight back when they come off. It's like, no, like none of this is even real. Certainly not for our patients and certainly not from what we are seeing at all. Now again, you have to put our goal is that by the time you come off the program, you put reasonable effort into your lifestyle and you maintain your weight, that you Actually put reasonable effort into your lifestyle. And you can lose weight if you want. Like, our whole goal is rehabbing your metabolism. Of course we want you to lose the weight that you want to lose. But even more so important for us is we want you to maintain that weight loss off of the program. We want your metabolism to be healed off of the program. So that is our goal. Thinking about coming off as well. There's lots of options. These are individualized. You can do a microdose, you can taper down, you can transition to metformin to keep that insulin sensitivity and really that blood sugar metabolism really potent. You can stop it 3 to 5 to 8 pounds under your goal weight, depending on the percentage of weight that you've lost. We have people lose a little bit of extra weight under their goal weight. Even hydration is going to swing that number back. So that's. And those are all discussed within the program so that I think you'll get clarity on as time goes on to take the next steps. If you decide, hey, you know what? This is for me, I'm ready to do this, let's make it happen. The biggest next step is filling out the Google form. Okay. So the Google form triggers us to do to look at your answers to see if you're eligible and everything cascades from there. Okay. So then you start following the steps outlined. I won't go through all of those here. This is more of the educational webinar component, so I hope it was super helpful. I'm excited for you on the potential that you take this next step in your journey. It has truly been one of the most sacred things I've got to experience. I've been able to experience with my patients and a lot of what we do is sacred and modern thyroid clinic. But this has been a pretty powerful journey for me to bear witness to and for my patients to walk through. Truly, truly. In my opinion, these weight loss medications are and will be the most exciting thing that happens in medicine in my lifetime. So I think that they are going to change so much about the future of medicine and the future of people's health unlike anything that I will ever see again. So I'm excited. You got to maybe learn a little bit more about them that maybe you didn't know before. So maybe I'll see you in the weight loss group. Take care.