Podcast # 12 Conversation with Bill Wilson, MD on GLP-1 agonist like Ozempic, Tirzepatide, Wegovy...

The poor correlation between percent body fat and bmi. Some thin people have excessive fat, some larger people don't. So you need to measure body fat number one to diagnose obesity.

Before Today's podcast with Dr. Bill Wilson on GLP1 receptor agonists like semaglutide. Consult your doctor before starting any treatment. These are for significantly overweight individuals used under medical supervision. Weight loss can cause muscle loss, so ensure adequate protein and resistance training. Let's dive in.

Good morning everyone. My name is Dr. Ron Najafi. I'm CEO of Emory Pharma. Welcome to our podcast series where we are really focused on health and safety of our colleagues, friends, family, audience and we've had numerous very prominent physicians and scientists at our Emory Pharma speaker series and podcast series. And we've also had the Honor of having Dr. Wilson, Bill Wilson here. And please feel free to see his previous video where he presented to the MRE Pharma team. Today we're going to be talking to Dr. Wilson about GLP1 agonist and the whole craze around ozempic and ozempic like drugs, the GLP1s and GIPS agonist, and try to figure out how they're working, if they're good, what are the risks, what, what are the benefits. And of course Dr. Wilson is author of a very prominent book called Brain Drain. Robert Lustig always talks about and he's also effectively discoverer of CARP syndrome. I'd like Dr. Wilson to essentially give a little quick introduction on himself. And Bill, can you tell us a little bit of background on what inspired you to focus on GLP1 receptor agonist and CARPSIM syndrome and how they are related?

Well, Carp syndrome evolved over many decades. Back at the beginning of the obesity epidemic in the 1970s, I was in private practice at my solo practice and actually, if you look in the New England Journal of Medicine 1999, Willettinel, who was the expert on obesity, put out an article saying that we should measure BMI to diagnose obesity. And BMI is a size measure. I can guess your BMI by looking at you. And what does that tell you about that? Because obesity is excessive body fat. Zero. Nothing simple. So I wrote a letter to the editor explaining, you know, I, I bought equipment and measured the body composition of probably 10,000 different readings over a decade. Saw the poor correlation between percent body fat and bmi. Some thin people have excessive fat, some larger people don't. So you need to measure body fat number one to diagnose obesity during that Time. I also belonged to Steven Stall's Neuroscience Education Institute, which is the most prominent institute studying neurobiology. I was very familiar with brain dysfunction symptoms and I noticed a strange correlation between certain brain symptoms and changes in body composition. So long story short, I propose that ultra processed food affects the brain in a way that fits the pattern of a disease and trigger does two things pushes you into a fat storage mode where you're going to store excessive body fat that virtually any caloric can take. It also can lead to up to 22 brain dysfunction symptoms that overlap with traditional psychiatric disorders. You know, at the same, this is, I call it carbohydrate associated reversible brain syndrome or carb syndrome. And it explains the dual epidemics of common psychiatric so called disorders and obesity. You know, I think it's held up over the decades. I think the GLP is where that came in, is, you know, treating carb syndrome has been challenging. I mean it's diet and exercise cut out the ultra processed food, et cetera, et cetera. And I applied those things to myself because I think virtually most of us have been exposed to that food. When these GLP receptor agonists came out, it caught my attention because, well, anything that affects weight of course said what's going on here? You know, did some research. And I said, yeah, they, you know, it's pretty amazing. These are hormones released by the intestines and the brain, by the way, that have a bunch of effects that number one result in weight loss. And that's where all the headlines came from. Everybody's, you know, all the movie stars are losing weight and these are miracle drugs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And my concern was, wait a minute, they're missing some, you know, the boat here. Weight loss is just one of the many things that these drugs do. GLP and GIP have all sorts of complex effects in the human body. We don't even know what a lot of them are actually. And as you well know being in the field you're in, we can study things on a molecular basis. But then when you bring them into empiric, you know, medicine that's a, that's a long distance and trying to figure out, you know, how these things actually result in, in the biology. You know, this can be pretty tricky in empiric science. I'm an empiric scientist, we simply look and say when you do X, what happens biologically? Do you get Y and Z and so forth, even if we don't know why it happens. I started studying These drugs and noticed these 22 brain dysfunction symptoms associated with carb syndrome. A lot of those would start improving, you know, moods, improve cognitive functioning, energy, sleep, bing, bing, bing, bing, down the list. And these are things that when you go to your doctor and say I'm not sleeping well or I'm depressed, you're going to get 10 different diagnoses. The problem is most of those diagnoses are not the classic disorders that were around 50 years from now. They're carb syndrome. You know, major depression is rare. It's rare as hence teeth. It's always been rare. Nowadays you go and you see your doctor and say, well I feel depressed, but my appetite. You know, to get diagnosed in the past you had to lose your appetite to lose weight. If you didn't do that, you couldn't get diagnosed. Well, most people going in now, they say, well I have an increased appetite and weight gain and I feel depressed. And the geniuses at DSM said well what is this? It looks like depression, sort of, but not totally. What do we do guys? Well let's call this new one atypical depression. So if you look at dsm, you know, that's what most people are being diagnosed with. Atypical depression is carb syndrome. It has absolutely nothing to do with major depression. So it's important to understand this I think, because GLP drugs are not going to impact true major depression. I don't believe. But most people that have mood disorders don't have them in all psychiatric terms. They have diet induced brain dysfunction and GLP drugs are miracle drugs when it comes to those disorders. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Can you explain basically how the GLP1 receptor agonists work both in managing blood sugar and addressing weight loss?

Well, they work on all sorts of levels. They slow gastric emptying, they increase insulin secretion by the pancreas, suppress glucagon in the brain, they decreased or increased satiety, feelings of hunger are diminished. You know, those are the, those are the primary effects. They increase insulin sensitivity. We don't even understand all the different ways these drugs act, but their mother nature developed them to, to help control food intake, basically. I mean humans can't go out there and just keep eating. You have to have some way of saying, okay, enough is enough, you're nourished. And in the old days when we were eating, you know, regular unprocessed food that worked perfectly. But now the system is all is kind of broken apart because of the brain dysfunction caused by ultra processed food.

Now we're seeing GLP1s being used for a variety of indications. Can you discuss some of these and where this GLP1s or GIPS are heading?

Well, you know they're showing effects in neurodegenerative disorders, any many different brain disorders. They have cardiac benefits, renal, hepatic. You look at an organ system and there seems to be some benefit. We haven't even uncovered a lot of it at this point. The GIPs added a little bit to the GLP1s. They kind of like a supercharge. It I guess is the best way to describe it. That is the most effective combination in this drug class. You know, they're currently. Type 2 diabetes, of course, is the number one. Obesity is number two. All the other indications are off label. Doctors can prescribe them off label for whatever they want to. The main problem there is number one, the cost, number two, the availability are two big issues.

The other thing, Bill, is it looks like once you're on it, you have to continue to stay on these drugs. If you stop using them, you get, you start gaining weight again.

Well, that appears to be true, but I'm not convinced that's totally true. For example, when you treat CARB syndrome, we didn't have these drugs watching your diet, exercising. And because the symptoms of CARB syndrome come from depletion of monoamine neurotransmitters like dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin, you need to take a precursor product that rebuilds those levels. And I sell one called Carb22 but I'm not trying to promote it. You can Google Apocer, but that's been around for years. It's an identical supplement. If you take that, it helps suppress the symptoms of CARB syndrome. The cravings for sweets and so forth improves mental functioning. But it, it, if you have significant CARB syndrome, it's not enough. In other words, it's a struggle. The GLPS is like a magic switch, so to speak. I believe that if you get someone Back to square one with aggressive treatment, you could taper off the GLPs, stay on the supplement and the diet and exercise. I think a lot of people would do okay, maybe not perfectly. The GLPs are available as a oral form for type 2 diabetes. It's a higher dose, but the absorption is a problem. But it is an option, right?

I know a lot of the GLPs are GLP bonds or GIPS are injectable and I think there are the oral forms have come onto the market. Several other oral GLP ones are also in the clinical trials. So that's very exciting. The cost obviously is a big issue. What about side effects and who is really a good candidate for these medications? Obviously they're expensive. I hear also a lot of celebrities are taking them. A lot of people who really don't need to be using them. So is there a basically risk benefit? What's the risk benefit analysis there?

Well, in my, this is my opinion, in my opinion alone, you need to understand what you're treating. And celebrities don't understand the carb syndrome concept unless they've read my book or talked to me. Unless you understand the disease you're treating, you're setting yourself up for failure. You know, the whole business with a zembic phase, excessive loss of lean body mass, serious side effects. Drugs are extremely rare. I mean, there's some thyroid tumors and cancer, but that's extremely rare. And they're probably safer than the majority of drugs that are out there right now. I don't think they're dangerous. I think they're quite safe, actually. The problem is nobody knows how to use them properly. Very few people, they're being misused. Using them strictly for weight loss alone. Again, I don't think that's the best way to use them because there's no such thing as a weight problem. It's a brain problem, if you're following my logic. And so you need to. I think getting people educated about what they're treating, in my opinion, is critical. And then you can use these drugs responsibly. I think they can be used by a. Put them in the drinking water, for heaven's sakes. Because there's so many people out there that have issues that would benefit. I'm being honest with you, Rob Lustig.

Was saying if everybody were to use these, it would bankrupt our healthcare system with the cost associated with the GLP1s.

Of course, right now with this shooting of this CEO of the United Healthcare, I think people, if you follow what's going on online and so forth, people are upset about the cost of health care. And, you know, and this is a classic example, these drug companies are ripping off the public. And, you know, I'm not advocating violence of any type, but I think we need to address the issue of who's making all this money and is it really legitimate?

Rob, there are a number of GLP ones on the market. There's Ozempic, there's Tirzepatite, there's number of them on the market. What should people do? There's also compounding Pharmacies that are getting these GLP bonds from overseas and compounding them. What do general public should do as it relates to what type of GLP1 and whether they should get their blend GLP1 or get it from the compounding pharmacy. What's your thoughts on that?

Well, I think cost is one of the biggest issues for most people. Insurance will not typically pay for obesity treatment. They'll pay for diabetes. If you get a doctor to write it off label for obesity, that your insurance might cover it. If you have. But you have to have type 2 diabetes or some sign of insulin resistance, if you don't have that, then most people can't afford, you know, it's thousands of dollars a month. The compounding issue is complex because they cannot compound a branded drug unless there's a shortage. And the FDA has to determine there's a shortage, which there has been. Once the shortage is resolved, they can no longer compound. You know, right now you can get compound forms of these drugs for maybe 150, 200 bucks a month. And these are legitimate companies. You know, they're safe and they're. But how long are you going to be able to keep getting them, you know, once you start on these drugs and then two months from now you're saying, oh, you got to pay 2,000amonth now? Well, most people are going to say, I can't do that.

Yeah, it's pretty, pretty pricey. Recent studies of these drugs suggest that these medications could save thousands of lives annually. Could you expand the broader health benefit, such as reducing. You know, there's conversation about cardiovascular risk, there's chronic kidney disease risk. How does that work? What's the relations between now GLP1 and cardiovascular and kidney diseases?

They're right at the floodgate of chronic diseases in our modern society. Almost all of those diseases are tied into insulin resistance and, and metabolic problems. And so these drugs directly impact that in a positive way that, that we don't. We, you know, in the past we've had metformin and, you know, a bunch of other things that, you know that that's the best we had. But they, they're Nothing like the GLPs. This is like the master switch they found. And, you know, they're truly miracle drugs because we've gotten to the core of what's driving most of our chronic diseases. In my opinion, that's heart, you know, cardiovascular disease, renal disease, liver disease. All of those problems are positively. They're not cured necessarily, but they have a very positive impact with these drugs. So you're going to see a significant. If they did put it in the drinking water. Yeah. It's a massive improvement in morbidity and mortality. The question is, how are we going to get there?

Yeah. So essentially you're saying by controlling diabetes and weight gain you have. The secondary effect is cardiovascular benefits and. And kidney benefits. What you're saying.

A good friend of mine is Barry Sears of Zone diet fame. I don't know if you're familiar with the old Z diet. Barry's a fatty acid expert and you know, he taught me a lot about inflammation. Inflammation is driving the bus in a lot of these chronic conditions. And the way to deal with it is to activate amp K in the human body. And omega 3s do that. There's a bunch of other polyphenols. Diet has a player, plays a role in that. But inflammation, excessive inflammation, is a problem. You need inflammation to heal wounds and to counter, you know, counter infections. The problem is we have way out of balance omega 6 and omega 3. It's supposed to be equally balanced. We have way too much Omega 6 from vegetable oils and we don't eat much fish anymore. So getting that straightened out is another critical thing in improving metabolic health. There's something called the AA EP ratio. It's a finger poke blood test, cost about 70 bucks. You want that ratio to be between one and three. And I had to take 12 capsules of Omega 3 daily to get it there. And most people, they're not. If they take an Omega 3, they're taking one capsule a day. They don't understand the science. Right? Right.

Bill, you've also mentioned that GLP1 agonists can reverse clarp syndrome. And how do they target this condition and what makes them so effective? First, define carp syndrome one more time for us and explain how GLP1s can actually reverse carb syndrome, please.

The best we can tell, carb syndrome is a result of depletion of monoamine neurotransmitters in various areas of the brain, primarily from glucose spikes that come from eating ultra processed food. We didn't evolve having. Well, you know, where the glucose shoots up and then drops below normal for some reason. When it drops below normal, that's not physiological. And that seems to cause an excess of dumping of neurotransmitters into the synapse overwhelms the reuptake system. These chemicals are cleared by the bloodstream and by your kidneys. And so you pee away your neurotransmitters and the brain becomes depleted. So when you lose your Monoamines. You get all these up to 22 symptoms that mimic some traditional psychiatric disorders, and they interfere with your ability to function, you know, your cognitive abilities, your impulse control, I mean, a whole long list of things. And these GLPs, we don't feel they. We know they're actually released in the. The thalamus of the brain, and there's communication between the brain and the GI tract, the vagus nerve, and so forth. So something about these drugs seems to flip the switch up there. You know, that's about all I can tell you. How do you know it relieves the symptoms of carb syndrome? And anything that relieves the symptoms is fixing the brain because that's where the problem is. So Precursor supplements and GLPs are the only two things that actually appear to do that. Well, diet and exercise to some extent, but, you know, they're by themselves. They're not enough. Frequency supplement and glp, Bill, some people.

Are reporting that they are just losing their craving for sugar. Is that related to what you're describing?

Yeah, the craving for sugar is the brain, when it sees that drop below, you know that you get a glucose spike, and it goes below normal. The brain, when it sees those drops below normal, thinks, oh, we're out of food. The brain evolved to read that as we're running out of food, it's time to eat. It didn't know there was this glucose spikes and drops. Okay? The only time that happened in the past is when you didn't eat for a couple of days. So the brain says, you better go find something to eat. And that sugar is low, so make sure it's something that is converted to glucose rapidly. And that would be a high glycemic carbohydrate, sucrose, fructose, etc. So your brain craves those things to try to fix that. It doesn't realize what's driving who's driving the bus here. And so those cravings, you know, you. You crave and you eat, and you get another glucose spike and another drop to get this vicious cycle that just doesn't go away. So anything that interrupts that is going to be helpful. And the GLP is, boom. They just put a stop to it. And, you know, the precursor supplements, along with, like, L glutamine, is another amino acid that can help. The number one symptom of carb syndrome is craving sweet and starchy food. That's what's driving the illness. You got to stop that.

Bill, you've also shared your personal experience with carp syndrome. And semiglutide. Could you share that with our audience? You know, and, you know, regarding your.

Own experience years ago, you know, like everyone else, I struggled a bit. I gained some weight. I never had major brain symptoms. Maybe some insomnia and low energy and so forth. It was mainly my weight went up to about 225, felt a little sluggish. And so I started treating myself because I recognized, hey, I'm getting this disease that I described. So I started taking the supplement and really watching my eating, exercising to the point where I used to be a runner. I can't run anymore. I have a horrible back. But I. I, like, swim for an hour to 90 minutes every day, really eat a healthy Mediterranean diet, take a supplement, and I was doing pretty well. I got my weight down to around198,200. I'd say I lost about £25, which is pretty good, and kept it off for a number of years when these drugs came out. I'm gonna try this and see what. What it does. Okay? So I. I actually started the compounded form. Well, it's been about a month now. And boom, you know, almost overnight. I noticed all of a sudden, in the past, I had trouble deciding when to stop eating. I had to force myself to stop. Bill, you've. You've already eaten enough. Stop, okay? In the sweet, you know, I had to have that ice cream sandwich or whatever, you know, I mean, you. I would never have two or some days I'd skip it, but I. My brain still wanted it, okay? I went on that drug. I haven't had a sweet in a month. Diple. Nothing. You know, I eat once a day. That's all I want to eat. And I stop when my brain says stop. Now, my weight this morning was 192, so I've lost another eight pounds, which is. You know, I've almost lost 35 pounds total. That's. That's pretty good. But even more than that, my energies improved. My sleep is, I think, better. I. I just feel better. You know, I'm more. A little more alert. Not that I was way off before, but it just. It seems like a bunch of things have improved. You know, my overall health seems to be better, if that makes sense to you.

And in our private conversations before, you mentioned something that different patients, different people have different experiences, you know? How is that sorted out? Can you explain?

Well, some people. I'm. I'm on the lowest possible dose of semaglutide. I think it's 0.25 milligrams. And I haven't increased it. You're supposed to increase it, you know, and I haven't increased it. I've had patients, people that I know of on that dose haven't had any effect whatsoever. It's really quite variable how much it takes to get the effect. But you know, virtually everyone will respond at some dose and we don't know why, why it's so variable. I don't think we have that answer. But it's something you can simply when I tell people, titrated against your hunger and cravings, that's the thing you can go by, not your weight. I don't care about weight loss. You know, I don't need to lose any more weight. I'm not trying to lose any more weight. I don't want a zembic face. And the key to that is simply you got to get enough protein, you know. And so I supplement with, you know, some protein shakes and some other things now to make sure I get enough protein.

Bill, you, you've talked about the carp syndrome. 22 symptoms of carp syndrome. Can you again kind of review that with us? What are those 22 symptoms? And you are saying that this, you know, perhaps GLP1s can address the carb syndrome as well?

Well, I mentioned the number one, number one symptom is craving sweet and starchy food. There's excessive hunger in general, excessive physical and mental fatigue, difficulty concentrating and focusing. People get labeled adhd, poor impulse control. You're not regulating your behavior as well as you should. Depressed mood, increased anxiety, excessive mood swings. People get diagnosed with, you know, bipolar and things like that, they don't have it. Poor sleep, a lack of sensory filtering where you start feeling things you shouldn't feel like crawling on your skin, low self esteem and self image, a loss of cognition, not optimal cognition, lack of empathy, inability to empathize with those around you, chronic pain, short term memory issues, internal restlessness where, you know, people that jiggle their leg, have you noticed that people that do that, that sort of thing where they're, you know, kind of involuntary shaking, poor listen, ills, obsessive compulsive tendencies. You can get intestinal symptoms, IR to bowel like stuff, increased communication, lag time, that's something that most people have never heard of. But if when I say something to you, there's a microsecond and then before you get a little head nod or blink saying you process what I said, which means I can say something else. In people with carb syndrome, that communication lag time has increased from Less than a second to 1, 2, 3 seconds. But it normalizes with treatment. Excessive thinking about food and eating. People are consciously thinking about food at inappropriate times. Those are the 22 symptoms. And people vary in which ones they have. If you go around and start talking to people, you'll find a lot of people that have some of these symptoms. Just a simple question. Do you crave sweet and starchy food? And if so, when is a real eye opener?

The question is, is that a mental issue versus lack of insulin? And you know, I'm saying that because some of the new indications are saying that it could potentially also be a treatment for addiction. You know, people who have an addictive personality to gambling, to different things, to Drugs could potentially GLP1s could be useful for them. What's your thoughts on that?

Part of carb syndrome is craving not just sweet and starchy food, but also nicotine, alcohol, drugs. It increases the tendency to crave those things. It's not necessarily the cause, but it magnifies them, if you will. And so these drugs do seem to blunt that effect. We're not exactly sure why. Again, most of the things that these drugs do in the brain, we haven't figured out the biology. We just know it's kind of the black box. You put an A and you get B. We're not sure how or why.

Bill, you've also been a big fan of omega 3 fatty acids. Can you elaborate on that?

As I mentioned earlier, it's based on what I learned from my friend Barry Sears. Omega 3s are the most effective way to suppress inappropriate inflammation in the body, to balance inflammation, to get it where it should be. And that and the science there is pretty solid. There's a bunch of different blood tests. AA ratio was probably the most common simple test. You can order online. There's a company called Omegaquant that sells these things. And, you know, I recommend everyone consider checking that and supplementing with a. You got to make sure it's a high quality Omega 3. I take his brand Omega RX2, but there's other good brands out there, but I wouldn't buy, you know, from CVS because Omega 3 needs to be highly purified if you're going to be taking those high, large amounts. It's just a way of depressing inappropriate, excessive inflammation. And, you know, most of the things we're talking about are associated with excess inflammation. All these chronic diseases, these brain problems, diabetes, insulin resistance, inflammation, one of the key things driving that process. So these are pretty simple, straight, cheap, inexpensive. You know, watch Your diet, exercise, take a precursor supplement like Apicurb. Consider GLP1s if you have major problems. You know, I think these drugs could benefit a lot of people. So the people, the decision whether to use them or not has to be based on availability and cost and, you know, finding someone to prescribe them and all those complex things. And I'm not here to tell anybody what to do. I think they need to just. I think they're quite safe if you can find, if you can afford them and find someone to prescribe them. You know, I think a lot of people could benefit.

Bill, with so much focus on treating metabolic disorders, how important is it for healthcare providers to address the underlying causes like processed food and, you know, and lifestyle that's, you know, completely lacks exercise and proper diet and things like that? I mean, we're, we're in situation where you say you have blood pressure, take lisinopril or let. Take some blood pressure medication, you know, Losartan, or you have, you have high cholesterol, take this, you have this, you take that. What about some changes that you could recommend? You know, obviously processed food. There's, you know, there's a lot of things that people should be doing alongside some of these medications. And what's your thought?

If I were king, I would do a bunch of things. Unfortunately, I'm not. I'm really encouraged by Kennedy and his statements he's made about taking on the food industry. Our food industry is horrible. You know, I mean, they, they make terrible stuff that shouldn't be caused all food, and it's being subsidized by, you know, taxes and the government. And so a lot of legal changes and I think getting people to understand what the problem is with Fruit Loops, you know, nobody should eat that stuff. I haven't had breakfast cereal in 20 years. You know, why? You know, but you go down, there's a whole aisle of that stuff in your grocery store. And, and so, number one, people need to be educated why it's not a good thing. Number two, we need to tax sugar and, and, and, and change our incentives when it comes to the food industry. In my opinion, make real food affordable, available, cut down on processed food. And, you know, that that takes a lot of political willpower. You know, I, I hope it doesn't become dictator, but, you know, I'm encouraged by what Kennedy has been saying. I think, you know, we're heading in a better direction. I just hope it continues.

I also think when someone goes to his doctor or her doctor and doc, and says, hey, you Know, they say you got blood pressure, they immediately prescribe some blood pressure medication. But they don't engage the person with a conversation that says what are you doing? What are you eating? What's your diet like? You know, what, what's your exercise routine like? You know, physicians should, yeah, that's a.

Broken health care system. And the way doctors are reimbursed, incentivize that approach. You don't get, you don't get reimbursed for sitting there for an hour talking to the patient about lifestyle. You get reimbursed spending five minutes with the patient and handing out prescriptions. And that's why I, I, one reason I got out of, you know, the direct practice of medicine because it just, it's just virtually impossible to, to be practice responsible medicine with our current health care system. So yeah, I mean I think this whole business with this, you know, shooting this guy and all that stuff, there's a huge problem with our medical system right now. And again, I'm not advocating violence, but I'm advocating we need to fix it.

People who are considering a GLP1 agonist, you know, as a physician and as a, you know, basically as a user of GLP1 yourself, what advice do you have for them?

Well, I think I always look at when you, when you're going to take a so called medication, you want it to be as close to the normal physiology as possible, correct? In other words, the hormone or something that acts directly on a hormone or the problem with most medications, they're way removed from biology. They're acting a long distance away from basic biology and then that's where the side effects come in and so on and so forth. And GLP agonists are acting directly on receptors in your body, you know, which is, you can't get any closer to biology than that. And that's their, their true beauty. I mean we don't have a lot of treatments that, that are so direct. Insulin is obviously one. But you know, there are very few treatments other than just you know, hormones, testosterone, estrogens, et cetera. There aren't too many hormonal treatments that are actually available. Most of the drugs out there are not directly stimulating receptor in the body. And GLP1s are one of the first things to come along in a long time that actually do that. I think that's their, their, their selling point. You know, they're safety wise. You're acting physiologically, when you follow biology, you're going to have less side effects, it's going to be more effective and that's what we're seeing. That's why there's such a miracle.

My last question, sort of closing thoughts. If, if you could change one thing, one thing alone that would, you know, what would that be, you know, for our medical community, for our society, given we're in the midst of this metabolic disorder disaster that we're in and obesity and everything that's going on there.

Again, there's not probably just one thing. I think slowly starting moving health care towards prevention as opposed to the whack a mole system we have now, changing the reimbursement and I think figuring out a way to make treatments like this affordable, the cost and available and those are all the realm of government. I would say the government has to get involved, change the laws, change incentives. I think we need to work on multiple fronts, but reducing the cost, increasing availability of these drugs, and not just these drugs. But you know, as you may be aware, insulin is becoming very expensive. You know, it shouldn't be. It's been around for, you know, a zillion years. Why is it so expensive? Somebody's making money. So the incentives in the pharmaceutical industry need to be change, in my opinion. What is your opinion?

No, I, I'm, I'm with you 100%. I'm, I, I believe that the incentives need to change. I believe the food industry needs to be regulated in a way that they're putting so much sugar, so much highly, highly super processed food into the diets of children at very early age. I think the pharmaceutical industry, obviously for novel new drugs, they spend a lot of money developing these drugs, millions and millions, hundreds of millions of dollars. They have the right to recoup their investment. But for a insulin that's been there for years and years, it's a lot cheaper in Canada and Europe. Why is it so expensive in this country? And I think that's the power of the lobby, pharmaceutical lobbies. Obviously we help develop drugs, but we really get involved with very novel drugs and we're not involved in generic drugs as much. But you know, I think the right thing to do is to allow Medicare and allow insurances to negotiate better pricing, especially for older drugs, generic drugs. And also we should, we should check the drugs more closely, generic drugs that are coming from India and China. I'm advocating for, you know, more sort of closer look at these drugs, purities and their impurities and things like that. But definitely I'm for what we discussed, which is physicians sitting down with a patient and just not willy nilly prescribe blood pressure Medication or Lipitor or this or that. They need to sit down and say, what are you eating? And part of it is also education. Doctors need to be educated. I don't think doctors get as much education about nutrition, nutritional issues as they're doing more now than before. But metabolic syndrome is a huge problem in this country. And, and you know, and, and diabetes is really the mother of all, all diseases.

And I think in terms of like the government subsidizes soybeans and corn which are, you know, that's funneling right into the ultra processed food. We need to subsidize whole foods, not, not ultra processed foods, you know, like incentivize growing fruits and vegetables and you know, lean meats and so on and so forth. It's going to take a lot of things on a lot of different levels to fix this. But I think this is a starting point, the discussion we're having today. The GLPs have, you know, what it's done, it's, it's drawn the curtain wide open and, and, and now, you know, there's no place to hide. We can see if you get it right, what gets better. Right. Like a magic wand. So it's, it's, it should be telling us let's do a bunch of things right. Fix our food, fix our healthcare system. Let the pharmacy, pharmaceutical companies that develop these products make money. That's the, you know, the American way. No one's against that. And actually I think, you know, if they did it right, we, we wouldn't need compounded forms of these drugs or generics. Generics are different manner. You can't even have those until. It's going to take a period of time, I think, before they can come out. So there's no generic forms of these drugs, but they're compounded forms. That's not a good system. I think we should have everybody getting these drugs from the Lilly and so forth. But they need to be, you know, they have to be somewhat more affordable. I think right now they're just a little bit too expensive.

Well, they've, they're on their patents, they're.

Patent protected, errants paid for them. That would, you know, that would be a solution. Right? Yeah.

And, and, and like Rob Lustig says, you know, if everybody were to be using them, the healthcare system will go bankrupt. But obviously that's an issue and I think more competition will bring the prices down and I think we're getting a lot of competition. Obviously Novo Nordisk was one of the originators of GLP1s and then Lilly got into the picture with various products and Pfizer is in it. There's a number of pharma companies. I think Merck is getting into the GLP1. I think the prices will drop as more competition, more options become available. But what I'm really, really excited about is the fact that there are so much innovation in pharmaceutical industry and analytical industry, analytical chemistry, that we're able to detect diseases earlier, we're able to deliver personalized medicine. You know, there's just a ton of ways we're doing things that we couldn't do 10 years ago. We're capable of analyzing hundreds of inflammatory protein from synovial fluid of a patient suffering from arthritis or rheumatism. We couldn't do that 20 years ago or 10 years ago. And I think there's going to be a lot more treatments, a lot more prevention, a lot more knowledge. If you can discover somebody at stage one of a disease, there's a lot more you could do for them as opposed to stage four or end stage, where somebody's out, it's too late. Pancreatic cancer, for example, is one of those cancers that often shows itself at stage four. And there's a lot of activity to figure out some of the biomarkers through blood to figure out where things are so that we could act on those types of things better.

And I, I agree. What excites me is that we have people like you on the biochemical end. People like me were empiric scientists and these things are moving together.

Yeah, exactly.

In the middle. And that's when we're going to solve these problems. You can't do it in the empirical side alone. You need to understand the biology. I mean, we wouldn't have GLP1s if we didn't understand GLP. Right, right, right, exactly.

Bill, I also want to put a pitch for my own book that I recently published. It's called Seven Commandments to Save the Planet. The book is on Amazon. And really one of the reasons why I wrote this book along with my wife is 27 years, actually invented a product called Ecofunnel and we built a company around it, cplab Safety. I'm not trying to advertise for either products or my company, but we've been in environmental health and safety field, myself and my wife, and we care enough that we wanted to help reduce the exposure of our planet to a lot of very heavy evaporation of various solvents from the laboratory into the environment. But as a result, we were became more focused on what's happening to our environment? What are we putting out into this planet? You know, it's a closed system. Nothing goes out, nothing comes in. And we're basically putting so much garbage, so much trash, so much plastic into the ocean, into the soil, into the sea. And we're basically very gradually slowly poisoning ourselves with microplastics, with plasticizers. There are 80,000, over 80,000 different chemicals that are completely not regulated and are ending up in our food, in our diet, in our water. And those things also have ultimately will impact us. And nobody really knows what happens to microplastic. These are plastics that are not met. You cannot see them by microscope. They're molecular plastics.

What's the name of your book again?

Right, it's Seven Commandments to Save the Planet. You should look it up. It's on Amazon. And you know, it took us a few years to write it and put it together. But anyways, love, love, love it. If you would read it and review it for me.

Actually, I just ordered it. Okay.

Awesome. Bill, thank you so much. Thank you so much for your time. Any closing thoughts?

If people want to look more at this carb syndrome concept, they can Google carb syndrome and you'll get to my website. One of my most recent blog posts was obesity. It's all in your head and to talk about some of these issues, you can't go to your doctor and learn about this because they don't know about it. I'm working on that. But people need to self educate themselves.

And from good sources. Thank you so much Bill. Really appreciate your time and look forward to our future, your conversation.

Yeah, very much so. Thank you so much. Thank you.