What happens when the craze for the new weight loss drugs hooks up with gyms and fitness studios. Well, we're about to find out based on a couple of announcements from industry leaders in the last few months, and on this week's episode we have a leading industry researcher to help us see the opportunity here for gym and studio owners. Welcome to Optimal Aging, the show for fitness leaders trying to grow businesses by reaching more people over 50. I'm your host, jay Croft of Prime Fit Content, and if you're like me, you might be wondering isn't this all a little counterintuitive? I mean, how does a prescription medication to lose weight get more people exercising right? Why bother going to a gym when you can just take an injection or swallow a pill? Well, lucky for us all, eric Durack isn't like me and he's here to explain it in a way that's enlightening and really just very intriguing under the broader umbrella of how fitness, medicine and insurance might someday be able to work together. But before we get to Eric's insights, here's more on the announcements I mentioned First. Late last year, lifetime president and Jeff Zweifel said the gym chain will pilot a program to prescribe weight loss injections for members. They'll bring healthcare professionals into the gyms to deliver the drugs, like ozempic and wagovie, working with their members, primary care doctors, the gyms, trainers and nutritionists. According to Jovenere of the fitness industry trans watcher, the Fit Insider, lifetime says the program will include blood tests and meat FDA guidelines for increased physical behavior. These drugs, as you know, are incredibly popular and it's easy to see why, with about half of adult Americans being overweight and most people saying that they're interested in trying this GLP-1 class of prescription medication. After Lifetime's announcement, equinox made similar headlines in People Magazine. Quote we're seeing an uptick in members who are using or are interested in using GLP-1 weight loss drugs, including ozempic and wagovie, says Equinox club coach, michael Crandall, who is spearheading the new program. Again, this is from the People article.
Jay Croft:Glucogen-like peptid-1, GLP-1, is a hormone used in the treatment of type two diabetes and obesity and it's the core component of ozempic, an FDA approved prescription medication for people with type two diabetes. And, as people reported, over the past year, ozempic has skyrocketed in popularity in Hollywood and beyond as more people turned to the drugs for casual weight loss. Equinox took notice and here's what Crandall had to say we're creating an internal education program at the Equinox Fitness Training Institute, adding the GLP-1 protocol to coach the many members who are using them. The drugs work so well, but we felt like something really important was missing for our clients on them. Weight loss interventions should always be done with a training program to get the best results.
Jay Croft:There are scenarios where people are either losing weight too quickly or they're unhappy with their bodies after they've been on the drugs for a little bit, or they plateau on the drugs, crandall explains. And that's really where Equinox coaching can help build better habits and teach them what maintenance weight loss actually looks like. Crandall adds in the People article if someone loses 50 pounds, it would be impossible for them to not also lose lean body mass, so we'll help them mitigate that loss, whether it's through aerobic or anaerobic conditioning or strength training. Now the most important aspect of the program, he says, is knowing that most people on these drugs don't wanna be on them forever. So the question is is this a marriage that has some potential to last a long time and to really go places?
Jay Croft:Can gyms help teach people the healthy lifestyle habits that will keep them from having to take these drugs forever or risk regaining the weight? And can gyms use the popularity of these drugs to drive in new members and make more money right. These are really interesting questions and I'm glad that Eric Dirac has joined us today to lay it all out for us. Eric is a leading clinical exercise physiologist and health educator with more than 25 years of experience in health promotion. He's the author of 24 books and has presented at about 200 conferences in exercise medicine and health promotion. Here's my conversation with Eric.
Eric Durak:I worked at a health club and I started one of the nation's first exercise cancer programs.
Eric Durak:And then over time I started working with people with hypertension, with end stage renal disease, with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a lot of metabolic syndromes. And then I spent 17 years at the University of California doing wellness programs for people for injury prevention. So I moved into the orthopedic prevention side back pain, shoulder feet, all kinds of stuff and I saw, did thousands of triad sessions with people just doing individual stretching and stuff. I did classes, I did safety programs, et cetera. So now I find myself back almost where I started from back to the future here in clinical research studies for clients, being really interested in the state of the industry and wanting to make a change in the industry in terms of this healthcare stuff. And one of the things you and I talked about was the whole weight loss issue, and during COVID I said as much as I hate this whole thing, it really gives an opportunity for health clubs to look at weight loss from a different perspective.
Jay Croft:You mean Ozympic and Mugovia, or do you mean the pandemic?
Eric Durak:Just weight loss. In general, health clubs have always taken a backseat to Jenny Craig, to Weight Watchers, to bariatric surgery, yada, yada, yada. And here we are during COVID, where everyone's getting fatter, no one's going out for a walk, the health clubs are all closed. And when they do open, I said to myself this is really a good opportunity for you to concentrate on one thing weight loss. Do it well, strengthen, conditioning, aerobics, helpful diet change, etc. Try to work with physicians and try to maneuver this.
Eric Durak:And just within the last few months, we've got OZMPIC and Wagobi and all of these other GLP drugs coming into the health club setting. The industry has to step up in this realm and say, okay, so if we're going to have this and Jay, what's coming? Just its lifetime, and then it's equinox and then it's going to be everybody else. But instead of having someone on this drug for 40 years, we should have them on it for six months, develop a really sound strength and conditioning program that will allow them to increase muscle mass, increase bone density, change the diet and then wean off, because we still don't know what the long term effects are. We know how effective it is, we just have to take it into the mainstream health club field.
Jay Croft:Okay, I want to stop you there. You mentioned lifetime and equinox, so let's tell the folks what you mean by that, because I'm not sure how widespread that just got out.
Eric Durak:Six weeks ago on LinkedIn, the COO and president of Lifetime, jeff Zweifel, put a post up saying that they formed a relationship with a company called Miora and Miora is a longevity company and he said we're going to be having ozempic injectables within our health club. And of course everybody said are you crazy? But then if you look at it, he's working with Miora. James LaSalle, I think, is the CEO of Miora and he's a pharmacist, so he's going to be working on the medical side and they actually have Miora within the flagship facility in Minnesota.
Eric Durak:So I feel a little bit better in that it's not just a bunch of trainers who are trying to figure out what drug interaction stuff. You literally have an entire company. That's what they're going to do, and then they'll work with the trainers, et cetera. And then right after Christmas, first week of January, equinox put something out as well that was in People Magazine, which was posted on LinkedIn that they'd be featuring this drug. And I just Jay, it's a matter of time before bigger chains will say, hey, we can do this. Is there money in it? Absolutely, but the thing is, the safety and efficacy also have to be part of the equation.
Jay Croft:So, again, before we get into all of that, I want to, I need to back up just a little bit, because this idea of health clubs selling this drug that helps you lose weight seems contrary to the idea of exercising the right and take better care of yourself. So how do we first reconcile those two things that seem to be almost at odds?
Eric Durak:So I look at the weight loss drugs like Wagobi and there's a host of them, but I look at them as something that, for diabetes, helps manage blood sugars, helps manage all health, and I think it's been a little co-opted by the weight loss industry and if you go back into the 90s when we had a lestra and all these other types of things, they were fine until they weren't, and I don't want that to happen with it.
Jay Croft:From what I understand physiologically it's mechanism, you can lose weight reasonably well on this, but I'm looking at it from the point of view of the listeners of this podcast, tend to be fitness professionals, people who are on gyms and studios who are trying to help. People are over 50. And a lot of those people over 50 want to lose weight. A lot of people over 50 don't want to go to a gym. They'd rather take a pill and oh, thank God, there's finally a freaking pill I can take so I don't have to go to the gym.
Eric Durak:But if they're working, if I live in Minnesota, if I live in Minneapolis and I see that lifetime has a program that is partnering with Miora, that I can be on Osempic with my doctor's prescription, this club, okay. We just need to create a symbiotic relationship here, because you're not going to do anything. I don't have a voice that says we shouldn't do this, we shouldn't do this, but that's that. But again. But we are and the floodgates have opened. I want to manage it from a research standpoint with all of these people to say what type of program are you doing? What's the intensity level? Are you monitoring these people on a regular basis and what are the health outcomes that you're looking?
Jay Croft:for let's give them this medicine for a period of time, while they learn to take better care of themselves. Is that what you're getting?
Eric Durak:at yes, and the beauty of the health and fitness industry is that, with bioimpedance analogy, you can measure a person's body fat, their body water and their BMI on a regular basis. So I think that the industry should look at the type of strength training program because it's going to be critical, because Osempic works not just by reducing fat stores but it also by reducing lean body weight as well, lean tissue. So that's where the hydration comes in. So you've got hydration issues, you've got electrolyte issues, you've got, I'm going to say, proportion issues with diet, from protein to carbohydrate, the timing of the thing, and then the strength training, the intensity and the amount of strength training per week that a 50, 60, 70 year old person who's losing weight should be doing. We need to be looking at intensity and we may want to put some of these people on a modified high intensity strength training program, a modified hit program.
Jay Croft:Okay, so you're a researcher. Yeah, yes, so you're looking at the information and the data about all of this adds up, and it's a little early in the ozepic story to know for sure, isn't it.
Eric Durak:Yeah, my initial research, doing my first dive into what the heck is this thing? It's a great opportunity for trainers to become more of a healthcare provider and I think that trainers I think this is going to be very good for the industry because I think trainers are going to want to step up. But if you're going to be at least talking about this, this debate is going to be a real positive thing for the industry.
Jay Croft:Okay, so let's talk about that. What are these positive connections between a prescription drug which is expensive and if you don't have healthcare insurance coverage? Most people can't afford it. So you're getting in, your doctor's prescription is necessary, your insurance coverage is necessary, and now you're bringing in the health and fitness industry into it, and those are some components that don't always play well together.
Eric Durak:So what needs to happen with that? Whoever wants to jump in on this? They too partner with a company where someone understands the pharmaceutical side, so they don't get into any problem. The trainer can always check with the nurse or someone who probably would be on staff, or they probably would be a consultant to their program. They're going to have to.
Jay Croft:What were the bureaucratic obstacles in the way that happening, though? Anytime you bring in insurance doctors, it gets complicated.
Eric Durak:The insurance issue aside for what we'll talk about that in a second. But from the medical aspect they're going to have to create a relationship because the persons on a medication they come to a health club they're working out there are certain contraindications and risks. They're going to lobby pretty hard to get some level of reimbursement and then the patient would just have a copay and then when we spoke last week about this whole issue of health savings accounts and the health may actually help pay for part of that program as well, because that money is already available with people who are involved with certain companies.
Jay Croft:So is it possible then? I don't want to get ahead of myself, but could display a role this whole is an economic development play, a role in the efforts to bring the insurance and medical and fitness industries together. On some other issues, as far as trying to make it easier for people to get into health clubs, get into gyms and have the support of their medical community and their insurance providers as well or is that too soon to even think about that?
Eric Durak:Actually your question. You're asking a question right now. That is, at the beginning of the change within the industry because Blue Cross and Blue Shield and United Health Care and Kaiser Permanente and a lot of those other insurance companies are still doing business as usual. But I've partnered with a company in Phoenix, arizona called Lifecore Group and the Lifecore Group by the end of this year will have the Lifecore Health Plan and the Lifecore Health Plan will pay Jay Croft as part of his premium. He'll be able to use a portion of that money for his health club programs, his personal training, his massage therapy, his nutrition counseling, his Reiki work, his yoga classes, etc. There'll be a set amount of money from that health plan each month. That will be what we'll call preventive in terms of what it's paying for. He's going to be the only program. Now you know that a lot of these groups pay for silver sneakers, they pay for silver and fit. They pay for these over 65 programs and that's a wonderful thing, but they're only paying bare bones.
Eric Durak:Jason's company right now is involved with a growing number of health clubs in the HSA space and the interesting thing is that Ursa International Health and Racquet Sports Association is lobbying Congress to get the fit act passed after 25 years to pay for health club memberships which for some odd reason they did not put in previous bills. But what most club owners don't understand is that they can actually use HSA dollars now for programs because there are certain merchant category codes, or MCCs, that you can put into your computer at the front desk and once you get those codes authorized, a person can come in, they can have their card, you can swipe that card and that 200, 300, $400 amount of money will then be applied to those health club programs, not a membership. You still have to pay for the memberships because, whatever legal jargon there is, hsas don't cover that. But they can cover programs through these MCCs. This is part of the evolution of the industry in that, by virtue of having to work with a person with Osempic, they're going to have to know the prescription, they're going to have to do a body composition on them regularly to look at body water, body fat and in lean tissue, and they're going to have to do quality of life stuff as part of what they're writing down either on their laptop or their tablet or if they're still using a pencil and paper.
Eric Durak:They need to have that information when you go to a health club, you do your body weight, your blood pressure, you do a body fat. They do all that stuff. Yeah, so, like they're having you, they're just having to categorize some information here and say, hey, we got 10 people on Osempic in the first five months. This is what they did, this is their weight loss, this is their body water, this is their strength levels, et cetera. And then you can take that to the physicians and say, yeah, we've actually been able to maintain or increase their lean tissue, their muscle mass, by virtue of a their strength went up 43% and B their muscle mass went up 2.3%, as opposed to going down by 9.4%.
Jay Croft:Hold on. This is all predicated on the idea that the patient or the customer or whatever we're going to call the person at the center while it is yeah, they're not just going to say, fine, I've got this medicine now I don't need you, I don't need to exercise, I'm just going to take this pill, I'll be a healthy way through that. So how does the fitness provider insert themselves into that in a way that's good for them, the fitness provider? What am I missing?
Eric Durak:No, actually I love what you just said. How does the fitness provider? They're not just anymore, they're a fitness provider, a body composition tool that will allow us to help measure your body composition, lean tissue, fat, water, etc. Over time. Because what we know from OZMPIC trials is that the only way that they're measuring stuff now is through university studies, because doctors who are putting patients on OZMPIC put them on a scale. They don't know where the body water and fat ratio is, or to lean tissue ratio. That's where the fitness industry comes in. That's why I'm excited about this, because I remember using bioimpedance in the late 80s, jay, and here we've got all of these fancy things. I'm going to be at Ursa in two months in Los Angeles and they're going to have all these newer and better and fancier body composition things.
Jay Croft:I understand that it's interesting as to use a researcher. How is it interesting to a gym owner who is trying to make money Austin he or she be responsible, behave responsibly toward their clients who are taking this medication and to play a role in that separate from providing richer data, just in terms of helping the person achieve better health.
Eric Durak:Two things. Number one I send my top trainers and my fitness directors to every endocrinologist, every internal medicine doc and every weight loss center in my community and say we want to help your patients with the exercise component and, and we believe, with our body composition tools we have the ability to follow their success over time. Number two we just put article, we put advertisements in the newspaper. If you're on Osempic, come to our health club. We're going to help you maintain your weight loss, but we're also going to help you keep your lean tissue.
Jay Croft:I haven't seen that happening yet.
Eric Durak:Because the Osempic is only from what I understand now. Osempic is only in two major clubs and it's just getting rolled out. This is going to be six months to a year before I think we see it in 20, 30, 40 clubs across the country.
Jay Croft:But even separate from it being in clubs, people are still on it. If I go to the gym today, I look at the 50 people in the club. I guarantee you there's two or three who are on it right now. Right.
Eric Durak:Probably exactly, and that's where. That's where internally, I think that the that the training staff would like to put that in their newsletter. Hey, if you're on Osempic, come get a body composition with us, we'll do it. We'll do a one time fee and you can do it for forever. You know what I mean, because that's good business. That's what I'm getting at. Yeah, like figure out the marketing plan.
Jay Croft:Yeah.
Eric Durak:Isiology, those two or three members in your club, that's going to be a great thing if they can just do body comp testing. You know what I mean.
Jay Croft:Yeah, yeah let me give you an example. Let's say we've got two sisters. They're in their six. They're both in their sixties. They're a couple of years apart in age. One of them is pretty athletic but has always been a little overweight. One of them is completely sedentary and very overweight and they both start taking Osempic and they both lose a lot of weight. Who's going to be more likely to have long term success with it? The person who is active, physically active, or the one who's sedentary?
Eric Durak:Define success? If you're only defining success is the amount of weight lost. On a scale, the person who's closer to obesity will probably lose more weight. But it's a combination of lean tissue and body fat.
Jay Croft:We don't want you to lose the lean tissue when you get older. You need that lean tissue right.
Eric Durak:Absolutely. I think that the holy grail of longevity is maintaining muscle mass and circulation as long as you can. I really see the benefits of just keeping the muscle mass because I see in my club people in their 70s and 80s who are working out and they still do light to moderate workouts. They don't want it to be painful. When you're an athlete, you understand that it's going to hurt a little bit. When you're working You've got to lift heavy at some point. Going back to this, I think that the two people they're both going to have success whose more overweight is going to have more weight loss. But they're the one who is going to need the services of the health club to help with the strength training, help with the cardiovascular conditioning, help with the mindset and help with the assessments, the body composition, the biometrics etc. Over time. I think it's really a great match because you see the success with body fat testing.
Jay Croft:As you researchers and other scientists continue to gather the data and analyze it. The role of the gym professional, the gym owner, is to what? To market themselves as being of service to their clients who are on this medication to network with health care providers. The power here for the health club owners is to aid market directly to people who are using OZMPIC and these other drugs. You're on these weight loss medications great but you need to stay strong, you need to keep your lean tissue, you need to have body composition analysis and all these other things. It's really not as simple as getting this shot once a month or a week or whatever it is.
Eric Durak:If I owned a series of health clubs and I see what Equinox in lifetime are doing and I said I'd like to do that. I'm not going to hire a big agency to come into my club, we can't afford that. But we can have a consulting nurse or a consulting pharmacist and I would sit down with my fitness staff and I would drop a game plan on how we're going to market to the community, how we're going to interact with this medical professional who would come on board as a consultant, and then how we're going to track the success of these people over time. That's the equation and if it can be done the right way, I think the industry can move in a great direction.
Eric Durak:If Mrs Johnson has been struggling with weight loss for years and she gets into the club and she loses weight with the OZMPIC, but she starts to see more of the muscle which you probably will because you're losing the weight a little more rapidly she's going to feel great. Her trainer is going to tell her she's great. The people at the front desk are going to say, hey, it's great to see. Wow, look, this is fantastic. She's going to be part of a group of people at the club that are really expounding the benefits of this OZMPIC slash exercise program. I think it's a win.
Eric Durak:If I'm the industry now and I see OZMPIC, I'm going to say we want to keep you as a member for life. I actually have talked about this with some of the folks at Lifetime. I said your program should be member for life. With OZMPIC, you do whatever you need to do to get that person to be a member of your club for the next 25 years. If they're 50, keep them there until they're 80. Why? Because Lifetime is an amazing club chain and you're going to get people who will be in there now specifically for OZMPIC.
Jay Croft:Okay, I want to wrap this up by telling the gym owner out there there's a lot up in the area. This is a lot of new stuff. You're doing a lot of research. Lifetime and Equinox aren't going to really know much from what they're doing for a while yet. If I'm a gym owner in Des Moines, Iowa, or Denver, Colorado, and I want to get in on this, what should I do at this point?
Eric Durak:I would see in my community what endocrinologists or diabetologists or internal medicine doctors, primary care docs are actually using OZMPIC. That's just a few phone calls. Then I would sit down and meet with my health and fitness staff and say, okay, you guys have to become a little more expertise in OZMPIC and how we're going to do our program. You're going to learn about the physiology. We're going to have X, y and Z assessments that we want to do with them. Then we want to have a 10-week, 20-week, 30-week strength training program. These are the expected results that we can see.
Eric Durak:The staff becomes educated. They go to their community and they say we can do this. We're going to do a social media marketing we're going to do, we're going to go right out to the community. We're going to have workshops and lectures. We're going to talk to doctors. We're going to keep those relationships going. Over time we can get three OZMPIC patients. We can get 11 OZMPIC patients. We can get 26 OZMPIC patients, etc. At the end of the first year you may have 25 or 30 people from the community who are part of your weight loss for life program.
Jay Croft:Okay, good. If people want to get more information from you or about your research, or get in touch with you directly, how can they find you?
Eric Durak:They can find me at wwwmedhealthfitcom. I usually use my direct fitness at Gmail account, like you sent me this morning, then they can find out some more information about it. Like I say, I already have a template for clubs that I've already proposed to clubs right off the bat. I want to continue to do that because the health clubs with the data are the ones that are going to get more and more referrals into them. They'll be able to get a percentage of that 20% of the non-exercisers in their community, versus someone who says I just want to get reimbursed. You're not a hospital, but the HSA dollars are there. You can talk with lifecoregroupcom and they will be able to get anyone who needs to know anything about HSA dollars because why? They're an insurance company. This is what they do.
Jay Croft:Okay, eric, thanks very much. I appreciate your time and we will definitely talk again.
Eric Durak:All right, terrific Thanks.
Jay Croft:Thank you for listening to the optimal aging podcast. I'm your host, jay Croft. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, I hope you'll subscribe, tell a friend and write a review. All of that helps us grow our audience. I also hope you'll share any comments you have with me in an email or on social media, including suggestions for people I should interview or topics I should cover. You can learn more about me and my content business at primefitcontentcom. You can send me an email at Jay at primefitcontentcom. That's Jay, jay A Y At primefitcontentcom. I'm also on Facebook, linkedin and Instagram, so find me anywhere you like and be in touch. And again, thanks for listening. Join us next time.