Health Longevity Secrets
A podcast to transform your health and longevity with evidence-based lifestyle modifications and other tools to prevent and even reverse the most disruptive diseases. We feature topics including longevity, fasting, ketosis, biohacking, Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease, stroke, cancer, consciousness, and much more so that you can find out the latest proven methods to optimize your life. It’s a mix of interviews, special co-hosts, and solo shows that you’re not going to want to miss. Hit subscribe and get ready to change your life. HLS is hosted by Robert Lufkin MD, a physician/medical school professor and New York Times Bestselling author focusing on the applied science of health and longevity through lifestyle and other tools in order to cultivate consciousness, and live life to the fullest .
'Envision a world of love, abundance, and generosity'.
Health Longevity Secrets
Stop Overdosing Ozempic! with Dr Tyna Moore
GLP-1 agonists are transforming medicine in ways few could have predicted. In this captivating conversation, naturopathic physician Dr. Tina Moore challenges the conventional narrative around these medications, revealing their potential beyond weight loss and diabetes management.
When Dr. Tina first began researching GLP-1s, she discovered a wealth of overlooked studies showing profound effects on inflammation, autoimmunity, and regenerative healing. Despite facing significant pushback from colleagues who expected a naturopathic doctor to reject pharmaceutical interventions, she couldn't ignore the compelling evidence. What she found most remarkable was how these peptides—which naturally occur in our bodies—could address multiple health issues simultaneously through their "pleiotropic" effects.
The conversation ventures into territory rarely discussed in mainstream medical circles: how lower, personalized doses might provide optimal benefits while minimizing side effects. Dr. Tina shares striking clinical observations, including her own experience with Hashimoto's thyroiditis improving dramatically on a micro-dose regimen. Patients report unexpected improvements in conditions ranging from rheumatoid arthritis to depression to addictive behaviors—benefits that appear independent of weight loss.
Most fascinating is Dr. Tina's perspective on dosing strategy. While conventional protocols typically start higher and escalate quickly, this approach risks receptor desensitization and excessive AMPK pathway activation, potentially causing disproportionate muscle loss. She advocates for "slow and low" dosing, tailored to individual needs, working alongside comprehensive lifestyle changes.
The discussion also tackles accessibility issues, comparing compounded options with brand-name medications, and speculates about future developments that might make these treatments more affordable and personalized. If you're curious about metabolic health, inflammation, or the future of medicine, this conversation offers a refreshingly nuanced perspective that cuts through polarized debates with evidence-based insights.
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Here we go. Hey, Tina, welcome to the program.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker 1:I can't wait to dive into the discussion about GLP-1 agonists. Personally, I think they're one of the most exciting drugs that are on the scene today and they're going to change the world, but I want to hear it from an expert on it. But before we do, could you just take a moment and bring people up to speed on how you got involved in this space and how you became interested in this fascinating area?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I am a naturopathic physician and a chiropractor and it's been much to many's dismay that I started talking about GLP-1 agonists, because they assume automatically that I must be some kindP-1 agonists, because they assume automatically that I must be some kind of purist who is completely anti-pharma. I don't love big pharma and what big pharma does as a conglomerate, but I certainly am not afraid. In Oregon we have full prescriptive rights and I am not afraid to use it. So my interest started on these peptides. They're peptides for one, which is really interesting and I don't think a lot of people understand. Peptides are just strings of amino acids and we make GLP-1 inside our body endogenously and they have figured out a way to tweak it so it has a longer half-life. That's simply what semaglutide is, or semaglutide, and that's what people know as Wegovian ozempic. And then we have the other ones Monjoro, which is True's Appetite, and then there's some exciting new ones coming out.
Speaker 2:However, I got into this because my podcast producer I have a podcast myself and he said we need to do an episode on Ozempic and I said dude, I don't want to talk about weight loss. I don't like talking about weight loss. I have been talking about metabolic health and strength training for a long time online, long long before I ever breached this subject and how that is. The true foundations of health is getting your metabolic health in order, making sure you build adequate muscle, eat enough protein, get sunlight all of the things that are popularized now. So it was really kind of out in left field that I even started getting on this topic, but when I was researching it for my podcast, I was shocked to find all the data that I found, all these studies going back a long time showing the impacts of GLP-1s on a multitude of body systems that have nothing to do with type 2 diabetes or weight loss. They are pleiotrophic, they work in a myriad of different ways across the body, across different systems, and we get more than one benefit, if you will.
Speaker 2:And so I started talking about it and it really just kind of took off because we were in the well, if you have followed me for a while or anyone who has, I pushed back pretty hard during 2020 and so on, hard during 2020, and so on, and the propaganda that I was seeing on this topic just a few years ago that it was a particular spring summer I think it was 2023. And it was like every headline was Ozempic is going to kill you, ozempic is killing people. All the functional medicine community seemed to jump right into it as well, and I thought this is just eerily reminiscent of 2020. Like when everybody's singing the same song.
Speaker 2:I decided to go the other way, and that's when I found all this really compelling data that these peptides are doing other things that we aren't recognizing, and perhaps using them in a much smaller dose, a much more personalized, or microdose, if you will to impact some of these systems and potentially lead to longevity, healing, anti-inflammatory mechanisms, regenerative impacts I mean really profound regenerative impacts, and my background clinically was in regenerative medicine, so that was very appealing to me. So here we are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I definitely want to get into those areas, but before we do, maybe we could just back backtrack a little bit and just kind of for for newbies out there. And, by the way, I want to give a shout out to the Dr Tina show, your podcast. I'm a huge fan. I recommend it to all our audience, and also that your content on your website, which we'll talk about at the end. I recommend it to all our audience, and also your content on your website, which we'll talk about at the end, but I recommend that as well. But maybe you could just take a moment and for our listeners who may not be familiar with GLP-1s, you mentioned they're a peptide. Is a peptide? Is that a drug? Is it what? Maybe? What are the GLP-1s? 101, maybe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so they are a Somaclutide terzepatide are in a class of drugs called GLP-1 agonists. That is a molecule that sits on our GLP-1 receptor. That's in our bodies. We make our own GLP-1 in our guts and we make it in our brain. And if it's made in the brain it's probably pretty important. But we now have these peptides that we take exogenously or from outside the body. They sit on that receptor and they make it go, so they mimic GLP-1. They don't induce its production, like maybe some herbs or different supplements people are familiar with. They actually mimic it and sit on the receptor and it goes.
Speaker 2:These are signaling peptide hormones in the body. They're in a class of. They're mostly understood for appetite regulation and they're in a class of peptides such as leptin, ghrelin. We've got a whole you know orchestra of different signaling peptide hormones in the body that were discovered mainly in the 90s and forward. Insulin is another signaling peptide hormone, as an example that the audience may be more familiar with. And so this class of drugs was I hate to say drug because it's a peptide but it was co-opted by Big Pharma and they FDA approved it for type 2 diabetes first and then, and that was being used exenatide on up. These different versions of GLP-1 agonists have been used for decades very safely and effectively. And then, more recently, the weight loss conversation came up when it got FDA approval for weight loss. That was about two years ago and that's when everybody lost their minds.
Speaker 2:And the way these peptides work in the body is that our own natural version has a very short half-life. The pharmaceutical version has a much longer half-life. So we're talking hours to days and its impacts on the body that we know. On the more traditional front for type 2 diabetes and weight loss would be appetite suppression. There's an impact in the brain. It slows down gastric motility as well. An impact in the brain. It slows down gastric motility as well.
Speaker 2:We have improved insulin signaling, improved insulin reception, because most Americans are sitting in some version of insulin resistance and metabolic dysfunction. So we've got that is the main premise it's being used for in the allopathic community at more traditional dosages. And then, when we look at the data, we've got, like I said, this whole other host of potential impacts. And then, since I've been talking about this the last year and a half, as you've seen, I'm sure I mean we get new studies out every single day. There's just so many exciting studies coming out confirming everything I've been trying to lay down out there and I've gotten a lot of pushback for it. So very interesting times and really, really compelling peptide.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so many exciting new breakthroughs. It seems like every couple of weeks there's a new FDA indication, and you know sleep apnea, and you know, sure, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is coming down the pipe. You know at the pipeline and everything. There's so many fascinating things about these drugs. One thing also fascinating about them is they are so politicized. In other words, there are two camps practically on this. I mean, people don't get politics, Aspirin isn't political, or so many other drugs.
Speaker 1:What is it about GLP-1s? Do you think that drives tribalism in people? What is it? Do you think?
Speaker 2:I've heard, so you would not believe the nonsense I've heard, because everyone sends it to me. I have a pretty large audience and when I started talking about these, I'm in a very unique situation in that I get to hear from clinicians from all over the world and from people utilizing these peptides from all over the world, and I immediately got a ton of pushback but also a ton of information that was very valuable, and so I knew I was on the right track. I had people telling me that their inflammatory arthritis was being reversed and put into just a dull roar, if you will. Rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis that's what I originally got interested in it for People reporting that they no longer needed their antidepressants once they got on these peptides. These were all unintended side effects and long before we knew that they were really going to be effective for alcohol cessation or any cessation, if you will like, it's being studied for smoking opioids, people were reporting that they quit drinking on it, that they quit smoking on it, that they quit online shopping, that they quit doom scrolling on social media. All kinds of things were being shared with me from my followers, and so I knew I was on the right track. I think it was the weight loss conversation. I think people lost their minds.
Speaker 2:I think there's a lot of obesity bias out there. I think you know I always joke that like the 1980s call they want their eat more or eat less and move more strategy back because clearly that is not working and it's just this concept that people are lazy and that they're using. People literally can't get out of that rhetoric. If I post something online about GLP-1s being studied and being shown with really compelling efficacy for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and neurodegenerative disorders, I immediately get pushed back that people just need to eat less and move more disorders. I immediately get pushed back that people just need to eat less and move more. Like they cannot separate out what I'm trying to lay down from this bias in their head and so I. That's really interesting. I think that's just people are programmed a certain way and they have a they have obesity bias.
Speaker 2:I think the other part might actually be some like top down propagandized nonsense. I don't know. I can only speculate, but there's a lot of industries that have something to lose here. Right, if people aren't smoking, big tobacco might be worried. If people aren't drinking as much, big alcohol might be worried. People aren't engaging in as much snacking anymore, and the snack food industry has already come out multiple times and said they're concerned. I wonder about the different pharmaceutical drugs that people are taking, that no one box out, like the statins and the blood pressure drugs and these lifetime drugs for a lifestyle induced illness like type 2 diabetes. The diabetes industrial complex is very profitable for a lot of industries and that's potentially being shifted and changed, so there's just a lot of industries that may have something to say here too. That might be driving the narrative.
Speaker 2:I don't know, I'm guessing, but I'm pretty good at spotting propaganda when I see it and I see a whole lot of it around this and then I hear a lot of parroting of the same nonsense and people just can't get with it. So at this point, for those who are hating on it like that's just literally intentional ignorance, there's just no way. There's too much data out there to support what it is that I'm lying down. I'm not saying everybody should be on a GLP-1, but there certainly is indication for it in a lot of different ways. That might be potentially like you said. It's just a complete game changer.
Speaker 1:And before we talk about those things, I want to go back to one thing you said that is fascinating is the central effects on sort of obsessive behaviors or addictive behaviors. You mentioned half of people decrease their alcohol use when they start these and other gambling, shopping, porn. You know whatever their, you know whatever their addictive thing is something, maybe something to do with dopamine or something in the brain. What do you think? What are some of the other effects we're going to see with that? And does that mean that you mentioned depression? There've been some things on suicide, but they don't really seem to pan out. So the central effects, at least so far, are on these addictive behaviors. And we're even seeing it with foods. Like you say, people eat less junk food, less snacking. Given the choice between a salad and a candy bar fascinating, some people, when they start using these, they take the salad. It's so interesting, the salad, it's so interesting.
Speaker 1:Well, the other thing I wanted to talk about was the obvious. The first use was type 2 diabetes and then, as you mentioned, obesity, and most people in the country are fat or overweight, you know, and and almost half of people are diabetic or pre-diabetic. So they affect a lot of people and the downstream diseases for diabetes and obesity are all the chronic diseases we mentioned. You know Alzheimer's and cancer and heart disease, stroke. You know all the killers, even mental illness. But it's interesting, I wonder Could there be a basic metabolic advantage to taking these diseases separate from obesity and type 2 diabetes? In other words, if a patient is not obese and they're not diabetic, do they have anything to gain from these? Do you think?
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely. I think that a lot of folks can stumble into insulin resistance and metabolic dysfunction, even if they're just tipping their toe in. That might be from chronic stress, it might be from getting hit from a terrible viral infection. It could be a lot of things. It could be just chronic stress that they're living in and not even realizing it, it could be toxicity, it could be exposure to mold or to latent illness or infections, you know, and they sort of ride the edge of metabolic dysfunction, even though they're doing all the things you know, all the things that we talk about, like the strength training and the nutritionally dense diet and adequate protein and adequate mindfulness, and they go for the walks and they get the circadian rhythm reset, all the things I talk about. I think that there's a place for those people and those in particular I'm thinking of women who are hitting menopause because as our estrogen wanes, we just become insulin resistant period. Like that's just how it goes, like there's nobody going to avoid that. We become more insulin resistant and less insulin sensitive as our estrogen wanes. So there's that category of people. But then there's nobody going to avoid that. We become more insulin resistant and less insulin sensitive as our estrogen, wayne. So there's that category of people. But then there's this whole other group of people who I've got a young woman who has PCOS and I've heard from a ton of clinicians now who are using it to help younger women with PCOS. We're seeing it improve fertility. We're seeing it improve fertility in men too. Is that the metabolic impact? I don't know, but we get this pleiotrophic effect where we get multitudes of mechanisms working.
Speaker 2:It seems like with these GLP-1s it's yes, any kind of weight loss or metabolic health improvement is going to be huge for all these other systems. But, like in the SELECT trial that came out on cardiovascular disease, that was obese and overweight, middle-aged people who did not have type two diabetes, although you and I could argue they were probably on their way to type two diabetes. Right, it was just a matter of time when their fat decided to go rogue. But they found a 20% reduction in cardiovascular outcomes, which is amazing. And so everybody griped and said, oh well, novo Nordisk put on that study so it could be biased. Okay, fair. And also, you know, when people lose weight, of course their cardiovascular health is going to improve. And yeah, fair, that's totally fair and true. But also they looked at that data sometime later and found that those impacts were independent of the weight loss and the metabolic improvement. So it's multifactorial and I think that we can look at the impacts these peptides have in the brain. We can look at the impacts they have in different organ systems.
Speaker 2:I, for instance, have had Hashimoto's for as long as I can remember. Hashimoto's thyroiditis that's autoimmune low thyroid. For your listeners I'm sure a lot of your listeners probably have Hashimoto's I have been taking two grains of armor thyroid a day for decades like a super long time. I've been using two grains of armor thyroid. Sometimes, depending on the season, I might go back to one, but generally it's about two grains. I can only handle half a grain of armor thyroid now and that's kind of every other day is where I'm at.
Speaker 2:That is the impact that doing really small doses of GLP-1s have had on me over the last nine months or gosh longer, probably like a year at this point. So they're healing, they're regenerative and they're anti-inflammatory. They sit on our immune cells. They have a profound anti-inflammatory impact and they have regenerative properties and we're seeing this in the data in the kidneys, in the pancreas, in the heart. We're seeing regenerative properties and I think that that just we don't have anything else like this. I mean, that's just mind blowing to me. So, yes, I think there's an application, potentially for a lot of different reasons.
Speaker 1:Yeah, does that answer your question? Yeah, it sure does. The whole thing with insulin resistance there's a school of thought that I happen to believe in also that most of us are on the path to insulin resistance as we get older, certainly, and type 2 diabetes if we live long enough, you know, if we don't do something else. So there's a clear advantage there. You mentioned the inflammation reduction, decreasing inflammation, independent of obesity and type 2 diabetes. That is a huge, huge thing. So you mentioned in the regenerative properties as well, and you mentioned a few diseases that all kind of fall under the chronic metabolic progressive diseases.
Speaker 1:And you know we've heard about a little bit about Alzheimer's disease. You know there's some suggestive evidence that this is, you know, for Alzheimer's disease. What do you see? What other diseases do you think are going to be in the future? Is it going to be basically all the metabolic diseases that are out there, diseases that you know were that that are out there, that when we improve our metabolic health with with GLP ones or or light and or lifestyle, all these diseases decrease? So do you anticipate that with GLP ones we're going to continue to kind of expand the, the indications for them and and all?
Speaker 1:to other other, all the diseases, even cancer, you know, and those things I mean. It's speculation, of course. Until the evidence comes in, we won't know.
Speaker 2:But we have supportive data. It's correlative. It's not causative for cancer, but we just had a study come out this past year, two studies one showing a significant decrease in colon cancer correlative, those who were on GLP-1s just happened to have a lower decrease in colon cancer. Correlative, those who were on GLP ones just happened to have a lower rate of colon cancer. And then another showing a decrease in 10 of the 13 obesity driven cancers. So I think it was the same group who did those studies. So that's really interesting. And then we have actually have a causative study on COVID. Yes, 100% improving metabolic health will improve outcomes with any kind of viral illness right across the board. Like we know that, and that was what I was trying to preach back in 2020. And I was getting my ass handed to me because people didn't want to hear it, but I was like metabolic health is driving this pandemic at its core, right. That's why it's hitting the US so hard and all the other countries where metabolic disease is so prevalent, right. And then we had one study in the Journal of Diabetes that came out in 2021. We had multiple studies come out in 2021 showing protective benefits from GLP-1s against COVID, which I think is like I wonder why that was never shared, you know, but this one in particular. They actually gave type 2 diabetics who entered hospital with COVID. They gave them semaclutide it, like they actually administered it in the hospital. They had an 80% 80% reduction in ICU admission and death and we never heard about it. So was it a plea you know like? Was it a multitude of impacts? Was it the anti inflammatory impact? Was it the cardiovascular protection? There were multiple doctors who wrote into the medical journals that I found sharing. Like we have a theory that because these are so protective to the cardiovascular system, they might be protective against you know, but we just didn't hear about it. And at the end of the day, was it because it improved metabolic health in these folks or was it because it actually had a direct impact on keeping inflammation low and keeping the immune system more regulated? I don't know. I don't know. We need more studies.
Speaker 2:But I think that the long term outcomes for a lot of metabolic induced illness, like you said, is really promising, although I gotta say and I know you are down with this too but this isn't a magic bullet and the doses I'm talking about are quite small, or as small as possible, as small as necessary to get the results we want. And you can't maintain that and have it work for very long if you're not doing all the other things. So I joke and, if I can curse, I call it the fuck around and find out peptide, because when you get on it it modulates your immune system so well. You're like I can eat gluten again, I can drink wine and I'm okay, like all the things I couldn't do anymore. I was like I can do that.
Speaker 2:Well, guess what? It doesn't work very long if you're not living as clean as you possibly could. So you really have to take that into consideration, and what I believe they're doing is providing a window of opportunity for people to get on that path of wellness if they're not already on it. If they're already on it, it's a really nice adjunctive therapy. Along with all the things like the hormone replacement therapy. There's other peptides that we utilize. But if people aren't on the path to optimalally you know, optimal metabolic health, then this gives them a leg up and an opportunity to start, and that's why they feel so good when they start it. But it doesn't last forever if they're not putting in the work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think you and I are both on the same page about this, is it's not. It's not a silver bullet in itself. It needs to be done with lifestyle changes. And if people just take this drug and they don't change their lifestyle, fine, they'll eat less, but they'll eat less junk food, they'll lose weight, they'll lose muscle, they'll you know, they'll just be a thin, metabolically unhealthy person, etc. Etc. So, but for a lot of people, for the reasons we've talked about, this can be the stepping stone to a healthy lifestyle. You know that maybe they have less, you know less dopamine driven urges. It's easier to control their lifestyle and it gives them the leg up they can get started and then going on.
Speaker 1:And you've been an advocate for low dose, low dose in certain situations with this. And what do you think about chronic use of this drug or any drug I mean, with like down-regulating receptors? You know we're on this for life. We're taking it a weekly dose now Most people, you know. Do you think the future is, how's that going to pan out? Are we going to switch to a daily dose that we take it? It's more physiologic, or? But even the I guess, glp ones are so short acting it's hard to imagine even a daily dose would be physiologic necessarily, because they really just respond to food, I mean in one sense. But what are your thoughts on that? Low dosing and receptor, receptor desensitization, etc.
Speaker 2:That's why I am such a fan of keeping the dose as low as possible and for a more personalized dosing strategy. I mistakenly called it microdosing way back when I started talking about this, and I don't think that's actually right, because the standard starting dose might be the right dose. For somebody, that might be the right low dose or personalized dose, and other people like myself can only tolerate a tiny little bit. I think receptor sensitivity is huge, and if you look at some of the folks that have been on this for a while I don't know about you and your patients, but I've looked at some of my friends and some of the folks that I know that really ramped up to a high dose very quickly. They are not reaping the benefits of it as much as they were six months ago. Right, they're starting to get some receptor desensitivity and for your audience, what that means is when you bombard a cell like insulin resistance is a great example you bombard a cell with something, it will start to cleave off its receptors and it won't hear it as well, and so I am worried about that. I also think that these peptides at high doses I'm a little bit concerned. You know they drive the AMPK pathway, which is really awesome when your poor mitochondria need a boost and you need a little bit of that like, ah, let's go, but that's I don't want to use the word catabolic, but that's like a breakdown pathway. And mTOR, on the other side, is what we balance that out with, is the pathway of building and muscle building, and we need mTOR. And the longevity community really thinks that the driving the AMPK pathway is the panacea to living to 120. But it's not because we need mTOR too. If we want muscle mass right, if we want adequate muscle mass, we just don't want high mTOR activation, because that's how you get to cancer. There's the sweet spots in the middle. I think that high doses of this are ultimately inducing atrophy is my hypothesis. This is and I've got some data to support this but at high doses, number one we've got the potential for muscle loss, lean mass loss across the board. I think that's the high dose atrophy.
Speaker 2:And you take someone who's metabolically compromised already. They start on this. They feel amazing and then all of a sudden they start looking like melted candles. Right, they also. They just overdo it. They go too high, too fast and they start looking like a melted candle and they've lost all the muscle they had. That is a brittle metabolic disaster. Like those people are worse off than when they started.
Speaker 2:And then we've got a little bit of data showing that it may actually slow, like shut down our adipose drive stem cells from kicking on and doing their thing.
Speaker 2:So that's concerning. And we've got the one study that just came out where they blasted these poor mice with high, high, high doses in a very short amount of time and induced an extreme amount of weight loss in a very short amount of time. But then they looked and saw that their cardiac cells had shrunk and had atrophy, and you've probably heard about that and everyone on the internet is like it causes heart damage. No, it was in mice that got way overdosed. And so I think that the dose is really individual for the recipient, for the patient sitting in front of us, and that might be a much lower dose or they might need a little bit more, but in any case I still want to keep that dose as low as possible to get the outcomes we're looking for, because I don't want to get into this extreme AMPK pathway domination. That's ultimately not how you could get through life with you know good, optimal health.
Speaker 1:So if someone we've talked about the applications for this beyond obesity and people who maybe aren't necessarily obese and people who aren't necessarily type two diabetic yet, they may be on the road to insulin resistance. But so for people who want to do this, you know, off label, let's say, for longevity and metabolic wellness and to help there, what kind of markers should they follow or what should they look for Because it's not like, it's not like, oh, I'm going to lose a pound a week. That's good. You know they don't want to do that. Do you follow their inflammation markers or are there any, any guidance there?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I've got some folks on it who didn't really have metabolic compromise. They may be. I wish I had a term for it. It's the ones who sort of ride the edge forever. You know what I mean. You know what I mean. You know what I mean. It's usually guys and they just sort of ride the edge of their, their labs to everyone else would be fine. But when I put them all together, I'm looking at it functionally and I'm like you're sitting on the edge of metabolic dysfunction. And they had, you know, maybe a difficult time with COVID because they've got and they've usually got some a little bit of high blood pressure, little bit of, you know, high insulin, little bit of elevated hemoglobin A1C, little bit of elevation in their C-reactive protein, that kind of thing. And so for those folks, all those markers seem to be dropping right back into normal, which is awesome, like into a very good zone. So we can just straight up look at that and I think that just takes a discerning eye. Like you and I have more of a functional medicine approach of like we have different parameters, we don't look at what the lab reports is normal. We've got much tighter parameters, and so to see those go back into my little tight parameters makes me happy.
Speaker 2:And then really just symptom resolution. And so for myself, I have psoriasis and I have psoriatic arthritis, so my psoriasis rears its head and my psoriatic arthritis rears its head, so I get symptom relief. For PCOS patients, they I will say that sometimes women will report that their menses gets thrown off for a couple months, but it usually starts to regulate and when it does, it regulates even better, like it's, becomes much more normal. They're not bleeding like you know a crime scene every month. They might have resolution of acne I've seen that and folks, I've heard about that from many of my followers improvement in mood, improvement in overall affect, the lights being on. A lot of people reporting just resolution of brain fog, like all of a sudden, like whoo, my lights are on, I'm back, I'm back. Middle-aged women saying I'm back to before perimenopause and menopause started making my brain go sideways. Younger people reporting just improved ability to focus. I won't say treating ADHD by any means, but like definitely improving ADHD symptoms.
Speaker 2:And then I will say that something I am concerned about I think it was Mark Andreessen said this on the Joe Rogan podcast and I was like man, he's not wrong, it is playing on dopaminergic pathways. And imagine a society of people who are being put on such high doses of this that they just become complacent, right right, like you literally can dose somebody into a flat affect, and I've seen this and I've heard about this. So I've had women message me and say I've lost my libido. My husband, for instance, will just sort of the tiniest little bit too much and he doesn't want to eat, he doesn't want food, he doesn't want sex, he doesn't want anything, he doesn't want, he wants nothing. So and that's a tiny little bit, so I think there's a potential concern of a whole society of people who are being dosed into compliance, and I will say I think they can do that if you dose too high. So it's again really important to me that I get this message out about keeping dosages as low as possible yeah, that's a great point.
Speaker 1:It's like the story that people talk about in the restaurant business. As more and more people take this, you know friends would go out to dinner. They go to a restaurant and they sit there and they go. I'm really not hungry, I'll just, you know, I'll just have a soda, or you know, I mean carbonated water or something, and you know, and it's just it. Really it's subtle effects on behavior like that. It's really fascinating. I want to ask one thing about your position on compounding versus buying, purchasing from a main line, one of the main manufacturers, and what are the differences, what are the strengths and weaknesses on that?
Speaker 2:I love compounding pharmacies. I've been using them since I got my license in 2008. And I didn't realize that doctors didn't use them. I maybe was just in a bubble here up here in the Pacific Northwest of you know, the land of naturopathic physicians and compounding pharmacies, so I didn't realize it was such a contentious topic and a lot since. I mean, I have never seen the medical community come down on the compounding pharmacies the way I have in the past couple years with this peptide in particular.
Speaker 2:It's very interesting because prior to that, I subscribed to all of these medical New England Journal of Medicine, jama, medscape. I subscribed to all of them, I read all of them and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the story turned that compounding pharmacies were evil and dangerous. And I'm like, really, and when you read the article, they give you a couple of examples of people who bought basically like black market peptides or whatever gray market if you will, and not at all from the compounding pharmacies. And then at the very end it's like, well, we've never actually had any real problems with the compounding pharmacy. It was like user error or prescriber error, which can happen with anything. So the compounding version comes in a vial and you have to pull it up yourself. And the compounding pharmacies I like all seem to have no problems and lots, and I mean who knows how many prescriptions are coming out of them. But a lot of my colleagues are using the same pharmacies and they all seem fine and good. So we can play with the dose. And that's where I got this idea of like what if we just gave a more personalized approach for people to apply off label, which is legal, to all these other things that I? You know all the conditions and see if they could shift? I'm never looking to cure, prevent, treat or cure anything. I'm looking to shift the hormonal milieu, shift the homeostasis so that the body takes care of itself. Right, that's naturopathic medicine.
Speaker 2:And then the brand name versions are pens and they're pre-filled, and they're by big pharma companies and they're pre-filled, and the lowest dose that they come in is, I have found, could be potentially way too high for some people.
Speaker 2:And so my argument to them is make a pen with a lower dose, lower starting dose, like I don't see why that's a problem. I'm not saying don't use them because, like I said at the beginning, that standard starting dose might be the appropriate dose for that individual because we all respond differently, and this is very individualized medicine that I practice. But I also know many people who started on the standard pen dose and got violently ill and could not continue with it or were unable to. You know, they were fine for a minute until it started building up in their system and then they were not fine, and so my argument is let's make a pen that starts at a lower dose so that people, more people can access this. Even if it is very specifically for type 2 diabetes and obesity, some of those folks still might need to start at a lower dose, and I see no problem with either. I don't have a preference Whatever is affordable that people can get their hands on. I just find that the pens sometimes make it difficult to do a more personalized strategy.
Speaker 1:So yeah, to summarize, either is a good source, but if you want to have control over the dose and smaller doses and variable doses, smaller interval increments, compounding is the way to go, and certainly the price is lower in many cases for compounding than otherwise there.
Speaker 2:And ZepBound. We have ZepBound in the vial now, so ZepBound has come out in a vial form, so I think that that's a really great option for people, especially if their insurance will cover it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah for sure. This is not a political channel, but there's a lot of changes in going on in our country now as far as healthcare leadership, we have on a national political level something I thought I'd never hear people talking about seed oils and chronic disease and metabolic health and insulin resistance on a national political stage. And you know whether it's Republicans or Democrats and I love my Republican friends, I love my Democrat friends but why weren't we doing this, you know, in the last five presidential administrations?
Speaker 2:I don't know, I'm tired. This silver hair is real Like. I have been in this, I know I look young, but man, I've been in this a long time and I'm tired and I'm very glad this is happening, but I have a little bit of shell shock from all of it, to be honest.
Speaker 1:If you had a magic wand, what are you most excited about potential change that government could implement to make our health better? With longevity, wellness, lifestyle, those sorts of things? Anything on your short wish list? Because they've been talking about doing a lot of things.
Speaker 2:Transparency. I'm excited that the topic of seed oils and red dye is coming up, but I don't think that's the root cause. I think the root cause really is education, number one. I think children need to be taught how to eat and need to learn basic nutrition and not government subsidized nutrition, but real nutrition, which I have a different opinion on. You know the, the pyramid, the food pyramid and the plate.
Speaker 2:But I think I I think transparency. I think we need transparency in the vaccine industry. We need transparency in the pharmaceutical industry, we need transparency in the food industry. We need to get big pharma, big food and big agriculture out of bed with, you know, congress and and politics, and I, I just think that the american public, I just think that the American public. We also have a, in my opinion, intentional dumbing down of Americans. Our school programs are atrocious, our kids can't read and do math anymore and mass I'm from Oregon where this has been going on a long time and if you have a population that's not well educated, they can't ask discerning questions right. They're not critical thinkers by nature because they don't have enough information in their brain to ask the hard questions. So I think that all just needs an overhaul. I think if we start there and you really start teaching people basic nutrition, basic pathophysiology, how their bodies work, how metabolic health works, kids know what's up and will make better choices and kids will educate their parents. But that's my lofty vision for it all.
Speaker 1:I love it. Well, I want to be sensitive of your time. Maybe one last thought about GLP-1s in five years. What are we going to be talking about? What is the world going to look like with this class of drugs then? Do you think if you could look in a crystal ball?
Speaker 2:I think we're going to have way more options. So there's really exciting studies in the pipeline and so I think all the big pharma companies are going to get involved and try to one-up each other. I think that's going to drive the price down significantly. If you look at I think it was a Harvard, a woman out of Harvard a few, maybe a year ago or less she did a study showing that producing a month's supply costs about five to $7.
Speaker 2:And you can buy it in the UK for a hundred something. You can buy it in Canada for a hundred something dollars. You can buy it in Germany for less. You can buy it in Canada for 100 something dollars. You can buy it in Germany for less. You can buy it in the country of origin. You know Denmark, where it's made for less, and over here we're getting hosed at around $1,000 a month. It's ridiculous. So that's for the brand name. So I think that's going to change drastically. I think we're going to see pill versions, oral versions, potentially even a month long injection injection who knows? I think everybody's going to try to one-up each other. You had mentioned offline retatrutide or I don't ever know. That's the only way I know how to pronounce it. That one's a hard. It reminds me of ratatouille.
Speaker 1:Ratatouille, that's a triple agonist.
Speaker 2:I think that's a more potent. I think that might be more applicable for folks who really do have some blood sugar dysregulation. That's more hardcore, but the you know the bro science peptide community is talking about that being much more phenomenal for weight loss and actually potentially and I think this is true at low, low doses. In my community of folks who have a lot of muscle mass, we're all reporting a bit of an anabolic impact at very low doses, and at high doses I think it might be more catabolic, as I mentioned, or more inducing of atrophy. So I think they're going to figure that out and, I think, more doctors.
Speaker 2:The reason I'm so passionate about this is because I want the public to know more. I want them to demand their doctors do better, and I want doctors to actually just get on the tip and stop cranking people's dose up into oblivion and start actually helping them get. They don't have to do all the work themselves, but they need to be able to help patients get. The community, the accountability, the strength training, the nutritional advice like this all needs to go with it, and so I'm hoping to create enough disruption that doctors start listening and realizing this is not a one shot wonder. This is not monotherapy, and cranking up a GLP-1 is not the solution for our obesity crisis.
Speaker 1:What's the? Could you just amplify one thing about the anabolic effect at very low doses? How low the dose and what's the anabolic effect?
Speaker 2:I don't know. So we have studies. We have one study in elderly males, humans, showing that GLP-1s actually. So there's multiple studies showing potential beneficial impact on muscle not catabolic but beneficial impact on muscle and in this group they showed hyperperfusion of the muscles, meaning they're going to be able to get more nutrients, more amino acids, to those muscles which should be driving muscle protein synthesis. So that's the anabolic potential.
Speaker 2:Anabolic not like a testosterone anabolic impact, but an actual health of the muscles, joints, tendons, ligaments, soft tissue, bone, to actually help them because it's regenerative right at the end of the day. And so that's where I get my term of anabolic. And again, waking up the mitochondria in the area by driving that AMPK pathway and getting the tissues healthier and more receptive to what they're supposed to be doing, versus taking high, high doses of it could potentially be, you know, atrophying tissues, especially if people go too fast. I'm really for a slow and low, like slow, as slow as humanly possible. Slow and low seems to get the job done. But everybody wants a super fast outcome and so they want to crank it up, and I think that's where we're seeing a lot of the troubles.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Well, is there anything we didn't talk about today or any question I didn't ask you yet?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, there's, you know, there's the real concerns. I will say I don't think everybody should. This is not the miracle for everyone. Some people cannot tolerate it. There are real concerns. There are real concerns with biliary issues and pancreatitis and gastroparesis, but all of those have mechanisms that are very explainable. I talk about this.
Speaker 2:I have a free four-part video series and I talk about that in one of the modules. In one of the videos I go into detail on that the myth of the thyroid cancer, the reasons that I think the pancreatitis and the gastroparesis are happening and how to avoid that. So those are real concerns. I will say that. And also, obviously, this should be done under the guidance of a doctor who knows what they're doing. This is not try to figure it out by yourself.
Speaker 2:I know a lot of people can get these off of different websites and then I'm hearing from them and they're making a mess out of things. And this is, this is but one tool in a comprehensive toolbox, and I talk about that toolbox inside that free video series and then it goes. It moves on to a course for purchase if people want more. So I'll leave it at that, because and I have a whole bunch of podcast episodes on it. I've got like 12 or 13 episodes, I think, at this point over on the Dr Tina show.
Speaker 2:All that can be found on my website at drtinacom. It's D R T Y N A and um, yeah, I mean, I just want people to get educated and I'm also always open to, I'm constantly studying this, so I appreciate when people send me the information that is like contrary or potentially some concerns. I had a gentleman the other day talk to me about how his daughter had an anaphylactic reaction to GLP-1. So I want all the information because I want to continue to educate people on them with as much honesty and transparency as I can.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I highly recommend Dr Tina's website and her course. I took your four-week course. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was wonderful online and I encourage everyone to do that if they want to learn about GLP-1s. It's very, very approachable. It just really spells it out, and then you have that follow-up course if you want to do a super deep dive, which is really really great too. Well, thanks so much, dr. Really really great too, so well thanks. Thanks so much, dr Tina, for being on the show today, and it's been a real pleasure Great conversation. And thanks also so much for all the all the wonderful work you do.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. It was so fun to be here. Thanks for having me.