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GLP-1 Medications: Benefits, Risks & What You Need to Know

November 26, 2025 • Linda Brown, MPT • Season 1 • Episode 33

0:00 | 19:14

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This week, as we step into the holiday season, we're discussing something millions of people use, but few fully understand: GLP-1 medications, such as Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro.

In this episode, we break down what GLP-1 actually is, how it works in the body, and why so many people are drawn to its rapid weight loss effects. I discuss how GLP-1s influence insulin, glucagon, appetite, cravings, and blood sugar regulation, and why their longer medication half-life creates such powerful results.

We explore the benefits of GLP-1s, including improved glucose control, weight reduction, lower inflammation, better cardiovascular markers, and increased confidence. But we also look closely at the risks, from GI symptoms and gallbladder issues to nutrient deficiencies, long-term dependency, and the significant concern of sarcopenia, or muscle loss, an issue at the heart of my dissertation.

Finally, I share practical steps to protect your health while on GLP-1s, including resistance training, protein intake, addressing root causes, tracking your progress, and obtaining baseline assessments of muscle and body composition.

Tune in to learn, reflect, and make empowered decisions for your health—because this is a journey, not a quick fix. Stay healthy, California!

Thank you for listening to Healthy California.

If you have tried all my suggestions and are still having trouble with your health, and would like an appointment with me, please email me, text, or call me via the contact information below.

My contact:

Linda Brown, MPT, Doctoral Candidate Functional Nutrition

916-426-2543

linda@heal-throughfood.com

www.heal-throughfood.com

Hello, and welcome to Healthy California Podcast.

My name is Linda Brown, and I am the host of Healthy California, where my goal is to help educate you on your daily choices so we all can become healthy.

I believe you, your family, your neighbor, and your community are all looking for better ways and simple ways to return to being healthy.

Many of you have health issues or have family that's going through tough times that seemingly have no answers.

It's frustrating.

There are questions about health, environment, foods, exercise, and lifestyle, and it can be all overwhelming.

And who do you believe? And where's the science behind it?

This podcast will unravel the mystery behind being unhealthy and talk about little things that we can do in our lives to make a positive change in our health from all angles.

So to be healthy, we need to have physical health, mental health, environmental health, financial and social health, and of course, spiritual health.

Let's answer some of these questions to get healthy.

What good is just listening to a podcast?

I will give you resources as well, ways to take steps and make positive changes in your life to becoming healthy.

This is a journey, not an assignment. So be kind to yourself.

Okay, welcome back, California.

This is Linda Brown, your physical therapist and functional nutritionist here in California.

This week, we are entering into the holiday season.

So I thought that this would be a good time to talk about GLP-1 medication.

There are so many people taking GLP-1 medication like Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and I want to define what a GLP-1 is and go over the benefits and the risks, and then maybe that will also help us make better decisions as we go into the holiday season.

So let's figure out what a GLP-1 is, first of all.

So a GLP-1 stands for glucagon-like peptide, and it's a peptide hormone produced in your gut after you eat.

So it's actually made in your gut.

It helps regulate blood sugar by stimulating the release of insulin.

And remember, insulin is a hormone that decreases our blood sugar.

So this GLP-1 helps regulate blood sugar by stimulating insulin release and suppressing glucagon.

So glucagon and insulin are negative feedback.

So insulin is going to decrease your blood sugar and then glucagon is going to increase your blood sugar so that it doesn't, your blood sugar doesn't go too high or too low.

So they work off of each other.

But glucagon-like peptide, GLP, does not act like glucagon.

It actually kind of does the opposite.

But the side effects of taking a GLP-1 is the reason why we take it.

We take GLP-1s more often for its side effects, not for its original intent, which was to reduce blood sugar and help with diabetes.

But a side effect was rapid weight loss.

So that's why people are taking it now, is to reduce weight, and that happens pretty fast.

And the GLP-1 also works on the hypothalamus in the brain and reduces hunger or cravings, which, you know, that's a big deal because a lot of times we can't control our cravings or our hunger.

It's very strong.

So our natural GLP-1 is broken down in minutes,

But medications have a longer half-life, so that's why we can take a medication and it works because of the longer half-life.

So why is all this important?

Well, this is important because so many people are taking this medication because of the rapid weight loss without knowing exactly what the long-term effects might be.

So that's what we'll be talking about today.

There are not really any studies that are long-term studies because this medication really hasn't been out that long to have enough data on the long-term effects of this medication or even of just rapid weight loss.

That means if you're on this medication, you're part of that discovery process of figuring out what's going to happen, you know, 10, 20 years from now.

So let's go over the pros and cons of a GLP-1.

Let's go over the pros first. The benefits of a rapid weight loss.

Well, you have the obvious, which is decreased weight.

And with decreased weight, you have improved glucose control.

You have decreased inflammation that leads to chronic disease like cardiovascular disease.

Remember, inflammation in the body leads to weight gain.

And weight gain on your body leads to inflammation.

So with rapid weight loss, we are decreasing the inflammation because we're decreasing the fat.

But we're not necessarily decreasing the root cause of the inflammation to begin with.

Another pro is that we get the benefits that come along with just losing weight, like lower blood pressure, lower triglycerides,

easier on the joints, less pain, just all the benefits that come with having less weight on your frame.

We also may improve liver function because we're reducing the non-alcoholic fatty liver disease because even the fat inside the liver is decreasing.

And then just feeling more confident.

When we have less fat on our body, we are more confident, we have more energy, we get out and we do more things.

So those are all the benefits of rapid weight loss.

So there are a lot of benefits.

But let's talk about some of the cons.

The obvious ones are the abdominal discomfort.

But only 40% of people experience GI symptoms.

And for some people, the benefits outweigh the risk.

And then also for a lot of people who aren't healthy, they don't have a healthy gut, so they have abdominal discomfort anyway.

And so increased abdominal discomfort a lot of times isn't that big of a deal to some people.

And then another con would be there are some issues like pancreatitis and gallstones.

Now remember, the pancreas is what releases the insulin.

So that could be inflamed, the pancreas could get inflamed.

and the gallbladder kind of hangs off that liver. So if the liver is working overtime, or if the liver is not healthy, it may form gallstones.

But also, some people could have been headed down that road already of having pancreatitis or gallstones.

Another con is on the label is thyroid carcinoma, thyroid cancer.

They found it in rodents, but again, there's not enough long-term studies on humans to know if this will happen in humans.

So if you have a family history of thyroid cancer, just be cautious about taking a GLP-1.

Also, a con is not addressing the root cause of why you have increased weight to begin with isn't addressed.

There's a lot of reasons someone might have increased fat on their frame, and that could be toxicity that we're holding onto, molds, poor gut health, and adverse childhood experiences.

There's a lot of different reasons people have increased weight.

What I see is poor gut health is one of the main reasons, and actually toxicity.

People are living in a toxic environment and don't realize what it's doing to their body.

And the liver can't get rid of the toxins fast enough.

So that's another con.

Is the root cause of why you had increased weight to begin with isn't being addressed.

Also a big one, which is what I'm doing my dissertation on as we speak, is this thing called sarcopenia.

Sarcopenia means muscle wasting.

And there was a recent study by Kong et al. this year, 2025, that demonstrates that glucose does not efficiently enter the cell, which then the cell is starved.

And insulin is supposed to help glucose out of the blood and into the cell.

So that's what insulin does.

We lower our blood sugar because it comes out of the blood and enters into the cell.

So with the GLP-1, Kong has demonstrated that the transporter on the cell membrane is actually inhibited and the blood sugar doesn't actually get into the cell and the cell ends up actually starving.

And that's why a lot of people feel weak when they work out because they just don't have the energy in the cell to feed their cell.

This lack of energy coming into the cell contributes to muscle wasting or sarcopenia.

If you think about it, 80% of our blood glucose goes to our muscle.

And if we don't have any muscle, which is what sarcopenia is, muscle wasting, if we don't have any muscle, then where's that blood sugar going?

And typically it would be stored as fat.

So your body's working pretty hard to try to maintain a lower weight and we're starving the cells.

And again, this may be okay because we do fasting and that's okay, but there's just not a lot of long-term studies done yet.

And if you have muscle wasting or sarcopenia, this is leading you down a road to fractures, to falls.

If you don't have enough muscle on you and you trip, you're not going to be able to catch yourself or you're not going to be able to recover fast enough and then you're going to fall and fracture your bone.

So sarcopenia is going to lead to fractures.

There's studies on that as well.

Another con is nutrient deficiencies.

A lot of times when we have a lot of weight on this to begin with, we don't have a lot of healthy nutrients in our body anyways.

But then you take a GLP-1 and you don't eat because you don't have the appetite and then you end up starving even more or getting at least nutrient deficiency and all the diseases that come along with nutrient deficiencies.

So that's something to be careful of.

And then lastly, it is hard to wean yourself off these GLP-1s if you've been on it for a long time, or if you keep increasing your GLP-1 medication, because your body will adapt and then the doctor will want to give you more.

So the more you're taking, the harder it is going to be to wean off, and then you're going to gain that weight back.

So you need to address the reasons why you have increased weight on your body to begin with.

And I can help you with that.

Or a functional nutritionist, functional medicine doctor can help you with that.

Not your primary care, because they're going to give you GLP-1s, but someone to help you find the root cause.

That's the question of the century, though, right?

That's what we've been dealing with for a long time.

Many, many people have been dealing with that for so long.

They reach for a GLP-1.

And I'm not saying that's good or bad.

I'm just giving you the pros and the cons so that you can weigh that out for yourself.

Okay, how does this affect you, and then what do you do about it?

Well, in my opinion, you need to address the root cause of your increased weight to begin with.

To know what the root cause is will also help you work on that while you are on your GLP-1, or it may help you make the decision to work on that instead of a GLP-1, or work on it before.

So to address the root cause, again,

It could be an adverse childhood experience.

It could be poor gut health.

It could be a toxic environment.

It could be mold.

There's a lot of different reasons.

You also need to keep moving. You need to keep exercising.

You need to stimulate the blood sugar to get into your cells.

And you need to keep resistance training.

That should be priority.

Resistance training is going to keep you from getting sarcopenia or muscle wasting.

You need to be doing resistance training.

You need to be aware of what you eat.

You need to be eating a good quality protein, at least 1/2 a gram per pound of body weight.

So if you are 200 pounds, that would be 100 grams of protein.

You need to be more conscious about eating the rainbow, all these different colored fruits and vegetables, so that you're getting all the nutrients that you can.

Because again, the more GLP-1 medication you're on, the harder it's going to be to come off.

And while you are on that medication, if you are not as hungry, you're going to decrease your healthy nutrient intake.

Maybe start a journal, a journal on your journey.

You know, if you have a lot of weight to lose and you're taking a GLP-1, maybe journal that journey.

It's going to be a big journey for you and it's going to be exciting on the other side.

But journaling is also good because if you have side effects,

You want to write that down.

If you are, if your attitude is changing, you're going to write that down, good or bad.

If your sleep is affected, there's all these different things that you might want to write down, good or bad.

Like if your pain goes away, you need to note that.

If you have increased pain, you need to note that as well.

So start a journal on your journey.

What else can you do about it?

You need to get a baseline of your body composition like a DEXA scan or an In-Body body comp.

Have your physical therapist do a grip strength.

A grip strength is a standard test for measuring whether you're going to maintain your muscle or not.

So have your physical therapist do a grip strength as a baseline so that you can start monitoring that over the years if you're on GLP-1s long-term.

And then talk to your physical therapist or a personal trainer on how to maintain muscle strength because you do not want to lose muscle.

The amount of muscle on your body is a great determiner of longevity.

So the more muscle you have on you, the longer you will live.

And there is this thing called skinny fat.

So you can lose a lot of weight and be skinny, but if you have no muscle on you, would be considered skinny fat.

So you can have, you can be very thin, but not have any muscle on you.

And that is not healthy either.

You need to have muscle on you.

need to prevent sarcopenia, which is muscle wasting, so that you don't fall and get a fracture.

And having muscle on you, there's a lot of good reasons to have muscle on you.

And muscles make anti-inflammatory molecules that prevent disease, that prevent pain.

So there are many reasons to keep muscle on your body.

It's so important that that's what I'm doing my dissertation on, because there's just not enough education on that for people who are taking GLP-1s.

So I want to end with another thought, and my thought is another Bible verse.

And this one is from 2 Timothy 1, 7, and it says,

For God gave us a spirit, not of fear, but of power and love and self-control.

And of course, when we think of dieting or weight loss, the first thing that stands out in that verse is self-control.

This verse says, God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power, love, and self-control.

So it's not a focus of whether we have self-control or not.

I think it's more the fact that we need to love ourselves, we need to not be afraid, and then the self-control will come.

Because I don't think that we love ourselves as much as we should.

And I'm not saying love ourselves by being selfish or us first or take a bunch of selfies.

I mean love ourselves in the sense that we need to just love exactly who we are, be comfortable in our own bodies, and just love the essence of ourselves because God created us perfectly.

And to know that, I think, is power in itself.

So that's where I'm going to end this, and I hope that you stay healthy, California.

Thank you for joining me today.

I hope you learned something new.

Health care and treatment should focus on being proactive and preventative, emphasizing the importance of addressing the root cause of a disease or illness.

While the U.S. has an excellent trauma medicine system, no helping patients when problems arise, our goals should be to prevent disease before they happen.

That's why this podcast is so important to me.

If you're needing further guidance or have questions on a particular matter, you can find my contact information in the show notes where you can set up a 15-minute consultation.

I also recommend you adding a functional nutritionist, a functional medicine practitioner, and a physical therapist to your healthcare team.

This podcast reflects my personal opinions based on extensive research and education.

It is not intended for medical diagnosis or treatment and should never replace the advice from your doctor or other healthcare professionals.

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This is a journey, not a quick fix, so be kind to yourself, and I'll be there to help.