SPEAKER_01 0:14

So millions of people are now using weight loss jabs and they're being called a miracle. But what's interesting is almost nobody seems to be talking about what happens after the weight comes off. And look, we get it, because when it feels like your body's working against you, you know, nothing you've tried seems to stick, something that's finally promising fast, maybe even effortless results is incredibly appealing. But here's what we're seeing. People are starting these medications without being given the full picture, without understanding how they actually work, and without a clear plan for what happens in the long term. So in today's episode of Empower Your Menopause, we're going to break down why GLP1 injections or weight loss jabs, depending on how you've heard them described, are everywhere right now and what you actually need to know before making the decision about whether to use them. We're not going into the hype and we're not fear-mongering here. We just want to provide you with some clarity. So welcome back. I'm Julie Medacy, Master Health Coach.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

And I'm James Ellis, functional nutritionist.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

So this episode is not going to be us promoting for or against these medications. It's about making fully informed decisions because you really deserve more than a quick fix. You deserve to understand your body and what it actually needs to work well in the long term. So, James, do you want to start out by talking a little bit about what these drugs are?

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Yeah, well, let's maybe even take it further back than that and let's talk about what GLP1 actually is. So people understand what it is. Because I was quite surprised, you know, when you're in the health industry, the conversation about these is all over the place at the moment. Everybody's talking about them. People are talking about them colloquially on the streets, but using the term weight loss jabs. And I was quite surprised yesterday when I did a reel and I talked about GLP1. Somebody said to me, What's GLP1? I don't even know what it is. So yeah, it's helpful to actually take it back to that kind of level, right? So it's a hormone, it's produced naturally in your gut, everybody produces it, it helps regulate blood sugar, it helps regulate your appetite, and it helps with gastric emptying, which is how quick your gut actually empties poop out. Yeah. So what GLP1 drugs actually do is because it helps regulate your appetite, they actually help produce GLP1. So by producing more GLP1, your appetite is dampened down. I was actually talking to somebody who was on the jabs last weekend, and he said to me, It's really strange, as soon as I put the injection into myself, my hunger just goes. I'm just not hungry at all afterwards. And so when doctors realize that or pharmaceutical companies rather realize that they could actually reproduce or produce more GLP1 with an injection, they decided it'd be a great way to bring it in to tackle type 2 diabetes, obesity, and metabolic syndrome. There are three conditions, right, that can be really life-challenging for people. And so when they first came in, that's exactly what they were used for, and they helped a lot of people who needed to lose a lot of weight relatively quickly because at times all three of those conditions can be life or death. They helped reduce their weight. Somebody said, Hang about, if this works for losing weight for people who've got diabetes, does it help people who just want to lose a couple of pounds or a couple of kilos? Will it help them as well? Of course it does because it dampens down hunger signals for anybody. You don't have to be type 2 diabetic for GLP 1 agonist stroke to actually work and to actually increase your GLP 1, which will dampen down your appetite. So it's gone, they've gone all over the place because a lot of people are using them for either medical reasons or for lifestyle reasons to help them lose weight. Now there's a couple of different types, don't want to get too deep into the science and certainly don't want to start promoting brand names and things like that. But you're looking at drugs like semiglutide and irreglutide, they're two of the main ones that you find that are out there on the market, branded in different ways, and are on sale to different people. So it's important to realise that these things aren't actually magic at all. What they're actually doing is they're taking your existing biology, and that is your body's ability to produce GLP1, which helps you realize that, as I said, your full helps control appetite, helps control your blood sugar balance, and it takes those signals and it turns the volume knob up. For anybody who's seen Spinal Tap, you know, the big joke in Spinal Tap used to be our amps go up to 11, which is one level more than 10.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Favorite line.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

So that's kind of what's happening here. So it's key to then think some takeaways from this little bit, I guess, is that they work by overriding your appetite signal signals, not fixing the root cause, of course, because all they're actually doing is they're working on the signaling, they're not working on why that signaling might be impaired in the first place. Um, and of course, you'll see these um referred to in different ways. Uh, some people call them injections, some people call them jabs. Um, the jabs make them seem quite simple and and routine. The person that I was talking to last week who was on them, they were saying that they had to get their daughter at first to administer them for them because they didn't like the idea of injecting themselves with something. Now, this is not a quick sort of like kachunk in and out, it's more of a controlled release, and he found it quite difficult to actually put that kneeling off. He's now got over that, of course. So it's important to remember it's a drug, it's a medical intervention that's changing how your body regulates appetite. But you know, it there are some challenges when it comes to how you actually implement them physically because, as I said, it's not a quick in-and-out jab, it's an actual injection. So let's talk a little bit about how these have spread, I guess, so much, Julie. You know, how come everybody's talking about them so much right now? And uh how has it spread? It's almost like wildfire, really, isn't it? Three years ago, hardly anybody was talking about these, and we've just seen it ramp up so much. And month by month it seems to ramp up even more. So, what's going on there?

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Well, we've you know, we've changed, we've changed some medical terminology for for different lifestyle and and and physical conditions. Um, people are so interested in rapid weight loss because if you look at the population, certainly in North America, um, look at obesity levels and overweight levels in in the US and the UK, um, they're quite high. And so people are looking for weight loss. And it can be a difficult thing because of the way we live, because of the kind of food we eat, and so on. So when you're able to produce something that gives people rapid weight loss, um, it becomes like instantly validating. It means, oh good, this is a quicker fix. I don't have to do all of that work and put in all of that effort. And I I understand there are some people that physically have difficulty losing weight, but honestly, we know from our coaching that lifestyle interventions are the most effective, certainly in the long term. But most people experience as well, by the way, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:48

It's not coach. Our own personal experience has taught us that.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Yeah, absolutely. And and um, yeah, we've both been on our own weight loss journey and and health journey for a number of years. But because people are busy, they don't want to think about having to, you know, learn how to prepare and plan whole food meals and start exercising, all those things, it just is is a it seems like a simple fix because of that instant gratification sort of culture. And then we've got social proof, right? We know people who are on them, we know people are having good luck with them, celebrities now are promoting them everywhere. Um, there's this culture of thinness being really an important thing now. We've kind of gone 180 from the body positive movement when it didn't matter what size you were, and that was perfectly perfect, and now skinny is is in again, and it's our our culture is just bouncing back and forth. Um doctors a lot of times are prescribing these really quickly for people who are wanting to lose weight rather than looking a little more deeper, a little more deeper, a little deeper about what's going on in the body, what the gut health is like, what the lifestyle is like. And I I know it's I'm not dissing doctors here, they don't have a lot of time with patients. So oftentimes medic using medication or medical interventions is easier because they just don't have the time to spend. And then you've got women over 40 who are in this life where they're exhausted all the time. It feels like everything's out of control, right? As we say all the time, we're parenting up, we're parenting down, there's a lot of stress, a lot of expectation, and then and then our favorite dismissal, right? It's just your age. Oh, this is how it's gonna be now because I'm just getting older. And and that is not even remotely true, by the way. So, of course, women are gonna say yes to this because they're not giving any other real answers or not any real answers that they like necessarily. So, again, even though we talk about these, they are a medical intervention, but calling them a weight loss jab or this super product that's gonna take care of all your all your problems, it we we treat them like they're no big deal, and that can lower the barrier for a lot of people to want to give them a try. So now having said all of that, we know that there are some risks here, but there are also some big benefits to these to these um injections. Yeah, they've been used for a long time.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

Yeah. And you know, obviously, for anybody with obesity or type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, where those conditions come with a medical risk, you know, the chance to use a drug like this that can help them reduce that risk really, really quickly is super, super important. We're talking life-changing, if not life-saving, for some people who are at that higher end of the scale when it comes to where the BMI might be and things like that. So they will help you know, overall reduce HBA1C, which is a marker of blood sugar balance uh of your of your blood sugar levels, and is a predictor of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular risk as well. So appetite uh regulation can be life-changing. So, for the right person in the right context, they're incredibly incredibly powerful. I'd add to that, you mentioned before medical professionals being short on time, and therefore prescriptions are getting easier as well. The other thing that we're seeing is there's a huge, huge increase in online pharmacies where the pharmacists are able to prescribe, and people are allowed to go and get these drugs in a much easier way than if they went through the local doctor, GP, NHS specialist here in the UK, whatever it may be. Somebody told me that a lot of these consultations are done online, so they're done with either telemedicine or video calls, some of them are just done via text chats and people are being prescribed things, so you know that there's a a level where acquiring the drugs can be open to people who don't particularly need them for strong medical reasons, and what uh some of the kind of things that I've heard people tell me about that people have actually done. So, one is they were on a video call, they wanted a prescription, they had to show they were over a certain BMI, and so this person actually actually wore a weighted vest under their coat when they did the weighing online so they could dupe the regulations for hitting a certain BMI so they could get drugs. So that is somebody making themselves appear heavier to a prescribing pharmacist online by one of these private portals, and of course, that that person isn't there to check, and even if they were there alive, would they be sitting frisking somebody down to see if they're actually waiting wearing a weighted belt and vest to make themselves appear heavier so they could get the drugs? And so access to people who want them for lifestyle reasons has increased massively, and of course, as with all these kinds of things, you know, the more people want them, the more are produced, the more prices can drop and can become more affordable for people, and so that tends to be, I guess, the challenge for some people feeling conflicted about the fact, and I I admit myself that I feel quite conflicted about the fact that somebody who wants to lose two or three pounds before they go and hold it to Ibiza can go online to an online pharmacist and dupe the system. I've heard of people even scarier getting them because they need them from their own health perspective, so they're at that level of BMI where they're being assessed by their by their doctor, they're getting them on the NHS and then they're selling them on. So they're actually selling the drugs onto people, you know, in the pub of the to their friends, whatever. Yeah, I've heard of people acquiring them, I don't know how they'd acquire them, but somewhat illegally, and almost selling them out of the back of a van on the street to people and making a quick book that way. So I guess challenge is you know, all about access, etc. But you know, that is a wider sort of like societal debate, I guess, that we don't really want to get into right now. But I just think I'm trying to illustrate, you know, for the fact that there are huge, huge benefits for people who need them, there's easier access for people who desire them because they want to change their weight from a lifestyle point of view, and of course, yeah, the challenge with all that is that because it's become an easy option, and you know, and we're going back to sort of similar concepts to the kind of things that we might have seen in the 1970s when the weightless uh weight loss drug of choice then was speed, you know, a lot of people would go on to it. Um, we get into the challenge of uh similar things where you know super super restricted diets, whether it be from a calorific point of view or cutting out certain food groups, and people because they're using them from a lifestyle point of view, can end up on yet another cycle of boom or bust when it comes to their weight loss, which is not a long-term option for people, obviously, right? Or not a sustainable long-term option, and that is one of the things that I think people aren't really talking about enough, and that is what is at the root cause of all this. The person I was talking to last week about their journey on these, they were telling me that previously, if they were going, let's say, to the coast for the weekend, it's about an hour and a half's drive from where they live, they would actually plan their trip via the fast food outlets that they wanted to stop off at on the way. So that person, it's not just about being overweight, there's obviously a deep-seated challenge there when it comes to their relationship with food. If you're thinking to yourself, you know, they didn't describe it to me like this, but this is kind of my imagining of what they said that they used to plan by fast foods. At mile 10, there's a McDonald's, at mile 30, there's a KFC, and at my mile 50, there's a Wendy's. You know, clearly there's a challenge there when it comes to their relationship with food, and that is just one of the things that people aren't talking about from a psychological point of view. But then, of course, you know, there are all kinds of things that go on outside of psychological points of view, which comes down to just general health and what could be other root cause of it. So why don't you take us through that a little bit? Because I feel as I've gone on quite a bit in that section.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

No, that's that's fine. And I, you know, I have a lot of worries about these black market ones and the ones you can buy online that that often aren't the drugs you're you think you're buying. And so there is a there is a concern there. Um, but you know what what brings us to this place anyway, because it's like it's like the diet industry, and we said before women in their adult life will go on 126 different diets. There's something underlying that that causes our lives, our lifestyle and our health not to be optimized. And that can go come back to gut health. And really, gut health is the core driver of everything. It's our immune system, it's our cognitive abilities, it's our um, it's our nutritional status, it's uh it's all all kinds of different things in our body, and where it's where GLP1 is actually made in our body. So we need good solid gut health, and then we can increase our production, obviously with the right nutrition and movement is a good way, you know, exercise a good way to increase our GLP1. So there are lots of things that we can we can do internally. You know, chronic stress, shall we say it again? Chronic stress really dampens down um everything that's going on in your body. It interrupts your sleep, it interrupts your body's ability to heal, it interrupts your gut health because your nutrient absorption isn't going to be as good because it affects your digestion, um, which affects your GLP1 levels and sleep of not only just affected by stress, but also affected by other things at this time of life. And one of the other big things is, you know, we're we like to say we're the most overfed and undernourished society because we eat so many processed foods, we eat so fast, we're not eating good whole foods, our soils are a little bit depleted, and we have to pay attention to what's going into our bodies. So we may have nutrient deficiencies that are affecting our gut health, that are affecting our health generally speaking, and our ability to produce our GLP ones naturally. And a lot of times when people are on these injections, they they lose their appetite to the point where they're not eating enough, they're not eating the right kinds of foods. Um, sometimes, you know, we feel like we have license to eat things that are a little bit less healthy because you know we're not eating so many calories, but it's not just about calories. So we have to really pay attention to to avoiding nutrient deficiencies in the way that we eat. Because, you know, if we don't change those underlying factors and those underlying drivers of health and and weight gain in the first place, what exactly are we fixing? And you know, this this affects so many other things. You want to, I mean, I can I can talk all day.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

Yeah, I mean the challenge, of course, is that when you're stopping your appetite to such a degree whereby you don't actually desire food is you know the first question, of course, is you just outline where does where do the nutrients come from? But also when you're in such a huge level of calorific restriction, what's happening to your metabolism, what's happening to your to your muscle mass? Yeah, you're gonna end up losing uh lean mass as well as fat because that's the way rapid weight loss tends to work. It doesn't discriminate. These drugs don't aren't targeted with fat loss jabs, they're targeted weight loss jabs. So you lose the weight from all over the place, including muscle mass. So that's a that's a real challenge. You know, the reduced nutrient nutrient intake, I've mentioned that several times, but really critical for women 14 above at this time of life. You need a full suite of nutrients to help with your hormones, with your insulin levels, with your blood sugar balance. You know, so so as soon as you start reducing those, then there's a real challenge there of deficiencies. I saw there's a big study yesterday that I think they were saying that vitamin D is one of the main uh nutrients that women are lacking when it uh when when they've been on on the GLP1 injections. And of course, uh if uh like many people around me, I live in up north of the United Kingdom, uh we're you know, particularly in winter, really, really short days and even and throughout the year, you know, we don't see a lot of sunlight, then you're getting hit by vitamin D deficiency. In two different ways, if you're on the drug, so it can be a real challenge as well. And then you know the side effects are still being studied. This is not something that we have 20 years of history behind that we can look back and say, Oh, you know, over 20 years X, Y, and Z will happen. But we are seeing some different challenges, and people are still forming patterns around these. But I've heard of things like nausea being reported, vomiting, constipation, uh challenges with dental health. Because when you're not eating, the acid balance in your mouth changes. It's something that we see as a side effect from um extreme calorie restriction in people who might have an eating disorder, you know, bulimia, anorexia, people's teeth start to fall out because the acid balance in their mouth is not absolutely right. I was talking to another lady yesterday, her mum's on them, and she was saying when my mum in the immediate hours and days after she's first taken the injection, she said her breath absolutely stinks terrible.

unknown 23:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:07

So lots and lots of different uh side effects. And the thing is, the more I talk to people about it, the more of these are being reported. So a lot of that is obviously anecdotal evidence. So I can't sit here with a past iron guarantee of a scientific study behind me that says X, Y, and Z is going to happen to you. But it's worth thinking that all these kinds of things can happen. Now, of course, having smelly breath for a couple of days, if your life is at risk, is probably a small price to pay. I'd argue that if you're losing GLP1 drugs from a vanity, if we can put it that way, point of view of I just want to lose a few pounds to go on holiday, then if you're that worried about how you look and your appearance, you know, perhaps you might have some concerns about whether your teeth might fall out in future or whether you're going to walk around with smelly breath. And I'm only suggesting that, I'm only positing it as a supposition. Some people might be okay with that. And if you're okay with that, I'm okay with it. But this is all about not about talking about the drug or demonize it in any way, shape, or form. It's making sure that people actually have the information to make a decision based on what I'd call informed consent, right? So, yeah, I'm gonna make this choice, but I'm gonna make this choice knowing the full facts of where the drugs are coming from, how they're being prescribed to me, how they're being prescribed legitimately, and also key thing is what else might happen outside of the weight loss that I desire. Whether you desire that weight loss for health reasons or lifestyle reasons, it's your body, your choice. I'm fully on board with that, but you know, be informed if you can before you make the decision is really the key thing to do. And obviously the challenge is always you know what happens next. Yeah. A lot of people have been told how to start. How many people have actually been told how to stop? Every single person that I've talked to who I know personally who's on these drugs have admitted fully they don't have an exit plan. So what's the off-ramp? Yeah, yeah. Is and if you don't have a uh an off-ramp, what is the potential long-term cost to your health? And the truth is we all know that the stuff that helps here, you've just gone through it all. It's the boring stuff, you know, it's the getting up and going and exercising, it's planning your meals, it's making sure that your meals are better balanced when it comes to what your your aims are, it's getting in control of your hunger feelings and realizing when it's real hunger, when it's psychological hunger, whatever it may be. All those kind of things take a little bit of work. And unfortunately, you know, as as a species, as human beings, we tend to be impatient, right? We tend to try and rush into things because we want things to happen immediately. And modern life probably makes us think that more. So, unfortunately, you know, nobody's telling people that while they're taking the drugs, working on some of that boring, if I can say it, shit, is the kind of stuff you really need to be doing. So that gives you the exit round because yeah, take them for whatever your reasons may be. You want to lose weight because it's life-threatening, you want to lose weight from a vanted perspective, absolutely fine. But let's not mean make it so that six months down the line you've come off them, you've not changed any of your habits, you've just gone back to your regular eating habits, you've put the weight that you wanted to lose back on, and then you start again because that is you know a long-term journey to long-term ill health, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 26:53

Yeah, 100%. Because neither of us is against using different tools to support your weight loss, right? But when what we are against is using those tools or expecting them to do everything for you instead of doing the work that's going to actually keep you healthy in the long term, because if you're outsourcing control of your health, then you don't you have no stake in the outcome, really. And skipping those foundational habits is probably the biggest mistake because we're chasing the outcome, right? But here's the thing: whether you take the drugs or whether you don't take the drugs, the bottom line is you still need to build the foundations, but they're more, even more important when you do decide to use the drugs. And that's why we're talking about this today, because we have to preserve our muscle so that so we need to um optimize our protein intake. You know, we have to look at ways to regulate our blood sugar balance in regular life, because I don't know anybody who says, I want to be on this drug for the rest of my life. You know, gut health, 100%. We need to really look at our gut health, and I probably that probably is the first thing we need to look at because it controls and it drives everything else. If you choose to take the drugs, or if you don't choose to take the drugs, if you're a woman over 40, strength training is going to be your longevity quote-unquote drug. It's going to be your longevity formula because you need that muscle mass and the bone mineral density to stay strong into your later years. And then, of course, managing your sleep and your stress. Those are all of the foundational things. And they're the reason that anything works for you in the long term. So if you use the jabs, fantastic. Focus on those things and get the support you need to help you understand how to focus on those things because we know everybody's busy, but those there's no shortcut to building that foundation tremendously.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

Sure. And I'd I'd say to that, you know, maybe these are things you should be doing, is might sound a little bit harsh to some people, but I would argue that if you care about your long-term health, building those foundations is absolutely what you want to do. Whether you decide, you know, to paraphrase Shakespeare to jab or not to jab, you know, working on your foundations is is absolutely key because that is the answer to that question. If you care about your long-term health. And I would like to think that most people do care about their long-term health, right? And equally, yeah, if you don't care about it, well, fine. You know, that that's absolutely fine too. Your body, your choices, you do do what you want. But I think it's uh for me, if you care about your long-term health, you absolutely have to do it, which is why we're running our upcoming workshop in uh two weeks' time. Julie, why don't you talk us through what that is and what it involves?

SPEAKER_01 30:05

Yeah, we um, you know, we're excited about the workshop because we want to walk you through, you know, what's really going on underneath your weight gain, why your energy might dip, where the cravings are coming from, and more importantly, what you can actually do about it in a way that supports your long-term health, as we've been talking about through this episode. So we're gonna have this workshop on April 23rd. We would love to have you join us. Um, and it's called Thinking About Weight Loss Jabs, Start Here First. So we're going to have a small entry fee of 10 pounds, which is about $13. And that is going to help make the biggest difference because it's going to be the step that moves you from thinking about change to actually taking a step towards it. So if you're ready to stop guessing and start understanding what your body actually needs, come and join us. You can find that information at jabs.fabulousbeyond40.com. Of course, we'll put the link down in the show notes. Feel free to share that with anyone and everyone who is contemplating these because we'd love to help as many people as we can. It's important you start to understand what your body actually needs. So that's it for this week, I think. Unless you have anything else to add, James.

SPEAKER_00 31:25

No, just uh hopefully come and we'll see you on the workshop. If you've got questions about it, it's the place to come talk to us. Uh, we'll tell you how take you through some uh ways of coming up with the solution that works for you, whether you decide to go for the weight loss jobs or not. So we'd love to see you there.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

Definitely. So thanks again for being with us. We've been coaches James and Julie, and we're here to remind you to stay strong and stay fabulous, and we'll see you next time.