All roads lead to lifestyleĭespite our greatest aspirations for quick fixes, it’s very possible that a healthy lifestyle remains the most important way to manage metabolic disease and overall health. Significant weight gain after stopping the drugs raises further questions about long-term effects and whether it’s possible to transition back to using only lifestyle measures to manage weight. These drugs can also lead to a loss of healthy lean muscle mass in addition to fat, particularly in the absence of exercise. Other more severe, but rare, side effects include pancreatitis and irreversible gastroparesis, or inflammation of the pancreas and stomach paralysis. These symptoms are related to how the drugs work to slow the gastrointestinal tract. While incretin-based therapies seem close to magic bullets, they are not without gastrointestinal side effects like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and constipation. Oleksandra Troian/Moment via Getty Images Some people regain weight after stopping incretin-based drugs. Should people who are only a little overweight use these drugs? What are the risks of prescribing these drugs to children and adolescents for lifelong weight management? A near-magic bullet – for the right folksĭespite the success and prospect of these drugs to help populations that may benefit most from them, current prescribing practices have raised some questions. Medical guidelines support the use of new incretin-based medications like Wegovy, Ozempic and Mounjaro to manage the interrelated metabolic conditions of diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease.Ĭonsidering the effects incretin-based medications have on the brain and cravings, medical researchers are also evaluating their potential to treat nonmetabolic conditions like alcohol abuse, drug addiction and depression. Many patients have seen significant improvements to not only their weight and blood glucose but also reductions in important cardiovascular outcomes like strokes and heart attacks.
This awakens the microbes to stimulate your gut cells to produce GLP-1 and PYY, effectively regulating appetite and metabolism. These surgeries may in part work much like Wegovy and Ozempic by bypassing digestion in segments of the gastrointestinal tract and bathing your gut microbes in less digested food. These drugs complement other measures like gastric bypass surgery that are used in the most extreme cases of metabolic disease. Mounjaro has gone a step further and combined GLP-1 with a second hormone analogue derived from the upper gut called GIP, and studies are showing this combination therapy to be even more effective at promoting weight loss than GLP-1-only therapies like Wegovy and Ozempic. Researchers have demonstrated their effectiveness at weight loss and blood sugar control. Wegovy and Ozempic reinvigorate the colonic brake downstream of food and microbes with molecules similar to GLP-1.
Removal of these key food components and the resulting decrease in gut microbiome diversity may be an important factor contributing to the rise in obesity and diabetes. However, food processing, aimed at improving shelf stability and enhancing taste, removes the bioactive molecules like fiber and polyphenols that help regulate this system. Prior to modern processed foods, metabolic regulatory pathways were under the direction of a diverse healthy gut microbiome that used these hormones to naturally regulate your metabolism and appetite.