Is Ozempic (Semaglutide) Right For Me?

Obesity is the leading preventable cause of death, with about a third of North Americans classified as obese. One of the few effective treatments was bariatric surgery. Health Canada recently approved a new weight loss drug, semaglutide, also known by the brand names “Ozempic” or “Wegovy.” Experts refer to it as a “game changer” for its ability to curtail appetite and spur weight loss.
In this episode, Medcan’s director of weight management, Dr. David Macklin, a co-author of Canada’s national guidelines for obesity treatment, provides host Shaun Francis with a Ozempic (semaglutide) explainer. “We’re in a super exciting stage in my field of medicine,” Dr. Macklin says. “I can safely say that 2022, for a number of reasons, will be characterized in history as the first time that we have a very effective non-surgical treatment for [obesity].”
For complete episode links and time-coded insights, visit the Eat Move Think episode 115 web page at the following: eatmovethinkpodcast.com/podcast/ep115-is-semaglutide-right-for-me

[@MountainBikeBabe]

I was hungry all the time. I could eat a steak dinner and be hungry an hour later as if I had not eaten. Now I am full after eating a normal amount of food. This peptide is a life saver. I haven’t heard anyone discussing Celiac patients.

[@RepublicConstitution]

It has done this for me too. I used to be able to order a large pepperoni pizza from Pizza Hut and have to stop myself from eating the entire thing in a single sitting. Now I can eat two or three slices and feel full for hours.

[@zelmoziggy]

On Ozempic, if I ate only when I was hungry, I would almost never eat.

[@SanchoGracie]

The nausea & fatigue is sheer hell. Doctors make it sound so positive. Honestly, it's hard sometimes to push through when you are vomiting & dealing with bouts of crippling fatigue.

[@Theresa914]

Sorry your having such drastic side effects. I am on Ozempic and might get nauseous maybe 4 times a month. Hope you find something that works better for you.

[@ambermoon1401]

At what dose did you start feeling sick? I'm on .5mg and don't feel anything

[@MedcanLiveWell]

I am so sorry this is happening to you!

[@MountainBikeBabe]

I think the people who don’t have any side effects are deficient. I just feel normal on this without the horrible urge to continue eating all day long and late at night before I sleep.

[@athenacontreras]

@@MountainBikeBabe do you mean deficient in endogenous glp-1? I have no side effects either. Very slow weight loss but I feel skinnier (even though no one but me can see it).

[@NaturalTiger]

I'm on week three of the 0.25mg dosage. So I'm 16 days in and I've lost 8.8lbs. I can't wait to see what happens on week 5 when I actually increase to 0.5mg. This has been a half a pound a day on average. A for side effects, I only reacted with the first dose. Had severe, explosive diarrhea for about 2 hours and then felt nauseas for a couple hours so I layed down for a couple of hours. I've had no side effects since then. I have been having trouble projecting how much rapid insulin I need for a meal as there's many times that I just feel too full to finish eating. Therefore I end up taking too much insulin for my carb count. I am a type 2 diabetic. Before I started ozempic I was taking 120 units of toujeo and a one to one ratio of novo rapid to carb load. The day I started taking ozempic my cardiologist advised me to go down to 100 units of toujeo. What I am really pleased about is the fact that it seems to be making my body produce more insulin or causing it to better use the insulin my body produces. I wear a freestyle libre 2 flash sensor. Before if I didn't eat immediately upon waking for 2 or 3 hours the graph of my sugar levels would climb rapidly. Now the graph shows my sugar remains stable within the permitted range. Where has this medication been all my life?!?

[@NaturalTiger]

***That was supposed to be my endocrinologist not cardiologist. Lol

[@MedcanLiveWell]

Your journey is really inspiring. Congratulations and keep it up!

[@NaturalTiger]

@@MedcanLiveWell thank you for this podcast! It's very informative. I learned a few things from it that I didn't know. I've been watching a lot of KZbin videos to try to educate myself on this topic. This has been the best I've come across so far, beyond first person anecdotes describing how to take it and what each person experienced. I appreciate the scientific research led approach on this podcast.

[@Kholoured]

My issue right now is that even after a healthy dinner with meat, veggies, and some carbs an hr later my stomach is growling. How can I be hungry only an hr later!! My endocrinologist thinks he knows what's going on but I'm worried I won't be able to loose the roughly 70lbs I've gained and can't seem to loose it.

[@robk7129]

Thank so much for your input 👍👍👍

[@VoiceoverMomentum]

Well structured program with m/f producers teasing content and reading bios. And, of course, I’m excited by the potential of Senaglutide!

[@MedcanLiveWell]

Thank you Julie.

[@hudsonchalmers6504]

I have lost 26 kgs since April. Physicians did not explain very well here in South Africa. So Thanks

[@RepublicConstitution]

I already suffer from low intestinal motility, do the semaglutide has slowed down my bowel movements from a normal 3 to 5x per week to like 1x.

[@edgaracevedo9658]

Have they measured the actual fat loss to muscle loss on using a GLP1? I keep hearing them talk about 15%, 20%, 22% weight reduction but how much of the weight loss is fat and how much is lean body mass?

[@SerialBitBanger]

I’d love to see the studies discrediting the insulin response for gaining weight?

[@DrMJJr]

I’ve lost 40lbs. (Down from 237lbs. to 196lbs.) at 6’1” now on the 6th month at 2.4mg. I’m curious about Tirzepatide to see how it works for weight loss!!!

[@MedcanLiveWell]

Congratulations!

[@DrMJJr]

@@MedcanLiveWell now stable at 185lbs!!! Wegovy is amazing!!

[@beverlystraus9300]

I can't wait for Mounjaro to be FDA approved for non- diabetics for weight loss.

[@atetraxx]

​@@DrMJJrhow's it going now homie? About to start

[@Theresa914]

Talking about costs, these GL1 meds are so expensive and my insurance will not pay for it, even though i am Type 2 and my AC1 is down to 6.7, lost 28 lbs. Ozempic 1.0 cost so much it’s hard to include in your monthly budget. Is there a way to code these Semaglutide meds that will help reduce the price? Thanks for your video.

[@MedcanLiveWell]

Hello Theresa. It really is unfortunate to see how expensive these medications cost. There is not really much that can be done at the moment.

[@MountainBikeBabe]

Just get semaglutide from a compounding pharmacy.

[@athenacontreras]

I’m on the 2.4 dose. I started the medication in March of last year. I know there can be some variation in glp receptors between individuals. But here’s the thing: it doesn’t seem to reduce my appetite. I don’t get side effects. BUT I have lost 20 lbs. I have more than 100 left to lose. Also I have inflammation that doctors don’t know the cause of (hsCRP = 45.8) and my inflammation has only gone up (though it was going up before taking it too). I’ve been working on weight loss to no avail since 1996 when I started weight watchers. I eat a Mediterranean diet and don’t really eat sugar or fast food or greasy stuff. I can lose weight and have before (usually doing OMAD) but it’s a horrible struggle and unsustainable. I just wish I could understand why this medication isn’t working for me when it seems to work for so many others.

[@MountainBikeBabe]

Try a grain free diet and daily Thymosin alpha 1 subq. Apparently there are other gastric peptides that also have function to reduce appetite, perhaps you are deficient in one of those. You could call them for a consultation and see if you can try these other new ones coming out.

[@vaidehimadabushi6527]

You may want to go back to your doctor and discuss the possibility of adding on more layers of drugs along with ozempic….

[@athenacontreras]

I’m taking phentermine as well. But the good news is that I am still losing weight, just very slowly. And I think I’m developing more muscle too because of the effectiveness of a barre class I’ve taking. Thank you for the help!!

[@KristinMonday]

Mitochondrial dysfunction, cortisol, hormone imbalance? Look at the Viome test. Inflammation comes from the gut, Tom Bileu has a video up on this with the owner of Viome. You could be having immune reactions, are you eating any grain? Look at Cyrex Lab for testing. You need a functional medical doctor, not a regular MD. I would add a red light panel, get a soda stream machine, test for heavy metals, get on a 100% grain free diet, and gluten free diet. Take iodine, make sure you arent getting fluoride or other toxic halides like Chloring, this includes shower water. Consider that you likely have glyphosate and perchurolate poisoning. Getting healthy is a full time job.

[@utfarley7563]

Why does Insurance push back so aggressively. So frustrating. Took me months to come to terms with doing this and now I get rejected. Not happy.

[@ambermoon1401]

It'd just a peptide

[@MedcanLiveWell]

That is really unfortunate!

[@Edgardit]

Recently I started to take Ozempic 0.25 mg weekly. I still don’t understand the relationship between semaglutide and fat loss. Usually people says weight loss. Can semaglutide make us to lose muscle?

[@MedcanLiveWell]

Oh really? Semaglutide does help you lose weight of course with a balance diet and moderate exercise. It does not make you lose muscle but also does not help grow it and that's why you still need to exercise in moderation.

[@MountainBikeBabe]

Semaglutide is sending a signal to your pancreas to release insulin, a signal To slow gastric emptying and a signal To your hypothalamus to feel full.

[@SDtheNP]

Just briefly piggybacking off of what Medcan said, as the medication does not cause you to lose muscle. However, with any weight loss regimen you need to focus on protein to stave off any loss of muscle mass.

[@LawrenceAugust_]

@@MedcanLiveWell “Lost in the current hype over Ozempic and other GLP-1 agonist weight loss medicines, unfortunately, is an alarmingly consistent finding: Much of the "weight loss" resulting from GLP-1 agonists is the loss of muscle, bone mass, and other lean tissue rather than body fat (3). For example, in a 2021 trial entitled "Impact of Semaglutide on Body Composition in Adults With Overweight or Obesity" that included pre-and-post-treatment DEXA scans (DEXA is a medical imaging test used to assess body composition and bone density; it is one of the most accurate methods for identifying how much body fat a person has versus "fat-free mass" such as muscle and bone mass), 34.8% of the total weight loss experienced by participants receiving Semaglutide resulted from muscle, bone, and connective tissue (4). Similarly, in a 2020 clinical trial entitled "Effects of once-weekly semaglutide vs once-daily canagliflozin on body composition in type 2 diabetes: a substudy of the SUSTAIN 8 randomised controlled clinical trial," 40% of the seemingly impressive weight loss in the Semaglutide treatment resulted from the loss of lean tissue (5)” www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-healthy-journey/202208/how-get-the-most-weight-loss-medications?amp

[@airforcex9412]

The muscle you lose is the same as if you were dieting aggressively. Thats why resistance training and protein consumption are important.

[@MountainBikeBabe]

I started semaglutide a few days ago, zero side effects and I felt improvements within an hour. I have Celiac disease. My theory is people who live with destroyed L cells are GLP1 deficient. I was going through hell for decades without this. I expect I will be on this for life as my small intestine isn’t going to go back to normal.

[@athenacontreras]

Not sure I know much about this but I think researchers are finding glp-1 agonists that help grow the small intestine, but I’m not sure for the same kind of thing you’re dealing with, and I think it’s a different glp-1 agonist.

[@athenacontreras]

Or maybe glp-2

[@chronicstitcher7933]

I am type 2 diabetic and I had a horrible experience with Ozempic. I made a video on that if any body wants to watch. It's on my channel. I will NEVER take this drug again.

[@jessicasmith9703]

I’m not able to afford this medication due to insurance denial.

[@alexandraalbertz1442]

Functional medicine clinic offer it in compound pharmacy semiglutide form. See Forum Health clinics and their youtube videos about this. Been on it for 5 months and lost almost 30 pounds. Still going strong

[@shaynadavidovhansonrealtor]

Thoughts that it can triger thyroid issues and even thyroid cancer? What about this “slow emptying stomach situation “ that it causes .. seems a l little concerning (?)

[@NaturalTiger]

Hi Shayna, if you listened to what he was saying it is only one specific type of thyroid cancer. People with a family history of this cancer are cautioned about taking this medication. However the gentleman has stated that there has not been one human who has developed this type of cancer. Only the rodents experienced it.

[@ambermoon1401]

The slow stomach emptying is a good thing! That's what helps you lose weight and isn't concerning at all

[@NaturalTiger]

@@ambermoon1401 exactly! That is the hormone doing it's job mimicking the role that the naturally produced hormone is supposed to do.

[@MedcanLiveWell]

The study is not accurate and there have been very little to nothing about it actually causing any future problems.

[@LawrenceAugust_]

@@MedcanLiveWell Are black box warnings typically based on inaccurate studies?

[@Brian.8272]

ive been on it for 9 months and lost 40 pounds, but im up 10 in the last few months, worried that its not working as well

[@MedcanLiveWell]

Do you find you are eating healthier or about the same.

[@Brian.8272]

@@MedcanLiveWell half and half, i also fast during the day and that really helped

[@Brian.8272]

@@MedcanLiveWell half and half, i also fast during the day and that really helped

[@sarahholding1315]

Low carb does work and controls appetite 100% This drug isn't that safe and shouldn't be used long term

[@larrybair2029]

Are you a Dr?

[@maryann2600]

This sounds like a whole bunch of marketing crap.

[@ambermoon1401]

So we need to take a med that costs 1300 a week for the rest of our lives?!?!!? How about teaching people to control their hunger while they're on it?!?!?

[@MedcanLiveWell]

I see what you are saying. We are just providing other options.

[@athenacontreras]

You can’t teach people to control their hunger. Hunger is based on many different hormones.

[@shelbysycamore637]

@@athenacontreras i am not too sure about this.

[@athenacontreras]

@@shelbysycamore637 there are a lot of hormones involved in hunger. Glp-1 is just one.

[@shelbysycamore637]

@@athenacontreras okay, if people cannot be taught to controll their hunger, then why do we make an effort to help addicts break their addictions? I could be going on a tangent here but a dog can be trained to eat at certain times. Some people feed their dogs once a day, others multiple times and pick the food up, while many will just leave the food out for their dogs. Usually an animal that has been trained to expect food at a certain time will begin to salivate because they know they will be fed wouldn't the same work for humans? If obesity is purely a genetic issue that cannot be overcome with programming , then why is it a recent issue? This only became an issue because of modern convenience.