Ozempic, Wegovy, and other weightloss drugs are all over the news these days promising quick and permanent weight loss but – like every other miracle weight-loss drug in the past- is this another “too good to be true” moment?

Our friend, Dr. Michael Greger, puts these new wonder drugs “to the test” in his new book, OZEMPIC: Risks, Benefits, and Natural Alternatives to GLP-1 Weight-Loss Drugs.

Leave it to Dr. Michael Greger to cut right to the chase when it comes to the latest trends in diet and weight loss. In his latest book, Dr. Greger explores the research behind these new “miracle weight loss drugs” and answers the questions that so many of us have:

• What are they?
• How do they work and what is their role in suppressing your appetite?
• What are the side effects?
• Is the weight loss really permanent?
• Does insurance cover these drugs?
• And, is there another (less extreme and expensive) way to lose weight?

Dr. Michael Greger shares the real science behind the marketing fluff and answers our burning questions.

I'm Rip Esselstyn and you're listening to the Plan strong podcast, Ozempic, WeGovy.

All these other weight loss drugs, they are everywhere you look these days, promising quick and permanent weight loss.

But like every other miracle weight loss drug in the past, is this another too good to be true moment?

Our friend Dr.

Michael Greger puts these new wonder drugs to the test in his new book, Risks, Benefits and Natural Alternatives to GLP Weight Loss Drugs.

And we're going to have his thoughts right after this message from Plan Strong.

Leave it to Dr.

Michael Greger to cut right to the chase when it comes to the latest trends in diet and weight loss.

Yet in his latest book, Risks, Benefits and natural alternatives to GLP1 weight loss drugs, Dr.

Greger explores the research behind these new so called miracle weight loss drugs and answers the questions that so many of us have, like, what exactly are they?

How do they work?

What are the side effects?

Is the weight loss really permanent?

Is there another less extreme and less expensive way to lose the weight?

Let's go straight to the man, Dr.

Michael Greger, who shares the real science behind the marketing fluff and answers all of our burning questions.

Michael Greger, welcome podcast.

My man.

How you doing?

Yeah, doing well.

You know, this, you never fail to amaze me.

I mean, if it's not, you know, how not to Die, how not to Diet, that are New York Times bestseller, How to Survive a Pandemic.

You, you.

Being the founder of nutritionfacts.org but this latest book that you've come out with, should we call it a book?

Is that fair?

Well, you know, it's funny, it's our first attempt at self publishing, right?

And so instead of this, you know, massive tome, as usual, only like 100 pages, right?

One constipated bowel movement and you're done with the thing.

It's, you know, we put out soft cover, audiobook, ebook, and people have really responded well to it.

So I think we're going to do more of these, you know, rather than waiting a year for a publisher to, you know, whatever they do.

I don't know why it takes so long for, you know, this is like, look, the work is done, the research is done, the writing is done.

Let's just fucking put it out there.

We did that and, and yeah, it worked really well, hopefully we'll do more of those.

Oh yeah, it's great.

So the name of your book is Ozempic.

Risk Benefits and natural alternatives to GLP1 weight loss drugs.

I love the fact that you're putting these drugs to the test.

Indeed.

Well, you know, I feel bad that it's been so long.

I mean, you know, Ozempic was approved for weight loss 20, 21.

It's been years.

Nothing on nutrition facts.

I've been dying to finally put my thoughts together, but you know, as you saw reading the thing, it's like a huge topic.

I should have done an early.

I should have done it early.

There's hardly anything on it now, there's just thousands of papers on it.

But at least it gives us a chance to kind of take a step back and see what, what the research has shown.

Yeah.

Did you, did you, when you wrote how not to Diet, did you, I can't remember.

Did you have any information on the GLP1?

Well, see, I mean, back then there weren't the drugs, but there was, but I talked about GLP1 all the time.

I talked about this interesting appetite suppressing, you know, hormone, digestive hormone and what we can do to activate it.

And so, yeah, a lot of it was like, oh, I know all about this.

Let's go back and revisit the groats and the greens and the vinegar and you know, some of the spices and all the things.

I'm like, I remember GLB1 and now it's making a trillion dollars.

But back then it just used as a second rate diabetes drug.

Right, right.

Something like that.

But let's dive into, let's dive into so people can understand it.

So let's start with, can you explain what is GLP1?

Yeah, no, no, that's, that's kind of one of the ways I kind of start this book is being like, okay, what is this?

What is GLP1?

Well, you know, people don't realize that the gastrointestinal tract is actually the largest hormone secreting gland in the body.

Releases more than 20 different hormones.

In fact, one out of every like hundred cells lining our digestive tract secrete some sort of hormones.

And one of those hormones is GLP1.

And its main action of this digestive hormone is to signal satiety to our brain.

And it's this kind of reduction in appetite.

So preventing us from eating too much also slows down our digestive tract Help us make us feel fuller for longer.

And you say, well, wait a second, if we have cells in our digestive tract that sense nutrients, sense calories, and then suppress our appetite so we don't eat too much, why is there an obesity epidemic?

What's going on?

What is undermining our natural satiety circuits?

And it turns out these cells, these nutrient sensing cells are all the way down, concentrated at the end of our digestive tract.

Which of course would make sense, right?

I mean, if we were way high up, then we wouldn't eat enough, right?

It wants to wait until, okay, all the nutrition makes it all the way down to the end of our small intestine.

And then these cells be like, oh, okay, there's food coming down, we're full from stem to stern.

Let's shut down our appetite so we don't need too much.

The problem is the crap that we're eating.

The calorie rich and processed foods, right?

The foods that aren't as nature intended, wrapped in cell walls, plant cell walls, whole intact plant foods, whether they're animal cells, which don't have any cell walls at all, or they're processed plant foods where for example, in making flour, we break open all those cell walls.

So this nutrition is digested.

The fats, the carbs, the protein digestion way up in our small intestine.

And so these nutrient sensing cells all the way down aren't sensing anything.

And so they keep our appetite cranked up to the maximum because it thinks we're like in a famine.

It's like, come on, are you ever going to eat anything?

We're just shoveling down donuts.

They all get digested early on.

No donuts make it all the way down, right?

There's hardly, there's no fiber, there's no.

And so our body keeps like, come on, eat already, eat already.

It's only when we eat the way nature intended, centering our doubts around these whole intact plant foods, can our body work the way it was intended.

And we can naturally, you know, let our body do its thing and keep our body weight down the normal range.

Yeah.

So I found it fascinating where they actually get this.

The source of the, I guess, would you call it the what is.

What is.

What is it that they get from this lizard?

Lizard Spit.

Yeah, the lizard spit chapter.

It's so freaking fascinating.

Right?

So the Gila monster.

You know, I grew up in Arizona for, for part of my life.

And there's this venomous lizard, very cool looking venomous lizard that called the Gila Monster, you do not want to get bitten by the Gila monster.

It doesn't actually have fangs, but it has a poisonous saliva and of course teeth.

And so it chomps on you and makes little holes and then holds on and basically pumps saliva into the wound to try to poison its prey.

And so it turns out that's actually the first long lasting GLP1 agonist was actually discovered and heal monster venom.

See this, the hormone in our body naturally only lasts about 2 minutes, 2 and a half minutes.

Yeah, it's a very short acting drug just kind of pinging the brain to be like, okay, we've had enough, stop eating.

But for the first time there was actually this, this, this, this particular compound in Gila monster saliva last a few hours, not, not just a few minutes.

And so that gave, that gave the big pharma a, the, an idea below.

Wait a second.

We make these long acting drugs and now we have drugs that last days long.

So you can inject it once a week, maintain this artificially high level of GLP1 signaling.

So it's kind of like a, kind of like how the pill works for pregnancy.

The contraceptive pill, basic contraceptive pillow, kind of tricks your body into thinking you're pregnant all the time.

Right.

And so doesn't, you know, normally, you know, so thinks, oh, we're already pregnant so we're not going to get pregnant again.

And similarly, these GLP1 agonists, they, they trick your body thinking you're eating all the time because, oh my God, we have this massive levels of this satiety hormone in our brain and so it dials down our appetite and people lose weight.

So speaking of losing weight, at face value it appears like, hey, these drugs seem to work pretty well.

So how well do they work?

Especially in the beginning.

Yeah, I mean, and pretty well is an understatement compared to every other drug that's ever been tested.

Now of course that is a seriously low bar.

So basically every single weight loss drug, we've had a half century of various weight loss drugs and the best weight loss drugs can do on average is about 5%.

5% weight loss.

And so if you think if you're like 300 pounds and you're losing 5%, that's like 15 pounds, you end up 285 pounds.

Right.

So you're taking this drug, risking all the side effects.

In fact, most weight loss drugs have been pulled from the market because we found out later, often decades later, that it was a public health threat.

And so it's actually pulled from the market because it was too hazardous, all that risk just for that 5% drop in body weight.

However, so what really, what made these game changing drugs is that they basically have on average triple the weight loss of every other weight loss drug in history.

So we're talking about more like a 15% drop in body weight.

Now that's not enough to take most people who are obese and actually taking down to normal weight or even down to overweight status.

In all the major trials, people started out obese, they take these drugs and they end up obese at the end because the drug only works for about a year and then your weight plateaus off.

So you know, they have these four year drug trials, lose weight the first year and then the subsequent three years.

Even though you're injecting drug every single week, not a single other pound comes off.

Sustain these drugs for the rest of your life just to maintain that initial weight loss.

Yet you don't lose any more weight.

You start out obese, end up obese, and you're just trying to keep taking the drug at perhaps $1,000 a month just to maintain that lesser level of obesity.

Now, being less obese has lots of benefits.

And so then it's a question of do the benefits outweigh the risks.

What I found really fascinating is how, yeah, the first year the body is kind of like, kind of tricked into believing that, wow, I'm good, I don't need as many calories, I feel satiated.

And then after a year it's like, you can't, you can't fool the body.

It isn't that interesting.

Yeah, so when you start out, when you, after a few months, when you've ramped up to the actual working dose of the drug, you have to start slow because the side effects can be really devastating for people.

But you start slow and you move up.

And once after three or four months, when you're at the actual clinical dose, you're eating a thousand fewer calories a day.

So for many people, that's like almost cutting their calorie consumption in half or cutting their calorie consumption a third.

And you're doing that because your body is getting this massive signaling that you're, that you know to reduce your appetite.

This massive signaling saying you're eating, you're eating, you're eating, stop eating so much.

And so your digestive tract slows down, your appetite goes down, your cravings go down, and you start losing weight.

But the body isn't stupid.

And there's this remarkable capacity of Your body to be like, wait a second, even though I'm getting this one signal, the GLP one very strong, very clear right to the brain saying we got too much going on.

The body is also getting other signals from the brain.

There's other hormones, there's other measures.

Your body actually knows whether you're losing weight, gaining weight.

And this is very important for the body to understand, have multiple fail safe mechanisms.

Because we evolved in the context of scarcity, right?

We evolved where, you know, we were just hoping to live long enough to get enough calories to pass along our genes.

That's why we have an extraordinary ability to fast.

People can literally go a month even longer just on water because our body has these remarkable capacities to go for a long time without eating.

Because that's how our body evolved constantly not being able to find enough food, going for days at a time without food.

This whole three eat three times a day thing is a totally evolutionarily novel behavior.

And so our body is really good at, you know, trying to motivate us to eat enough calories.

That's why we have this desperate craving for calorie dense foods, for fatty foods, for sugary foods.

Why?

Because that's where the calories are.

And so we're really.

And so of course, the processed food industry takes advantage of it, the animal industry takes advantage of it by, you know, by genetically selecting for fattier cuts of meat, et cetera, et cetera, trying to pack as many calories into as small space as possible to really light up those reward pathways in our brain.

So our body is really does not want us to lose too much weight and so has multiple kind of backup mechanisms to be like, oh, wait a second, losing too much weight.

And even though I'm getting this ping that this GLP1 ping and consistently gets that GLP1 ping such that you are still eating less than you were before.

That's why you maintain that weight loss.

But you don't lose weight more even though you're obese, don't lose a pound more because your body's like, wait a second, I'm on to you.

And is able to figure out some other way to find out that something's wrong with this GLP one thing because it's just matching other signals that I'm getting.

So you talked about the expense.

What I've heard is it's upwards of $1,500 a month.

You in the book mentioned about 16,000 a year.

That seems absolutely exorbitant.

And my question is, do you know if most health care insurance policies cover that.

Oh, no, they don't.

But even if they do cover it, most people actually don't stay on these drugs more than a couple of months.

In fact, most, about half don't even make it up to the ramping up to the regular dose.

So they don't even get a clinical dose before stopping these drugs.

80% are off these drugs within six months, even when they have the drug paid for, even when they're not paid out of pocket.

And it's because of these side effects, which are the side effects.

Oh, so, yeah, so the side effects mostly gastrointestinal.

So vomiting, nausea, slows your stomach tract, your digestive tract down, and people feel really queasy, really nauseous, on average of vomiting.

And the problem is, you take this drug.

You know, normally drugs only last for a few hours.

That's why you got to take them every single day or multiple times a day.

These drugs last all week.

Now, that's good that you only have to inject yourself once a week, but if the drug causes your problem, oh, you got six more days.

Right.

While this drug is still in your system.

And so it can really make people feel sick.

And there's, you know, other kind of more serious side effects that are less common, but that tends to be what gets people off these drugs.

They're like, they can't take it even when they're being paid.

And of course, these are forever drugs, have to stay on these drugs forever.

And so I think even if you're like, well, I could stay on it for a few more days, but wait a second, I've got to stay on these drugs every single day for the rest of my life, even when I'm not losing any more weight and just facing the side effects without the benefits.

Maybe these aren't the drugs.

For me, another.

Another thing that I found super fascinating was that most of the weight loss that people have also comes from lean.

Lean muscle mass.

Crazy.

So, I mean, I assume, look, you lose weight through any mechanism and you'll lose some lean mass, but normally it's only about 25%.

So you do bariatric surgery, you do calorie restriction, you eat less food, portion control, and, you know, you lose four pounds on the scale.

Actually, only three of those pounds are fat.

One of those pounds was lean mass, which includes your skeletal muscles.

But with these GLP1 drugs, it's 40%.

40% of the.

It's almost half.

40% of the weight you lose is not fat.

It's actually Your lean mass.

And that is part of this phenomenon like ozempic face.

This changes, this altered in facial appearance.

It's not just you're losing fat from your face, which can make you look more God.

Well, understandably you're losing excess fat from your face, but it's also you're losing muscles, losing muscular musculature.

Now you can, if you engage in a rigorous strength resistance training program, you should be able to emeliate some of that loss of lean mass when you're losing weight.

But it's not like you can do like face exercises.

I don't even know.

Right.

So there is this accelerated lean mass loss.

But so that's why, you know, you look in the medical literature like critically important.

Anyone going on these drugs must enact a rigorous resistance training exercise to maintain as much muscle mass as possible.

Because we don't want to get.

Particularly when you're cycling particularly, you know, you go on these drugs and all of a sudden you can't get these drugs anymore.

There's a shortage on these drugs or you can't afford to pay these drugs.

All of a sudden the weight comes back.

And then you get on these drugs again, you lose more pounds.

Every time you do that weight cycle, the fat may come back, but all the muscle that you lost may not come back.

So every time you cycle.

Wait a second, you're kind of fat to lean ratio gets worse and worse and you don't want to end up kind of both with the worst of both worlds where you have not enough muscle mass and excess body fat.

Another thing that was, I'm going to keep using this word fascinating is you have, you have some little boxes in the book, and one of them was about how if you have to go in for elective surgery, you have to stop, you know, the drugs like three weeks beforehand because it empties the contents of your stomach so slowly and they don't want you to aspirate.

Fascinating.

Yeah.

No, and I mean and, and it can get so bad, actually paralyze your digestive tract and you get something called a bowel obstruction where things just stop entirely and kind of form concrete and it can be a surgical emergency.

Now this is rare, like less than 1%.

Like some of these serious side effects like pancreatitis.

Yeah.

And bowel obstruction.

These are less than 1% risk every year.

But I mean these can be very kind of serious side effects.

But yeah, if you're, if you're going under elective surgery, unfortunately, sometimes you go under surgery, you don't have a choice.

It's emergency surgery.

You have to go under regardless.

But if you know you're going to have surgery, yeah, you want to stop these drugs many weeks in advance because you know how they say don't eat, you know, the night before you go in for surgery, don't eat that breakfast.

Because they want to clear your stomach contents.

Because they don't want you to aspirate while you're under, while you're anesthetized, exercise and have food contents go into your lungs.

But these drugs slow your digestive tract so much that even if you stop, even if you stop eating during the regular time, there's still food in your stomach the next day, 24 hours later because you're, because this slows your digestive tract so much, which is good in terms of weight loss because it makes you feel fuller, longer.

But yeah, it can be risky if you're going under anesthesia.

So I want to, I want to talk, I want to, I want to use the remaining time.

We have to talk about how we can boost GLP1 with diet and lifestyle.

But before I go there, in your final assessment, do you feel like the benefits outweigh the harms when it comes to taking these GLP drugs?

You know, that is a decision that has to be made on an individual basis.

It's your body, your choice.

Right.

Just like anything in medicine.

Right.

It's not up to the doctor to decide for you, it's up for you to decide with your doctor's kind of advice of what are the pros and cons.

And so that's what really was the, what the book was meant for.

You know, obesity so dramatically decreases your lifespan, reducing life expectancy as much as six or seven years that like bariatric surgery, these drugs should be considered as a last resort for those unwilling or unable to treat the cause of their obesity.

Right.

I mean, the problem is people to eat too much crap.

So anything to get people to eat less crap can be beneficial.

But you know, we don't need a thousand dollar drug or you know, surgical manipulation of digestive tract to decrap our diet basically.

And you know, it's, it's kind of taking a step back is kind of perverse that, you know, big food addicts people to junk food on purpose for profit and then we fatten the coffers of big pharma to treat at cost, at high cost and some risk, the array of health problems that really need never to have occurred in the first place.

But you know, it's like you can look at any lifestyle disease, right?

Be like, you know, statin drugs, blood pressure drugs, blood sugar lowering drugs.

If you are unwilling to reverse the course of your type 2 diabetes or reverse your high cholesterol, or reverse your high blood pressure with diet and lifestyle changes, then these drugs can be life savings.

Now they only reduce your absolute risk by, you know, 1 or 2%, but on a pop.

So for you, maybe it's not going to help you, but on a population scale can save thousands of lives.

And these GLP1 drugs can do the same thing for those who have cardiovascular disease and who are obese.

You get about a, you know, one and a half percent decrease absolute risk, reduction of heart attack, stroke, dying from cardiovascular disease within a few years of taking these drugs.

Why?

Because, yes, you're still obese, but you're less obese.

The consequences of obesity are so devastating, you could have a drug that like takes years off your life and it still might be worthwhile now.

But the question really is, wait a second, is there any way to get the benefits without the risk by choosing natural approaches?

And so that's really where the second half of the book comes in.

Yeah.

So let's talk about some of these natural approaches.

Should we start?

Where you want to start with exercise is exercise.

Exercise, yeah.

So most studies show that exercise studies actually boost GLP1.

Turns out there may be some publication bias, meaning, you know, there may be some studies that did not find beneficial effects and they were quietly shelved.

There's ways you can kind of look at studies and say it looks like there's something missing from the literature.

But the nice thing about exercise is all benefit.

So.

So whether or not that helps with GLP1, critically important to move more.

I want to get into a, you know, whole food plant based diet.

Before I do though, you talk about, you have a little section called chew on this.

Oh, isn't that neat?

Yeah, very.

Regardless what you eat, right.

In fact, the study was done on ice cream.

If you slow the rate at which you eat ice cream, you randomize people to eat the same amount of ice cream, but you eat but slow or fast.

You, I think with the slow group, like every five minutes they got to take a few, take a few bites such that you eat salmon ice cream over half an hour versus over five minutes and you get a significant boost in GLP1 eating slower even if you're eating regardless of what kind of food you're eating.

And same thing with chewing.

So you can have people randomize people to eat the study, that most famous study was done with cabbage, regular cabbage, which takes a lot, you gotta chew cabbage versus pureed cabbage.

Sounds kind of gross, but like you know, cabbage in a blender, same amount of cabbage.

But the one that they actually added chew led to a significantly higher GLP1 level.

So regardless of what you eat, eating slower, chewing more may indeed help with appetite suppression and help control your body weight.

So yeah, that was an interesting piece that I didn't know going into it.

What about which spices when put to the test?

And so there's a bunch of stuff that is just totally total scams.

These things like, you know, like berberine, you know, nature's ozempic.

So much stuff that's sold to the public as being kind of nature's ozempic just totally flops.

And you know they, they hold up animal studies when you actually test in humans, either you don't have any results or actually the opposite results.

So it's actually worse for GLB1, it works for raspberry, doesn't work for people.

But there are a few standouts that do actually work and the three are turmeric, cinnamon and cayenne pepper.

All of which not only boost GLP1, all of which not only improve satiety, decrease appetite, decrease the amount of calories you eat, but have been shown in meta analysis to a significantly decreased body weight versus placebo.

You can hide spices in capsules, they're so potent, you can put them in capsules versus placebo.

Randomized controlled trials showing those three spices actually lead to weight loss compared to not eating those spices.

What about plant based versus meat based diet?

Oh, you know, one thing is interesting, so here I am talking about whole intact foods, but even the processed plant based meat alternatives.

So they tested a couple, they tested burgers and they tested ground, ground, ground plant based meat.

And they also tested a chicken substitute made out of microprotein.

Yeah.

And in every single case, more GLP1 more satiety, less calorie consumption with the plant based alternatives.

Now it might be from the fiber, Right.

So even though they tried to kind of macronutrient match it and they certainly calorie matched it, it's possible.

I mean there's nothing you can do about the fiber, right?

Animals don't, animal foods don't have any fiber.

And even these ultra processed meat alternatives still got a few grams of fiber in them.

And so that may help explain why you have the satiety, you have the weight loss when you randomize people like in the Stanford Swap Meat trial.

They took people randomizing these beyond meat products versus grass fed organic meat, the best meat they could find and swapping two and a half servings out a day for a few weeks.

Significant loss in body weight even though apparently the same amount of calories they didn't.

It wasn't really a weight loss study but they just tended to lose weight and part of it may be the satiating quality of even the ultra processed plant based meat alternatives.

Right.

How important is that five letter word fiber?

Oh my God.

Well it's really all important when it comes to feeding our good gut bugs.

Our microbiome.

I talked about how these GLP1 sensing, nutrient sensing cells are in the end of our small intestine.

They're even more concentrated in our large intestine in our colon and are activated by signals from our microbiome.

These goods, so called post products like acetate, propionate butyrate that are produced when we eat fiber.

But you know, fiber is you know, kind of a catch all term for actually a thousand different kinds of compounds, completely different compounds, but they're all kind of fit under this umbrella term of fiber.

So that's why you cannot just take you know, isolated fiber like Metamucil or something fiber supplements and get the benefits you'd get from the hundreds of different fibers in whole plant foods.

That's one of the reasons for this interest in getting people to diversify their diet, eat many different types of foods a day because we're feeding different populations of good gut bugs.

You cannot replace whole foods with fiber supplements.

What about vinegar to boost glp?

Oh my God.

So cool.

Yeah, it's kind of cheating.

It's kind of cheating because normally you eat fiber and your good fiber feeds in your gut actually produce acetate, uhm, actually acidify your colon which is a good thing, reduces colon cancer risk.

And some of that acetate gets absorbed into your system, circulates throughout your body.

Ah, but you can cheat the system by just taking some vinegar.

You never want to take it straight.

You can burn your esophagus but dilute it in some water, sprinkle it on a salad.

Uhm, and uhm, the acetic acid, which is what vinegar is, just acetic acid and water gets turned into acetate in your body and has that same GLP1 boosting effect, appetite suppressing effect and weight loss reduction effect.

So I mean for hundreds of years vinegar has been used as an obesity treatment and now we know one of the reasons why.

And my father loves patients to put balsamic vinegar on the, for the.

Well the acetic acid and the bump up the production of nitric oxide.

Oh, absolutely.

Oh yeah.

What a great season.

There's a couple seasonings that you know, sodium terrible in terms of hurting our artery function.

There's some seasonings that actually really beneficial.

So you know, salt free mustard for example, actually good for you.

What is mustard?

Mustard?

Cruciferous vegetable.

Right.

Mustard greens come out of mustard seeds.

You're just grinding up mustard seeds, mixing it with vinegar and so what a great.

That's one great way to make meals healthier and tastier at the same time.

Balsamic vinegar is another one.

You talk about slow carbohydrates to boost GLP1.

What are you referring to?

Yeah, these lente carbohydrates.

So you're talking about beans, we're talking about sprouted grains and we're talking about groats.

We're talking about the whole intact groats.

So not just steel cut oatmeal, which is certainly better than rolled oats, certainly better than powdered instant oats, but actually the whole oat growth before it's chopped up.

And you can do rye groats, you can do a barley groats.

No matter how well we chew, we're gonna have bits of food make it all the way down to the end of our small intestine into our colon, providing a plethora of nutrient for our good gut bugs that produce these components that boost GLP1.

And indeed 14 hours later you eat barley groats for supper.

14 hours later the next day, significantly less calorie consumption.

You feel just as full eating 100 fewer calories because your appetite was suppressed by all the GLP one boosted because your good gut bugs are eating the barley groats you had the night before.

What about green leafies and chlorophyll?

Oh my God, green leafies.

So thylakoids, the chlorophyll rich membranes in greens actually slow the absorption of fat such that you get a GLP1 boosting effect, a cravings reducing effect.

You eat the equivalent of a half a cup of cooked spinach in the morning and hours later significantly reduce craving for chocolate.

I mean you can randomize people today so they don't even know who got the spinach, who didn't.

You put people in a brain scanner and you have less reward pathway light up when you show them a picture of a donut.

All because you just ate some greens.

So eating greens doesn't just isn't just good for your arteries actually acts as a GLP1 boosting appetite suppressant to help prevent those cravings.

Yes, we all know the good foods to eat.

Most of us know good foods to eat.

The problem is how do we walk past the donut shop, how do we not dip into the bowl of candy in the co worker next to us?

And that's with these cravings controlling foods like thylakoids, which means dark green leafy vegetables.

And it's because it's the chlorophyll rich membranes.

The darker green the better.

So go for that like lacinato dinosaur kale, that really, really dark green.

That's where most of the thylakoids are concentrated.

And what I found fascinating is you mentioned how you don't want to overcook those.

You want it to be so it kind of glows.

Right.

As opposed to.

Right.

We all have over accidentally overcooked our collards and it turns that drab kind of olive brown.

Now it still has the nitrates.

It's still, I mean this is a healthy food but you can see the, some of the thylakoid degradation because that's where the green is.

When the green goes down, we're losing some of that thylakoid blocking activity.

Yeah.

Any last thoughts you want to share with the audience on GLP drugs before I let you go?

Oh, just good news.

We have tremendous power over our health, destiny and longevity.

Vast majority of premature death and disability is preventable with a healthy enough plant based diet and lifestyle.

I'm so excited with all the wonderful things you're doing in this world and I'm honored to be your brother in this journey to get out some evidence based knowledge about nutrition.

My plan, strong brother, always putting it to the test like everybody else.

Nutritionfacts.org Again, the book is called Ozempic Risk Benefits and natural alternatives to GLP1 weight loss drugs.

Dr.

Michael Greger, thank you so much.

Hey, did I hear, did you have a birthday recently?

I had a birthday, yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well fantastic.

You're now 40.

Oh God, I wish.

Hey, hit me, hit me with a plan strong virtual fist bump on the way out.

Boom.

Plan strong.

Thank you.

As you just heard, the long term effects of Ozempic and these types of drugs is still very much unknown.

And the long term outcomes remain mixed at best.

Are there safer, cheaper, natural alternatives to boost GLP1 with diet and lifestyle?

You bet there are.

And it starts with, you guessed it, plants.

Let's start there by eating strong natural weight loss foods.

Thanks so much for listening and as always, please share this episode with friends or loved ones who may benefit.

And until next week, always, always keep it Plan Strong.

The Plan Strong podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Lori Kordowich, and Amy Mackey.

If you like what you hear, do us a favor and share the show with your friends and loved ones.

You can always leave a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

And while you're there, make sure to hit that follow button so that you never miss an episode.

As always, this and every episode is dedicated to my parents, Dr.

Caldwell B.

Esselstyn Jr.

And Ann Krile Esselstyn.

Thanks so much for listening.