Dhruv Khullar

You know, people with Parkinson's disease, for instance, have disrupted dopamine in some of the motor parts of the brain, as well as motivation.

And so our desire or our motivation to seek out things, whether those are positive rewards or negative rewards,

those are also being influenced by dopamine.

So sometimes there is this kind of reductive sense that it's just a matter of dopamine spikes.

And if we just blunt those spikes, we'll be able to overcome much of what's ailing us today.

And I don't think it's as simple as that.

And some of the ways in which these medications are actually operating are still mysterious.

And so, you know, one of the interesting things I came across in my reporting is that it's still kind of a question mark how exactly these medications are even affecting

brain, you know, as they become these longer lasting, more powerful medications.

And it's not even clear exactly how or if they get into the brain.

And so, you know, there's a lot that we still have to learn about the exact ways in which GLP-1s are affecting not only the brain, but the body more generally.

But from what we're seeing from trials that are being published, not only on addiction, but on other types of disorders, they seem to have a number of positive effects.

Yeah, I mean, for a long time, GLP-1s were thought to affect primarily the gut.

They have their receptors all over the body, their receptors in the pancreas and the gastrointestinal tract, the brain.

Of course, GLP-1s, they stimulate the release of insulin.

They slow the passage of food through the stomach.

They're signaling to the brain that we are full.

So there's a lot of crosstalk between the gut and the brain, and there's some thought that maybe some of what we're seeing, both in terms of addiction, but also other types of conditions, is related to the ways in which the medications are affecting both the gut as well as the brain.

I think so.

I mean, some of the estimates are that one in eight people in the United States have been on a GLP-1 medication at some point.