Dr. Ben Bikman

That is the, yeah, that that's the low dose of what is used now.

Right.

Oh no, for sure it is.

Yeah, in fact, I am, as much as people will hear me describe this and think that I'm being just universally opposed, I actually do think there's a place for these GLP-1 drugs.

A paper was published in 1996 that looked at the changes in GLP-1 in two populations.

They took otherwise healthy humans and split them up and they noticed changes in the obese group and the lean group.

So when they gave both groups a high fat meal,

They looked at the GLP-1 response, and it was roughly similar in both groups, that whether they were obese or lean, they ate a high-fat meal, and GLP-1 was the same, a heavy overlap, suggesting that the satiety effect of that meal would be roughly equal.

Now, I'm speculating a little bit there.

I'm adding that last part in.

So if you look at the GLP-1 response, given GLP-1's effects on satiety, which is very meaningful, the high fat meal elicited a similar response regardless of body fat mass.

However, when they gave them a high carb meal, the lean group had a huge increase in GLP-1.

The obese group had no statistically significant response whatsoever.

There was a little noise, but the error bars were big enough that there was no statistical difference.

Again, it wiggled around a little bit, but at no point did it reach a significant increase, suggesting that you may now have two people who sit down to eat a meal.

One person eats that carbohydrate-heavy meal, and they have a big GLP-1 response.

They pat their tummy and slide the plate away.

The other person eats that same amount and asks for seconds or even thirds because they aren't getting that GLP-1 response.

So to me, the best use of these drugs in the context of weight loss isn't...

for weight loss per se, but it's rather to acknowledge some people aren't going to get that off switch when they eat carbs in particular, that apparently people responded the same way to fat, but there are differences in how people respond to carbohydrates with GLP-1.