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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Show Me The Science with Professor Luke O'Neill, a Newstalk original podcast. Hello, Luke O'Neill here, and welcome to Show Me The Science. Now, this week in a request, and I'm very happy to take requests. I've got about 20 lined up, though, sadly. So apologies to people who might be waiting for me to cover it, but I will get to them. Many of them are fantastic suggestions.
Very happy to get them.
And my email is laoneal, with two L's, at tcd.ie. That's my work email in Trinity. And do please send me in a request. And if I can feel I can cover it, I will. I'll do my best. And this one came in.
The person didn't want their name read out, so that's fine. This is The Science of Ozempic Manjaro GLP-1, and more broadly, The Science of Peptides. Now, anybody who watches sort of developments with cosmetics and supplements and all sorts of things will have come across this phrase, peptides. And this person says, well, look, what is a peptide? And what are these peptides doing?
And they'd spotted that things like GLP-1 and Ozempic are peptides. So is it all the same or whatever? So I'm very happy to cover it because it does get a bit complicated. And there's an awful lot of nonsense, let's get that out there, of peptides doing certain things, allegedly claims on them, slowing down ageing,
making your muscles stronger, speeding up recovery after injury, boosting your mood. You'll see all this, you know, people trying to flog peptides to do these things. And the truth is, most of that stuff is maybe true, but there's limited evidence to support a lot of it. Where there is massive evidence, of course, is the semaglutides, which are peptides.
And that would include things like Ozempic, Wago v. Mount Jaro. They're all words we all now know. Isn't it amazing? Everybody seems to have heard, of course, heard of these things because they're being used so commonly. And they work. That's the sound end of the world of peptides, by the way. Millions of people are on them for diabetes and weight loss.
They're the two big things that you take semaglutides for. And then they've been in the news and maybe this person I've seen this as a new member. It's called retatrutide.
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Chapter 2: What is the science behind Ozempic and GLP-1?
It's been given the name Godzilla. It's having a huge effect on weight loss and it's much more stronger than the other ones. And I'm going to mention that a little bit as well as we go along. Now, of course, what's very important is these ones, the things like ozempic and so on, they're very tightly regulated. They've been examined by the FDA in America.
and the EMA in Europe, and they've been approved for use, which means that all the evidence is there, clinical trials, both on efficacy and safety, so we're on very firm ground with them, hence the approval of them. The other ones, very few have been approved and very few have been examined in that way, and very few have been proven to work and be safe, so you've got to be careful.
Now, let's define what peptides are. Well, biochemists, and I am a biochemist at heart, are very familiar with peptides. They're bits of proteins. So proteins are made up of things called amino acids. And you have 20 different amino acids in your body. And think of them like beads on a string. And they all get attached together like a big thing on a necklace.
And then it twists into a shape, and that's a protein. Okay, so proteins are made... of string, a string containing loads of amino acids. Now, because there's 20, it's very complicated. Each amino acid is different. You might have one type here, a second type there, two types next, you know. So you end up with this huge diversity of proteins.
And remember, in your body, proteins are critical because they do all the various things because they're all so different, made of the different amino acids. They'll digest your food. Their collagen, that's a protein in your joints. Antibodies in your immune system, they're proteins as well.
So these really are the workhorses of life and they're made of all these amino acids all stitched together on a chain and then folded up into a shape that gives the protein this function. And because there's 20 amino acids available... It's like you've made 10,000 different types of necklaces, really, with different combinations of these amino acids.
And you end up with all this diversity and this functional diversity in terms of what these things do. So collagen, for example, is over 3,000 amino acids all stitched together and wrapped up into this structure, right? 3,000 of them, right? Now, the semaglutides, they usually have only 39 amino acids. And they're called a peptide because a peptide is a fragment taken from a bigger protein.
And that's all that really defines them. They're short little stretches of amino acids. Now, the name came from when they were first sort of configured, I suppose you might say, proteins were digested. Now, your stomach is full of enzymes, digest proteins as part of your diet to release the amino acids to use to build other proteins.
And you break down a protein in your diet to provide amino acids for protein synthesis. And there's all these enzymes in your stomach that digest that, right? And one of them is called pepsin. And they use pepsin to digest up proteins. And they call the product a peptide because it came from pepsin. That's where the name came from.
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Chapter 3: What are peptides and how do they function in the body?
They're calling it Foundaya. And that is, again, an oral version. So we'll see these coming on the market. Now, the hope is the prices will drop because making this might be a bit cheaper. Ultimately, of course, the big issue is getting access to these. And very often, people who are in lower socioeconomic groups need them, you know, and they can't afford them.
So the hope is the price will start to come down because of all this. And certainly when they come off patent, They'll come down. And then the other new one to mention is Retatrutai that I mentioned, made by Eli Lilly. And that had a huge effect in the trials. People lost 29% of their weight over 68 weeks on that. Now, you know, that's a year and a half or whatever it is.
They lost a huge amount of weight, which was great. And remember, the weight you're losing... is usually what's called visceral fat, which is the more toxic type of fat in your body that's irritating your body. So, you know, it's really effective at getting rid of the fat tissue that's so troublesome, I suppose. And that 29% is the highest ever for any of these products.
Manjaro only gets to 20%, so it's been called a Godzilla. of weight loss drugs. And there's a prediction this could take over the whole market. You never know. Be huge. Now, why is it working so well? Well, it turns out it's got two other components. It hits more than one thing. And the combination of the things being hit seem to make it really, really effective.
So we're going to see more powerful ones. Of course, it's still being tested for safety because that amount of weight loss could be troublesome, but still. It's looking good so far. It seems pretty safe. And remember, you should only take these drugs under medical guidance because they're very powerful. So GPs are really important here because people shouldn't be taking them willy-nilly.
You should certainly not take them if you aren't overweight because that's the one that's approved for, you know. We don't know what these drugs will do in people of normal weight. They might have some side effect, remember, having been tested. So again, a bit of caution is needed with these types of drugs and make sure you talk to your GP if you want to go on them.
Keep an eye on you and make sure everything is okay. And that applies to this set of drugs anyway, even though they've been approved, they still need to be used carefully. Now that especially applies to all these other peptides. And it's a bit of a free-for-all out there at the moment, right? There's loads of different peptides available online. All these claims that they do things.
It first began in bodybuilders, actually, where there were peptides that allegedly could increase muscle mass. They were based on a natural hormone called growth hormone. peptides derived from them. And they do work a bit, but they can be very dangerous. So you'll be careful. You don't want to be bulking up loads of muscle in response to a peptide.
You know, it can cause all kinds of untoward effects. And then the other claims around some of these peptides to increase recovery from injury, slow down aging, you know, it's not a big claim. There's no evidence for that. Or if there is any evidence, it's very limited.
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