This was inevitable...

Spoiler alert. Intermittent fasting and consistent exercise will give you the same results but with better health as an ultimate outcome...not worse health because of a drug your body didn't really need.  This week’s article in BenefitsPro about the 10K patients who are suing the makers of the GLP-1s like Ozempic and Wegovy was inevitable.  These semaglutide drugs give patients a distorted weight loss experience. In my last blog, I said this..."Consider Ozempic and other semaglutide copycats that are flooding the market. Ozempic’s list price is approximately $1200 for a one-month supply. Patients taking this drug barely have to get out of bed to watch the pounds melt away. They get temporary weight loss that comes with a hefty price tag for your health plan. It also comes with significant side effects like loss of lean muscle mass, stomach troubles and more. And what happens to the coworkers who might be diagnosed with cancer or other difficult diagnoses while your health plan has been bled dry by this drug? Well, that’ll be between you and your plan administrator to figure out. It’s gonna have to come from somewhere, friend." If you didn't catch that blog you can still read it here -- https://www.custombenefits.work/news/2023/11/27/bcbsnc-tries-to-pull-one-over-on-us-but-we-arent-fooled.

Too many doctors don't get reimbursed much for the care encounters it takes to follow a patient through their weight loss journey; couple that with how Americans love quick fixes. Doctors are instead encouraged to prescribe expensive drugs to do the work for them. And why not! The health insurance companies are now fully integrated with pharmacy benefits managers. That's right, more spoilers…the healthcare system is now almost 100% controlled by big pharma. The fact that your doctor has less than 10 minutes with you during appointments is the perfect lay up for Blue Cross, UnitedHealthcare, Cigna and Aetna who are all about the hidden money they have embedded in the cost of these drugs. And let's face it, it's not just these drugs. It's ALL drugs. Is it any wonder that every other commercial on TV is a drug commercial and then the other commercials are from insurance companies selling Medicare Advantage plans?  Even politicians are going to have to pay more to compete with healthcare for airtime in the upcoming election year. Couldn’t happen to a nicer group of folks considering they get more campaign money from healthcare than they do from anyone else.

Here's my unsolicited advice to anyone out there who is currently on Ozempic or other GLP-1 copycats. Get your doctor's help to wean off of them and start following some of the important experts in the intermittent fasting arena like David A. Sinclair A.O., Ph.D., Peter Attia, Andrew Huberman and others. Why? Because these drugs have chemically put you in a quasi-fasting state without you realizing it. Seriously, when you inject yourself once a week, there's at least a couple days where you're probably too sick to eat much. The nausea you experience makes you want to skip meals and push the plate away after just a few bites. So, embrace that! Go with it and I promise it won't take long (maybe 3 weeks) to realize that you made it through breakfast, lunch and clear into late afternoon before you ever thought about being truly hungry. My trick is to sip warm/hot liquid. Between coffee, hot tea and a hot brothy soup (like what you might get at a Hibachi restaurant), my tummy stays full on that liquid pretty much all day. Then I eat a sensible meal with my family after spin class (where I also gulp a bunch of water trying to keep up with the spin instructor). You can retrain your body to not get hungry until much later in the day. It’s the truth. I dare you to prove me wrong.

Dr. David Sinclair is a Harvard Researcher who studies longevity and reports on the science of intermittent fasting. He wrote a book called “Lifespan” and recorded a podcast by the same name.

The other trick that I think is instructive is using a Freestyle Libre 3 or Dexcom to watch your blood sugars fluctuate throughout the day. You’ll be amazed at how level they will stay even while fasting. Your body is a mostly well-functioning machine when you get out of the way and let it do its job. Even a lazy pancreas like mine regulates my blood sugars pretty well throughout the day when I’m not eating anything. While I usually just fast through breakfast and lunch, the longest continuous fast I’ve done so far is 3 days. My blood sugar never dipped below 75 the whole time. I like the Freestyle Libre 3 and I buy it at a local, independent, community pharmacy for around $70 per sensor. No insurance needed. Those sensors last 14 days. Even people who don’t struggle with their blood sugar control can buy one with a prescription just to see how their body processes certain foods. Like, for some reason, my body can deal with potatoes way better than rice, pasta or bread. Everyone’s body is different so each person should do some research and wear a sensor for 14 days to see what happens. It’ll be an interesting but needed experiment.

Freestyle Libre 3 checks your blood glucose once every minute and automatically plots that data to a graph on your smartphone.

OK, last but not least…and this is the most important trick of all. You need a direct primary care doctor to lean on during this process. Traditional insurance and their fee-for-service reimbursement methodology is not going to cut it when you need a doctor that sticks closer than a brother. As I went through my own epiphany around weight loss, Ozempic, fasting, etc. I would text my DPC doc fairly frequently and we’d have quick, spontaneous encounters that were either digital or live and in-person as needed. No insurance middleman to get between us. The national average for DPC memberships is around $80/month. Very affordable. Anyone who consumes care in the traditional sense, scheduling appointments way into the future, having to wait in waiting rooms and then wait in an exam room, getting maybe 10 minutes with the doctor, then paying a copay every time, then getting a surprise bill for something you didn’t expect to be billed for…all that can be alleviated in a direct primary care relationship. Well worth the cost! And employers can embed this tool into a well-designed health plan. If employers are curious about that, I know a gal!

You and your doctor deserve an appropriate amount of time together without any third party telling you what you can and cannot do. You can get the third parties out of the room when you use direct primary care.

When you realize that your “insurance” was part of the problem that was keeping you from a well-functioning primary care relationship, the most logical next question is “do I really need this type of insurance?”. Well, I can’t answer that for you, but I did answer that for myself and the answer for me? Again, spoiler…NO, NOPE, NOPITY NOPE, NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT. If you’ll navigate over to my YouTube Channel, I’ve recorded several videos about different strategies that accomplish the goals most individuals and employer groups are aiming for. Well, like usual, I could keep going on and on, but I think that’s enough for today.

Stay well everyone! Hit me up if you wanna talk.