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We’re coming to you with breaking medical news could a diabetes drug be a game changer for weight loss a new clinical trial is giving millions of americans struggling with obesity hope and it couldn’t come at a better time because obesity is a significant risk factor for severe illness from covert 19. so today we’re going straight to the source dr robert kushner an
Obesity researcher at northwestern university a good friend of mine he actually ran this groundbreaking clinical trial dr kushner thanks again for joining us i thought i would quote you because there was a great article in the new york times uh that uh that when they sort of tried to understand what this was about you told them that semi-glutide is a game-changer
And you’re a very conservative guy so after studying weight loss therapies for years what makes you so excited about this study yeah first of all thanks for having me on you know i don’t use the word game changer very often in fact it’s the first time i’ve used in my 40 years of practice this medication is one and a half to two times more effective than any of the
Currently available medications on the market uh patients on average after 68 weeks lost 15 of their body weight and that turned out to be 34 pounds from starting weight and more exciting dr oz is that is that a third of the individuals in the study lost 20 of the body weight which was about 46 pounds which is really an amazing amount of weight loss just to put
This in context 33 pounds right that which was the average over the 17 months of the trial oh you see the cinder block everybody right you haven’t done construction recently i can tell you this is pretty heavy right 33 pounds imagine losing this from around your waist that is the amount of impact of a of a medication which again i got to say i was stunned by as
Well i never anticipated those kinds of benefits so semiglutid is a diabetes drug it’s already on the market but people can’t just go outside taking the medicine to lose weight today explain why why i put the cinder block down so this drug is currently available in the market as a diabetes drug and it’s a a it mimics glp1 which is a gut hormone now we’ve known
About gut hormones for quite some time most of them increase your insulin response to sugar and that’s why they’re they’ve been used quite a bit for diabetes but at higher doses they also affect one’s sense of hunger or fullness so when you eat a meal and you and you feel full don’t want to eat anymore part of that is a release of gut hormones glp1 is one of them
And not only does it slow your stomach from emptying so it gives a sense of fullness but even more importantly it has receptors in the brain which is the appetite centers in the brain which which has to do with hunger and fullness and thoughts of food and so on so when the same drug which is used for diabetes is used at higher levels the weight losing effect the
Appetite controlling effect really kicks in and that’s why this drug is much more effective than the drug currently on the market which is for diabetes now of course there are no magic bullets when it comes to weight loss and these trials and the participants in them made lifestyle modifications they were important so here’s how researchers think semiglutid works
Inside the body it has to do with these special receptors found in many organs now before you go to them here’s the stomach the liver these the intestines all these organs have to respond when you eat so normally there are receptors on these that are activated after a meal right and every one of these has a role and that increases the amount of insulin you make
Which as you know is important to digestion now these same receptors that are normally activated with food they can be activated by this new drug semiglutid and when this happens let’s go to the stomach right it actually takes the stomach and it slows gastric emptying which means the food stays in the stomach longer stomach distends right and guess what happens
When your stomach is full right you feel full because that’s what it’s all about when you eat food that’s why you feel full now these same receptors are also found in the brain and they’re activated there by semi-glutide as well and they release this hormone that causes you to have a decrease in appetite it’s called glp1 the result you feel less hungry right so you
Eat less food which can lead to weight loss that’s the goal for so many folks now that’s the kushner you’ve followed participants for 68 weeks which is a relatively long time for a weight loss study but as far as we know weight loss can sometimes be fleeting so are there plans to follow up with patients to see if they kept the weight off a year later yes there’s
Actually an extension trial that’s going on from a subset of these individuals that will be followed for another year so we will know what happens when you go off the drug there are other trials also dr oz that are looking for long-term use of the medication plus there’s a five-year cardiovascular outcome trial called selected is currently underway importantly
Looking at if you stay on this drug for five years do you reduce your risk of heart disease and including mortalities that’s going to be a very very interesting study that would be published later on in the future when the study is done let’s talk about side effects because that percentage of people with side effects is quite high mostly gastrointestinal things
Like nausea and diarrhea i mean that can cause weight loss as well how bad were these side effects well the side effects were transient uh described as mild to moderate and then they went away on average the side effects occurred during the dose escalation so this kind of drug you need to dose up slowly and it’s during that dose escalation when side effects
Occurred usually three to eight days is what people reported and then it went away also it was fairly limited then how many people had kinds of side effects that forced them to come off the medication uh the side effects uh about seven percent of the individuals taking the drug actually had to come off of the drugs that seven out of a hundred had a difficulty in
Staying on the drug so it’s a that’s an acceptable number that’s pretty low all right when we come back we’re going to sit down with someone who tried cinnamon glue tie for weight loss as part of this trial that’s making some just big headlines and she actually ended up losing over 40 pounds but i want you to hear from her directly that’s up next today an os alert
You don’t want to miss a diabetes drug is making headlines as a potential therapy for weight loss it is called semiglutid and while it’s not available now it could be as soon as june dr robert kushner who ran this great trial is back with us we’re also joined by someone who participated in his study and lost 40 pounds keanu is joining us now thanks for being here
I am so glad that you have taken such a big step to better health and i’d love to hear more about your story kiana so if you can’t walk us through your weight loss history before you start taking this drug you know how successful were you before what other weight loss strategies seem to work which ones failed i struggle with my weight for most of my adult life
Dr oz um my highest weight was about 270 and my lowest weight was maybe 200 over my adult life so i’ve tried it all i’ve tried online programs i’ve tried medications and just none of it worked for my lifestyle i am working full-time i’m a single mother so i’m always putting my family first in my cell class i’ve struggled uh with most of my weight loss journey
Majority of the medications that i took i had a lot of side effects though it was really hard for me to keep up with it a lot of dehydration constipation sometimes uh diarrhea so i was really excited when i had the opportunity to participate in such a trial all right so again it’s a trial you didn’t actually know if you’re getting semi-glutide or a placebo right
You know something with nothing in it so when you started dropping the weight did you suspect that you actually got the real medication well initially no i was losing maybe one or two pounds very slowly as the medication increased and then once i got like to the maximum doses the weight just started to kind of fall off and at first i was like oh it’s me you know
I’m exercising i’m dieting but the truth was is that i wasn’t giving it 100 you know life was taken over and i was like no it’s not me it has to be the meds did you did you feel that you weren’t hungry at times that historically you would have been hungry yes i did and it was really challenging because i spent a lot of time with family and friends so we spent a
Lot of time around the dinner table and you know going out to eat and so i noticed that at those moments i wasn’t hungry at all or i got full really fast no we should note that everybody i mean everybody in the trial also made lifestyle changes like improving their diet and their exercise but i know it’s an imperfect world dr kushner what if someone were to take
The medication without any of the lifestyle modifications that kiana was trying to make in her life would the weight loss still happen you know keanu makes some wonderful points on how the biology changes one’s appetite in her case she was able to make better choices eating healthier and other things hopefully like being more physically active not not avoiding
Excessive alcohol and so on so the medication helps someone uh with appetite control but you still need to follow a healthy diet and and dr ignomia i’m a lifestyle medicine guy so the whole idea of an individualized lifestyle program regarding your habits is so important it needs to be done with the medication to be successful kenneth i’m so proud for you i’m
So happy uh thanks for sharing your story dr kushner i want to thank you for being here today for being a leader in this field for many years and i want to celebrate you for this wonderful trial that’s uh that’s captivated everybody in american medicine i want everyone to check out that kushner’s book by the way it’s very well done six factors to fit it goes
Into some of the details of lifestyle changes that make sense we’re gonna keep following the research on this and bring you updates as they become available i’m sure there’ll be quite a few
Transcribed from video
Could A Diabetes Drug Cure Obesity? By DoctorOz
