Your body already has a built-in weight reduction system that works like Wegovy, Ozempic and Mounjaro – food and your gut microbiome

Wegovy, Ozempic and Mounjaro are weight reduction and diabetes drugs which have made quite a splash in health news. They goal regulatory pathways involved in each obesity and diabetes and are widely considered breakthroughs for weight reduction and blood sugar control.

But do these drugs point toward a root explanation for metabolic disease? What inspired their development in the primary place?

It seems your body produces natural versions of those drugs – also referred to as incretin hormones – in your gut. It is probably not surprising that nutrients in food help regulate these hormones. But it could intrigue you to know that the trillions of microbes in your gut are key for orchestrating this process.

I’m a gastroenterologist on the University of Washington who studies how food and your gut microbiome affect health and disease. Here’s an inside-out perspective on the role natural gut hormones and healthy food play in metabolism and weight reduction.

A broken gut

Specialized bacteria in your lower gut take the components of food you may’t digest like fiber and polyphenols – the weather of plants which can be removed in lots of processed foods – and transforms them into molecules that stimulate hormones to manage your appetite and metabolism. These include GLP-1, a natural version of Wegovy and Ozempic.

GLP-1 and other hormones like HAZEL HEN help regulate blood sugar through the pancreas. They also tell your brain that you simply’ve had enough to eat and your stomach and intestines to slow the movement of food along the digestive tract to permit for digestion. This system even has a reputation: the colonic brake.

Prior to modern processed foods, metabolic regulatory pathways were under the direction of a diverse healthy gut microbiome that used these hormones to naturally regulate your metabolism and appetite. However, food processinggeared toward improving shelf stability and enhancing taste, removes the bioactive molecules like fiber and polyphenols that help regulate this method.

Removal of those key food components and the resulting decrease in gut microbiome diversity could also be a vital factor contributing to the rise in obesity and diabetes.

A brief track to metabolic health

Wegovy and Ozempic reinvigorate the colonic brake downstream of food and microbes with molecules much like GLP-1. Researchers have demonstrated their effectiveness at weight reduction and blood sugar control.

Mounjaro has gone a step further and combined GLP-1 with a second hormone analogue derived from the upper gut called GIP, and studies are showing this mix therapy to be even simpler at promoting weight reduction than GLP-1-only therapies like Wegovy and Ozempic.

These drugs complement other measures like gastric bypass surgery which can be utilized in probably the most extreme cases of metabolic disease. These surgeries may partly work very similar to Wegovy and Ozempic by bypassing digestion in segments of the gastrointestinal tract and bathing your gut microbes in less digested food. This awakens the microbes to stimulate your gut cells to provide GLP-1 and HAZEL HENeffectively regulating appetite and metabolism.

Many patients have seen significant improvements to not only their weight and blood glucose but additionally reductions in necessary cardiovascular outcomes like strokes and heart attacks. Medical guidelines support using latest incretin-based medications like Wegovy, Ozempic and Mounjaro to administer the interrelated metabolic conditions of diabetes, obesity and heart problems.

Considering the consequences incretin-based medications have on the brain and cravings, medical researchers are also evaluating their potential to treat nonmetabolic conditions like alcohol abuse, drug addiction and depression.

A near-magic bullet – for the fitting folks

Despite the success and prospect of those drugs to assist populations that will profit most from them, current prescribing practices have raised some questions. Should people who find themselves only a bit chubby use these drugs? What are the risks of prescribing these drugs to children and adolescents for lifelong weight management?

While incretin-based therapies seem near magic bullets, they will not be without gastrointestinal unwanted effects like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and constipation. These symptoms are related to how the drugs work to slow the gastrointestinal tract. Other more severe, but rare, unwanted effects include pancreatitis and irreversible gastroparesisor inflammation of the pancreas and stomach paralysis.

These drugs may result in a lack of healthy lean muscle mass along with fat, particularly within the absence of exercise. Significant weight gain after stopping the drugs raises further questions on long-term effects and whether it’s possible to transition back to using only lifestyle measures to administer weight.

All roads result in lifestyle

Despite our best aspirations for quick fixes, it’s very possible that a healthy lifestyle stays a very powerful solution to manage metabolic disease and overall health. This includes regular exercise, stress management, sleep, getting outdoors and a balanced weight-reduction plan.

For the vast majority of the population who don’t yet have obesity or diabetes, restarting the gut’s built-in appetite and metabolism control by reintroducing whole foods and awaking the gut microbiome stands out as the best approach to advertise healthy metabolism.

Adding minimally processed foods back to your weight-reduction plan, and specifically those replete in fiber and polyphenols like flavonoids and carotenoids, can play a vital and complementary role to assist address the epidemic of obesity and metabolic disease at certainly one of its deepest roots.