Hidden Risks of Weight Loss Injections with Dr Zoe Harcombe

Now, let's get on to weight loss injections, because obviously they've become incredibly popular over the last couple of years, but also very controversial.

Now, could you explain in simple terms what the GLP-1 drugs are and what they're doing in the body, particularly in terms of appetite and metabolism?

Yeah.

So GLP-1 stands for Glucagon-Like Peptide-1, which we can basically think of as a natural hormone produced in the gut after we eat.

So we can think of it as a messenger that tells our brain, our stomach, and our pancreas that food has arrived, and you kind of need to start doing something about it.

Now, the word glucagon is quite interesting straight up because our body has got this incredible system that regulates our blood glucose at all times, and one of the factoids that I came across studying all of this that you should just get taught in school, but you tend not to, but it blows me away every time, is that in our bodies right now, you and I, we've got one teaspoon of glucose in our entire bloodstream.

So in approximately five liters of blood, we've got one teaspoon, which is about four grams of glucose.

So the minute we eat something that puts more glucose than that into the bloodstream, the body calls upon the pancreas to basically get the blood glucose level back to normal.

So you've got insulin.

Insulin and glucagon, think of them as sort of equal and opposite hormones.

So insulin will take glucose out of the bloodstream, and glucagon will put glucose back into the bloodstream.

So this sort of Glucagon-Like Peptide, you've got an interesting word in that just to start with.

So if we just look at what they're doing in terms of a couple of things.

One-... appetite, and then the other, what we've just talked about, the blood glucose levels.

So in terms of appetite, they're supposed to...

Well, the, the claim is that they make us feel full because they're sending out that food has arrived messenger that we've just talked about, and then this is gonna come up when we talk about side effects.

They slow down gastric emptying, so there are claims that people feel fuller because food is actually not leaving their stomach at the rate that it would if we weren't on these drugs, and I say we, we might come back to that.

Now, in terms of blood glucose levels, probably important to remember that these drugs started out as drugs for type 2 diabetes, so they were first approved back in 2005 for type 2 diabetes because they've got three actions that reduce actually, not just regulate, but reduce the levels of glucose in the bloodstream.

They increase the release of insulin, which is that hormone that's gonna help to take glucose out of the bloodstream.

They slow the absorption of glucose, and they reduce the action of glucagon.

So glucagon is the equal and opposite hormone to insulin.

It's the one that will put glucose back into the bloodstream.

So technically, that's what they're doing.

When I said at the top of the hour that because of what I've written about obesity and why do we overeat, they've always baffled me, is because I've never known anybody become obese because they're hungry.

People who've had an eating problem or people who've felt addicted to food or who've craved food or have developed a weight problem will, to a person, tell you, "I eat way beyond the feeling of fullness.