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Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome to episode 1212 of the Juicebox Podcast.

Tom Blevins is an endocrinologist that Texas diabetes and Endocrinology in Austin Texas today Tom is going to come on and share his expertise so that we can better understand GLP medications I'm talking about we go V I'm talking about ozempic, zap bound, mon Jarno and more. Please remember while you're listening that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan or becoming bold with insulin. You can find out more about Dr. Blevins at Texas diabetes.com If you are a loved one has type one diabetes and you'd like to be involved in research. All you need to be as a US resident and you can head to T one D exchange.org/juicebox. When you complete their survey you are helping with type one diabetes research. You're also be supporting yourself and this podcast T one D exchange.org/juice box. When you place your first order for ag one with my link you'll get five free travel packs and a free year supply of vitamin D. Drink ag one.com/juice box don't forget to check out the private Facebook group Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes with over 50,000 members. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Omni pod five Omni pod.com/juice box if you have FUBU the fear of missing out on Omni bod. You don't have to have that any longer. Just go to my link Omni pod.com/juicebox This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the only implantable sensor rated for long term wear up to six months. The ever since CGM ever since cgm.com/juicebox.

Dr. Blevins 2:04
Hello, everyone. My name is Tom Blevins. I'm an endocrinologist at Texas diabetes and Endocrinology in Austin, Texas. I work at a clinic where there are about 12 endocrinologist and we have about 12 to 15 advanced practice providers and we see a large number of people with diabetes, especially type one. And we also see a lot of people with type two diabetes. Of course we treat people with pumps and technology and, and even just regular injections. Happy to be here. Oh,

Scott Benner 2:35
I appreciate that very much. Thank you. How long have you been an endo?

Dr. Blevins 2:39
I've been an endocrinologist since about 1986. I finished training and went to Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and got boarded in internal medicine then Endocrinology and Metabolism ultimately got boarded and lipid ology as well. So I've been in practice for about that long. I think that adds up to be about 38 years.

Scott Benner 2:58
What drew you to it initially? And is that the same thing that you do today. Of

Dr. Blevins 3:03
course, back in the 80s, when I was in training, endocrinology was kind of a different space, a lot of diabetes, a lot of thyroid, I really was fascinated by the conditions. And I saw a big potential to help people. You know, interestingly, I really liked the people I worked with who were endocrinologist and, and that attracted me. Now over time, of course, things have changed a huge amount, which is really fortunate for everyone. And diabeetus has evolved from the days of mph and ultra linty. And all that the huge fingerstick devices, which if you've seen it those made, you're probably too young to have seen those but the old iTunes and the the evolution of technology has been just incredible. And then the evolution of the therapeutic agents as well.

Scott Benner 3:52
And that's why you're here, Tom. So can I call you Tom or would you prefer to be called Dr. Blevins or Thomas? Good Thomas. Good. Okay. So you you mentioned something else though you got boarded in Lippa chronology is that right?

Dr. Blevins 4:06
Lipid ology technology. You know, like lipids, interestingly, you talk to people about cholesterol, and their LDL, the good and the bad and all that and that sounds very basic, but really, there's a huge world underneath that there's a board Believe it or not, it's that's when you study for and there's a society of lipid ology, and I'm a fellow of that group. And there was a lot of work done in Houston and that's where I trained with people like to Debakey was there the the surgeon, and the cardiovascular surgeon, then a guy named Tony Gato came in to be the person that did the lipids to help prevent some of that heart disease that they were treating, then a few other people, very smart people came in and I was fortunate to be able to train alongside them. So lipids, part of Endocrinology, really, that's metabolism.

Scott Benner 4:53
Is there any intersection between that and why you and I are talking today your understanding of lipids? No, no and how you came to, like pay attention to GLP is

Dr. Blevins 5:04
not exactly it's another aspect of metabolism. Yes, and that is what endocrinology is about by specialty the board has actually Endocrinology and Metabolism, then there's not a tight link between glucagon like peptide, one mil. It's a GLP. One meds and lipids are somewhat of a loose link, we could talk about that anytime people lose weight, of course, their lipids get better. And the GOP one meds can can help people do that.

Scott Benner 5:27
I see. So let me tell people a little bit about how I found you. For the people listening to podcast, they probably know that for about the last 13 months, I've been taking a GLP medication strictly for weight loss, I don't have diabetes. And I've lost I think 46 pounds at the moment. Since then I started on we go V I moved on from weego V to zap bound maybe a handful of months ago now. Anyway, I think not this similarly to how most people end up doing things. I was about six or eight months into this. And I thought maybe I should understand better what it is I'm injecting into myself once a week. I mean, it's working fantastically. I feel better, everything about my life seems to be better. But I'd like to learn more about it. And I'm starting to see people with type one speaking openly about the successes they're having. So that led me of course, to where any good research would lead a person to YouTube, where I found you, Tom just doing a sit down talking head describing GLP to people and I just thought you were masterful at it. And I reached out and I'm really grateful that you reach back because I think this is a great topic for people living with diabetes.

Dr. Blevins 6:35
Yeah. Glad to be here. Good. Thank you. Nice to work on the on the weight change. Weight loss.

Scott Benner 6:39
Oh, thank you. I appreciate it. The just about three weeks ago, I went to my Endo, who's the one who manages my weight. She was doing my vitals and she kept like mumbling half under her breath and half of my ear like a kid like a kid. These are great. You know about my BP my blood pressure, like just yeah, just just so much stuff that she's like, wow, this is it's incredible. I look like a completely different person. It's my aches and pains are gone and everything else that you would expect to come with weight loss. But then there's also been other benefits. One being that for my entirety of my adult life, without knowing it, I was running around with an incredibly low ferritin level, I was not absorbing iron, and my digestion was always poor and kind of off. And I guess just the slowing of the digestion. My last Burton was 170. And I'm telling you, I've been in the hospital like in the ER with a nine ferritin where I was like almost passing out. And no matter how I supplemented it, I couldn't cut it to come up without iron infusions. It literally is changing my life in ways I don't even think I know yet. Anyway, I sent off a massive list of questions from listeners to you. And you've kind of boiled it down to what you want to talk about here in our first recording. And I think if you enjoy yourself, we're going to do more. So I'm going to try really hard to make you enjoy yourself. But why don't we start right at the top like GLP one. Of course we go V and ozempic GLP one with a GI P that'd be Manjaro. And zap bound. There's others but these are just the ones that are out in the zeitgeist right now. So let's start real basically with what is a GLP?

Dr. Blevins 8:14
Yeah, GLP one that stands for glucagon like peptide one. And, and the gap that you mentioned, Scott is and let me just recommend everybody stick with the gap abbreviation it's glucose dependent insulinotropic polypeptide. Now, okay, stick with gap and actually stick with GLP. One, if you say GLP, I know what you're talking about. Actually, interestingly, people make these hormones in their body, and they make them in the small intestine, and GLP. One is made in cells called the L cells in the small intestine. And when a person eats, carb stimulates the production of GLP one. And gi P has made in the case cells in the small intestine, and in it to is produced after carb, and maybe protein can stimulate it as well. But those normally do is the GLP. One actually goes to the pancreas and can stimulate insulin production. So that's what they do. Normally, this is natural. This is what your body does all the time. So GLP, one stimulates insulin, it also can affect another cell in the pancreas called the Alpha cell. alpha cells make another hormone called glucagon. And glucagon stimulates glucose release from the liver, and actually GLP one that suppresses the alpha cells, it makes them less glucagon the Alpha cell does, and there's less release of sugar from the liver. And so that's those are two things that GLP one does. Now, I'll tell you, I'm going to skip to tip a minute. Tip stimulates insulin production from the beta cell in the pancreas. That's what it does. That's his main role. And we'll talk more about Then a bit, because there's some other things that GeoIP mimicking medicines can do. Like you mentioned mount Jarrow has GeoIP. And of course mount Jaren is up bound to the same thing GLP one does two more things, though, we talked about the insulin to glucagon all that that's good. But what it also does is slows gastric emptying. Meaning this slows your stomach down when you eat. And it slows the emptying of the carb and everything else into the small intestine. Therefore, the carb can't get in as quickly, that lowers the amount of carb that gets in lowers the sugar after you eat is what it does. And what else happens if your stomach slows down. And Scott, you've experienced this, it makes you get full fast and easily, you don't want to eat as much. And so that's one way by which a GLP one time Ed can lower calorie intake, but also it probably has a direct effect on the hypothalamic area that reduces appetite. And gap can reduce appetite a bit as well. And I'm just gonna go ahead and say GeoIP, and meds, that's the amount jarred can also seems that they increase sensitivity to insulin, which is really interesting. And so these meds, do some really good things. It turns out that people with diabetes, type two, make plenty of this stuff. And as far as we know, people with type one, make these two. But the effect in type two is, is reduced of these two hormones. And so therefore, giving people a medicine that mimics that kind of a hormone can really kind of improve things. Of course, people with type one don't make insulin, so you're not going to get that effect. A person with type one would get the lower glucagon, the gastric emptying effect and the appetite effect. I want to just step right in front and say these medicines are not approved to be used in people with type one diabetes at this point, right? They're approved for type two.

Scott Benner 11:59
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Dr. Blevins 14:41
know, the answer is these. Well, to your second question was a good way to enter back into the first part of the question your first part of the question. That is a concern with slowed emptying and suppressed glucagon. And of course glucagon and people type one your alpha cells do make glucagon and go God can help when you get low, of course, and that's what you get by injection, you know, the glucagon injections. And your your alpha cells make that and they help regulate your sugar. So if your sugar gets low, your cells kick out glucagon. Well, if you suppress glucagon, it could increase your risk of low number one. Number two, what you said is right, if the stomach emptying slow down that could increase your risk of of low also. Now back to the first part of your question. These agents have been studied in people with type one. And I'll just briefly tell you, there were two studies a few years ago, we participated in one of them here, we do quite a bit of clinical research here. One thing I didn't mention when I introduce you should have but we do quite a bit of clinical research. And we were really excited about these studies using it was liraglutide, which you know, as Victoza. And that was being studied people type one and there's large studies. And sure enough, in people with type one diabetes, who were treated with, I'm gonna say Victoza because people know this is Victoza. liraglutide is one of the GLP one meds, it's the one you had to give every day, once a day. Yeah, short duration, you have to give it once a day. And we were very excited about this people's agency did drop, you know, around point 3.4. And, and the body weight dropped five kilos or so that's good. But also and the insulin dose reduced, no surprise, but also those people had more hypoglycemia. And also, there was a little bit of an increase in ketoacidosis diabetes related ketoacidosis. And, you know, that kind of caused everybody to pause. And and these big studies were done, and the drug did not get approved for type one. If you look back into those studies, I will tell you this, just just to let you know, the ketoacidosis episodes occurred for typical reasons, it wasn't they didn't look as mysterious when I looked at the studies. And the hypoglycemia was a bit increased. But I think, you know, it's very possible that could have been mitigated with increased change in doses and things like that. Nonetheless, though, those two studies kind of stopped the whole approval process for type one in its tracks.

Scott Benner 17:21
Do you think it needs to be looked at again?

Dr. Blevins 17:23
I do. I really do. And I'll also tell you that another analysis of this whole area, kind of a pooled analysis of, of a number of studies with GLP, one meds and type one showed, certainly there was more gi side effects, we know that's going to be true. And anybody that takes these medicines are competing nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation. I always tell my patients, you know, with these meds, you could get diarrhea, constipation, nausea, vomiting, and usually gets better I tell people you don't get to choose. One of those might have some of those might happen. But if the this pooled analysis showed no differences in ketoacidosis, severe hypoglycemia between the people treated with the Met or the placebo, so yeah, I think it needs to be studied more. I think, anyone that listens to this should, you know, rattle the cage of somebody and say, Hey, we need to study this again and get this so it's approved. Right? That's my opinion. And you know, we're very cautious about this when people talk why and we'll talk about that more.

Scott Benner 18:27
Yeah, no, I appreciate you being candid. I mean, listen, I think people who listen, no, I am getting, I mean, our endocrinologist is giving my daughter GLP. Actually, she's using Manjaro at the moment, which seems to go Jive better with her. I don't know a better way of saying that. Yeah, the decrease in insulin use is insane. Yep. Yeah, I genuinely believe my daughter will use 16,000 fewer units of insulin in the next calendar year, because she's injecting five milligrams of Manjaro a week. Yeah, it's fascinating. And her her excursions, her glucose excursions are flatter. I don't. And now in fairness, she's also wearing a DIY algorithm she's using Iaps. I don't see any more instances of hypoglycemia. As a matter of fact, without the excursions high we're getting fewer Bolus is to bring her back down, I actually think it might be making less hyperglycemia than before, which isn't to say that she had a lot. I've also told you a story and sent you an episode of 15 year old girl who's gone from 70 units a day down to now, seven units a day of total insulin, a type one, my 47 year old brother went from a seven a one C with type two diabetes down into a five a one C without really even changing how he eats and he lost 35 pounds. I mean, I know there are people who are going to have results that aren't like that or that You know, they have some sort of a reason why they have to stop it. But my gosh, like everything I'm seeing just it screams for us to pay attention to this. Yeah, yeah,

Dr. Blevins 20:09
I agree I do, I do want to emphasize that, since it's not approved for people type one, where I don't want to talk about the information for type two interchangeably, it would be using these medicines and a person with type one diabetes, unless they fit certain weight criteria. And we'll talk about that more in a bit. But is off label meaning it's not approved, right. And, you know, insurance, insurance coverage is highly variable, not guaranteed, in fact, likely won't be covered. And so the doctors, your, your treating prescribing doctor can use a medicine off label if, if that doctor or provider feels like it's appropriate, and some will, and some won't. And everybody wants to be very careful, I'm very cautious, for good reason. And these are some great stories like your brother well, and you know, some people do great with these meds, and some people simply can't take them and they can't tolerate them. And I've had a person in this morning to the office who said, you know, I tried a couple of these. And I simply, she simply could not tolerate, and we can we can adjust the dose sometimes and make it work. And we can use a little bit under even recommended dosing to make it work. But they're not for everybody. Yeah, they really are, are wonderful meds for for many, many people. Right?

Scott Benner 21:25
I do wonder if in the future we won't see at boils down to be micro dosing for people with type one sometimes. Because if you're not looking for the weight loss aspect of it, or the hunger aspect of it, although, you know, when you have type one, a lot of people with type one have trouble regulating their hunger and have digestion issues. It's not uncommon, right? But you know, I want to go back before we go forward, you just said, you know, early on, one of the mechanisms of this is the fullness you feel full, go over again, the part where your brain just doesn't tell you you're hungry, because I have both implications. So yes, I get fuller, faster, right, right. That's slower digestion, that's lovely. You can eat through it, by the way, you have to you have to mindfully stop when you feel it. I can eat through it. I should say, I'm sure some people would vomit, or I've heard those stories, right. Yeah, but the part where your brain, like I have to remind myself to eat, I don't get hungry very often. And if I do get hungry, it's almost always in the last two days of the injection when I think the halflife is waning,

Dr. Blevins 22:32
right? Yeah, you know, there's a lot to learn here. We don't know all the answers. But there does seem to be a central effect of GLP. One agonists we'll call them agonist because that's what these meds are they, they stimulate that GLP, one receptor in various places, there does seem to be an appetite suppressant effect, and GeoIP probably does that too. So those two together work well together when it comes to the appetite part. So appetite could be partly regulated by feedback from the GI tract. That may be and so that could be part of it could still be linked to the to the gastric emptying, issue, or change. But also there's a seems to be a central effect. And when I tell people is, you know, you're taking the appetite, I call it Daymond you're putting into a cave, and you're kind of putting a rock in front of the cave, so won't come back out. Because appetite. Everybody has appetite. And, and I'm sure over time, appetite has been a really good thing to keep people eating. And when there's food eat. And when you're not, you're not getting enough calories eat, you know, but appetite these days, kind of throws people into high calorie intake and high carb high anything intake. And so these meds do seem to have an effect a central effect on appetite. Yeah,

Scott Benner 23:48
that's fascinating. I mean, I think not like most people, I felt impacted by it immediately. And my wife's like, Oh, it's a placebo, but I lost four pounds in the first four days. Yeah, recently, I had to go up in my dose, like I was writing the 7.5 milligram dose as long as I could with the Zep pound. And my doctor, I said, Hey, I put a couple of pounds on but I'm not doing anything differently. And she said, Well, I'm gonna move you to 10. Actually, 10 and 12 is where I see the most weight loss. She goes, I just wanted to see how much you could get out of the 7.5. And all of the little things like I was starting to have more sugar cravings. I was hungrier, all that stuff. I swear to you, I shot the 10. Four or five hours later, I said to my wife, oh, I have that feeling of like when I started the first time in my stomach, my body regulated to it. I've been using it for 13 months. So you know, in a day, I felt better. And now it's been four days since I did that. And I've already lost four pounds. Yeah, and I have not I swear to everybody listening. I haven't changed my activity. I haven't changed my hydration. I haven't eaten any differently. I just I'm losing weight now. Oh, it's absolutely fantastic. And to watch it work on my daughter's blood sugar is is magical. She I couldn't get her she's away at college. And so I, as I was switching her to Manjaro, because she was using ozempic. In fairness, we're getting this through a Canadian pharmacy. So everybody understands how it's happening. I had to ship it to her, and it was late to getting to her. And in five days past her injection day, her blood sugar's got completely wonky, we had to make all kinds of adjustments to her Basal or insulin to carb ratio to her insulin sensitivity factor just to get her through the four days. And then she injected it. And I talked to her last night and I said, Listen to me right now put all of your settings back. And we are going to be looking for lows over the next 36 hours just in case now the algorithms getting ahead of it. But as soon as the medication hit her, her blood sugar's all like flattened out and stabilized. Again, it's, it's really, it's crazy.

Dr. Blevins 25:54
That's really interesting, you said a few things are really important. One is it's not approved, so it's not going to get covered, you're getting it from Canada, which which, of course, I as a prescribing Doc, I can't write scripts, and send them to Canada, they have to be, I can write a script that you could take anywhere you want. But and that's one thing. And the other thing is, it's definitely want to be cautious because the you're right, hypoglycemia is possible, and then you treat it with oral carb, and it may not get absorbed quickly. So you know, the stomach slow down. So you got to be really cautious about that. And if a person has had diabetes for a long time, they might have gastroparesis. And that is slowed down empty, and because of some nerve involvement from the diabeetus, and then they definitely would get doubled to slower in and that would be a person who wouldn't want to take it. So we have to be very, the stories are great. And and the results can be really interesting when you're using it. And off label again, I'll say that repeatedly. Because I want everybody to know that's it as a story right now, with type one and vicious I'd be very careful about it and select people properly and can be careful about the and understand the drug itself may make it a little difficult to treat hypose And could create hypose

Scott Benner 27:08
Yeah, and it's going to be such a case by case situation not that everything about diabetes isn't right. But at the same time, like when this becomes more accepted or covered by insurance or everything, it's going to take some real overseeing by people who understand what's going on, because your transition so important. If somebody wouldn't have told me in the very beginning, hey, it feels like your food stops halfway down your chest for the first couple of weeks, you know, which is how I would describe we go via when I first started taking it. I might have panicked if somebody wouldn't have said to me like do not eat crazy. I don't anyway, but but do not eat crazy, fatty or greasy foods you might throw up, I had help moving into it. I had good direction. It's why I was able to navigate it. Because the truth is there's a lot there to navigate. I you know, people ask like what are your implications, and I had diarrhea in the beginning. But I said to myself, I know that when my body regulates this, I have a good chance of this stopping. So I'm going to try to make it through. Because I want the other side of this because Tom, I thought I was gonna have a heart attack. I'm always carrying all my weight and my stomach. I've classically ready to have heart attack, you know? Yeah, yeah. So anyway, we're gonna go back and forth here. But let's talk about the the half life and the dosing. Right. So I don't I'm sure everybody doesn't know what half life means. But you can explain it to them and tell them why it's important with us. Yeah, thank

Dr. Blevins 28:29
you for asking Half Life is you can look at it two different ways. One is the time it takes when you give a medicine for it when you stop it, the time it takes to reach half the level of the dosing. In other words, look at it as the time that it takes to reach the steady state as you give them medicine. So if the half life is a day, that means that takes about a day for the drug when you give a dose to reach 50% of the metabolized, excreted whatever. And, and so it tells you a lot about the duration of the medicine and the body. And then when you're creating dosing frequency, it tells you how often you have to give the dose I mean, if I gave it a medicine that had a half life of a day, would I want to wait two days to give the next dose? No, because you want to give it every day to maintain the level of the Med and we could go on and on about various meds. But the relevance here is that some of these medicines have very long half lives, meaning they can be dosed infrequently, and some of them have shorter half lives they have to dose more often. And for example ozempic would go v semaglutide. And that rebelliousness is the pill version of that that drug has a half life of a week. So it can be given once a week because it stays around for a long time. The medicine like the mount Jarrah And that's also observed bound. Okay, yeah, as you pointed out earlier, that one has a half life of five days. So it can be given once a week to. And we could go on and on about that Victoza has a half life of about 13 hours. So you really have to give that every day to maintain that level. So the beauty of these new meds that we're talking about the ozempic will go V set bound mount Jarrow, those meds can be given once a week, which is very convenient, really in relative to other meds. And so that that makes a difference.

Scott Benner 30:34
It's fantastic. And I know I think Novo is working on a pill, a once daily pill I got, it'll probably be 10 years before you see it. But I think that people are people by people. I mean, researchers, pharma companies, they obviously see what's going on at this point. Like, it's the amount of people who use this don't have side effects that don't stop them and are having insane kinds of, you know, transformations, both health and visually. Yeah, it's gonna be a focus. But you know, it brings me to this point that you put on your list here, like what is overweight and obesity. And I really do want to hear from you. Because what you're seeing right now, in the zeitgeist, right? The way people talk about this is you'll either find somebody who says, well, whatever works for you, that's fantastic. Good for you, which is how I think about it, or you'll hear somebody say, well, work harder, eat better. And sometimes for those people, I say, Okay, fair enough, there are plenty of people who are not getting movement and are not eating well. And they, they're overweight. But I can tell you that from my perspective, I was not eating poorly, right? My entire life. This has been my situation, I used to joke with people. If I ate like you did, I'd gained five pounds. I retain water, like a pregnant lady, I would tell people, right? Like, if you and I went out to dinner and had a normal meal, I'd be three pounds five pounds heavier. The next day, I couldn't tell you why I didn't eat differently than you did. And so can we talk about this a little bit like, you know, just weight and obesity? How you think about it in relation to these medications?

Dr. Blevins 32:07
Yes, you know, there's a lot of data that shows that as people gain weight, certain things happen. And if there wasn't some risk to gaining weight, we wouldn't care. You might not like the way it looks. But it has medical consequences. And that's where a lot of the treatment sort of motivations come from. And it turns out that as people gain weight over their usual ideal weight, then you start seeing things like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, type two diabetes, insulin resistance. And you know, it's well known that people with type two diabetes have insulin resistance, some of that's genetic, some of its acquired, like when people gain weight. And so, you know, it's kind of arbitrary, when you set a cut point to say over a certain amount of weight over ideal, it is a problem because sometimes people would gain five or 10 pounds and things go to pot when it comes to metabolic things like I talked about. But a commonly accepted standard for overweight, that could cause medical issues is a BMI of 27. Now BMI, what is BMI? Everybody, I think when you go to your get a checkup, you get your weight, your height, and those two can be put together into a formula. And his body mass index, BMI, his body mass index, it's an index that takes into account height and weight. So a person who's like, you know, 610 ways to 10, that's probably okay. A person who's five, two that has a weight of up to 10. That's way over. So you takes into account height and weight, BMI. We could go on and on about that, but I'll just tell you the currently accepted standard is a 27. Plus on the BMI over 27, is overweight, and that person is at high risk for things like all those things. I've talked about high blood pressure, high cholesterol, type two diabetes, insulin resistance, and over a BMI of 30 is called obese. And there are other cuts that are higher than that too. But those are the two classics. Again, BMI is calculated by height and weight. If you wonder what yours is, you could go to a table online, when you go see your medical person and you can say what's my BMI because the EMRs calculated pretty much automatically these days. That's an adult's. I do want to talk a little bit about pediatrics a little different. There are various standards for defining obesity in pediatrics. The most accepted one here in this country is obesity and pediatrics is a weight that's over the 95th percentile. So you get out of BMI. You could use BMI a little bit but you get out of BMI. In up we're looking at percentiles that is comparing people to other people their age. There's so much dynamic changes that occur in the pediatric population. So they get older, the height changes, weight changes all that. So obesity and pediatrics is defined as a weight. That's over 95/95 percentile of other comparable people they like age matched. And those that that goes from the ages of two to 19.

Scott Benner 35:18
Is there an increase over decades in young people being overweight? Absolutely. Is that in your opinion? Like, I mean, is it a little bit of everything? Is it movement? Is it what's in our food? Is that how we eat? Is it how often we eat is? It's an amalgam of these things.

Dr. Blevins 35:39
Yes. I mean, I could expound on that. But you nailed it. Okay. It's, it's the diet, its nature, for sure. Genetics determined things, determined metabolic rate. And you can see overweight and families. But it's also nurture, it's the environment we live in. And activity changes over time. And, and what you know, everybody knows what's going on. But it were glued to the computer, or to the phone or something like that sitting still a lot. In the old days, that didn't happen. And we could talk on and on. But you're exactly right about that. Scott.

Scott Benner 36:18
So is the clinician, how do you think about it? Meaning? Maybe I should back up and ask this question. How many times in your career have you told somebody to lose weight? And they've actually done it?

Dr. Blevins 36:28
I'll answer that is many, many times, I think people understand the concepts of calories and calories in calories out. And you know, I'll say, exercise is always important. You mentioned exercise earlier, and your own particular experience. And 20% of weight loss is related to exercise, unless somebody's an elite athlete, or a very athletic and exercises all the time most people don't. So exercise is important. And reducing calories is important. But I'll tell you, I think people respond and are successful, many times, the problem is the long term part of it, people are successful frequently for a while, and on average, they tend to gain it back, we're all busy, we're exposed to calories all the time. Activity is challenging, sometimes because of scheduling or, or just understanding about the amount that you need. So I think people really handle this way on their own. And so people can lose weight on their own to keep it off and do really well then understand the medical part of it. But for the most part, it's really challenging. A lot of it has to do with the environment that we live in. My

Scott Benner 37:36
take on that is in a world where I can't impact the environment, right? I can't just it's nice to say like, I love turning on a podcast or TV show, you hear a rich person say get out and move around. I'm like, Well, you have $9 million in the bank. That's great. You know what I mean? Like, I've got to get up and sit back down and make this podcast all day or I don't get to pay my electric bill. And that's how this works. Right? Right. When that's the environment? Do you have any moral qualms with giving people medication just to lose weight?

Dr. Blevins 38:06
The answer is no. That's the answer. But you know, when I have a medicine that I think is safe, and, and effective, and I understand, then I'm much more comfortable prescribing, we've gone through all kinds of medicines over time. And some of them, we still have, I mean, GLP ones are not the only medicines approved for weight loss. Right. And, and some of them, I feel comfortable with others. I don't like the side effects. And I don't like the idea of long term, I have increasingly come to think and No, and I think most people in this area are similar, that any medicine we use is going to need to be long term. Right? And for example, I mean, let's just go look at other like type one diabetes, it's not like you can take the insulin for a while and and get off of it. And and, you know, various medicines, thyroid hormone, it's not like you can take thyroid hormone for a month or two and then get off and everything's okay. It's a it's a continuing need for treatment, then people call it chronic, chronic condition. So I think the weight loss medicine is going to have to be that way too. Because like you pointed, as you pointed out, you get toward the end of the cycle of these very effective meds and the appetite comes back and tries to come out from the appetite demon tries to come back. Yeah. And you just have to keep it where it is. And so I think chronic treatment is is is the way to go. With this type med.

Scott Benner 39:31
I've heard people describe a food noise in their head that goes away. My wife got a got hypothyroidism and it took us seven years to talk a doctor into giving her medication for it. And in that time, she gained a significant amount of weight which she's almost completely all lost on we go vino. And she describes and I'm going to have her on at some point to tell it in her words, but she describes it she would open her eyes in the morning and be thinking about food before she was even conscious and Then, as she was making breakfast, she'd start wondering what she was going to have for lunch. And she said, It's all gone. It just doesn't happen anymore, which makes it much, much easier. And then her you know, then it impacts the insulin, and that your body's using, keeping in mind, she doesn't have diabetes, right. And then the weight starts coming off, and then the metabolic stuff gets better. And that's in there. I think to me, for me personally, the most significant part is the way I ended up describing it as my body works better with the GLP. I don't really care what that means. And I by the way, I am now more active than I was before, because a I lost weight b I have more energy, my joints don't hurt like I am more active now than I was prior, it was easier to get going, it was easy to pick up weights and go, Hey, I'm gonna lift these now. It's a nice say, go ahead and lift some weights and go for a walk, etc. Except every time I tried to do something, I ended up getting a knee surgery or something like that. Because in fairness, my body was too big. And every time I tried to use it, I'm older and it would break. And so if we can all basically agree that there's stuff in the food we shouldn't be eating, and maybe stuff we're spraying on the food that we shouldn't be eating. And we're microwaving and plastic. And there's 90,000 Different kinds of oils, three of them apparently could be her one of them could apparently be an Industrial Lubricant, the way it's graded out, right. And we're eating this stuff all the time. And over time, people don't even understand what good food and bad food is anymore. In many situations, to say to people, I threw you in the cesspool, and I could pull you out, but at you should climb out. I don't understand that. Like I really don't like what is it? You're saying to people, if you're fighting against this idea now, is this ideal? It's not. But until GLP is make food come out of the ground tasted like candy and being good for you like lettuce. I don't know what else we're gonna do. Because this is where we are now. That's my opinion of it. Yeah, it's nice to hear other people wanting to be helpful for those who are are stuck in that. Also, there are plenty of thin people who are not healthy either. So you know, they're eating the same crappy food to their bodies just aren't reacting the same way as mine did, if that makes sense. Yeah, I think

Dr. Blevins 42:13
that makes sense. Yeah, your body, it was built for a certain amount of weight, your chassis, your skeleton was built for a certain amount of weight, your internal metabolics worked better with a certain amount of weight. And when we load the body with more things happen to the metabolics. And they also you pointed out, you pointed out they happen to the structural part to the knees. Cancers are higher in frequency. You know, I don't have a study that tells you when you lose weight, your cancer risk goes down. I would think that's probably true. But nonetheless, we know that overweight is related correlated to all kinds of things cardiovascular answer, all of that. And then losing weight is actually really important for some people losing 40 pounds is was needed. Some people lose 10. And they do a lot better. Yeah,

Scott Benner 42:59
time. Listen, I didn't even go to college. I have no background in medical whatsoever. I'm better off now than I was last year. Yeah, that my common sense tells me right? I've joked with people if I grow horn out of the middle of my head, and it literally says Manjaro up it. I'll go at least I'm not going to die of a heart attack. You'd have to show me some really tough health concerns about using this for me to think about. I'd be better off 40 pounds heavier. Yeah, yeah. So here's the thing like that. We don't talk about enough. Maybe you could do these medications. They started being researched in the 80s. I might is that story about the heal a monster in the Canadian researcher. Is that true? That's

Dr. Blevins 43:38
pretty true. Yeah. Yeah, they were started. The research started many, many years ago. And there was something in the heel of monster spirit that was kind of similar. And the one of the one of the early medicines that you probably remember was by Ada, which is exemplified, we don't really use it much anymore. He had a very short half life and had to get given twice a day. It was effective. It caused lots of side effects. It had peaks and valleys and peaks and valleys because they had to be given so often. And yeah, these are not brand new. You nailed it. I mean, epic has been out since 2017. Yeah, by eight it was approved long before that. And then we had a long acting by Ada kind of thing. I extended it that was by durian, you probably remember and one or two came and went because they just didn't have enough uniqueness to actually be used very much. And then along came Victoza. And we use that quite a bit that eventually got approved as the drug saxenda that the same thing for weight loss. And then you know, started people start observing, Oh, these are good for diabetes, but they also cause weight loss. And most of the drugs before that we use for diabetes, including the insulin would be associated with weight gain. And we'd say, Oh, that's good weight gain because your sugars are better, but nobody that I know Who is listening? And there's no weight gains good. Yeah, yeah, they've been around for a while.

Scott Benner 45:06
Yeah, it's tough because you lose weight when you're diagnosed with type one very frequently because you're, you know, drifting away from life and you don't realize it at first and then you reintroduce the insulin. And then you get back to the caloric intake that is normal for you, which for some people is more calories than they needed. And then they start gaining weight. And then they say, Oh, the the insolence making me gain weight. And I always try to tell people like, generally speaking, it's the calories you're taking in that help you gain weight. Now, the the insolence putting it, you know, is storing it for you. And do you agree with that generally? Or is there more to it than that? I

Dr. Blevins 45:40
agree with that. Okay, everybody, you know, people, everyone's different. And everyone, not everyone, but in general, it's still safe to say it's a good concept. Everyone has a different metabolic rate. And they deal with calories differently, frankly, calorie burn his genetic appetite is partly genetic attitudes about food are acquired. But, you know, we grew up in our families and in certain attitudes about food and amount of food. People are told, eat three meals a day, and you know, have a dessert. Yeah, we live life in real time. And we eat and so the calories, it would be kind of interesting if everybody had a custom calorie for their particular body. And that can be calculated. But But still, the environment we live in is so easy to get calories one on but you know, a handful of us has lots of calories, go look that up. I use, I use the net. And as many people do in Siri, I just say, Hey, Siri, how many calories in a handful of walnuts or something and you know, it's like, wow. And I still remember when I was in training, we were asked to have a dietician sit down with us. And I would go over to the hospital every day, and grab lunch. Lunch was, you know, an event. And, and we got time off to do it. And I was having a chili dog with french fries and a regular drink. And the dietitian calculated calories for that. And I thought, oh, it's gonna be like 450. But it was like 1000. And I will tell you that kind of feedback was a reality check. And I never had a chili dog again, I'll tell you because I just it just floored me. So if you look at what you actually eat everyone, you've done this, you do this, then you'll you'll find some interesting things.

Scott Benner 47:21
I'll tell you that I had an experience last week where I started eating something I hadn't eaten in a while. And I enjoyed it, and I ate it. And then I injected the 10 milligrams up from the 7.5. And I reached for it on the counter one day. And I actually thought to myself, Oh, I don't want this, right. Like the idea of it nauseated me. Yeah. And I was like, but But five days prior without two and a half more milligrams of this medication. I was like, Oh, this is good. I like this. It's it's it really is fascinating.

Dr. Blevins 47:52
changes your attitudes. And you know, something, there's nothing wrong with that. That's good. I mean, people, do you ask the question earlier? Is that really? Okay? And the answer is, you know, if it works, and it's, it's safe, and you tolerate it, go for it, it's what you should be doing

Scott Benner 48:06
is overweight and obesity, an issue in the type one community more so than in the regular community?

Dr. Blevins 48:11
You know, I've had people tell me, oh, overweight, it's not a problem. The type one is type two. And I look at them and go, No, that's not true. I know that because of the people I see in my office, people with type one diabetes have the same struggles with appetite, and maybe sometimes more. So as the people with type two and struggles with weight. If you look at stats, I can say, Is it 2050 or 80% of people with type one who are overweight or obese based on that definition I gave you earlier. And most people probably say 20%, I think most of the people in the medical world right now would say 50 or more. It's not at all mean, but if 50% of people with type one are overweight or obese, and I'll just say this type two diabetes, people with type two, have not cornered the market on overweight or obesity. And they haven't cornered the market on insulin resistance. People with type one can have genetics that are insulin resistant. And when you gain weight, you get more insulin resistant, whether you have type one or type two. Yeah, so it's a real it's a common issue. It's talked about more and more. And yes, we really do need some good studies, with I hope, this kind of medicine, looking at people with type one, and I'm going to tell you more about I can tell you now and there's a study that's going on, but we need more studies that look at this and people with type one, we need to find ways to mitigate risk. And we can do it. When

Scott Benner 49:34
you say we need studies. Where does that have to come from? Is it a pharma company that has to say, hey, I want to sell to these people. So I have to prove it works? Is it researchers like Who are we looking for to jump in and carry this load for us?

Dr. Blevins 49:46
Yeah. You know, it's the pharma companies. And there were these studies early on that there was a lot of optimism and we all assumed it was all going to be approved and it wasn't they have to go to the FDA and have to show the adverse events associated with medicines, and everybody has to come to an agreement, it just didn't happen. So the pharma company typically would have to put together a sizable enough study, which is very expensive, and then show effect, and then show, you know, manageable side effects. To get it through the FDA. Currently, there are some studies going on. In fact, I'll just jump in a minute and tell you about one, there's been reluctance to proceed. Of course, most people with diabetes have type two. And then there's just people who are overweight, who don't have diabetes at all. And then there are people with overweight who have pre diabetes. And that's where the numbers are. And that's where they're going for. A big part of me says, We want to go on something, and you have type one diabetes, go to the JDRF, and say, hey, please lobby for this because they have an organization. And they know how to do that. And they're really good at that. If I went to a company, and I said, I want to put 50 People with type one on this medicine, and that I probably could get funding to do the study. That's not nearly enough people, though, to get it by the FDA. So it really has to be a large study. Question is what about these weekly meds? That that's those two studies I told you about? That had the ketoacidosis and the hyperglycemia. Were in the once a day drug alert. liraglutide Victoza? What about the weekly meds we don't know, we need studies. Now there is a study going on right now. And I'll just jump in and say something about it's called car mod c AR mot that's just the name of the study. And accompany is studying a medicine such as we're talking about, specifically, in people with type one diabetes, who are either overweight or obese. This is a phase two study meaning it's going to turn into hopefully, if things look good, into a bigger study phase three. Now that's the kind of study that needs to be done. And that is ongoing. That's not from Novar. Lilly, it's a different company. And we are involved in that study, here. And in fact, if anyone is in the Austin, Texas region that wants to be with type one diabetes, who could be categorized as overweight or obese, we're looking for people for that study. So these studies, please, I've encourage everyone to volunteer for some of these studies, as you have in the past. Every medicine that's approved for type one, type two, anything, has people who volunteered to study jump on in there and help those things get approved, or at least at least get them study. They may not get approved. You never know.

Scott Benner 52:34
Yeah, Tom, I'll I'll get some information from you afterwards, I could probably funnel some people towards you that would help with that. And also, let's take a moment to chide Lilly and Novo who both in their charters say that they're around to help people with type one diabetes. So here's your opportunity, spend a little money and help them you know, the big problem here is there's not enough people to sell it to afterwards. That's the bigger problem. Yeah, there's not enough type ones. For them to think of it as a splash. But my gosh, like you're looking at really impacting people's lives. Because, listen, I think you can hear through the raindrops when Tom's talking. If he was in charge, if you were the Wizard of Oz, you'd give this to people, right? You do the study, come up with the protocol and give it to people with type one. Is that fair to say?

Dr. Blevins 53:19
And the answer is yes, I would. Yeah, I would be very, very careful. I would talk about all the things we talked about with the little part of my head saying, you know, there was a study that showed increased ketoacidosis. But then another larger kind of analysis said, probably not, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me that it would cause that I can I can come up with mechanisms. When you look at the studies, you come up with your own impressions. Yeah. And it looks like those people might have developed it anyway. But and then hypoglycemia, that one, I get that one I really do understand. And I know how to mitigate. And what you said earlier, you're you're looping your your daughter's loop. And I mean, and and even the automated insulin delivery devices from all of the manufacturers, since hypoglycemia, or since the progression towards it, and they back off the insulin. So with those devices that lots of people with type one are using, would there be an issue at all with Hypo? The answer is I don't know it needs to be studied. We

Scott Benner 54:18
live in a world where generally speaking, people with type one diabetes don't know how to accurately adjust their insulin to begin with. And often they see doctors who are not much more help it so then to say that we will I'll inject something in you that's going to lower your insulin needs. Who's going to adjust the insulin, like the user doesn't know how to do it, the doctor doesn't know how to do it, you know, like it's, that's where the rubber is gonna hit the road right there you have, you're gonna have to tell people look, we're gonna enjoy when Arden gave herself the first injection of ozempic We spent the next three days changing her settings. It was that significant and that real quick, and then after we got them right, it was fine. And that was it. So you know, anyway, Yeah, sorry, can I say about the DK thing? Yes, I bet you could have gathered all those people up and just check them for DK and came up with similar numbers without the GLP. But that's my guess based on nothing other than talking to people for years about diabetes?

Dr. Blevins 55:15
Well, I will say in those studies, there was a group on placebo and the group on treatment and the people on placebo, that is the comparison and a scientific study where you actually have people who aren't on and who are on and the people who weren't on didn't have the ketoacidosis. I can't say that interesting. And why did it cluster in that particular group? It on treatment, it tended to be the higher dose, so maybe the nausea from the higher dose sort of covered nausea from something else going on, like ketoacidosis. And people were kind of misled. It's possible that the lower insulin dose needed, made people more prone to have keto ketosis because they had less insulin going in. I don't know.

Scott Benner 55:59
And they were still eating regularly because they weren't being slowed down from eating. I wonder there's a lot in there. Yeah, there's, like you said, I think further study might prove out that that's not something to be overly concerned about?

Dr. Blevins 56:11
Well, it's something to be very careful, definitely. And what you said, is, is very important about adjusting for the first three days, the studies studies that are the one that we're talking about the karma study that we're doing, yeah, we have a very clear kind of direction as to how to adjust insulin right off the bat to be very cautious. And so we don't know if person is going to go on the real thing or not. And we adjust the insulin in a certain way. And so these studies should look not only and they are this one study, looking at not not only the effect, and the side effects, was also looking at a treatment kind of algorithm approach to reducing the insulin.

Scott Benner 56:55
Yeah. Do you have any patients of yours type one who you've given them a scrip? And they're paying cash?

Dr. Blevins 57:02
And I'll say I do? Yeah, yeah, you know, I'm writing it off, it's off label. And what I tell people is, I tell them about all the side effects, I say it's not approved by the FDA. And if you look at the approvals, many times, it says specifically not approved for type one. And, and I tell them that and give them a prescription of I think is appropriate, we we start low, we always start low, and then we increase the dose as as appropriate. It is off label. And I'm gonna say that so many times, and and I tell them, it could bring out some major gi problems, and you may really not like it, and you may not be able to take it, you may have to discontinue it. And we're really cautious. But I do have people who are overweight with type one, and I will point out and we can talk more about this later, that actually there are instances in which it could be covered in people with type one. And that would be the obesity overweight obesity indication. And and that would be the main one actually. Yeah. So if somebody and then also with what GAVI there is an indication for using if a person is overweight, or obese, and if they have a cardiovascular disease, so someone has a history of SEO, and a heart attack or stents or bypass or whatever. And if they're overweight, then there's a really, really interesting study that showed a reduction in major cardiovascular events. And people given them a govi. It wasn't that people type one. But there were a few people type one of the studies, it turns out, and they still fit that indication. I hope that made sense. Does

Scott Benner 58:41
Do you think we'll see an approval one day or a study one day for PCOS? Have you seen the people talking about that the the mass amount of women in these Facebook groups who are getting pregnant before they're losing weight on GRPs?

Dr. Blevins 58:54
Yeah, yeah. People with PCO, you know, weight loss can improve fertility and people with PCOS and without, and there are studies that have that are done small studies, there are ongoing studies. Are we going to see an approval? I don't know. I don't see a big study being done. And people PCO at this point, I may not be aware of one that's been done possible, but I think it's really an interesting thought.

Scott Benner 59:21
I think a lot of women suffer with it quietly. Yeah. And it's not looked at and it's

Dr. Blevins 59:26
highly connected to overweight. You said it right. It's highly connected to overweight and insulin resistance. And if you lose weight, the insulin sensitivity improves. Ovulation improves. Really interesting. I

Scott Benner 59:36
am going to share a story that I can't tell you who the person is, but I know them very well. And 20 mid 20s female, not you know, growing up heavy than not heavy, mostly not as an adult through college, and then suddenly in the last year, just gained 60 pounds. They're working out crazy eating as clean as they can gaining weight through the whole Then doctor says you have PCOS. We told her, go back to the doctor, see if they'll give you a week. Ovie something like that. We go, here's that bound doctor gave her we go V. She shot it on Saturday morning, over FaceTime with me because she couldn't bring herself to do it. I had to talk her through it. And she got it in and sent me a text 36 hours later that said, I've lost five pounds. I don't know what that means, or how to measure that. But that's insane. Like is that's not water weight. Do you know what he means? Like, it is probably some of it. But she stopped eating in the past for 36 hours and nothing's happened. And she's eating super clean to begin with. And she's active and everything else. Like, I don't think we have the answer yet. But you can't tell me that there's not something happening here. That's not commensurate to the idea of thyroid stimulating hormone, right? Like you My body's making it but it's not using it correctly. Like, there's gotta be something there making those those GLP receptors light up, that's changing people on a metabolic level like it maybe I'll be wrong one day, but in the moment, this is how I'm thinking about it. Yeah, yeah. Well,

Dr. Blevins 1:01:10
I mean, I'll say 36 hours, five pounds. There's a lot of water there. I think I mean, that or something? Or maybe there was a big blowout, diarrhea, I don't know. But, you know, usually on any diet when a person lowers calories. Typically the first week or two, you lose a lot of water weight for various reasons, part of its decreased salt intake and, and part of it is kind of the ketone formation thing and the less calorie in and all that type. I agree

Scott Benner 1:01:41
with you totally, but she was already doing that. Yeah, there was never a moment whether it was either a Gary has just exploded, and she just that diary, like or whatever it was, that still didn't happen to her when she was eating clean, exercising, and, and etc, and so on. Who knows? Like, I have no idea, I can tell you my daughter's acne is almost completely gone. And she was not overweight to begin with.

Dr. Blevins 1:02:04
Yeah, you know, we have a lot. Well, I will, I will say we have lots to learn. And I will emphasize to the audience, these are anecdotal, please, of course, examples of effect, not that everyone's going to get anything like that. And some people are really not going to tolerate it. And I have some people who simply can't take it as too bad. Can we talk about that people don't have and yet some people don't have as much weight loss as we're talking about either. So life is a bell shaped curve in response to a medicine is to Yeah, and we like to we tend to talk about the real yet exceptional examples. But remember, not everyone gets that that result.

Scott Benner 1:02:42
Talk to me about the not tolerating it when you don't tolerate it, what does that look like?

Dr. Blevins 1:02:46
You know, the main thing is Gi, and it's typically just what we talked about that gastric emptying, change, and maybe even some central effect can induce nausea, vomiting, it tends to get better over time, we always start with the low dose and we titrate or increase the dose very gradually, we if we increase the dose, and then a person gets side effects, we back off. And that's very doable. You have to work with your health care person when it comes to that. And, and so diarrhea, and constipation, the medicines typically slow down the GI tract all the way down, but some people can get diarrhea as well. Commonly, those those effects are tolerable or get better. I had a gentleman in this morning who told me he's taking one of the meds and that at the highest dose, he gets really tight in his abdomen and very uncomfortable. And he's backed it off, backed it off, backed off and I encouraged him to continue to and try to find a happy medium because the GI tract is in the balance here. Some people can't take it and if you look at studies for up to 8% of people on these meds discontinue because of the GI side effects. Now they're those effects can be matched with medicine. I don't like to treat the side effects of one medicine with another but it's sometimes temporary use of like anti nausea pills can help. And you can use medicines or anti diarrheal 's to same concept but that typically are temporary but not always. And so people need to be aware of that. It just happens it's not your fault if that happens. I will say this if you have nausea and maybe Anyway remember that high fat slows the stomach down to so if you add fat plus a GOP one, your chance of nausea it goes right up. So one thing to do is cut the fat back about

Scott Benner 1:04:40
Yeah, no I don't eat high fat to begin with. I don't use any oils almost at all in my life. But I was very careful about that. I also if I don't see myself going to the bathroom I add a little magnesium oxide to my supplementing Yeah, I knew how important it was to keep the process rolling once I started this, like, if I don't see myself going, going every day on this, I hydrate, I take the magnesium like I keep things moving. I know there are some, you know, people love to yell in the media about stuff like this, but have people been injured permanently from it at all that you know of like, I mean, and is that got something to do with who they were before they started? And? Or could it because I think the fear is like randomly you're just not going to be able to like, I don't know, digest food anymore. Like you mean like people get when they hear about it, and you hear them panic about it, they say kind of bombastic things like that, is there a call for concern,

Dr. Blevins 1:05:37
you can ask something, when we talked about half life earlier, I mentioned that, that, you know, the week Half Life means that it takes a week to reach 50%, I'll tell the audience, it typically takes five half lives for a medicine to get totally out of your body. So if a medicine has a long half life, it's gonna take a while for it to get out. So if you have a symptom that you don't like, and you're gonna stop the medicine, it's not like you stop it. And that just goes away with this type of medicine because of the long half life. The symptoms of like the slowed gastric emptying are gonna go on for a while, and maybe they'll go longer than that. But there's really no clear evidence that those go on forever. And some people have underlined gastroparesis, and we don't know. And, and we might bring it out, make it worse. And then after they get off the Med, they may they may get diagnosed. And I may say maybe think Well, I have this now because the answer is I think they probably had it before. And there's still a lot to learn, but there's no clear evidence out of studies that there's there's a permanent impairment. Right. Okay. And, you know, there are other side effects too, we could talk about that. That's, I think the main one that people talk about,

Scott Benner 1:06:48
I would, I would never minimize anybody's experience. But either, yeah, but I want to say this, and I want to leave with that. I've interviewed 1000s of people. And I have access to my Facebook group that has 50,000 active people in it. And so when my daughter at 18 years old, was told by a GI doctor, she had gastro precess, even though her a one C had been in the fives and the low sixes for most of her life. I didn't accept that. And we went and looked at other ideas, and added a digestive enzyme to her process of eating, which made all of her stomach pain go away. I shared that on the podcast. And I have to tell you that the amount of people with type one who I hear back from who just said to me, I thought my stomach was gonna hurt the rest of my life. I thought there was something wrong with me, my body was broken, etc, and so on. Now, I've added this, and it's all gone. It just cleared up. So we don't talk enough about when you get type one diabetes, some people get digestive problems, right. I mean, you know, they used to give Amazon out like it was like candy to type ones. But now if suddenly we don't do that anymore, so we, we ignore the possible digestive implications of having type one diabetes. And then when people talk about stomach issues, they send them right to a GI doc, who just jumps right to you have slow gastric emptying, you have gastroparesis. And I wonder if there's not, it wouldn't be helpful if people were better educated about that and spoke more about that to their patients. Do you find yourself seeing those things? Yeah,

Dr. Blevins 1:08:27
I think it was a really good point. And I think gastroparesis should be diagnosed based on you know, commonly some testing to document what's going on. And I think if anyone goes to their GI doc, please, if you're on a GLP one, tell them about that. Because everyone, you know, we we in the endocrine world, diabetes world, we're, we're all up on it. But not everyone is. And I can't tell you how many people now the GI Doc's I work with are really sharp. And they picked up on this very quickly. But I got some calls early on, from people saying, Hey, I just did an endoscopy on somebody who's on that medicine and they're still fluid in their stomach and they haven't eaten anything since last night. We've learned a lot, we've learned that that can happen. Slow gastric emptying can leave contents there for a while. And you need to be aware of that. If you're a GI doctor, and then this thing about symptoms too. I've had people go through major gi workups. And, and they're told Finally, well, everything's okay. Take these medicines, and it might help. And then they come back to my office, I go, Oh, you're on this medicine that probably cause all those symptoms. And Did y'all talk about that? And the answer is, there's been a lot learned and things have gotten a lot clearer. But But these medicines if you slow the stomach down, what happens? Well, you slow the stomach down, you could get fuller. And, and like my patient said earlier, it felt like his stomach was tight. Yeah, and that's no surprise. You can also have that gastric to juice be kind of pushed up the esophagus because there's more pressure and you could get some a soft vaginas. So it's important to kind of understand the implications of that gastric emptying thing.

Scott Benner 1:10:11
I have to tell you my acid reflux has completely gone away on a GLP. Right? Yeah, good. Is that in common?

Dr. Blevins 1:10:18
All things are possible there. They could get worse. I mean, you said it's got better for you. Yeah. And so the various things can happen. Okay. Most people really don't have any don't have an increase in reflex. Some do. And I can understand how it could get better, too. So there you go. And, and a lot of variability from person to person.

Scott Benner 1:10:39
I think we're coming up on our time. Is that right? We could go a little bit longer the longer Can I ask you about? So two things? So first of all, availability? Are you seeing it get better? I know there was a flood somewhere that slowed it down for a little bit? Like do you think that they just can't keep up with this? Do you think that so many people are using it? What Why are we seeing this? Do you think it'll clear up at some point?

Dr. Blevins 1:10:59
Yeah, availability has been a big deal. And I think part of it is related to some manufacturing difficulties. Part of it, the most of it, I think, is due just as pure demand. I mean, these these medicines are in high demand. And we almost need a pipeline, you know, there's so much that is needed and needs to be distributed. And we've seen those Olympic supply became very challenging, and it's improved a little bit in my experience will go the challenging, and maybe getting better, I keep hearing next month is going to be better. And then the next month comes in, it's not better June next month. And then now now, you know mount Jarrow has had some tight supply zapped bound as well. And of course, we as treatment people, like I want I want my people with diabetes, to have availability to the medicines they need. Right. And I like people losing weight, that's great. And so, you know, people that don't have diabetes, and you lose weight, that's important people with diabetes, big deal. So, you know, there's this this kind of back and forth about, you know, people who really needed aren't getting it really needed, what the definition of that, but that would be, you know, I think most people think those people with diabetes, again, we're talking type two, because remember, these are not approved? Yes. In general, for type one.

Scott Benner 1:12:24
I mean, listen, I, they've got to, they want to make money, right, they've got to figure out a way to get on top of it. I think one of them literally just bought a new place and down south somewhere, or they bought they bought somebody else's building and they're they're manufacturing, they're trying to get set up for it. I don't think it's because they're not trying. To me it lends to the idea of doing studies in other populations, because if it's this popular now, and you're not going to be able to stop taking it. And we have no shortage of people who could use it for diabetes and or weight, or hunger or PCOS or whatever we end up using it for like moving forward, find more people to give it to so you can make excuses to build more buildings and hire more people and produce more. I've heard of people getting it through China, like through China through a Canadian pharmacy into that was happening like that for a while. It's insane.

Dr. Blevins 1:13:13
Your your points well taken? Yeah. I think the demand surprised everyone, the potential the benefit has been embraced. And there's a shortage, which I think will cure in the next few months. Of course, I said that three or four months ago, too.

Scott Benner 1:13:29
Do you think that the demand was surprising is an indication that it works?

Dr. Blevins 1:13:33
I do? Yeah, I do. And I think that, that people understand that people with diabetes, that have the under the indication, benefit, a great deal from it. And that's really a big deal, because lowering the agency reduces risk of complications of diabetes, and helps all the metabolic issues that occur with diabeetus. And we know now that at least a few of these are approved for reducing cardiovascular risk. This studies were done in people with known heart disease, of course, but we know that too, there there are benefits all the way around. And but I think that people who don't have those, the diabeetus. And those risks still want it because weight loss is something people want. And for good reason. I can't blame them at all.

Scott Benner 1:14:19
Can I give you my my big theory? Yes. I think that after a generation of people using GLP medications, and basically learning to eat less and eat better, because they're being chemically kind of directed like that, that we might raise a new generation of people who don't eat poorly. I know that's a big idea. It's a generational idea. But how do your kids end up eating poorly? It's because you eat poorly and you maybe don't even know it. I use this example all the time. My mom who's passed now was told she was pre diabetic a few years ago, and she called me and said Scott i They Say I have prediabetes I'm gonna film to change up my diet completely. So that's great mom. And then I visited her a week later, and I opened up a refrigerator and everything she bought, couldn't have been a worse decision. Because she just didn't know the right things to eat, right. And that's the lady who taught me how to eat, right. And then I taught my kids how to eat except I got lucky, at some point and said to myself, we're doing this wrong, my wife and I were like, we both grew up very blue collar very simply, nobody understood, you know, nutrition at all. And what we consider to be good food was just the stuff we couldn't afford, that we got once in a while is a treat. And that made it good food is really interesting, like how we think about what's actually good for us. So that's my big idea. My big idea is if we take a generation of parents, and write their thinking that they might raise a generation of kids who don't get, I can see in three generations, this completely flipping the other way and forcing Agra to move with it. Because if we're not buying it, they're not going to make it. That's kind of how I feel about it.

Dr. Blevins 1:16:05
I like your idea there. I think starting early, with pretty much anything when it comes to kids is going to have long term consequences. And I think dietary, you know, approaches that early ages that are good, make make things happen. I've actually know some your young children who eat nothing but vegetables and all that all day, it seems. And they really, they do like ice cream and that but they don't. It's a treat, it's not a common, it's not something they expect, but they don't like some of the things that are really what we'd consider it to be high fat. And they're just because their tastebuds are there, they're acclimated to things that are different and, and they're healthy. And I do think you start early, whether it comes to when it comes to food or various things, like Stay away from drugs and cigarettes and all that I think you start early and you teach the kids how to how to go, it

Scott Benner 1:17:00
just becomes kind of second nature. Yeah, I do a Pro Tip series about diabetes with a with a CD or excuse me with a nude, a woman who's got type one diabetes, and is a nutritionist and her children eat fantastically, but So does she. Yeah, and that I think it just is what Liz also, I have to tell you, Tom, if you're willing to do this a few more times, I think you and I are gonna have a Pro Tip series on GLP is together because this is fantastic. I can't thank you enough for spending the time and we still have we didn't even get to the listener questions yet.

Dr. Blevins 1:17:30
So there's a lot to talk about. No, I'd love to. Okay, we'd love to. That's

Scott Benner 1:17:33
great. Kate, listen, do you accept new patients at the practice? Or would it not benefit you for us to share your information like that? I

Dr. Blevins 1:17:41
really don't see new patients. I do supervise a lot of people with advanced practice providers. We have excellent group here, who are really experts on diabeetus. But we have we're a single specialty. We have 12 doctors and three offices here. So though, I don't see any patients. The we as a practice, we see new patients all the time. Okay. In the Austin area, people come from various and we do diabeetus all endocrine so, you know, some listing that would include the practice predominantly

Scott Benner 1:18:14
and no, I Well, for sure. What would tell me the website? Yeah,

Dr. Blevins 1:18:19
it's Texas. diabetes.com. Okay. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:18:24
I'll put it in the show notes as well. And I'm not kidding you. When you get done. You send me the study information that I can share online. I'll put it in a place where a lot of people say it for you. Okay, I'll

Dr. Blevins 1:18:33
do it. Yeah, we'll do that. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that. Oh, my God, let's let's put off the Frezza a little bit, because, first of all, we'll probably want to do more GLP. One first, because there are quite a few things we didn't get to your right. And we need to like the muscle mass change all that stuff. Preparing for surgery, all that very practical, that the impressive thing, American diabetes is late June, and there's going to be I know there's going to be a study presented that will make that discussion more useful. Okay. And I can't talk about the results before them. So anyway, when that's okay,

Scott Benner 1:19:08
can I leave this part in you talking about it? Like that? Yes. Okay. Because what I see here on I'm going to keep recording. You're back with me in two weeks. I think we need that one and one more to get through. GLP. Okay, and, and then do a fourth one on a friends. I think that would be terrific.

Dr. Blevins 1:19:25
That'd be great. Okay, cool. Very good. All right.

Scott Benner 1:19:27
Use that link I gave you and grab a couple more recording dates. I'll do okay. All right, Tom. This has been fantastic. No, you're amazing. Thank you. Bye. It's

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