Hey there, it's Susan Peirce Thompson, and welcome to the Weekly Vlog. Ooh, we have fun stuff to talk about today. First, I'm going to share with you some really, really interesting research that's just come out, and then I have a really fun announcement for you. Okay, so weight-loss drugs, they're all the rage, right? We know that there's been an Ozempic revolution since 2023, and how's it working? We have some new data in, and this is pertinent because healthcare providers of all sorts, and by healthcare providers, I mean the gamut from doctors and nurses to chiropractors and acupuncturists and functional medicine doctors and osteopaths and massage therapists and personal trainers, and nutritionists, all of these people who help people with their health, health coaches, they are routinely flummoxed by how to help the people that they serve to lose weight. They know that the health at any size promise is deeply flawed in this sense that carrying around a lot of excess weight is actually incredibly problematic for health on just about every level. That's not to say that there aren't any people living with obesity who are right now healthy, but research also shows give them 10 years and 80 to 85% chance they will no longer have good blood work. So, it's just a matter of time. It's not to say that every person who is carrying extra weight is currently unhealthy, but it is to say that we have no better general marker of current health status than how much weight someone is carrying. It is so correlated with just about every chronic degenerative disease and just with so much physical pain, joint pain, arthritic pain, mobility issues, psychiatric issues, psychological challenges, it just affects human beings across the board. Healthcare providers know that. They see people day in and day out, and they know that maintaining a lean body is absolutely the number one thing you can do that's within, we think of it as within your control. To live a longer, more flourishing, health-wise life. They know that. And yet, they don't know what to tell people or how to help them. And so, when the weight-loss drug revolution happened, I think for healthcare providers, frankly, it was a big relief because now there was something actionable, they could tell people. As a matter of fact, I shot a vlog a little while back that talked about a study that showed that doctors don't say much to their patients who need to lose weight even in an appointment that's supposed to be about weight maintenance or weight loss. They don't give any actionable advice. They don't say anything really beyond typically, gee, make sure you follow good dietary recommendations and get enough movement in. They have nothing to offer, and they know it. And it's disheartening. It's beyond disheartening. It makes people want to throw their hands up and say, "I've had it. I don't know what to do for people, because nothing works to help them lose weight." Now, if you're listening to this vlog, you know Bright Line Eating? works, but that's kind of where we're going with this.
Okay, so let's talk about the new research on weight-loss drugs. It's interesting. So, doctors have been falling over themselves to give people these prescriptions. Mass adoption to the tune of huge profits for Novo Nordisk, the Danish company that came out with Wegovy and Ozempic, and then Eli Lilly followed suit with their tirzepatide products, the Mounjaro and so forth, huge profits. Okay, well, what does the new research show? I want to talk about a couple things. One is people aren't staying on the drugs. They're not staying on them. They're voluntarily going off of them. A couple of big new studies just came out. One in JAMA, open network, Journal of the American Medical Association. Big journal and then one by a pharmacy benefit management company who was literally tracking, "are people filling their prescriptions?" What it shows is that after two years, 85% of people are no longer on these drugs. 85% have discontinued voluntarily taking these drugs two years later, 85%. We also know that people regain the weight typically after discontinuing the drug, not all of the weight, but within a year, two thirds of the lost weight is regained. It's just a matter of time. You've got to stay on the drugs to keep getting the benefits. You've got to stay on the drugs to keep getting the benefits, but people are going off the drugs.
Now, you might say, well, maybe because of side effects. I don't think that's really the driving reason that people are getting off the drugs. These studies, by the way, didn't ask, "why did you get off the drugs?" They just know that people are getting off the drugs. But if you look at a study that just came out now, which is what I also want to talk to you about in the journal, Nature Medicine, one of the biggest journals there is, Nature Medicine. This was a study in May of 2014. That was the first study to look at long-term weight-loss outcomes for weight-loss drugs. I mean, four years. They published four year data on over 17,000 people. This was an experiment with an experimental group and a control group. So, people were taking an injection, and they didn't know whether it was a placebo or a drug. Under those conditions, only 16.6% of people who were in the drug condition had to get off because of adverse side effects. 16.6% of people, and actually 8% of people in the placebo condition got off because of adverse side effects, which is interesting. "I've taken this placebo, but oh, it's making me feel funny." So interesting. The drug condition only had an 8% increase over placebo in getting off of the drug due to side effects. So, people are getting off the drugs for other reasons, by and large cost diet mentality. Thinking, "Ooh, I've lost some weight, now I'm done."
How much weight are they losing though? Let's take a look at that. You've heard me share on the vlog that weight-loss drugs, the semaglutide at least, so this is Ozempic, Wegovy typically produce a 15% weight loss at a year and two years, well, this four-year study that I was just talking about looked at that more closely. Here's what the data show. You start taking a weight-loss drug, you lose weight, and the weight loss-phase on average lasts for 65 weeks. That's one year and three months. So you start losing weight and you're losing weight, you're losing weight. You're losing weight one year and three months in, you've lost about 15% of your body weight, and now you stall out, you plateau. So, imagine you're on this drug. Let's say you're paying 500 bucks a month for it. You're getting some insurance coverage, but it's not covering all of it. You're in the United States where it's most expensive, you're paying 500 bucks a month. Okay, that's a lot of money. You've been on it for a year and three months, you've lost a good chunk of weight, you're happy with that. And now, the weight loss stops. How are you feeling? The weight loss now stops. You're paying 500 bucks a month and next month and next month you're not losing any weight anymore. And for another month and another month, this goes on. Now, on average for nine months, no more weight loss. And now, statistically what happens is weight regain starts. Even though you're still on the drug, you're still paying 500 bucks a month, you're still on the drug. On average, people regain from year two to year four, a third of the weight that they had lost. And so let's say they lost 40 pounds initially. Well, they're going to regain 13 of those pounds over the next two years, from two years to four years out while they're still paying 500 bucks a month, 500 bucks a month, 500 bucks a month. Can you see now why on average at two years people have gotten off the drugs? Can you see how you'd be thinking, this isn't working for me. I'm not down with this. This isn't my solution anymore. It makes sense, right? Why are people regaining weight?
Well, I don't know that we know, but I have a hypothesis as a neuroscientist, I've talked to you at length about a phenomenon called downregulation. Essentially, receptors in the brain adapt whenever there's an abnormal level of anything, whether it's dopamine or in this case, GLP-1, which is a satiety hormone, the brain adapts. So, what these drugs do is they flood the brain with an unnatural, nonstop level of a satiety hormone, a mimicker of a satiety hormone, a GLP-1 agonist. It's not the exact molecule, but it mimics it enough to bind to those exact receptors and convince the brain that it's compound. Those receptors are receiving way more stimulation than they think they need. They start to downregulate, they become less numerous, less responsive to bring themselves back to the baseline of how they're supposed to operate, which means weight regain.
What does this mean if you're a healthcare provider? Well, Bright Line Eating has just conducted its own six-year follow-up study. It's submitted right now in the review process for publication. What our data show is that that weight regain phase is not happening between years two and six. For the people who are still doing the Bright Line Eating Program, they are maintaining their weight loss at the same high level that they experienced it in year one and year two, six years out, six years out, they're not regaining that weight. And what that means is that we have data now to show that Bright Line eating works better long-term than weight-loss drugs.
That brings us to my announcement, which is we finally have put together a healthcare professionals funnel. So, I don't know, funnel, it means a process like a way for healthcare professionals to partner with us to say, "Hey, I want to tell my patients who might be getting off weight loss drugs or might be considering weight loss drugs, but have heard that maybe they should consider other options or maybe are considering gastric bypass surgery or maybe just want to lose that baby weight finally." It's not that big a deal, but it sure would be nice if those 20, 30, 40 pounds were gone. For healthcare professionals who want to help their patients to have a viable long-term, solid behavioral option to get that weight off and keep it off, we now have resources for you.
Here's how it works. We have a simple flyer for you, and you can click the button and go to the website, the button below this video. Go to the website and download a flyer that you can take to your healthcare provider at your next visit. And again, this could be anyone. It could be your doctor, your nurse, your acupuncturist, your chiropractor, your nurse practitioner, your trainer, your nutritionist, your health coach, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right? Think about your OB, GYN. Think about the people in your life who help other people be well for a living. Print off that flyer and it'll explain to them a little bit about what Bright Line Eating is, and it will give them a link to their own website that will explain a little more and allow them to opt in to become a partner with us in spreading the word about Bright Line Eating and offering it to their patients. We'll explain how that works with them. They take it from there. You just give them that flyer.
If you're a healthcare professional, download the flyer, check it out, and consider partnering with us to spread the word about Bright Line Eating, because this is the biggest win, win, win I could imagine. You and I win because you've experienced the magic of Bright Line Eating. It works, and we win by getting the satisfaction of helping other people to be relieved from their suffering. Healthcare providers win because they finally have something to offer that works, especially to their people who are now disillusioned by having the experience of being failed yet again by now, weight-loss drugs and the people who receive the information win because they have the opportunity for freedom, finally, from the albatross of food and weight obsession. Just click the button down below, download the Healthcare Professionals Flyer, consider giving it to your healthcare professional at your next appointment. Thank you for partnering us. It's taken a long time for us to get this together. You've been requesting this for years. But finally, finally, finally, we have a partnership program where we are joining together with healthcare professionals to share the message about what really works. And honestly, everything happens in the divine right time because the fact that this is happening, right when we have these data to show that Bright Line Eating works six years out, it's pretty sweet, right? It's amazing. There has never been a study showing that something works that well for that long. And again, it's without drugs, without surgery, just by becoming a person who knows how to live bright. That's the weekly vlog. I'll see you next week.
