Addiction

• Wegovy, Ozempic and Mounjaro are weight loss and diabetes drugs that have made quite a splash in health news.
• They target regulatory pathways involved in both obesity and diabetes and are widely considered breakthroughs for weight loss and blood sugar control.
• Here’s an inside-out perspective on the role natural gut hormones and healthy food play in metabolism and weight loss.

A broken gut

• These include GLP-1, a natural version of Wegovy and Ozempic.
• GLP-1 and other hormones like PYY help regulate blood sugar through the pancreas.

• Prior to modern processed foods, metabolic regulatory pathways were under the direction of a diverse healthy gut microbiome that used these hormones to naturally regulate your metabolism and appetite.
• Removal of these key food components and the resulting decrease in gut microbiome diversity may be an important factor contributing to the rise in obesity and diabetes.

A short track to metabolic health

• Researchers have demonstrated their effectiveness at weight loss and blood sugar control.
• These drugs complement other measures like gastric bypass surgery that are used in the most extreme cases of metabolic disease.
• Medical guidelines support the use of new incretin-based medications like Wegovy, Ozempic and Mounjaro to manage the interrelated metabolic conditions of diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease.

A near-magic bullet – for the right folks

Despite the success and prospect of these drugs to help populations that may benefit most from them, current prescribing practices have raised some questions. Should people who are only a little overweight use these drugs? What are the risks of prescribing these drugs to children and adolescents for lifelong weight management?

• These symptoms are related to how the drugs work to slow the gastrointestinal tract.
• Other more severe, but rare, side effects include pancreatitis and irreversible gastroparesis, or inflammation of the pancreas and stomach paralysis.

All roads lead to lifestyle

• Despite our greatest aspirations for quick fixes, it’s very possible that a healthy lifestyle remains the most important way to manage metabolic disease and overall health.
• This includes regular exercise, stress management, sleep, getting outdoors and a balanced diet.

Christopher Damman is on the scientific advisory board at One BIO and Supergut.

• PITTSBURGH, Jan. 13, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- A multidisciplinary team of physicians at Allegheny Health Network (AHN) is among the first in the nation to safely utilize deep brain stimulation therapy (DBS) to treat a patient suffering from opioid addiction.
• Led by principal investigator and AHN neurosurgeon Nestor D. Tomycz, MD, the AHN team announced this week that they have successfully implanted an deep brain stimulation (DBS) device in the brain of a 28-year-old New York man with treatment-resistant opioid addiction.
• The procedure took place in December at AHN's Allegheny General Hospital, and the patient's ongoing therapy is part of an FDA-approved clinical study.
• DBS for opioid-use disorder involves implanting bilateral electrode leads into an area of the brain called the nucleus accumbens – the brain's addiction and reward center.

• View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240111045086/en/
  Andrew Tatarsky, PhD, Director of Clinical Programming at Freedom Institute (Photo: Business Wire)
  The founder of Integrative Harm Reduction Psychotherapy (IHRP) and a leader in the field, Dr. Tatarsky will build new IHRP-centered programming to treat the spectrum of substance use disorders and other addictive behaviors and will create and facilitate an internal IHRP training program.
• Dr. Tatarsky will work in close collaboration with Freedom Institute Medical Director Ryan Wade, MD, and Director of Clinical Services Caroline Kern, LMHC, to integrate the harm reduction framework alongside the organization’s existing abstinence-based programs.
• Tatarsky is a true groundbreaker,” said Andrew J. Gerber, MD, PhD, President and Medical Director of Silver Hill Hospital, which is currently working toward a partnership with Freedom Institute.
• In addition to developing an internal IHRP training program, Dr. Tatarsky will also facilitate external educational programs through the Silver Hill Academy for Research and Education (SHARE) .

• GLP-1 agonists are among the hottest drugs in healthcare, with uses targeting multibillion-dollar diabetes and obesity markets and much more.
• Lexaria Bioscience has developed DehydraTECH drug-delivery platform, which is being shown to improve pharmacokinetics of orally administered drugs.
• Lexaria issued final data from the pilot study and is planning for multiple human and animal studies early in 2024.
• Uncontrolled blood sugar dramatically increases the risk of devastating comorbidities, including kidney disease, vision loss, amputations, heart attacks, strokes and early death.