I’m JJ Virgin, PhD dropout, sorry mom, turned four time New York Times best selling author. Yes, I’m a certified nutrition specialist, fitness hall of famer, and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe, but I’m driven by my insatiable passion. Satiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking questions, digging for answers and sharing the information that I uncover with as many people as I can.

And that’s why I created the Well Beyond 40 podcast to synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive. In each episode, we’ll talk about what’s working in the world of wellness. From personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism, to healthy aging and prescriptive fitness.

Join me on the journey to better health, so you can love how you look and feel right now, and have the energy to play full out at 100. Have you ever felt overwhelmed by all the conflicting information about new health treatments? Today, I’m incredibly excited to clear the air with someone who has a wealth of knowledge and amazing insights to share, Dr.

Tyna Moore, who’s a regenerative medicine expert, doctor, mentor, coach, author, and speaker. Now, in this episode, we’re going to dive deep into the fascinating world of GLP 1 agonists. Now, you might be thinking, what the heck are GLP 1 agonists and how can they benefit my health? Dr. Moore is going to guide us along her journey from running a regenerative medicine practice to looking for ways to treat her own symptoms of illness, which put her on the path to exploring the incredible potential of GLP 1s.

We’re going to discuss her initial skepticism. And by the way, that’s just the beginning. We’ll also explore the wider benefits of GLP 1, such as their potential to tackle obesity and cardiovascular health, and even some surprising benefits for conditions like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Dr. Moore will help us navigate through the controversy and misinformation surrounding GLP 1s, focusing on the real science.

So if you’ve ever wondered about the true potential of latest medical advances and how they can elevate your health, this episode is for you.

Dr. Tyna Moore, I am so excited. I’m so fired up to be digging into this GLP 1 topic with you.

Yes, I’m so excited to be here. This is going to be great fun. And we’ve talked offline a little bit about it, so it’ll be fun to dig in.

Yeah, so I think the first place to go, because I’m very interested in everything that all the benefits that no one’s hearing about with these GLP 1s, you know, as we go through it, I’ll share some of my own stories, especially with my son, which got me interested in all of them.

But you are the only person I’m really seeing out there going through the research, talking about this. Now, your background was regenerative medicine. How, how did you come into this?

Yeah, so I regenerative medicine, Long, long before it was cool. And I was working hard in my clinic in Portland and was mentored up by one of the best for several decades and closed down my practice right before COVID hit, thankfully.

And a couple of years in, I don’t know if you know this or your audience knows, but I pushed back pretty hard against COVID and the narrative. And I had a decently sized platform and I took a lot of heat and it really took its toll on my stress levels and on my cognition as I was edging into menopause.

So I was right at that late 40s mark where people were like, You know, hormones are shifting and life just got a bit chaotic there for a hot minute. And I was having tremendous brain fog and I don’t know if it was COVID, was it perimenopause menopause? Was it just massive amounts of stress? It’s hard to say, but It was culminating into some pretty significant brain fog and a significant flare in my psoriatic arthritis.

And so I found myself in tremendous pain with tremendous brain fog and I was looking for solutions and I have. Like you said, a regenerative medicine background. I have access to things that most humans cannot get access to. And none of them were working for very long. I was, you know, I’d moved the needle a little bit, but I just couldn’t get myself over the hump into feeling like myself again.

And my spine was fusing. I was, And I was dealing with some depression, all of the above, you know, everything that comes with brain inflammation. And so the whole GLP 1 thing was taking off, ozempic for weight loss, the click bait, you know, all the headlines were looking so propagandized to me. And I was like, this is suspect, you know, everybody was running in the same direction, including the functional medicine community.

Everybody was hating on them. And I was like, huh, when everybody goes in the same direction, I usually do not. I usually go, I usually go the opposite way or at least hold back and wait. And so I was watching this sort of come down and my podcast producer said, we’ve got to do an episode on this. And I said, okay, fine.

I’ll, I’ll research it. And the first thing that I always type in when I look up any kind of substance is, what is it? What is it? You know, how does it work? What’s its mechanism of action? And then how does it work with brain inflammation? How does it work with pain? Because that’s my wheelhouse. That’s what I did in practice for so long.

And what I came up with was just mind blowing. And I, you know, I admittedly hadn’t even heard of Dr. Seeds yet, who I have come to love and respect immensely, but I hadn’t even seen his work yet. And I was finding all of this phenomenal information about You know, potential with Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, neuro regeneration, decreasing neuro inflammation, um, improving neuroplasticity, potentially reprogramming microglial cells.

And I was like, holy smokes, this is not what we’re being told. And then I just kind of went tip to toe, JJ. Like I literally just typed in GLP 1 and, and it was like tip to toe. And I found all of this research and literature, Going back 20 years, that was not at all lining up with what we were hearing about in the news, right?

And in the, on the social media platforms and with the influencers. And so that’s when I started, it was just about a year ago. That’s when I started talking about it.

Yes. And I, I am so thankful that you’re out there talking about it. I had the good fortune. Um, gosh, I guess it was two and a half years ago.

It was February of 2023. I heard Dr. Seeds at a lecture at Integrative Healthcare Symposium. And as I’m hearing this, I’m thinking of my son who had a traumatic brain injury at 16, got re injured, you know, just a couple of months earlier, was having crazy seizures that Dr. Perlmutter was helping us with.

I’m listening to this and they’re talking weight loss, but then he starts talking about everything else and just what’s doing with inflammation and, and, uh, and regeneration. And so I asked him afterwards, explain the situation. He goes, Oh yeah, I would. Totally, totally use that for, for him. And, you know, Dr.

David Perlmutter felt like it was a good idea to do it too. And so we started him on it and it, it, it’s been a game changer, a game changer, so much so that I started to look at all the research, you know, and you’ve been really great at supplying so much of this research and that’s the crazy thing, there’s so much research about this.

Right. There’s. That’s getting ignored. I had a great mentor early on, he always talked about all the research that we’re going to ignore. Um, you know, but when you look at it and start to look at it, I, I have, my husband has a big family history of cardiovascular risk factors. Uh, uh, dad heart, heart attack, died in early fifties, another brother dying.

Always elevated ApoB. Everything, we’ve tried everything to get it down naturally. We put them on a little bit of terzapatide and boom, everything corrects.

Yep.

Same.

I’ve got a husband with, whose father just dropped out of a heart attack, whose mom has had issues. Uh, he’s adopt, they were adopted. I’m sorry, both of his parents were.

So we don’t know the history going back further, but I immediately I put everybody who would let me on a small dose of GLP 1 agonist when I started doing the research and all for entirely different reasons, looking for entirely different outcomes, just to see how it would, um, pan out because I had data showing efficacy for all of these things.

I wasn’t just like, Hey, let’s see what this does. It was like, okay, there’s, here’s these studies going back. Somacletide and terzepatide are the newest iterations, but this family of peptides, first of all, it’s a peptide. It’s not a drug. It was appropriated by Big Pharma because of its delivery system being an injectable, but these are peptides just like any of the other regenerative peptides that we use clinically, and many of these are now available over the counter in oral form.

I did I suspect GLP 1s, we are going to have a plethora of oral forms coming out, at least pharmaceutically here in the near future, but people need to understand that these are not drugs in the traditional sense of the word. It’s a peptide, which is a regenerative compound. It’s a string of amino acids tied together.

Anyway, uh, This family of peptides goes back 20 years and have been prescribed successfully with great safety and efficacy. They just get better each iteration with less side effects, longer half life. And so Exenatide, which is kind of the OG, that’s millions of prescriptions have been written. It was not until the conversation around weight loss came up that People just started losing their minds about it.

And I think that comes from implicitly some obesity bias, some misunderstanding about obesity. Who knows? I, I, I I’m seeing it from both sides. Uh, people are very angry that I’m even talking about it. And, I’m seeing a lot of ignorance around it.

Yeah, I, I remember watching that. Was it 16 minutes where the doctor came on and said that obesity was genetic?

Oh, right. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

Nothing you can do. So you must use this. I’m like, huh. And I know that I’ve heard you talk about if you are using it for weight loss, there are very specific things you want to make sure that you do. I’d love to uncover this big myth before we get off weight loss.

The big myth that if you take this. First of all, you might have to be on it for life. Um, and secondly, the bigger myth is you’re going to lose all your muscle.

Right. And just to preface, I am not an obesity expert or obesity, you know, board certified obesity doc, but I do understand the nuances. I think better than all than many people do.

I’ve been studying it. pretty intimately, more so the last year than ever. And there are some genetic components that have a lot to do with satiety and appetite hormones that are in our system. There’s epigenetics that come into play. Um, so there’s a piece of this where I would say people are dealt a so much for joining me today, and I’ll see you in the next video.

You’re a very thin person, JJ. You, you, you told, you shared with me you always have been. I’ve always been a decently thin person. Uh, I have people in my family who’ve always been very heavyset and we have a different set of cards, right? We’re dealt a different deal and there’s, A lot of work that goes into maintaining a healthy body, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not harder for some and that perhaps there’s not genetic and epigenetic components.

So I’ll just leave that there. I want to acknowledge that. And let people know that I understand that. Um, the losing weight part is actually the easier of the two. When you think about the maintaining the weight loss, that’s a whole other thing because we’re talking about leptin and ghrelin and these appetite hormones, they’re signaling peptide hormones, just like GLP 1 and they all work in concert together.

So that’s a mixed bag and that’s a, Complicated conversation, but the myths. So the muscle loss piece, first of all, those studies are looking at lean mass loss. Muscle is but one component of lean mass. Lean mass makes up all the soft tissues of your body. So there’s the osseous tissues, which are your bones.

And then there’s all this other tissue, which is your soft tissue. So they’re losing lean mass loss in these studies. Were they looking at folks that were protecting their muscle actively? Not really. In some cases they had people doing some exercise, but who not really knows what kind of exercise it was.

Was it strength training? Was it muscle, um, protective exercises like lifting weights? Doing things that are going to help you build muscle? Probably not. We’re also talking about a group of people being studied who already have very pathological muscle. They already have muscle that is riddled with fatty infiltrate and marbling.

It’s already not well trained skeletally. It’s not, uh, it’s not insulin sensitive. And so we’re talking Apples to oranges really. And that kind of muscle is very prone to wasting and sarcopenia. Sarcopenia is muscle wasting. And really that’s the beginning of all metabolic dysfunction at its core. So these folks are already sitting in a pretty precarious spot and then they’re being given in these studies.

Really incredibly high doses that are escalated very quickly. So over 16 weeks they get cranked up to very high doses, which I think are significantly way, way, way too high and they’re wasting. It’s malnourishment and the amount of lean mass loss that they’re losing is right in line with any other low calorie diet.

So if somebody were to go on a significant low, you know, calorie restricted diet or they were to have bariatric surgery, it’s right in line, um, It’s right there in the 20 to 35 percent lean mass loss group. So these folks are not protecting their muscle, first of all, and they’re going in with pathologic muscle.

And then the third component is that these peptides are actually showing in the data to be muscle protective, muscle regenerative, and actually induce muscle protein synthesis. And so I think that they’re getting a very bad rap and nobody’s talking about that data because it doesn’t go with the narrative that these are evil and People are going to waste away.

The people that are wasting away are one, I think being overdosed and two, they are not protecting their muscle with strength training and making sure that they’re hitting their protein macros. They’re potentially just eating less of the already, you know, poor calorically high, uh, nutrient low, garbage that they were eating before.

They’re just eating less of it now. So they’re malnourished. And of course you’re going to lose lean mass loss when you’re malnourished.

Yeah, any poorly designed diet causes this. Yes. Any poorly designed diet. I look at this at a low dose and in terms of the application for weight loss, because I’ve worked in weight loss and weight loss resistance for 40 years, I think of this and go, what a small amount of this, which you could potentially also do with maybe calicurb and allulose and some protein and fiber and exercise is going to help you become more insulin sensitive.

Calm the food noise and the satiety, because I used to do a lot of genetic testing to look at people who were had, you know, increased hunger and increased sweet tooth and also reduce that inflammation. And I remember as I was looking at the inflammation, so I was really digging into what are all the different things this could help with.

And I was hearing all this about muscle loss. I thought, you know what, if it’s improving, if it’s reducing inflammation, it should be good. Really an improving insulin sensitivity. It should help you build muscle. Yep.

Absolutely.

And that’s what you found. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Well, so at the end of the day the root cause of metabolic dysfunction, which you know, what 94 percent of US adults have if not more that was 2018 data.

I mean, that’s pretty daunting. Cardiometabolic dysfunction in the majority.

The numbers still, I looked at those numbers and went, those aren’t ideal.

No, I mean, we’re, we’re in a mess. We’ve got, you know, 6. 8 percent of U. S. adults. so much for joining us today, and we’ll see you next time. It’s like a chicken and egg, right?

Once the sarcopenia and the wasting start and the metabolic dysfunction and the insulin resistance start rolling, it drives the inflammation. There’s a shift of the immune system to a more inflammatory state. The fat cells become more inflamed. The whole thing just sort of snowballs itself and it’s a disaster.

And by the time peop You know, people are hitting type two diabetes as a diagnosis. They’ve been rocking that smoldering fire for 10, 15, 20 years, as you well know. So they’ve just hit this magic number where the doc’s like, Hey, now you have type two diabetes. And I’m like, no, this has been a disaster dumpster fire for decades.

And once you get to that magical diagnosis, your metabolic system is so deranged and pathologic and really, really, really compromised. And that’s All being driven by this fire. That’s this feed forward mechanism. And so if we can have something that not, not only heals the metabolism, sensitizes the cells to insulin, helps the pancreas create insulin appropriately, because what a lot of folks don’t know is by the time you hit type two diabetes, you’re actually not making a great amount of insulin.

You’re just not, your cells aren’t hearing it. So you’ve been swimming in it for decades. And it’s, which is pro grow and we don’t always want to grow, right? Like there’s certain things we don’t want to be growing when we’re in that state like cancer. And so folks are really in a compromised state. If we can do something that’s regenerative healing and then anti inflammatory and these sit on immune cells, there’s GLP 1 receptors all throughout our body.

That’s why we’re seeing impacts in a positive way, independent of weight loss all throughout the body. But they also sit on our immune cells, which is, Phenomenal. So we’re seeing all kinds of positive immune impacts, including some data that’s just come out. It hasn’t entirely been published yet, but it was shared out at a cancer conference.

Um, huge reductions in the most common types of cancer. For folks that have been on GLP one’s. And there was one study published this last year, talking about colon cancer and pretty significant reductions. And it was not causation. It was correlation. But folks that were on GLP one’s for a decent amount of time, showed a very significant reduced risk of colon cancer.

So we’re seeing some pretty cool stuff coming out. I think we’re going to see more, and a lot of it is immune driven.

Wow. That is huge. So is this looking at people who, their, their risks? It wasn’t people who had cancer. It was people that didn’t get cancer. It

was people who did not come down with it.

Yeah. It was type two diabetics who were on GLP ones for I think 15 years and then they did not come down with cancer. So again, it’s not causation, it’s correlation, but pretty phenomenal. And then I dug up data showing really significant, um, Risk reduction for death and ICU admission with COVID on folks who were admitted to hospital and then started on somaclutide.

They were not on it prior. They were type 2 diabetics admitted to hospital with COVID and given somaclutide. I don’t know why they decided to intervene with this group, but they gave them somaclutide and this group had A 8 0, 80 percent reduction compared to the non semacletide users of it. When was this?

Why wasn’t this put out there? Like a lot of stuff wasn’t put out there, was it? Let’s, uh, yeah, not open that January 5th. I was trying. I was just getting censored. Wow. 2022. That was 2022 data out of, uh, Journal of Diabetes.

You, you mentioned something that’s really important. You said people who’d been on it for 15 years, because one of the things that you hear is you might have to be on this forever.

I think the important thing here is to recognize this as a peptide. There’s certain peptides that I’m taking that I’ll always take. Um, but also I’m going to be on a little thyroid hormone forever and some estrogen too. So, you know, there are some things that I will be on forever. And so I kind of, when I hear that argument, I think, well, if someone.

Is on a statin, they’re on maybe a blood pressure medication and you know, maybe something for their diabetes and they get off all of those and they have to be on a low cycling dose of this for the rest of their life. Which would you choose? Right. Once healing and repairing. One’s just band aiding.

Absolutely. It heals the metabolism over time. And so, well, some folks are going to be able to get off. Some folks are going to maybe need to cycle it. Some folks are going to need to titrate back to a very low dose. Um, you know, and I think the The MDs at large, the, the allopathic system is starting to come around because I keep up with this, JJ.

Like I, every morning I’m opening up my, you know, medical newsletters and I’m seeing what’s being published that day about GLP 1s and what are the doctors saying? And they’re starting to get it. They’re starting to get this concept that we don’t need to crank everybody up to the highest dose and, you know, blow out their appetite and blow out their metabolism up there that we can Keep it personalized.

I still think they’re dosing too high in many cases, but they’re starting to get it. And then this concept of like, how do we dial it back? And some people may need to be on it and others may not. And it, it really depends. I think it depends on how metabolically busted and for how long. Were they when they went into it, right?

If you’ve got somebody who’s just a complete disaster of inflammation and metabolic dysfunction for decades on end, that’s somebody who might need to be on it for a long time. If you take somebody and intervene early, I’m a big fan of preventative medicine. And so one of the reasons I’ve been taking a lot of heat is because from the onset of this, I’ve been telling folks like, Hey, when that, Middle aged woman walked into my office.

I saw so many women like this and then I became this woman. They walk into my office and they’re like, I literally just gained 15, 20 pounds out of nowhere. I haven’t changed anything. I’m doing everything right. Like they’re doing all the things they’re doing, the strength training, they’re eating well. Uh, sure.

Maybe they might have a glass of wine here and there, but they’re not binging on alcohol. Like these are healthy, fit, motivated, disciplined women. And all of a sudden, um, The weight pops on there. That’s insulin resistance at a cellular level. We may not see that on labs for a couple years. If I had GLP 1s in my bag of tricks when I was running my big practice, that is when I would apply it.

I would apply it early, and I would apply it carefully and with, uh, honor of, of how potent these things are, and we would keep Tight tabs on that woman instead of letting her gain another 10, 20 pounds. And then how many years later, Oh, you have high blood pressure. Here’s your high blood pressure med. Oh, you have high lipids.

Here’s your statin drug. Oh, here’s some metformin for the type two diabetes that we saw coming 20 years ago that nobody was looking at, you know? And so this is where I argue that we need to be looking at things a bit more preventatively and intervening. Earlier with care. And you know, it’s not just about the GLP 1.

There’s other parts of this comprehensive treatment plan, but as you know, but uh,

Well, you look at that woman’s quality of life too. Absolutely. For years. Walking in, being told your metabolism hasn’t changed at all. This is like, you know, you need to eat less exercise. You know, all the stuff she’s hearing when she walks in.

Not being told that that estrogen dump now has caused some insulin resistance and now your metabolism isn’t the same as it used to be. She knows it, but she’s being told that that’s not the case. So she then thinks she’s a little crazy. Um, and I think of. And I don’t know if you’ve met Sarah who owns Calicurb.

Calicurb, the company that worked with, that the New Zealand government spent 10 years working on this proprietary Hops Blend 2 as a natural way to raise GLP 1. And she literally did it because she was a menopausal woman, you know, and her metabolism dumped and she’s like, what is going on here? Right? And it made me just kind of look at a couple things.

Number one, what is making people Deficient in GLP 1. Like, because as you start to dig into, well, why is this working so well? Isn’t the real question we should be asking is do we have chronic deficiencies because of this? And why are there?

That’s a good question. That’s what hit me when I started doing the research as I started thinking, Hmm, I would intervene with patients when they had subclinical hypothyroidism or subclinical hormone deficiencies.

And it may not even show up, Frankly on labs but they were showing all the symptoms. And so I could clinically justify it so long as I was prudent and kept tight tabs on him. And we worked together and made sure everything was okay and we weren’t driving them into side effects. And I put a lot of people on a lot of different hormones based on symptom picture that, And I got to thinking, I wonder if that’s the case with GLP 1.

And certainly we have data showing that those who are obese, diabetic, and have fatty liver have GLP 1 deficiency. What’s the cause? Who knows? Was that the chicken and, it’s a chicken and egg again. Was that the root cause driving the diabetes? Diving the inflammation, driving all of that. Or was that high insulin?

Cause insulin at high levels will suppress GLP 1, so secretions. So it’s like, who knows, but they’re in it. And once they’re in it, it’s a pickle. Yes. We can stoke GLP 1 from the L cells, with different nutrients, with food, with, you know, of course we’re going to use all of those adjunctive helpful things that we can, but sometimes people’s L cells are also completely pooped out because they’ve had a lot of gut inflammation over the years.

They might have had Crohn’s or, you know, those are more severe. Like we’ve got Crohn’s, we’ve got ulcerative colitis, but maybe it’s, And if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me, and I’ll be happy to answer any questions that you may have. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Yeah, and the cost

is significantly different, right?

Right. Well, let’s talk about the cost, because I literally just got a text from a friend who was put on prescription Munjaro, 1, 100 a month. First of all, she wants to use a lower dose. Anyway, even though she’s got probably 60 pounds to lose and, you know, inflamed and osteoarthritis and some of the other things that we know it can help, but she’s stuck with this dosing that the drug companies do.

Can you talk about the difference of that? Because that’s where I see another challenge is people don’t know. And I’m not sure the doctors are using some of the compounding pharmacists either. So we’re kind of stuck in these drug doses that turn this peptide into a drug rather than using it as more of what I would think kind of an orthomolecular substance.

Well, so that goes back to

what I, we were saying about deficiency is if there is a physiologic deficiency, then we need a physiologic dose. We don’t need a pharmacologic dose, right? We don’t need the super high dose. And so I might just like titrate somebody up on the tiniest amount of thyroid where most doctors would be like, well, that’s not enough to do anything.

I’m like, yeah, we’ll tell that to the lady whose migraines are gone, who feels great again. You know, like we’re titrating up physiologic dosing and we can do the same with GLP 1. That was my hypothesis. That’s what I started putting my, My patients, anybody who would let me treat them at the time, I was like, we’re doing it.

We’re going to try this. And I have found that those who are metabolically optimized and have less weight to lose, definitely do better on the tiny doses. And folks who are needing to lose 30 or more pounds tend to need a bit of a higher dose. I, it probably comes down to whatever the deficiency is. And again, is that deficiency organic?

Genetic or is that deficiency induced by years of whatever it was that got them there? Who cares? I’m not judging. Right? Right. We got our, we get ourselves to where we get ourselves. If we need help, we need help. Um, the compounded version, we can play with a dose. The standard branding version comes in these prefilled pens and you get what you get.

And the starting dose on those, I think is. Way too high for many people. Although I will say I’ve heard from several people who say the starting dose was just fine for them and they did great. Those folks had more weight to lose. Those folks tended to be a bit more metabolically busted. So it’s, you know, I don’t want to tell people completely avoid the brand name, but for someone like me, if I were, or you, if I were to have started at that dose, I would have been projectile vomiting and in a whole, a world of hurt.

So I do think that being able to play with a compounded version is much safer when you’re We can go slow and low and we can kind of sort out what that person needs in front of me. And the dose depends. It just depends on the person in front of me and it depends on a lot of cofactors. It

feels very similar to hormones in that you’d really want to use, like go slow, titrate up.

It’s why I never understand these pellets. I’m like, Oh, you’re stuck. You just put pellets in your butt. Now you’re stuck with that. It’s like, you know, why wouldn’t you want to just creep the dose up till you get to the lowest dose that you need to have the positive result. Wouldn’t it be the same?

That’s exactly what my hypothesis was.

And so that’s what I started doing. I started playing with it. And I have to say, I asked a lot of people who are indeed using this peptide or these peptides in low doses, but their version of low and my version of micro were different. And so I’m finding. Very small doses to be very effective in the right person.

And again, it totally depends on the person. And there’s more to this clinically. When I try to, I have a program, I explain this in, and you know, it’s several modules long. Um, when you get it compounded though, that dose might cost you, if you’re, if you’re a candidate for microdosing and it’s working well, that dose might cost you like 30 to 50 bucks a month.

And that’s nowhere near what these brand names are. And the brand name, the funny part about that is a study just came out in the last year showing that it costs Novo Nordisk about, I think 7 to manufacture a month’s supply that they’re selling for around a thousand. They’re selling it, they’re selling it in Germany for about 60.

They’re selling it in Canada for about 150. So we’re just getting hosed in the U S. Like that’s all part of the scam. Um, so I like the compounded and then I will say anytime I open up any of my medical newsletters, they are really coming down on compounded versions of this. And I, I don’t know why I could speculate.

They just don’t want to getting in people’s hands, but they have really scared off the allopathic community into using compounded. So most people who walk into their doctor’s office and say, I would like compounded somacletide, their doctors are going to look at them like they’re nuts. They’re, they’re going to be like, no way, I’m not touching that.

It, It, it, they feel, I think, from what I’m hearing, that maybe their licenses will be at risk if they prescribe a compounded. So for the consumer out there, you’re going to have to do your homework and find somebody to work with.

Now, I know you’re also have a training program. So

do you have a list of those people?

I do inside the program. I haven’t. I don’t think I’ve announced it to the public yet because I’m still working on some liability issues, but anybody who’s in the program will get a list of anybody who’s also there’s I think it’s about half and half at this point. There’s a couple hundred folks in there and half of them are doctors and half of them are the general public and I make sure that it’s understandable to everyone.

The way that I teach is really that at that level that everybody can get. Cause as you know, most doctors don’t have a clue about metabolic health either. So I sort of had to like, you know, I got to teach base level here to everyone. Um, there is a list of those doctors that are in the program. I haven’t vetted them.

I can’t. You know, I can’t vouch for them by any means, but they at least I know are in the program.

Well, it also sounds like, Tyna, that the consumer, the patient really needs, and I think this is with everything, and you know, now we’ve got the internet, good or bad, where you can start to do your research, find your trusted sources.

You don’t go into your practitioner, you know, Empty handed, you go in having done your research and knowing what you want and then using them as your consultative partner. Exactly. For someone hearing all of this, like, what are some of the use cases that they may not think about that GLP 1 can be amazing for?

There are so many, and I am so glad you said what you just said, because that is the entire goal of my program, is to teach and empower so that So, uh, I think folks can fully understand what they’re doing and fully understand why they want to use it and have all the data. Like I supply in there the entire list, like 20 some pages of all the data I’ve pulled up.

Because there’s so many different applications that this has been studied for. And I want to make sure that folks know what they’re getting into, and they know exactly what The words to use are with their doctor, you know, and like present the data. Like here, here’s, here’s GLP 1s and their impact on osteoarthritis.

Here’s their impact on inflammatory arthritis. Here’s their impact on Parkinson’s. So we want to make sure that people are empowered with that information because it’s crazy what the data that It’s suggesting even, not every study has been in humans. Some of it’s been in mice or rats, but they sort of have, you know, many have gone in and put together and extrapolated, well, if this is the mechanism of action and this is how it works, and we know these receptors are present in humans, then it would seem, you know, You know, appropriate to attempt to see if this would be helpful for this.

And I’m finding that to be true with my patients. I’m like, okay, you have Crohn’s disease. Let’s see how this impacts you there. And boom, significant improvements, ability to go off of the hardcore medications that were expensive that, you know, she was having to get from Canada cause they were too expensive in the United States.

Um, I’ve got one young woman who went on it for PCOS and all of her PCOS cleared, her depression cleared, her stomach cleared. Severe cystic acne cleared. She’s off of all the other medications that we had her on. Unfortunately, birth control was the only thing, which I know is a terrible thing to have a young woman on, but it was literally the only thing that was giving her any relief and any clearing of her acne.

And she was doing all the things as best as a young woman can do, right? Like they’re not going to be as hardcore as we are, but she was definitely for being in her twenties, she was doing a whole lot better than most of her friends. Um, brain cognition, just, Just the clearing of anxiety, depression, brain fog across the board in all different age groups in both genders.

Uh, I’ve got one person on it who’s my dad who is severely obese and type two diabetic and is about to lose some toes if we don’t do something. So for him, it was like, okay, dad, you’re 80 years old. You’ve got one foot. Further in the grave than the other. Like we gotta, we gotta dose this up and get you out of that.

Um, same as you mentioned cardiovascular, anybody with a history of cardiovascular disease, we’ve got a, the studies coming out around that are really profound and they were independent of weight loss, significant improvements in cardiovascular outcomes. So I’m using this preventatively. That’s what I, I’m a naturopathic physician.

We do preventative medicine, right? And so, uh, for me, it was, um, It’s autoimmune regulation, which I’ve seen all different types of autoimmune disease respond really beautifully. And this is something I want to explain to your audience. I get questions all the time. Can we use this for this? In naturopathic medicine, I’m not treating a disease.

I’m treating the person in front of me. So I’m just trying to maintain and improve homeostasis in that individual and get their immune system to calm down and to work appropriately and not against them, but also for them as much as we need it to. And so I don’t look at applying a peptide for a condition.

So I know I just listed off several, but in my head, that’s not how I treat. I’m treating the person in front of me and I’m trying to get them back to. So that everything’s working as it should. And that’s when we see symptoms fall away. And so I want to express that to the audience because I get messages all the time.

Have you looked up GLP ones for this? And would you go research it for me? Well, first of all, you have Google, you can go research it yourself, but I’m not a library, not a librarian. Uh, but, I don’t want people thinking that way. I want the diagnosis is just simply a label that’s been slapped on based on a symptom profile.

We’re trying to treat the individual, which I know is for a lot of people. It took me a few years to wrap my head around that concept, but we’re treating people. And so a GLP 1 is regenerative, healing, and anti inflammatory in the body. On all levels. So that could be applied to whatever it may be. Right.

You know, it’s interesting. I had a great mentor, gosh, 20 years ago, who said you don’t lose weight. You don’t lose weight to get healthy. You actually get healthy to lose weight. And when I’ve kind of moved that into. You don’t lose weight to get healthy. You get metabolically healthy to be able to burn off fat, to be able to build muscle, to be able to not be in pain, to be able to think straight, to have great, like for everything.

And ideally you want to go as upstream as possible. Like you were talking about, you could do all of these support things for thyroid, but if your thyroid gland is not pumping out thyroid, you can just take thyroid. And why wouldn’t you go as upstream as possible? And also as close to biology, biology as possible.

As possible, so it’s like we’re mimicking normal physiology with these things, and that’s what this really feels like to me. And when I started to look at these again, I first tested this on my son and went, Oh my gosh, like this is springing him back. And he had all these issues from a traumatic brain injury where he couldn’t regulate his blood pressure, like this is getting resolved.

So, and, you know, 13 fractures, so a lot of. Pain and stuff that just has, is not the issue that it was anymore. Um, and then I also put my ex husband, I let him do a little bit of it cause he just started to get this insulin belly, total like tennis pro. Got rid of and cycled right off of it and he was fine.

Yes. I’ve heard of people taking it and like doing two or three doses and it literally correcting the ship. And then they’re done. And I’m like, what?

Yeah, that was, it was very interesting. He’d had a very weird, um, he’d gotten like a flu. He took antibiotics. He, he got a little belly from that and never was able to come back.

And I’ve thrown all this stuff in his gut to try to restore his microbiome. Nothing worked. This brought him back and I think he might’ve done it for like three months. Yep.

It shifts the microbiome to a more favorable biome as well. So I think that’s where some folks are having some of the gastrointesTynal issues.

I don’t think it’s so much the peptide Cause it definitely can cause, uh, you know, slowing of gastrointesTynal motility. And we’ve seen some of those concerns and yeah, some of them are very real. I will say the gastroparesis is not permanent. That’s being really sensationalized, but there is a concern for biliary issues, you know, gallbladder issues, which can lead to pancreatic issues.

So we want to be really careful, but none of my patients are having any side effects. And the interesting part is that, I think the shift in the biome is what’s causing a lot of discomfort for some folks because you know when you start to shift the biome and there’s a die off reaction oftentimes for folks and so these bugs as they’re dying will start to release their toxins and it can make you feel very awful and fluish.

So I think folks might be getting hit too hard and getting driven too fast into that and they’re having what we call a Herxheimer reaction. I had it happen to myself until things regulated. I was like whoa this is shifting my biome significantly. That’s another thing I’m seeing. Seeing long term, um, you know, I would, I would call it IBS SIBO e you know, just that kind of like milieu that some folks, I, I couldn’t personally get out of it.

I, I have access to everything and I could not get over it. It would just come back anytime. I had a little bit too much carbohydrate that fed whatever’s was living in there. Right. And yeah. Improvement in bowel movements, significant improvement in bowel movements for so many people. That was really surprising to hear a lot of people who were more prone to diarrhea, tell me they were starting to have more normal bowel movements, vice versa.

Um, improvements in sleep. A study just came out. I, I just put it on my Instagram stories, uh, significant reduction in, terzapatide significantly reduces sleep disruptions, significant improvement for those having to use a CPAP for sleep apnea. So, yeah, but in other folks, it can drive insomnia. And so I posted this and I had all these people message me back and say, my sleep has, middle aged women in particular, you know, as things shift, our sleep gets all crazy.

Lots of women, middle aged messaging me back saying, I cannot believe how much better I’m sleeping on it. 40 to 50 percent no longer needed to use a CPAP machine. What? I mean, it’s, these numbers are crazy and that’s what people don’t get. We don’t have anything out there on the market that’s regenerative like this to the brain in particular.

And what people don’t understand is the downstream impact of brain injury, which is either happens traumatically, like in the case of your son, or it happens like in the case of myself and my husband through repetitive head trauma from sports and, you know, you know, being a young person and getting knocked in the head all the time.

Or the impacts of metabolic dysfunction. It literally inflames your brain to the point where it starts to shrink. And all of those cases lead to metabolic dysfunction. Your son without proper intervention to protect his brain would eventually end up in a coma. Metabolic dysfunction due to the traumatic brain injury.

You know that, but most people

Coupled with the med, coupled with these medications that they put you on when you’ve got, you know, if, if he’s in a seizures, so now he’s on anti seizure stuff then, and it’s these things that now are impacting his blood sugar that are driving more insulin resistance. It’s, it’s a hole that’s really scary.

So the GOP1 you, you talked about trizepatide and you talked about some, Simaglutide. What is the difference between these?

So trizepatide is a dual agonist. Simaglutide is simply a GLP 1 agonist. So it sits on the receptor in our body throughout our bodies. The other point to make is that GLP 1 is also produced in the brain and has multiple receptors throughout the brain.

And I think that’s something that folks aren’t appreciating. Even some of the. Top scientists that I’m listening to are not appreciating that. They’re still talking about it’s made in the gut and it goes to the brain, it crosses the blood brain barrier. No, it’s actually made in the brain and it is sitting on receptors throughout the brain.

So it must be important for more than just, you know, slowing gut motility and it, it, it must be more important than just appetite. Like there’s more to this picture. There’s more to leptin, there’s more to ghrelin. We will figure this out as time goes on, right? These are more than just appetite. Signaling peptide hormones.

But, um, the GLP 1 itself, somaclutide is bio identical to it. We make it, it has a short half life in our body and it’s gone. Somaclutide is bio identical to our own endogenous GLP 1. It just has a lipid tail added to it to make the half life longer. So it’s in the body for a longer period of time. And then terzapatide is a dual agonist.

It’s a GLP 1 agonist and it’s a GIP agonist. And GIP. Tinkers with our glucagon. So insulin and glucagon are sort of like, you know, checks and balances system a bit just to make it simple for everyone. And it seems that GIP, we can either agonize it or antagonize it. We can either push it or we can suppress it and we still get really great outcomes.

And so in this case they just chose to agonize it, but there’s one coming out where they antagonize it. They actually reduce it. And something about GIP one makes GLP one, I’m sorry, G. I. P., not G. I. P. 1. Something about G. I. P. makes G. L. P. 1 work better. And I’ve listened to so many scientists talk about this, like the folks that produce this stuff that came up with it, and they still don’t entirely understand it and can’t explain it clearly, but they’re, they’re messing with, they’re messing with these, Peptides that are in our body naturally that have a lot to do with our metabolic health.

And what’s interesting, and I think what surprised everyone is, is it the metabolic healing that’s leading to all these favorable outcomes? Is it the GLP 1 itself sitting on the cells throughout the body that’s leading to favorable outcomes? Is it the weight loss that’s leading to favorable outcomes? I would say it’s all of it.

And I think that’s awesome. Like, Why not? Why not enjoy the benefit of that trifecta, right? All three of those are good things at the end of the day.

Yes. I’ll have it all. A big dose of all. So what about, um, is there a case where you’d look at some Semiglutide instead of terzeptide? Is terzeptide the better option?

Uh, does it depend? I

think it comes down to cost and tolerability. We have nausea and vomiting centers in our brain and they have a bed of GLP 1 receptors on them. And so I think that GLP is going to impact people differently. In some cases it’s going to make people really nauseous and in other cases it’s, it doesn’t impact them at all.

Um, and that probably has to do with their level of deficiency as well, but something to do with that receptor and that. How, you know, how dense are those receptors in those regions of the brain? And so GLP 1 plus terzepatide seems to be better tolerated in cases like that. Not always. Um, I have found that terzepatide actually, for me, leads to more side effects down the line.

So I think that it comes down to tolerance. It comes down to working with somebody who is willing to You know, have these conversations and discuss like what’s best for the person. And then cost is a big one. Terzapatide compounded costs about four times as much as Simaclutide, three to four times, depends on the pharmacy.

And in the brand name version, in some cases, the Monjoro, the Terzapatide is cheaper than the Simaclutide. So again, it’s just, you know, variability of what people can access as well. But. I think that, oh, and also depending on what they need clinically. So I look at folks and what’s the short term goals, what’s the long term goals, what are we trying to accomplish?

And so having that little bit of GIP1 agonism on board might be more appropriate for somebody with more of a metabolically dysfunctional profile and someone like you and I who’s just using it for different reasons, longevity, anti, you know, anti inflammatory, whatever we would probably need. I mean, I think somaclutide at a low dose is totally fine.

I’m glad you brought up longevity. When I started to dig into this, cause I was initially interested for myself because of chronic, like I trashed myself when I was a teenager, just trying to do point ballet and gymnastics as a six foot tall girl. It’s ridiculous. I know. Why didn’t someone just say, stop that before you blew out your ACL?

Because you wouldn’t listen . So, you know, I wouldn’t have listened. I would’ve done more. So, you know, we know that, but you know, lots of joint issues. Lost lots of osteoarthritis, broken foot, I mean the whole thing. Oh, and you know, and then some autoimmune stuff. So I was super interested. in what this could do.

And, um, but then as I started to dig into it, I also look at this and go, I think this is the ultimate longevity peptide.

Yeah. It, I mean, it’s, it’s really remarkable what it’s doing throughout the body and just going back to your orthopedics. I did a whole podcast on it. There’s great data showing. Bone health, joint health, cartilage, the synovium of the joint.

I mean, that’s like my wheelhouse, right? And really really phenomenal results around that. My pain is significantly reduced when I’m on it. And that’s actually how I know I need to redose is when the pain starts creeping back and it starts, everything starts feeling like it’s gluing up again and getting really stiff and gummy.

And folks don’t appreciate, you know, we’re, we’re doing all the things as our hormones shift, but as our hormones shift, our pain tolerance definitely changes. I don’t know about you. I used to be sss. Bulletproof, like pain tolerance through the roof. I could get tattooed for seven hours and be like, meh, it’s no big deal.

And now things, you know, my husband brushes me the wrong way and things hurt. And you know, it’s the hormones, it’s the shift, it’s the menopause, it’s all the things. And so I could sit there and try to tough it out. But I’m like, when you’re having a pronounced pain response to something, that tells me that your brain’s inflamed.

Things are not working in your favor and it’s probably not a trajectory to stay on, right? Like, what’s that going to be like when you’re 80? So I’m all for intervening early and getting that under control. Why

would you tough that out and create, we hear about inflammation. Why would you want that to go on any longer than it needs to be?

Exactly. And we will become more insulated. We also have another website that has hundreds of videos on the channel that Well, the next question is, how do you grow your weight? Um, how do you know if you’ve got good or poor weight loss? So one of the things I’ve been working on is watching a lot of content that just says, you know, immune body analysis, you know, I believe you can see it.

Keep to those lower doses. We don’t want to dose anything. I call it monotherapy, right? Like there’s no one solution. We’re not gonna crank testosterone up. It’s not the end all, be all. Thyroid is not the end all be all. There’s a window, a honeymoon period, where you’re like, oh my God, thank God this hormone’s in my system.

I feel so much better. But as you know, we kind of need all of them, right? It’s like an orchestra. We can’t just have a big bass drum and they’re using GLP ones. The brand name Dosages has a big bass drum and that’s going to lead to trouble down the line for folks. I’m, I’m very sure of it. You can’t flood the system with something forever and expect good things to happen.

That makes so much sense. So it’s, it sounds like the way you’re teaching, especially in this course is that you’re using this to rejuvenate, to rehabilitate. It fits perfectly in with your background. It’s like the exact tools for your background. You’re going as upstream as possible. You’re using smaller doses of that and doing it in concert with hormones if needed.

What are some of the other things that go alongside this that are helpful?

So the lifestyle, You’ve been talking about for decades and I’ve been talking about for a few decades and, uh, that are just non negotiable, right? Like you have to build muscle. I have always, I have been telling people since. I mean, I’ve been on the online space, like what, 2016, I think, and I came out telling people to deadlift and eat steak.

And that was when the big health influencers, other than you, were telling people to do yoga and be vegan, you know? And so I was like, no, eat, eat steak. And if you are interested in the bio impedance, you can find it on the website, which is also in the description. So, and I’ll see you next time. Bye. And I got all these messages from people telling me how life changing these were.

And then subsequently people saying, I was afraid to go on them, but I went on them because of your peptide or sorry, because of your podcast. And my whole life has changed and they send me the testimonials. It’s amazing. And so, um, But you got to do all the things. You got to strength train. You have to get the sunlight.

You have to keep your circadian rhythm in check. Meaning you’re viewing daylight at the appropriate times and you’re going to bed at the appropriate times. When it gets dark, you have to block the blue light. You have to ground and have some mindfulness and keep your stress mitigated. Although these do a really remarkable job of keeping that cortisol regulated I’m seeing.

And it’s pretty phenomenal. And I’ve, it’s been pretty life changing for me personally. So all the things that you and I, I have been touting still apply and even more so if we want these to work and stay at low doses. If you want to crank it up and you want to override your natural systems, go for it.

But what happens then, and I think the real problem we’re going to see is people are going to start to get receptor saturation. It’s going to stop working. And there are going to want to go higher and that’s really not a good idea. Um, I’m hearing about this from some compounding pharmacists saying people are already hitting that max dose and they want to go higher because it’s starting to not work.

And then if you don’t protect your muscle, you’re going to come out of it the other side. You went in metabolically busted, you’re going to come out metabolically, you know, Brittle with no muscle. And that’s just a complete disaster. I think we’re going to see some real disasters coming out the other side of it.

So I understand why people are upset. Um, but it’s not the peptides fault that the management of the patient, the dosing, and then the compliance issue of the patient. We’re all, you know, the doctor and the patient weren’t doing what they needed to be doing there. This

is a fantastic tool. I, I like to say, you know, cause exercise is my real background and exercise to me is the perfect drug when it’s dosed appropriately, but you could be someone who’s crazy running ultramarathons, you know, and then we’re going to have a problem.

So this is the same thing. It’s like dose, use it wisely. Use it in combination with other things, and it can be the most remarkable thing. And I love the fact that you have been out here teaching. You’ve got that four part series, which we’re going to link to in the show notes, which is fantastic, by the way.

I’ve listened to it twice. Tell everyone about your four part series. Yeah,

so it’s completely free, and I made it, honestly, sort of as, uh, in response to all the propaganda and everybody pushing back on me. So part one is, Part two is beyond weight loss. Part two is talking about all the big scaries. So we didn’t get into many of them here, but I talk about the thyroid cancer and the gastroparesis and the pancreatitis, all of that.

I cover that. And then part three is about how the dose makes the poison. And I go further into detail about why I think the dosing is really not being done great. And then in part four, I talk about protecting your muscles. So, and that leads into my, um, bigger program if people are interested, but the first, Four part series is free to everybody and they can find it on my website or if you have the link there in your show notes.

I will, I will put it at, in all of your links because your social is fantastic and you’ve got your podcast, you got a lot of stuff going on. Thank you. And by the way, I mean, so much of this is just a labor of love. I think people don’t realize that when we do podcasts and Instagram and all this stuff is, is, uh, it’s a lot of work to create content, especially well researched content.

Which is what you’ve put together. So this is a lot of work and I appreciate that you’ve got this four part series, but you know, for someone who wants to go deeper, I think this course makes a ton of sense. And especially if you’re a practitioner. Well, if you’re considering using it, you want to be armed with all of the information.

You want to know exactly what you can do to use these and really get the best results from them. And that’s on you to really do. And then for the course for any practitioner, I was like, Oh, this is fantastic. So appreciate you putting that all together. We’ll put everything at jjvirgin. com forward slash.

Dr. Tyna, D R T Y N A, and that is Tyna with a Y. So again, jjvirgin. com forward slash Dr. Tyna. And I just appreciate everything that you’re doing in the world. And I, and I appreciate you as a human being and absolutely adore you.

Thank you. And thank you so much for having me on. And I’ve been so honored to connect with you and, uh, just have this conversation and get to know you better.

So thanks for, thanks for that.

Be sure to join me next time for more tools, Just tips and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look and feel great and are built to last. Check me out on Instagram, Facebook, and my website jjvirgin. com. And make sure to follow my podcast at subscribetojj. com so you don’t miss a single one.

And hey, if you’re loving what you hear, don’t forget to leave a review. Your reviews make a big difference in helping me reach more incredible women just like you to spread the word about aging powerfully after 40. Thanks for tuning in. And I’ll catch you on the next episode.

Hey, JJ here, and just a reminder that the Well Beyond 40 podcast offers health, wellness, fitness, and nutritional information that’s designed for educational and entertainment purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace, professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

If you have any concerns or questions about your health, you should always consult with a physician or other healthcare professional. Make sure that you do not disregard, avoid, or delay obtaining medical or health related advice from your healthcare professional because of something you may have heard on the show or read in our show notes.

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