Are GLP-1 medications like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro really fixing weight loss and blood sugar issues — or just masking deeper metabolic problems? In this episode of the Freedom to Flourish Podcast, Dr. Joel Miller and Dr. Tim Augustyniak break down the science behind GLP-1 receptor agonists, how they impact metabolism, appetite, insulin, and digestion, and why so many people are turning to them for rapid weight loss. They also discuss the hidden downsides of GLP-1 medications, including muscle loss, slowed metabolism, digestive issues, hormonal stress, and long-term dependency concerns.
Most importantly, the doctors explain how the body naturally produces GLP-1 hormones through healthy gut function and proper nutrition. They dive into the root causes of poor metabolism, insulin resistance, gut inflammation, and blood sugar dysregulation while outlining natural strategies to support weight loss, improve gut health, balance hormones, and increase the body’s own GLP-1 production naturally. If you’re looking for a holistic approach to sustainable weight loss, blood sugar balance, metabolism support, and gut healing, this episode provides practical insight into how to restore your health without relying solely on medications.
This podcast transcript is provided for educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Please consult with a qualified healthcare provider before making changes to your health routine, diet, supplements, medications, or treatment plan.
Dr. Joel: Hey everyone, welcome to the Freedom to Flourish podcast.
I’m Dr. Joel Miller here with Dr. Tim Augustyniak.
You guys are back at it again today.
We’re talking about GLP-1s, which has been a really hot topic over the last many months with people just trying to lose weight and people are seeing a lot of benefits from GLP-1s.
We’re going to get into those today and talk about really what they do.
And we’re going to talk about really kind of why they work or why they help.
And we’re going to talk about what really is at the root of weight loss issues and how to address these things in a way that actually allows your body to heal itself and therefore not only lose weight, but keep the weight off rather than just being dependent on a drug for your weight loss.
So, Dr. Tim, let’s jump in.
Dr. Tim: Yeah, absolutely.
This is going to be a good one.
I’m sure anyone who’s in the natural health world somehow has come across all bravery over GLP-1 inhibitors or GLP-1 receptor agonists, which is a more correct way to put it.
Semaglutide, Mounjaro, Ozempic, all those things potentially just a disclaimer, it is not our scope of practice to prescribe medications.
All that stuff.
What we’re going to be talking about today, it’s observations that we see with patients through the muscle testing and all that stuff that we do, as well as the underlying biochemistry of the mechanism of action of these medications and our way of dealing with weight loss issues or diabetes, blood sugar issues, all those things naturally as opposed to using medications because those things can be accomplished without the piece of medications.
I understand there’s a lot of people who, you know, struggle with significant blood sugar issues or, or sitting things like that and they, they really struggle with the lifestyle changes required to make some good progress.
And these medications can be helpful, but the goal is to help people with their issues naturally.
So anyway, it’s going to be a good episode.
Lots of good stuff to get into.
Dr. Joel: Cool. I love it. Well, hey, Dr. Tim, let’s start with this.
What are GLP-1s and what do they do?
So GLP-1 stands for Glucagon, like peptide 1.
And this is actually, it’s actually a hormone that your body makes itself.
I love sharing this with patients, Dr. Tim, because they’re usually a little bit flabbergasted.
GLP-1s obviously are going to do a number of things.
So let’s talk about that really quickly.
And then we’re going to talk about actually how and where your body makes itself, which is exciting.
So #1 GLP-1s are going to increase overall secretion of insulin, which is basically going to help your body to take in the sugars better.
It’s going to decrease glucagon, which is also going to help reduce blood sugar.
And then it’s going to decrease gastric emptying, which is essentially slowing down digestion.
That’s going to help you feel more full and that’s going to increase satiety.
So, Dr. Tim, real quick, anything else to add to that, that little list there?
Dr. Tim: Honestly, those are in our research.
Those are the main things that we came across.
I think more so about how this can cause problems or irritate metabolism as a whole is what we’ll get into more in a little bit.
Dr. Joel: Totally. So here’s the question I always post to patients.
I said, did you know that your body actually makes this hormone itself?
And most of them say no.
And then I say, OK, do you?
I said, so your body does make it yourself.
Guess where it makes it?
It makes it in your small intestine, it makes it in your gut health.
So the majority of people that find benefits with GLP 1 medications and prescriptions, the reason why is because their gut health is very suboptimal.
Their gut health needs some support and needs some love and needs some healing.
So, so we’re gonna, we’re gonna get into that and we’re gonna talk about how you can really support your gut health through nutrition.
And then, hey, what are some of the root causes that can impact your gut health that really need to be fixed in order for your body to kind of have its own healthy balance of GLP-1s.
So obviously, Dr. Tim, you know, one of the things that we talk about is, you know, why do people take these?
You know, and, and chances are if people are listening to this episode, they’re familiar with the GLP-1 prescription that they help with losing weight, they help with controlling appetite and satiety and all that stuff.
Dr. Tim, where should we go next?
Should we jump into what we find with the muscle testing and how these things impact the nervous system?
Dr. Tim: Well, how about we get into this.
So overall with all of these effects that these medications will have on secretion of insulin, gastric emptying, all those things, Let’s talk about what a normal good diet should look like.
So we always harp on, you know, you need to eat 3 meals a day, five hours apart, plenty of protein and fat, all those things.
And the whole goal of that is to make sure that we have to use a lot of hormones to regulate blood sugar.
The more hormones you have to utilize during the blood sugar, the more that your body is going to have to use resources that it could use elsewhere for things that’s honestly unnecessary if you eat properly.
But then also it has to utilize other resources to break down those hormones that you’re putting on early, where those resources could be used to break down other things in your liver or produce other things, for example.
So methylation is super necessary to prepackage things and help prepare things to then be broken down through individual pathways, other pathways.
Estrogens are a huge, huge example of this where they have to be converted from their hydroxy estrogen form to their methyl estrogen.
Is it the methoxy estrogen form to then be broken down into their individual pathways?
And so if you are, you know, having one, taking a medication that needs to be broken down through methylation to kind of pathway that will be broken down through, but then also having cortisol and insulin issues and, you know, maybe even drinking caffeine along with it, you’re going to deplete the hell out of your, your, your methyl donors and all the nutrients required to produce glutathione and all that stuff.
And as time goes on, you’re going to reduce your ability to regulate blood sugar as a whole.
So you’re going to have more insulin resistance, you have more cortisol, insulin, all the things hanging out circulation and it just makes things more difficult to regulate blood sugar.
So with people that have metabolic issues or I guess I would, I would argue everybody that has metabolic issues, there is some degree of blood sugar dysregulation.
If you are artificially taking something that is going to increase the amount of insulin that you’re producing, you’re going to decrease your hunger, all those things, what’s going to happen is you’re going to reduce blood sugar significantly.
You’re going to induce some insulin resistance.
And then from there you’re going to not be hungry.
You know, to say it again, you’re not going to be hungry.
But the effect that less sugar has on the body is if you do not eat enough food often enough, you’re going to produce those hormones.
And so there’s either the high end of the blood sugar spectrum where people have too many carbs, or too much insulin all the time, insulin resistance develops.
That’s where high cholesterol, diabetes, all those things tend to come in.
That’s where you get your volume, where triglycerides, cholesterol, obesity, A1C, all those things kind of come into play on the low end of blood sugar.
That’s where cortisol ends up coming up to help regulate blood sugar.
And these GLP-1 inhibitors can cause blood sugar to go way high to way low.
And if you’re basically starving yourself, yeah, OK, you’re going to lose weight.
However you’re going to greatly, greatly reduce your metabolism.
You’re going to screw your thyroid, absolutely.
And you’re going to deplete the heck out of your muscle mass.
So if you’re starving yourself, cortisol is going to be driven all the time.
Cortisol not.
So it’s kind of this positive feedback loop of the GLP-1 patient decreases hunger, you won’t eat as much and then you’ll produce cortisol to raise blood sugar at that point because you’re not eating enough.
Well, cortisol will reduce hunger as well.
And so you’re not going to be eating as much and you’re going to produce cortisol, which will decrease hunger and then it’s more cortisol at that point.
So it’s just just and never any cycle cycle cortisol issues all the time, but with more cortisol being produced, what cortisol does is very what we call catabolic cortisol breaks down your tissues for raising blood sugar.
So cortisol is even like a starvation hormone.
So there’s the stress out of it where if you’re, you know, trying to escape danger, fight or flight response, you name it, it’s going to mobilize blood sugar, it’s going to increase heart rate, blood pressure, all those you can get away from whatever danger.
However, in a starvation setting, what it will do is raise blood sugar, but then it’ll down regulate metabolism.
It will break down your muscle because your body requires protein to rebuild various tissues.
So if you think of a kind of like a high hierarchy of importance of different tissues in your body, having big muscles really isn’t as important as having a heart function or having a gut lining that is able to absorb nutrients or you know, preparing your tissues that are necessary to continue working.
And if you’re in a long term starvation mode, what will happen is your body will breakdown protein in muscle and like for other things that are more necessary for survival.
So with cortisol, your body can utilize muscle as a kind of like a stored end source, just like a stored material raw material source to rebuild other tissues that require protein.
It’ll also form a function called gluconeogenesis where it will make blood sugar, make sugar for metabolism and produce energy from.
So it’s this big cycle of breaking down protein as a result of this.
And that’s where a lot of the weight loss comes in.
One of the one of the well known side effects of these medications is or, or decrease muscle mass.
So you lose fat, you also decrease muscle mass.
And so as a whole, it can really screw your metabolism.
And you know, we’ll get into it a little bit.
How do we, how do we increase our metabolism and help with weight loss, all those things naturally.
So that way it’s not just artificially weight and kind of messing with our muscle mass, fat mass, all that stuff and screwing our thyroid.
It’s more so increasing metabolism, increasing energy burning because your body’s in a thrival state as opposed to a starvation state.
So anyway, kind of a tangent there, but hopefully that made sense to our listeners and hopefully covered quite a bit of stuff that is in, in a nutshell, instead of starvation mode, we want to get into throttle mode and these medications will really push towards the starvation mode.
Dr. Joel: Yep, totally. Yeah.
And we’re going to, yeah, like we’ve we’ve said a couple times here, but we’re going to jump in, in just a second talk about how can you actually support your own body secretion of GLP-1s in a healthy way that doesn’t sacrifice other parts your digestion Dr. Tim, a lot of the common side effects that come with GLP-1s a lot of times have to do with gut issues.
It throws the whole digestive system off between the liver, gallbladder system, the bile flow, which you know, bile is made in the liver, stored in the gallbladder.
It’s released with food and helps break down food, helps breakdown and digest fats and fat soluble vitamins.
And then of course, it helps with maintaining a healthy microbiome balance with the bile salts.
And so a lot of the different side effects and symptoms that people can have is they can have nausea, they can have diarrhea, they can have bloating or gas.
And then, you know, some people can have heartburn.
And then of course, a big one is just that their appetite is so low.
And obviously we talk a lot about how important protein is for balancing cortisol like you’ve talked about.
And if that appetite is so low that you can’t even eat protein, it’s just going to create a myriad of other issues.
So let’s see Dr. Tim, let’s kind of jump into, you know, the, the overall production of our GLP-1s in our body naturally comes from our gut health.
Let’s jump into what are some of the things that that impact that, that number one, it’s just good to know about and maybe that’s more of like the root cause of conversation when we talk about gut issues.
And then two, nutrition wise, nutrition and lifestyle, sleep, exercise, all that.
What are the things that impact the GLP?
Ones that you can really address on your own and find significant improvements with your body producing more of its own without the side effects, without the side effects.
So let’s kind of jump into that Dr. Tim number.
Let’s see, let’s talk first about some of the root causes, right?
So gut health in general, Dr. Tim, what are the lot of the root causes we talked about when it comes to just poor gut health that, you know, a lot of times we’re addressing in the office for patients?
Dr. Tim: Yeah. So when it comes to gut health, I would argue that 99 plus percent of the time when somebody comes into the office with gut issues, there is some sort of overgrowth of the microbiome.
And by overgrowth we mean the natural microbiome that should be there for some reason.
You know, say you get sick, you get food sitting, say you’re exposed to mold, whatever it is you can get where various different strains of bacteria, fungus, parasites, you mean into the and the body must reach a a new equilibrium where it’s happy with the microbiome that’s there.
And if this gets, the immune system’s going to constantly try to kill that off.
The microbiome is going to overgrow.
It’s going to drive inflammation and it’s going to lead to things like the gut poor nutrient absorption, poor immune system function and lead to some chronic downstream issues.
So a healthy microbiome is for proper nutrient absorption, neurotransmitter production.
But then beyond that, actually the healthy microbiome will be super necessary.
It’s super necessary for various essential nutrients that will be produced for us when we eat certain foods.
So when we get into talking about once stimulating our body to produce GLP-1 on its own, we’ll get more to I guess more specifics, specifics on those nutrients.
So, but when it comes to an irregular or irritated gut that leads to problems, typically the fix is just with some herbs, calm that microbiome down and then from there do various things to support the immune system barrier of the gut or support neurotransmitter cyst feeling, all that stuff.
So whenever there’s disruption, like I just explained, you’re not going to produce hormones in the gut that you should be producing as a whole.
So you basically just have decreased function of the gut, decreased nutrient absorption and production, and decreased production of various hormones that regulate your nervous system, regulate your hunger and metabolism, all that stuff.
Dr. Joel: Totally. Yeah, totally. And to piggyback off that, the infections are huge.
You know, a lot of times people ask, OK, can you, can you address and heal the gut?
Well, actually, let’s start here.
What kind of causes these infections?
What kind of causes all this inflammation?
I would say #1 a lot of it goes back to our nutrition.
Eating processed foods is always going to throw a lot of stress onto our gut microbiome.
Eating inflammatory foods, seed oils, really again, the processed foods, processed sugars, all of the, the different artificial preservatives and, and ingredients and sweeteners, these things that are not normal to our body, yet they’re put in foods today to again, preserve them, keep them fresh longer.
All this stuff that is not, I would argue that is not how God designed our body as far as nutrition goes. And so getting these things out of our nutrition is huge.
But then there’s also a lot of different things that we want to do specifically to help our gut be strong and healthy and to be able to, to increase the GLP-1s with the infections.
Herbs are amazing.
We, we just a touch on this real quick, Dr. Tim, you know, when we find that there’s a bacterial, fungal overgrowth or imbalance, there’s usually one, maybe 2 herbs that someone needs.
But we’re usually talking about like a list of like 25 different herbs.
And so that’s where we jump into the muscle testing with patients and figure out, OK, what herbs do you actually need?
Because not all herbs that might be antibacterial or antifungal are going to work.
And so we jump into that.
Now, in general, if you said, hey, actually I’ve seen that people can heal and balance their gut without any supplements or herbs, I would say yes, it’s possible with really good nutrition, really good movement, really good mindset and, and just thoughts and things like that.
Good sleep, like you can heal the gut over time.
But apart from herbs, I would say it’s usually going to take quite a bit longer with the herbs.
It’s going to speed up the process significantly.
So without further ado, what are the things that people can eat and focus on to improve GLP?
One secretion.
So, Dr. Tim, in some of our research, we were a little bit surprised in a good way, because these are the.
We were flabbergasted.
These are the things that we tell patients about all the time.
So I was, as we were talking, Dr. Tim and I, I was like, Dr. Tim, look, this is what I was finding with my research on GLP-1s and the, the different things that will actually increase secretion.
And here’s what he said.
He said we already talked about those things.
He said we already tell people about these things.
So let’s jump in #1 protein and fat.
Meals that are rich in protein and healthy fats stimulate GLP.
One release, guys, this is something we’ve talked about all the time.
Protein and fats help to support your blood sugar, and that’s going to help your body handle cortisol better.
It’s also something that is going to help you generally feel full more so and so protein fats need to absolutely be prioritized.
If you have digestive issues with proteins and fats, that is kind of another topic.
That way we need to, we need another conversation.
I would say that we need to figure out why your body is not absorbing these things.
Is it low stomach acid?
Is it poor methylation because your nutrients are run down?
You know what does that look like Dr. Tim?
This might be my favorite here is fermentable fiber.
Basically fiber that’s fermented by the gut into short chain fatty acids.
Here’s the two top ones, butyrate and propionate.
These things are going to stimulate GLP-1 secretion in the gut.
What is butyrate?
Well, butyrate is a fat that is found in our favorite food, butter.
And so a lot of times butter.
So a lot of times again, we’re talking about increasing protein intake, increasing fat intake, especially with grass fed butter.
Do not be afraid of butter.
Butter is so helpful as long as it’s grass fed.
I would argue that I would say that’s going to be best.
At least it’s going to help with your gut health, gut micro, gut microbiome diversity.
It’s going to help with hormones because your cholesterol is what builds your hormones and you need healthy fats to make healthy cholesterol.
The bad cholesterol, as we call it, does not come from things like butter and grass fed meats.
That’s going to come from inflammation.
It’s going to come from infections.
It’s going to come from sugar and carbs.
You said insulin.
And insulin.
Yeah, totally, totally.
Here’s the next thing on our list, something that can really help two other things here I’ll mention.
As far as nutrition goes, polyphenols are really supportive with increasing GOP.
One secretion: what has polyphenols?
Well, these are little antioxidants.
These are found in berries #1 so eat more berries.
Blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, eat more berries.
Also, they’re found in green tea and cocoa, green tea and cocoa, and so those things can be beneficial as well.
Are you saying eat more chocolate?
Kind of just make sure that there’s not a lot of processed sugar in there.
Yeah, not a hershey’s bar.
Organic dark chocolate baby.
That’s right, that’s right.
All right.
And then the fourth thing on our list here, things that naturally support and increase GLP-1 production in your gut, low glycemic carbs, right?
So lower glycemic carbs are basically going to be carbohydrates that are not going to spike your blood sugar, right?
So Dr. Tim, I’m starting to see a trend, right?
Low protein, which will usually result in blood sugar imbalances, high carbohydrate, you like high glycemic index carbohydrate that’s going to spike your blood sugar.
And so we have this, like you mentioned earlier, this dysregulation of blood sugar and insulin that’s going to suppress our overall body’s production of GLP 1.
So what can we do?
We can eat more protein, eat more fats, especially things like grass fed butter.
We can get more berries, maybe some green tea, maybe some chocolate in our diet.
It’s got to be good quality stuff.
And then low glycemic carbs to help overall, of course, support energy and so forth, but to not spike the blood sugar.
Dr. Tim, any thoughts into that?
I know I’m kind of running with things here.
That’s OK.
That was a good list to get through.
Well, I suppose in summary it kind of sounds like the issues that will lead to low GLP-1 in the first place is diabetic type symptoms.
So if you’re, if you have, or diet habits that will lead to diabetes in the long run, high carb, protein or gut health, all those things.
And just like with other conditions, the fix at least on the medical side seems to be, well, let’s just replace the hormone with, with the medication.
And so will it make things feel better?
Probably a little bit.
But the question is, why is it the case in the 1st place?
It sounds just like thyroid issues, you know, Oh, thyroid hormone is low, Well, let’s replace that and you’ll feel better.
And the problem is you don’t actually end up feeling much better because it’s the underlying inflammation, insulin issues, stress, all those things that lead you to the point of needing the medication in the 1st place.
Sounds like the same exact situation: you have inflammation, stress, insulin issues that contribute to you requiring some sort of replacement of GLP-1 to make you feel better.
And it doesn’t really solve the underlying metabolic issues or inflammatory issues that contribute to the problem in the 1st place.
So being said, we’re going to talk about how to fix that.
But beyond that, you know, you’re with your talk about butyrate or butyric acid.
I always harp on the importance of this because people will be like, Oh yeah, I’m vegetarian, I’m vegan, I’m so healthy.
And yes, there are plenty of health benefits to getting a wide variety of vegetables and fruits and all that stuff in your diet.
But we are animals.
We require sad fat and cholesterol for the sake of hormone production, for the sake of repairing their own tissues, for the sake of building.
Clearly a single cell in our body has cholesterol in the cell membrane that encases the cell.
And so we require proteins and fats to repair our own tissues and rebuild ourselves and produce hormones and stuff.
So if we are just eating junk all the time and not getting enough protein, fats, all that stuff, we’re not going to be able to produce our own hormones, we’re not going to be able to cholesterol.
We need all that stuff.
Taric acid is what we call an essential fatty acid, OK.
And what EF is they are fatty acids that we cannot obtain in our or we can’t produce it.
So it’s like we can convert stuff in our body to that we either have to or not.
Either we have to eat or consume, absorb however you want to put it, those essential fatty acids from our diet.
If we do not get them in our diet, our body cannot convert other fats or other things into it, and therefore we must obtain it through our diet.
The only place that you can get butyric acid from is a healthy microbiome with those unfermentable fibers and all that stuff you talked about.
Quite honestly, people come into your office that truly have a healthy gut and are able to eat enough of those fermentable fibers and all that stuff to get enough butyric acid.
How many people do you think come into your office that have truly a healthy enough gut and get enough of a wide variety of fermentable fibers to actually produce enough butyric acid?
I would say near, near to none.
I would say very, very little.
Yeah, I agree.
And that’s what I tell people.
And, and even with people that come in and they autoimmune reactions vary, I tell them if you want to be healthy in the long run, heavily, heavily encourage somebody to go down the road of getting like milk, milk, something like that and somehow incorporating that into their diet at least a couple times a week.
So then that way they’re not starving themselves with butyric acid.
A scene where people have these chronic gut issues and what we’ll end up testing at the end of the rope is a, you know, the last herb to clean up whatever issue they have and then with it, butyric acid.
And so it’s super, super important to regulate the immune system, rebuild tissues or gut, all that stuff.
If you don’t have it, your tissues can basically crumble.
We require a wide array of potential fatty acids to allow for cell membrane integrity, tissue integrity.
Fats are responsible fats like vitamins are responsible for, you know, moist or I guess moisturized skin, not dry skin, all that stuff.
And if you apply the same logic to all of our gut lining and you know, lining of our, our sinuses, just our membranes that are throughout our body, we do not have those.
We’re going to basically have dry skin membranes going on everywhere and that leads to problems.
So super, super point.
But anyway, in a nutshell, I just wanted to talk about that as well as the correlation between just covering up right and fixing your metabolism.
All the stuff will go away.
And that kind of gets us into our next, next and final part of the guess is what are the natural ways that we can lose weight, fix insulin issues, fix blood sugar, all that stuff and totally negate the need for GL inhibitors, at least for a true medical reason.
I just want to lose weight quickly, you know, because unfortunately, naturally outside of straight up not eating anything and starving yourself, you’re not really going to lose weight quickly.
An appropriate amount of weight loss is 1 to 2 lbs per week.
And even still towards a 2 LB loss, it’s just a bunch of loading and stool that you’re holding on to.
I honestly think 1 to 1 1/2 Max is probably the most appropriate level that I’ll see people anyway.
So how do we meet those goals?
So Dr. Joel, do you know, do you want to walk us through a couple of these points on how you’d be, let’s get your metabolism in check so we can start meeting those goals?
Totally, Totally.
So yeah.
So we talked a lot about the dysglycemia diet.
Essentially, as Dr. Tim mentioned this very early on in this episode, we generally want to look at 3 meals a day.
We want to look at prioritizing protein.
We want to look at having space in between our meals.
Usually four to five hours is optimal.
Your body roughly takes 2 hours to process the food going through your digestive system and then roughly 2 hours for your body to go through a self cleansing process called the migrating motor complex.
Four to five hours gives your body the time to process and digest the food and then also cleanse and kind of reset your gut and prepare your body for another meal.
Whenever you snack or eat before anywhere along that process, the whole process starts over.
So think about most people, they eat for 2 hours or they eat and then two hours later they get hungry and they eat again.
I mean, at least the first bit of food is processed, but the gut doesn’t get into that self cleansing kind of process and state.
So that can definitely lead to issues over time.
But this glycemia diet Dr. Tim, I know, obviously we talk a lot about protein intake.
How much protein should people be getting?
I would say most guys should be getting 120 upwards to 150 a 160 grams a day.
And then women should be getting anywhere from usually 75 to 100 grams a day.
Of course, everyone’s a little bit different depending on their size and their weight and things like that.
But there’s some kind of general guidelines with things.
What else would you add to the dysglycemia diet, Dr. Tim?
Just making sure that people are eating within an hour of waking up, avoiding processed sugars.
So this is a good thing I always talk about to make these a bit more manageable for people.
Bio hacks for blood sugar.
So your three meals a day are your types of eating food.
OK, outside of that, you really shouldn’t be eating anything.
You should just be having water.
But if you want to have something that’s kind of a kind of a cheat, which of course we do not necessarily encourage all the time, but life happens.
And if you really want something to, you know, do kind of like a 8020 or I’m 8010, which I’m more a fan of for fixing problems.
If you want to have dessert, have your ice cream right after your dinner.
You know, you want to have something sweet, do it right when you have your meal, you know, don’t spread it out because if your blood Sugar’s going out because your meal and you have something, you know, a couple hours later, but it’s still in the if it’s spike versus if you do it with a meal, it’s going to blunt it and it’s not going to be so sharp.
So definitely encourage people to chunk the new meal.
And yeah, just three meals a day, Nothing, nothing too crazy.
I had a patient who did blood sugar for a continuous glucose monitor and he decided to get some candy bars and stuff like that to try to see if the timing of meals really messes with blood sugar and the timing of eating a bunch of candy messes with it.
And he found that if he had his protein and fat, that stuff first, the candy bar really wouldn’t change versus if he had even just a bite of candy bar first, blood sugar just through the roof.
So it’s, yeah, timing of meals and timing of sugar rings with your meal is super important.
So every meal.
And then if you want something else, have it right at the tail end of your meal.
But really just doing your three meals a day, five hours apart and all that stuff.
Yeah, I like it.
Yeah, I found that too.
If I eat like obviously you know, you want to prioritize, OK, what’s my protein for this meal in the next kind of steps, at least I walk through mentally is OK.
What about fats?
What about carbohydrates?
And then what about just nutrient dense foods, you know, if there’s anything else that could be added in there?
We talked all about this in our nutrition kind of series of episodes.
And then it was nutrition Part 2.
I kind of walked through like, hey, here’s what I eat in a day.
And I just kind of talked about my mindset and things like that.
So it might not be a bad one to listen to.
But what I have found is if I eat my carbohydrates first, for example, let’s say I’m having, you know, some kind of protein source and I’m having oatmeal.
If I eat my oatmeal first, usually I’ll notice that my appetite doesn’t feel as great when it comes time to eat the protein or my blood sugar spikes, you know, and I don’t feel the greatest.
So usually eating the protein in your meal first along with vegetables is usually kind of a good way to get that digestion going the right way.
Other ways to help with weight loss and balance blood sugar.
So identify inflammatory issues.
If you have chronic gut issues, chronic hormone imbalances, those things are going to impact your overall detox pathways, they’re going to impact overall inflammation.
So you want to obviously spend time learning more about those things.
And then if you need professional help, find someone that’s ideally certified in systems healthcare, which is the technique that we do with patients or at least if not that sort of practicing applied kinesiology.
And then, you know, all of those people are going to be very well versed in functional medicine and, and the holistic side of things and all that good stuff.
We talk about detoxing the liver, we talk about good gallbladder health.
Dr. Tim, I’ll let you comment on those if you have anything else.
A couple other things I want to mention that can help significantly with weight loss supporting your thyroid and metabolism, which is huge.
And you know, we’ve, we’ve had a lot of other episodes and so forth on the thyroid.
So, you know, we haven’t specifically touched on the thyroid so much, but to be honest, you know, a lot of it is tied together anyways.
You know, I had a patient that we were testing different things for weight loss during our appointment and we were checking a lot of things with the thyroid and it went to gut health.
And this is a great example where I think she would say she was a patient that this was kind of before the GLP-1s got, you know, really popular with things.
But she ended up having an A SIBO issue, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.
She needed two herbs and then she needed to follow a low FODMAP diet.
She lost 10 lbs in two weeks.
She and she didn’t gain it back.
And, and to my recollection, maybe a small amount of that was bloating like she legitimately felt like she had, she had lost a good amount of weight.
I do think probably more so that was bloating, but still a significant amount of weight loss with that.
All right, here’s the rest of the list.
Things that increase GLP-1 secretion help with weight loss exercise, exercise.
Well, we know exercise is good.
We know exercise is good for weight loss.
It actually stimulates your gut to make more GLP-1 proper sleep and good circadian rhythms.
What does that mean?
It means prioritize sleep.
Have a good bedtime routine, actually go to bed, sleep in the dark, maybe even in a cold room.
Make yourself comfortable and then when it comes to circadian rhythms, don’t be on your phone with a lot of bright light, this and so forth before bed and when you wake up in the morning, don’t get on your phone immediately.
Spend some time in the sun.
Let your body kind of wake up in that way.
And then yeah, the other main things again are things that we’ve already talked about in relation to gut health, good nutrition and overall just addressing inflammation.
Dr. Tim, anything else?
Anything else for weight loss and GLP 1 support?
I just will touch on, you know, what we’re talking about when we say detox the liver and then proper biliary health already talked about methylation and how important that is for hormone detox.
But just making sure that you have plenty of vitamin B6B12B9, glutathione, artichoke extract, NAC, those things are super important to help detoxify all the hormones involved with regulating blood sugar.
And so if you are, you know, digging yourself out of the hole of blood sugar issues and, and maybe you’re trying to get off of these medications, those nutrients are going to be super important to support the pathways that are definitely insufficient currently to detoxify those things and, and get you where you need to be another part of it.
So, you know, we talked about cholesterol and all that stuff being super important, very, very, very important for producing bile.
So the way that we can get rid of things is either through a water soluble or get rid of things through the urine through the kidneys, or we have to get rid of them through a fat soluble form where we get rid of things through bile into the digestive tract.
So if you do not have sufficient bile, what will happen is things will back up, you won’t get rid of them through the digestive tract and you can get all sorts of issues.
And so a lot of the nutrients that are required for hormone detox are also required for bile production.
And there’s a lot over there.
So glycine, taurine, vitamin A, cholesterol, fats, butyric acid, butyrate on that food is butter.
But yeah, fixing all that stuff is, is incredibly important.
But it all starts with getting rid of the stimulus for reaching those resources in the 1st place, which starts with the dysglycemia diet.
Then from there you can start adding in those nutrients to help detoxify and, and rebuild your B6 U BB9B12, glucuronic acid, glutathione, all that stuff.
And, you’ll be good to go.
So you know, we always talk about, we’ll, we’ll fix this problem.
Who’d have thought, right?
Who would have thought?
All right, Dr. Tim, let’s wrap up.
How can people find you online and then any last comments?
Yep.
So I’m Dr. Tim Augustyniak down here in Bentonville, AR at Flourish Functional Wellness Center.
My website is flourishfwc.com
On the homepage you can find links to the socials contactable for the office.
If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions for future episodes, feel free to reach out.
Yep, love it, love it.
Freedom, health and Wellness is the practice here in the Dallas, TX area in Flower Mountain specifically, I’m Dr. Joel Miller.
You can find me online Dr. joelmiller.com.
You can find me on Instagram.
Guys, thanks so much for listening.
I hope this is helpful for you.
Hope this provides some clarity and understanding as to what is around this whole GLP-1 topic and how you can support your body to heal itself naturally.
Any questions that you guys have, would love for you to send them our way.
Any help that you guys need with things, feel free to reach out and we’ll be glad to do what we can for you.
All right guys, thanks.
We’ll see you guys in the next one.
