AMA 64: New insights on GLP-1 agonists (Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro) - efficacy, benefits, risks, and considerations in the rapidly evolving weight-loss drug landscape

**Peter Attia** (0:10)
Hey, everyone, welcome to a sneak peek, Ask Me Anything, or AMA episode of the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. At the end of this short episode, I'll explain how you can access the AMA episodes in full, along with a ton of other membership benefits we've created. Or you can learn more now by going to peterattiamd.com/subscribe. So without further delay, here's today's sneak peek of the Ask Me Anything episode.
Welcome to Ask Me Anything AMA episode 64 I'm once again joined by my co-host, Nick Stenson. In today's episode, we cover a topic that we've addressed in the past, but has continued to gain significant attention since we last spoke. And that of course is the topic of GLP-1 agonists. You may have heard of these drugs, Ozempic and Mounjaro, but we go much deeper into this. Now, given how these drugs have gained popularity and given how our knowledge on them has advanced probably non-linearly since we last discussed them, we felt it was appropriate to address many of your questions on these topics and what we've learned through our own experience with patients. In this conversation, we begin with a very quick background on what a GLP-1 molecule is, how these drugs work, and why they are finding so much utility today. We focus on what we now know about their long-term efficacy, which is longer than what we knew in the past, what we know about side effects, and what we know about what happens when you stop taking these drugs. We also talk specifically about their effects on body composition. This is something we couldn't speak to from clinical trial literature before, but we now in fact have that data. We talk about the role resistance training plays on these, and we talk about the differences between the specific GLP-1 receptor agonists, for example, is one of the two on the market today better than others. We talk about the role compounding pharmacies are playing in this. We talk about orals versus injectables, what some other health conditions might be that are amenable to treatment with these drugs, and we talk about the types of GLP-1 agonists or other receptor agonists that are on the market, and that appear to be promising, and at least in one case, potentially more promising. If you're a subscriber and want to watch the full video of this podcast, you can find it on the show notes page. If you're not a subscriber, you can watch the sneak peek of the video on our YouTube page. So without further delay, I hope you enjoy AMA number 64

**Nick Stenson** (2:43)
Peter, welcome to another AMA. How are you doing?

**Peter Attia** (2:46)
Doing very well. Thank you for having me.

**Nick Stenson** (2:48)
I see you're in a new location today. Do you want to let people know why?

**Peter Attia** (2:52)
Well, after some planning, we've decided to expand the look and feel and create a dedicated studio for this. So excited to have our inaugural in studio podcast today.

**Nick Stenson** (3:05)
For people who don't know, we used to transform your office, your actual work office into a studio every time we recorded. So how much nicer is it to not have that done each week?

**Peter Attia** (3:18)
It's as much nicer as it is when you have to stop having a weekly root canal.

**Nick Stenson** (3:24)
That's good. Much less noise going on from background, from kids or dogs or anything of that nature as well.

**Peter Attia** (3:31)
That's right.

**Nick Stenson** (3:31)
In the new studio, which is always good. For today's AMA, it's actually funny because it's kind of a little inside baseball, how we do the podcast is usually there's anywhere from a 10 to 12 week delay from podcast recording to release just with how we work. But this one is going to be released first, and then we're going to go back to the old studio a little bit in the release schedule, but not the recording schedule.
And the reason why is we're covering a topic today that we want to turn around and get out as quickly as possible because it seems it's a topic that changes more than almost anything else that we talk about, which is GLP-1s or Ozempic, Trisepatide, you name it as people have heard of them. And I actually look back because you and Bob first talked about this November 2021 is when we released that episode. We did a follow-up March 2023 And I don't think there's been a topic that has had more change in terms of interest in that period of time than this. And I still, I said at the last podcast we did this one too, is I remember the first time you and Bob talked about wanting to do a GLP AMA. And I was like, I have no idea why we're doing this. It was the most technical thing. It made no sense. No one was talking about it. And now, it seems like it's everywhere. Even since the last 18 months when we did the last one, so much has changed. And so, in this one, we're going to cover everything as it relates to these. And we'll just go through piece by piece. And we'll do a little recap of how they work. But previous AMAs will be best if people want to go into detail there. We're not going to spend as much time. We're going to spend much more time on what we know about this now and how this works, the difference between the drugs compounded, injection, what we know about weight regains, safety profiles. The past few times you talked about this, there just wasn't as much information as there is now. And so I think it'll be really interesting because I think it's also one where you maybe have changed your mind a little bit based on past conversations that we had. So it will be a really good one. I think it will be really interesting. And with all that said, do you want to add anything before we start rolling into it?