Ozempic Hair, GLP-1 Kids, Gut-Brain Anxiety, Food Additives, Taurine, and more

Dave Asprey (0:01)

I'm Dave Asprey. That's Dave spelled D-A-I-V-E. And this is your 10-minute weekly upgrade on the biggest stories in biohacking, longevity, and the world of health. Let's go.

Have you hit your protein goal today? Well, you might, but it's probably not good protein. And ButcherBox has made it easier to get good protein for your protein goal. They deliver 100 percent grass-fed beef and organic chicken and wild-caught seafood and a bunch of other good stuff right to your door. They've already done the research and they made the tough sourcing decisions, so you don't have to go to the store and ask questions that the butcher can't answer anyway. That means all you have to do is decide what's for dinner. Every ButcherBox is customizable, so you can choose the cuts and the proteins that fit your routine and just what you like to eat. Busy weeknight or friends coming over? You've already got great protein ready to cook. My days are really busy, so it's easy to just throw one of their grass-fed steaks on the grill after I work out. And if you're looking for an easier way to make great meals, give ButcherBox a try. Go to butcherbox.com/humanupgrade to get $20 off your first box plus your choice of free ribeye, New York Strip, or filet mignon in every box for a year with free shipping always. Again, that's butcherbox.com/humanupgrade.

Be sure to use our link so they know we sent you.

Novo Nordisk, the company behind Ozempic and Wegovy, says it's looking at hair loss as a possible area for future expansion. That does not mean Novo has a hair loss drug. There's no announced molecule, clinical trial, acquisition or partnership. Their chief scientific officer, Martin Holst Lange, simply identified hair loss as one of several areas the company may be interested in, along with menopause and addiction. And there are a few reasons hair makes sense for them. Pattern hair loss is heavily tied to hormones and endocrine signaling, which is already familiar territory for Novo. It is also an enormous consumer market where people often pay out of pocket and stay on treatment for years. Right now, the standard options still have real limitations. Minoxidil can help, finasteride can help men with androgen-driven hair loss, but neither reliably brings severely miniaturized follicles back to normal. That's why some of the newer drugs in development are interesting. Veridermix is working on an extended-release oral version of minoxidil. Pelej Pharmaceuticals is testing a topical compound called PP405 that is designed to reactivate dormant follicular stem cells. And another drug, Brizola, is designed to block androgen receptors locally in the scalp instead of systemically. None of those programs are connected publicly to Novo. They just show you how active the space has become. There's also an interesting GLP-1 connection here. Hair shedding has been reported by some people after significant weight loss on these drugs. In many cases, that may be telogen effluvium, where rapid weight loss, low calorie intake, low protein intake, illness, or other physiological stress temporarily pushes more hair into the shedding phase. That is different from classic male or female pattern baldness, where follicles progressively miniaturize over time. So if someone is losing a lot of weight and suddenly starts shedding hair, that distinction matters. You want to know whether you're dealing with genetic pattern loss or whether the body is reacting to rapid metabolic change, lower food intake, or nutrient stress. My takeaway here is less about whether Novo eventually sells a hair drug. What's interesting is how fast hair loss is moving from old-school minoxidil and finasteride into a much broader drug development category.

And that leads pretty naturally into the next story. Because it's another example of what can happen when you change appetite and body weight very quickly.

A new study looked at 2,031 kids between the ages of 10 and 17 who were prescribed GLP, receptor agonists. Within one year, 16.88% had received a new diagnosis related to a nutritional deficiency. The most common one by far was vitamin D deficiency, which showed up in about 12.4% of the group. Smaller numbers were diagnosed with nutritional anemia or iron deficiency anemia.

There are some important caveats here. This was an insurance claim study, not a randomized clinical trial. The researchers could see diagnoses that were added after treatment started, but they did not have perfect baseline blood testing on every kid. So we cannot say that GLP-1 drugs caused all of those deficiencies. A lot of these kids already had obesity, pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes, and vitamin D deficiency is already common in pediatric obesity.

Also, this was mostly a loraglutide cohort. Nearly 79% started on loraglutide, while only about 9% were initially prescribed semaglutide. So this is not really an Ozempic study. But one number really stands out. Only about 5% of the kids had documented nutrition counseling in the first 30 days after starting the medication. Even after 6 months, fewer than 1 in 4 had received it. That matters because GLP-1 drugs reduce appetite, increase satiety, and can cause nausea or other gastrointestinal side effects. So a teenager may simply start eating a lot less food. And teenagers are still building bone, muscle, blood volume and lean tissue while going through puberty. If total food volume drops, then things like protein, iron, calcium, vitamin D and B vitamins become even more important. Again, the study did not show that these kids had impaired growth, fractures, muscle loss or cognitive problems. Those things were not measured. What it did show is that nutritional deficiencies were being diagnosed after treatment started, while early nutrition support was relatively uncommon. That's the part I'd pay attention to.