Comment by jaggederest
1 day ago
I have some individual anecdotal evidence. I spent a long time, basically a year, relatively heavy but on a very small dose of GLP drugs due to tolerability issues, and my labs improved dramatically, to a degree we redid them out of disbelief, even without weight loss. I believe one of the suspected underlying causes is reduction in fatty liver despite constant body weight and composition, and also inflammation reduction directly through GLP influence in other areas of the body.
I'm not great evidence because N=1 and all the confounders, but I found that it absolutely made me much healthier without weight loss. I then went on to increase the dose slowly and have lost a bunch of weight and my labs improved even more, which I attribute mostly to the body mass reduction.
Similar experience here on minimal dose of GLP-1. There is definitely something going on here other than "you are just losing weight and that's really why you are healthier".
With my labs at my current weight you can not tell that I am a type 2 diabetic. Previously, when I was at this very same weight in the past - all my labs indicated I was prediabetic.
Being weight X while gaining weight is a significantly different metabolic state than being weight X while losing weight.
Very cool - to be clear, are both your diet composition and calorie intake similar before vs. after?
Could be just because you stopped eating bad food. Things improve dramatically once you limit your intake of industrialized food.
Not that dramatically. Things like fatty liver take a long time to reverse. It’s not like you stop eating junk food and then suddenly your body is chilling. No, the damage is done and takes a long time to repair. It’s like smoking. You can benefits from quitting smoking within 20 minutes. But to reach the full benefit and reversal, you need 15 years.
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My diet consisted mostly of lean meats like chicken and vegetables.
People's habits usually don't change. They still eat the same plastic crap, just less of it.
A lot of metabolic stuff is due to insulin and insulin sensitivity. This drives pretty much everything. Insulin sensitization is pretty terrible and it gets more important as you age. Unfortunately natural selection doesn't need to fix this as it doesn't cause issues until after reproduction and often until after your grandkids are born.
Semaglutide and glp1s resensitize it which is why they have these effects.
My opinion
I strongly suspect that it has had an impact on my insulin sensitivity as well.
I really wish my insurance would cover GLP-1s, because I think reduction in fatty liver and other ancillary benefits, along with the weight loss, would be medically helpful for me.
I was paying $1400 a month of my GLP-1 (on top of the $2400 monthly health insurance premium). I eventually just bought a batch from a reputable online compounding pharmacy for a very small fraction of that (about 12 months of meds at a time), and send one of the vials in for testing at a mass spectrometer for about $500.
I've been given a sheet of prices for self-pay in the U.S. and they range from $150 to $350 for the lower doses (the oral versions are $150, the injections $300 and $350). These are not online prices, just local pharmacy prices.
Would you mind sharing the online pharmacy and the testing facility you used?
I've been wary of using online pharmacies due to concerns with knowing what's legitimate and what's not, so maybe a recommendation would help.
If you don't want to share publicly, can you put you contact info in your profile and I'll reach out to you?
Amazon Pharmacy sells name brand GLP-1s (Ozempic, Wegovy, Zepbound, etc) for $250-400/month without insurance.
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I thought they closed whatever loophole that let compounding pharmacies do GLP1s, but I suppose online there are ways around that.
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