Alex Clark (3:59)

Do you think that it's BS If a functional medicine doctor tells a patient they can't lose weight because of a hormonal imbalance?

Dr. Tina Moore (4:08)

My conversation I'm trying to have really is quite independent of weight loss. I do think the peptide can help with weight loss. However, I'm trying to talk about a plethora of benefits that really is quite independent of that. That said, I think that hormonal imbalances or actually lack of hormones is a better term. I think the term hormonal balance is really thrown around a lot. When we are missing hormones, we especially estrogen, we become more insulin resistant. And when we become more insulin resistant, we definitely are going to have issues losing weight or keeping the weight off. We also will start to redistribute where our fat lays down. So hormonal deficiencies are going to lead to weight gain. In fact, most women who hit menopause end up gaining, you know, a mild to moderate or significant amount of weight. So most women sitting in menopause, which is a third of their life, are, you know, I think stats are anywhere between like 50 to 75% of women in menopause are overweight or obese.

Alex Clark (5:07)

You have your own personal story of how it's ozempic, right? Changed your life and your daughter's life.

Dr. Tina Moore (5:12)

So I immediately decided I had to guinea pig Myself up because that's how I roll. Like I don't put my patients on something unless I try it. And I was, I was like, am I going to get stomach paralysis? Is it going to be terr? And so I tried it and it was, I was fine. And then I waited a few weeks to months and I started to see the impacts. And one of the first things I was going for, neurocognitive benefits I was going for, I was getting this persistent brain fog. I was not able to keep up with all of my tasks. I like you run many different ships and things. My team was getting annoyed with me because I was having this sort of perimenopausal post Covid brain fog, whatever. And that really snapped me out of it. Mood improvement, wanting to move more. It actually makes people want to move more. So I started moving more. I had a significant pain reduction with it. I could tell it was mitigating my immune system really beautifully. I've had autoimmune disease for most of my life. Like many of us, you know, many women, young women especially, you're not the first generation to be bamboozled by the whole system. Like we were the initial guinea pigs. Gen Xers, right? Like look at most Gen Xers were a hot mess. So that was really profound. Gave it to my daughter, she had some really profound impacts. Got a couple patients on it, put my whole family on it for various different reasons, none of which was weight loss. Except for my dad, that was the only person that I actually was trying to induce weight loss on. Everybody else it was for autoimmune diseases, cardiovascular disease, cognition, you have it. And the results were just across the board, really well tolerated, kept the dose very low and slow, not cranking up the dose like they do in the standard practices, standard dosing, it starts generally pretty high. It comes in a pen that's pre filled. You can't play with the dose at all. You get what you get and they ramp the dose up. They basically double it every month over 16 weeks. So they're cranking people up into these crazy high doses. And I thought, well that's ridiculous. Like I don't think most people need that dose. Maybe if they're severely overweight or we're talking a whole different calories category of, of folks here. But I was using it in tiny little increments to try to nudge people towards optimal wellness longevity. That's a different story than treating pathology. So yeah, I mean so far everybody's done great and the only time we run into Side effects is when the dose gets a little too high.

Alex Clark (7:40)

Aren't you worried though that if we start saying GLP ones can be good in some circumstances, that it kind of just paves the way for people to say, oh, they're good in all circumstances, in all situation situations and for all ages.

Dr. Tina Moore (7:55)

I think that there is, I have, I've been in medicine a long time. I have seen that happen multiple times with multiple different substances. The ability to abuse a substance and overuse it is pretty common and I think we see that with a lot of pharmaceutical drugs already. I think a great example would be how most people in my age category are already on a high blood pressure medication. They're already on some kind of statin drug. They're never, you know, the conversation around diet nutrition never comes up with the doctor. The doctor's like, oh, lose weight and you know, eat less and move more. That's always the answer. And by the way, here's your blood pressure medication, here's your statin. Nobody bats an eye to that. And I'm not saying that's okay either because my favorite thing to do is to take patients off those drugs and get their lifestyle dialed in so I can remove those drugs from their protocol. But that said, utilizing peptides for regeneration to have an anti inflammatory impact and to have a longevity impact is a different story. And so there's a lot of peptides out there right now. We lost several of them in 2023, at the end of 2023. But there's still a few out there that are available through compounding pharmacists. And they're amazing. They're amazing for healing joints, they're amazing for regeneration, they're amazing for stoking optimal wellness in people, for body composition, for pain, for cognition, for overcoming, you know, chronic illness like mold, ly, et cetera. So this in my head is in that category. I'm still not really talking about like everybody, go grab a nozic pen to lose weight when lifestyle isn't being addressed. So it's not take the peptide or take the drug and throw everything else out. It's not a substitute. I think it's a tool in a toolbox. And that's a comprehensive toolbox that includes lifestyle mitigation and exercise and dietary interventions and community and mindfulness and sleep. You know, all the things, what do.

Alex Clark (9:52)

You think about the people getting off GLP1s? And then the weight all comes right back.

Dr. Tina Moore (9:57)

The way that the allopathic system generally handles patients, that's different from the way that I approach patients as a naturopathic physician, is that they wait until people hit pathology. So it's a medicalized pathology approach. So they're waiting until the wheels are falling off the car before they help somebody or they come in with some big guns. So as my mentor used to say, it's like trying to hit a fly with a fly swatter or a shotgun. The allopathic community comes in with a shotgun, right? You have a little cold or sniffle, let's throw an antibiotic at it. Maybe we didn't need to do that. Maybe we did, right? Maybe it's nice, you know, with a patient. I. I might send them home with an arsenal of supplements and herbs that are specific to their needs. I might also include a prescription for an antibiotic if we think it's going to come to that or if they're not improving. Right. It's both. You can do both. And I think that what's happening is that our society doesn't understand that there's 10 to 20 years before most people get to some of these more severe conditions, or longer. A lifetime where we could be doing a whole lot of work and intervention preventatively, to get people optimized and to get people well. But that's a different category. And when you're your age, it's very easy to bring somebody. Even if you came to me and you were a complete disaster of health, I'd be like, oh, this is easy. She's young. I said that to you earlier. I was like, oh, you're young. It'll be.

Alex Clark (11:22)

And I said, no, I messed up.

Dr. Tina Moore (11:23)

Dr. Duffel, it's not too hard when people are young. But as we get older, I think the great divides around 45 to 50 years old, look at people in that age range. It's almost like they just took two entirely different paths. And when that person comes to me and they want to get their together, if they're way off course, it gets much, much more difficult.

Alex Clark (11:44)

So would you say, and I'm bringing this up because I listened to this debate conversation you had on Dr. Hyman show, which was phenomenal with Callie Means. Would you say that you completely disagree with Callie Means, his views on Ozempic?

Dr. Tina Moore (11:57)

No. I think that his message overall, I, Kelly and I have been on the same team for a long time. Like he and I are batting the same team back. During the last four and a half, five years, we have been screaming the same message from the hilltops. Where we differ is that he has absolutely no clinical experience. And I don't say that with any, you know, it's no diss. But he's not a clinician. And I'm not saying hand it out like candy. I'm saying when you have somebody in front of you and they're really struggling. We've got a couple different scenarios here. We've got like the kind of patient that would be more like myself. I'm healthy, I'm fit, I've taken really good care of myself for decades and I've really optimized my health as much as I can. Now how I came to that. I was a hot mess when I was your age. I was chain smoking and drinking too much and I was a Mac and cheesetarian and I was a disaster. So there was some damage done, right? So I'm walking into 50 and I'm like, I need some hormones, I need some peptides. But it's just a little tinkering. It's like salt bay. You just put a little sprinkle, a little something something.

Alex Clark (13:00)

Salt bay, Ozempic.

Dr. Tina Moore (13:01)

And these are easy patients. I'm a pretty easy patient. I'm not a complicated patient. There's the second type of patient where I would say somebody more in their 30s to 40s, maybe a woman who's had a couple children, she's found herself with maybe 30, 40, 50 pounds on her. She can't get it off. She is exercising, she is doing all the things, but the weight isn't budging. Or Maybe the type 2 diabetes is setting in and she's pre diabetic and her doctor's like, you better watch this. And she's doing all the things and she can't quite get on top of it. Or maybe she doesn't know all the things to do. I think coming in with the GLP1 there is a beautiful idea. I also think that we're seeing a lot of women. I saw this all the time in practice. I would see a woman my age come in and say, doc, you know, I've been seeing this person for 10 years. And she'd say, doc, I don't know what's going on. I just put on 15, 20 pounds around my midsection. And this woman's perimenopausal, menopausal. That woman, that is insulin resistance. That's what that 15, 20 pounds is. If we let that run its course, that woman will become more overweight and obese as time goes on and she will end up on a whole arsenal of medications. So I'm about using tiny, slow and low dosages. Of whatever I need, Be that hormones, be that peptides. This is just one of many peptides where we can get the person back to optimal. And then we're going to have our third category of patient, which is where a lot of Americans are sitting, where they're dealing with severe obesity. They're dealing with, with pretty severe type 2 diabetes. I don't think people understand because we've normalized type 2 diabetes. That is a disaster of metabolic health. Why it has gone on for probably 15, 20 years that this blood sugar dysregulation and insulin resistance has been happening. So by the time they get that magic diagnosis, all that is is a number on a lab. Like, oh, you hit the number, you're now type 2 diabetic. All of the damage has been happening over the past 15, 20 years. So the retinal damage, the kidney damage, the brain damage, all the dam, the cardiovascular damage, it's all been happening. And so we wait until they get to this point where it's like the wheels have fallen off the car and then we intervene and then what's the next step after.

Alex Clark (15:03)

Type 2 diabetes is basically what Alzheimer's.

Dr. Tina Moore (15:05)

If the cardiovascular disease doesn't take you out, then you're looking at a potential life of dialysis. If that doesn't take you out, then you're looking at dementia and Alzheimer's, which is type 3 diabetes. We've known this for 20 years. This is not new. I know just recently on the Internet, people are like, you know, type 3 or type 3 diabetes is Alzheimer's or vice versa. And I'm like, dude, we've known this.

Alex Clark (15:26)

What do you think about these concerns with Ozempic and stomach paralysis?

Dr. Tina Moore (15:30)

Those who are type 2 diabetic have, they are the most at risk for gastroparesis already because the hyperglycemia or the high sugar levels have been rocking for 15, 20 years or more. And that impacts the vagus nerve. And the vagus nerve starts to become deteriorated and damaged and that leads to low grade gastroparesis. They usually get misdiagnosed as having like, you know, regurgitation or reflux and they get put on some Nexium or something like that. Right. Like it's usually somewhat dismissed. Type 2 diabetes is a very profitable condition for the medical industrial complex. Like there's a lot of people who make a lot of money when folks get that far down the line. And so there's, you know, Nexium's one of the, those companies that's profiting off of the low grade illness of human beings. So I think that at that point, we have to intervene with something. And my argument if we want to talk about weight loss with it is that, and this is where I disagree with Callie, is that I am all for giving a patient a leg up because sometimes we have to get the ball rolling. Sometimes we have to get them started feeling better. My dad is an example. He had two or three traumatic head injuries. He ended up in his LA Z Boy 24 7. He spent, God, it's been 15 years now or more literally, in his La Z Boy, degrading and deteriorating and getting bigger and bigger and bigger and in more pain and watching his cognition go down the hill. And finally I was like, we're doing this like, you've got one foot in the grave. You're 80 something years old. What have we got to lose? I still don't have him at the optimal dose or what they consider the highest dose. I've got him somewhere in between. We went very slow and low. He's now going out of the house. House. He's going for walks every day with his dog because I bought him a puppy. He's moving more. He's not in as much pain. His brain is on, his lights are on. He's participating with us, he's having conversations with us. My mom's like, you gave me my husband back. Right? So this is where I think it's so. I don't even know how to say this respectfully. It is so disrespectful to people who are really challenged and really trying and feeling so disheartened because the weight isn't budging or it just keeps coming on. And we can talk about why that is. And then there's a group of people over here saying, this peptide's evil. Nobody should be taking it.

Alex Clark (18:00)

Okay? So I'm open minded because I'm one of those people that's like, it's evil, don't do it. But if you're talking about somebody who is a hundred plus pounds overweight, they're in the morbidly obese category. And they're like that where they're like, I just don't even know where to start. I just need to help. I just need to get started. What are the steps that you're putting that patient on?

Dr. Tina Moore (18:20)

First and foremost, we're doing both, right? And so if somebody is using a little bit of a dose of something just for myself, I just needed to get moving a bit more. I needed my pain to come down. I needed my brain and my lights to come back on a little bit. So that allowed me to have the energy to do the things I needed to be doing more often and more readily. Right. So it didn't feel like this insurmountable task if you've got somebody way, way, way over here. Like my dad for instance, I was, I did not even bother to ask him to start exercising until we hit a certain point. That usually happens around three months, but for him it took about six months. And all of a sudden he said to me, I'd like to start walking. And I was like, hallelujah. Right? So we have to meet them where they're at. I'm not saying crank your patient up and let them waste away. I am saying, why first of all are we waiting until people are a hundred pounds overweight? There was so much we could have done in here, Right. And there's so many things we could have used to help nudge them along. I'm not saying we substitute out lifestyle, I'm saying we utilize what we need to, to help people along. But for the general population, I think getting people walking, getting people focusing on their protein macros, making them aware and educated of what their food choices are doing to them. This isn't just a one on one thing. I think this usually requires a team. There's health coaches, there's the physician, of course, playing, you know, overarching sort of team cheerleader. But then often community is necessary where people are in groups and they're with other like minded people. So there's accountability, there's community and you get people moving along the path because people want to feel better, they want to do better. They don't want to sit in their house and eat junk food and waste away. Have you ever seen that movie with Brendan Fraser called the Whale?

Alex Clark (20:07)

Yes. And it's incredible.

Dr. Tina Moore (20:08)

It's incredible. And I, I love Brendan Fraser, like low key. He was the hottest, like 90s star. He was so cute. Have you, did you know him from back then?

Alex Clark (20:20)

No.

Dr. Tina Moore (20:20)

Oh, he was so cute. And he was, he was kind of like this cute, quirky sex symbol of my generation. And so to watch his health and of course he was wearing a suit, but he also, his health had really deteriorated and it's been hard to watch because he was such a healthy, like he played Tarzan in a live motion.

Alex Clark (20:38)

Whoa.

Dr. Tina Moore (20:39)

And he was so like, just go look.

Alex Clark (20:41)

Okay.

Dr. Tina Moore (20:42)

Yeah, yeah. All your Gen X audience right now is like, yes, I know what she's talking about. And that movie broke my heart because you saw what a highly Intelligent person.

Alex Clark (20:53)

Being trapped in their own body.

Dr. Tina Moore (20:54)

Being trapped in their own body. And.

Alex Clark (20:56)

But here's what's frustrating to me, though. I mean, in. If we're talking about that movie, which, I know it's a movie, but, yeah, he's trapped in his own body, he's miserable, but also, like, I mean, look at what he's eating throughout the movie and everything.

Dr. Tina Moore (21:09)

It's just, yeah, they get the folk. I can't. I cannot speak for people who are obese because I've never been obese, but my whole family has been. And again, I don't want to be defending Ozempic's use for obesity because what the message I'm trying to bring is, it has. We have the data. We now have the data, the studies. I mean, just two days ago, Nature published a paper talking about going through the data from tip to toe. Everything I've been saying out on the podcast circuit, like neurocognitive benefits, its use in the dopamine pathways that it impacts in the brain, it has. It's being shown to be efficacious for alcohol cessation, for opioid addiction, for smoking cessation. Like, it actually allows people to be back in the driver's seat and in control of what they're doing. I don't think they need to be cranking the dose up so high in people. I think a lot of doctors believe since the studies were done on those dosages, that that's what's clinically indicated. And I think that's where we get into trouble. And we see a lot of these side effects like the gastroparesis. So these folks are already sitting sort of on the edge of gastroparesis. And then you give them a peptide that's going to slow down gastric motility at such a high dose at such a high pace that it throws them over the edge. That's not how you do good medicine.

Alex Clark (22:18)

Do you think that that's what happened to Oprah, that they're hiding that she got gastroparesis?

Dr. Tina Moore (22:22)

Oh, I have no idea. I haven't been keeping up with Oprah.

Alex Clark (22:24)

Okay, so Oprah, this is a big scandal because, you know, she's been the weight watchers for years and years and years, and then all of a sudden she comes out and says, oh, yes, I've been taking oic, right? And then the news says that she's rushed to the hospital a few months ago in an EM thing because she had some stomach problems, but they would never specify what it was. And so A lot of people were like, it was the freaking stomach paralysis from her Ozempic.

Dr. Tina Moore (22:48)

So that's not permanent. Although it can be terrible. And I think folks can definitely. A little bit too much can be a lot too much, and it can really cause a lot of discomfort. So I don't think that this peptide is to be played with, and I don't think that people should be. A lot of people online are like, I'm gonna buy it offline, and I'm gonna try it myself. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. This is a prescription item that you get from your physician, and you have to be under the guidance of a physician who's watching you and monitoring you. But what I'm saying is we're kind of talking apples to oranges. When, for instance, the starting dose of semaglutide is 0.25 milligrams, they take them up to 2.5 milligrams in 16 weeks, 10 times the dose in 16 weeks. I'm talking a fraction of that, 0.25. Like, sometimes a tenth of that. A fifth of that really depends on the patient. A patient who is really metabolically compromised. That might be their starting dose. It really depends on what they need and what their body is missing, because I think we get into functional deficiency, which is a whole other conversation. But bottom line is it's made in the gut and it's made in the brain, and I think some folks are very low in it. I think Oprah's a good example of that. She looks like somebody. When you kind of look at that phenotype of somebody that I've seen, just turn it around. And I know you've seen this with your girlfriends or people online, where all of a sudden they're kind of getting thicker, their face is getting more swollen, and then they disappear for a few months, and they show up and they look amazing. And everyone's like, oh, she's on the Ozempic, Probably. Probably on Manjaro, More specifically, the tirzepatide. But the reason you're seeing their face look so incredible is not because of the weight loss. It's because of the immune impact it has. And I think that a lot of folks get caught up in an autoimmune bloat. We swell up. Some people are swellers, and so their immune system is a little bit autoimmuney, and they end up in this sort of perpetual bloated state. And that might look different for everyone, but it's uncomfortable. And I'm one of Those people, it doesn't feel good. And when you find something that mitigates your immune system and all of your brain inflammation goes down, that's not just about the weight loss.

Alex Clark (24:48)

Interesting.

Dr. Tina Moore (24:49)

That's what I'm getting at is there's so much potential for these peptides that we're not talking about because everyone over here is so concerned about the weight loss conversation.

Alex Clark (25:02)

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Dr. Tina Moore (27:23)

I think that. No, it depends on how it's used. It depends on how it's used. So I have a friend who's a PT and he sent me a text message and he said, yo, I heard you were the person to talk to because I haven't kept up with it, but I just had a dude come in and he literally looked. Looks like a wet noodle skeletor. Yeah, he's like bones and noodles.

Alex Clark (27:41)

They look like the Scream painting. You know that famous painting.

Dr. Tina Moore (27:45)

I say they look like melting candles. Yeah, they look like melting candle people.

Alex Clark (27:48)

That, to me, that looks like muscles wasting.

Dr. Tina Moore (27:50)

Yes. So if you crank the dose up, you will throw the person into a. You'll crush their appetite and they won't eat and you'll send someone into a massive caloric restriction. And the percentage of lean mass loss that they lose, that they've shown in the studies, is comparable to someone who goes through bariatric surgery or somebody who's on a very low calorie diet. So it's not an excessively higher percentage than somebody who's just not eating. So look at, you know, the Biggest Loser, for instance. Those folks are put on a severe caloric restriction. They also did have them exercise, thank God. And in some of the studies on these GLP ones, they are having people exercise. But they're all looking at this category of people. They're looking at a group of people who are very far down in a pathology, down the trail. And I'm over here saying I'm talking about very different dosages and different strategy. These folks, some of my colleagues who are using it, who are like bodybuilders, strength and conditioning folks, very fit folks, they are reporting almost an anabolic, like impact, meaning a muscle building impact. One guy said to me, it feels like when I take testosterone, like I get that pump when he uses Tide, it's working differently in different bodies. And they're taking tiny doses. They're taking it for longevity and they're taking it for different reasons and what it does in the body actually with multitude of studies on this, it actually helps hyper profuse the muscle with blood so you get more blood flow into the muscle which helps with muscle protein synthesis. It is anti inflammatory to the muscle, it is regenerative to the bones and muscles and joints. So the weight loss you're seeing, the lean mass loss and the muscle loss I strongly believe is due to lack of protein intake, not being counseled appropriately and being overdosed on it.

Alex Clark (29:37)

For the person who's listening that is several hundred pounds overweight and really at like the last end of the rope, what are you telling them to do? Like tomorrow this is what we're going to start doing.

Dr. Tina Moore (29:48)

We have to get folks moving. First of all, when people start, you know, it's the whole inertia thing, we want people to start moving. Once people start moving, they want to keep moving, body in motion, stays in motion. So that can be very painful and it can be not accessible to everyone. Some people literally can't get someone who I've had patients that were several hundred pounds overweight, they literally couldn't walk, walk without a cane or a walker. So like my dad as an example, we get them moving if we have to. On the peptide, again, I'm not using this for weight loss and hardly anybody at this point. But we have to get some of the weight off of them, get them to a point where the inflammation is low enough, where they want to start moving. We want to focus on nutritionally dense food. The cool thing about these peptides is it impacts the brain in a way that it gives them control and it quiets the food noise, but it also quiets all of the noise. It quiets noise. I've had people report they don't want to doom scroll on social media media all day. They didn't realize they had a, you know, Instagram addiction or TikTok or whatever. They don't want an online shop all the time. They, you know, and I think if you crank the dose too high, you actually can send people into a zone where they don't want to do anything. So we don't want to mess with that either. Right. There's some folks reporting that they're losing their libido on it. There's some folks reporting depression on it because they're being dosed into a place where they don't want any of the things they love. So it's a sweet spot and that's different for everyone.

Alex Clark (31:11)

Why do you think that happens? That is like a Little bit. And then you want to give up. Like not healthy addictions.

Dr. Tina Moore (31:17)

I think that you get folks, you know, you start playing with the dopamine circuitry in the reward centers and you can overdose people, you know, you can get them too far. And so we don't want folks there. There's a sweet spot for everyone. There's a sweet spot where we titrate them up to where we get the symptom relief we're looking for. And we don't take them over that. And we don't need to take them into side effects effects. And then if for the person who's severely overweight, obviously this is a very complicated, comprehensive approach. You don't just throw people on Ozempic and say, good luck, see you later. I mean, it is again, community. It's group coaching, it's health coaching, it's hand holding, it's all the things. But the bottom line is that there is utility for this peptide for folks who aren't severely overweight who simply need a little help with cardiovascular disease because they've got a history of it or they need help with. I've. There's good data showing an antidepressant effect, antianxiety effect. So there's a sweet spot. And I don't think that medicine has caught up with this idea yet. I think that most clinicians are following the studies because that's what they have to do for their license. And they are putting people on higher and higher and higher doses without really dealing with any of the other lifestyle cases.

Alex Clark (32:30)

Do you think there's such a thing as a fat gene?

Dr. Tina Moore (32:33)

So this is complicated. What I will say is that we have very good data showing that children born of obese mothers have the odds set against them, so they are epigenetically flagged. And there, there's a woman, a dietitian named Lily Nichols. She was on my podcast.

Alex Clark (32:51)

Yes, I've had her on. Okay, yeah, Real food for pregnancy.

Dr. Tina Moore (32:54)

Yes, she talks about this. And when you've got an insulin resistant mom and you've got a fetus in utero, that baby is being bathed in excessively high levels of insulin. That child is set up for metabolic dysfunction, type 2 diabetes and obesity down the line at excessively higher rates than a child who's not swimming in insulin in utero. So.

Alex Clark (33:15)

So in a way, there's kind of a fat gene.

Dr. Tina Moore (33:17)

Yeah. Or I would say an epigenetic. So epigenetic is when your genes get flagged. So there's definitely differences in people. There's also Data to show that those who have fatty liver and type 2 diabetes have very low levels of GLP1. Again, is that a functional deficiency or is that some kind of. Is that how they're built? We don't know. I just know that there's got to be room in this conversation for nuance. And again, I very much respect Cali Means and his message. And Casey of. Dr. Casey means, of course, I mean 100%. Casey and I say the same things all day long. That's what we say on our platforms all day long. The same exact things. And I think at the end of the day, we're throwing out the baby with the bathwater over idealism when there's people who could really be helped who are afraid to use this peptide. I've gotten hundreds of messages from my followers of folks saying, I was so terrified, my doctor suggested it. I'm too type. I'm type 2 diabetic, or I am, you know, dealing with excessive weight. That won't come off. And I was afraid to do it. And then I watched your podcasts and I have a whole series of podcasts on it, and I decided to try it. And we're going very slow and low, and it has completely changed my life. And then they tell me how, and it's like, thank God they were listening to something that was reasonable and not just propagandized media that was scaring them away from something because it's gotten so black and white like everything else, right? And there's just room in the middle. Medicine is a gray zone. Nothing works in a silo. There's no right or wrong answer for every single person. We can't say that this medication is evil in all cases. Cases. I don't love Big Pharma by any means, and I'm certainly not a big Pharma shill. I'm not getting any checks. I think they may have turned off my Instagram. They're not my fans. But that said, thank God for medications when used appropriately. And the way that I was trained by my mentor decades ago was you have a teeter totter. So the patient comes in and they're on all these medications. And a lot of these are lifestyle medications. Your high blood pressure, your statins, your. A lot of times with the oic. Now, these are lifestyle medications, I believe, not being prescribed appropriately because they. The doctor has about seven minutes with you before they're losing money because of the way health insurance works. My goal is to help improve lifestyle and bring up the lifestyle pieces in such a way that we can lower this down. That doesn't mean we go off of everything. They may still need a touch of something, but I don't vilify them for it. I just don't want them on such damn high doses of everything that they're getting side effects. And we have to make sure that we promote this piece of it and we continue to teach them. And I have it tattooed on me. Doceri means doctor is teacher. Like that's what it means to be a holistic physician. Unfortunately, most doctors don't have time to do that. They don't have the education they weren't taught. And it's not that they're being. There's nobody writing doctor's checks, by the way, for prescribing. I know everyone thinks that we're all getting some kind of kickback by big pharma every time we write a script. That's not reality. That's not how it works. We're vilifying the doctor when the problem goes much higher up. So that's a whole other conversation. But we need to start talking about the health insurance companies and the hospital administration and how the system works. And everybody's hyper focused on, well, the damn doctors are doing this and they're doing it wrong and they're prescribing things, you know, irresponsibly and everybody's getting this. It's just a fairly messed up system that I saw you the other day in front of. You know, I was at a congressional hearing. It was amazing with our senate hearing. Yeah, you just dropped the mic at the end. You were just the most beautiful clothes there and like you just, you know, sealed up the whole conversation so well. But it's such a bigger beast it watching that whole event. I watched everybody's speech and I thought, you know, this reminds me of the video games where you play the levels of the video game and you, you know, you get life and you meet helpers and I don't know, I'm not very into video games, but my daughter was. And I remember, you know, you'd get to these different levels and you think you're really dealing with the issues and then all of a sudden you get to the big boss and you're out of lives, you're out of supplies and you get your ass handed to you. The big boss in all of this is the medical industrial complex that is profiting significantly off everybody being slow, sick, fat, dumb and chronically ill. And that is a bigger conversation. So again, we can't throw the baby out with the bathwater because we need all hands on deck and we need tools and we have ep. We have generations of epigenetic damage at this point. And so. So kids with ozempic. What do I think about it? I don't know until I have an obese child in front of me.

Alex Clark (37:51)

No, Dr. Tina, no.

Dr. Tina Moore (37:53)

We have to do, we have to do what's best for the child.

Alex Clark (37:57)

And it can't be Ozempic, that it.

Dr. Tina Moore (38:00)

Can'T be OIC for life. No. But there's also this consideration that that child could completely change their diet and exercise all day long and they still won't lose a pound. There's so many people like that because of. I don't know if it's genes. We also have to talk about their parents. Most obesity in children is directly due to the obesity in the parents. So we're talking about children.

Alex Clark (38:23)

It also has to do with what the parents are buying to feed them.

Dr. Tina Moore (38:26)

That's what I'm saying. The parents lifestyle is directly impacting the child and we want to treat the child. We can't do that without treating the parents. This is a very comprehensive in depth problem. Problem is what I'm getting at. We have a big boss. We have a much bigger problem brewing. And I'll. The analogy I like to use is Pottinger's cats. Have you ever heard of Pottinger's cats?

Alex Clark (38:49)

Tell me.

Dr. Tina Moore (38:50)

Okay. Pottinger was a veterinarian and in the 30s and 40s he was studying cats and he found that when he fed cats cooked meat and pasteurized milk, that's all he did was cook the meat and pasteurize the milk. Within a few generations, they became completely infertile. They had intestinal issues, they had big fatty livers. And it took several generations, I think it was three or more generations of putting them back on a pristine diet to recover the health and to get them back to being fertile. My generation was Pottinger's cats. My daughter, who's a bit younger than you, is now two generations. We are generations into this problem and these kids are epigenetically marked. Marked. So my daughter has significantly more weight and pcos and metabolic issues than I did. So we're dealing with a generational problem. I understand that we have huge systems that are devastating the entire population. We have. It's like we have a house that's on fire and we've got a group of people over here arguing about the foundation and the way it's built and the materials that were used and the Paint and it's flammable and the wood and the drywall and all of that. And I'm over here like I have a fire extinguisher and we have to put the freaking fire out too. So I think it's both and I think it is short sighted to say, and I'm not saying put a child on zempic, I'm saying don't throw the baby out with a bathwater because when you that child, that 200 pound 12 year old, that's their life. I don't care if you intervene with everything. That kid, that child, even if they lose weight. Do you know that there's like I think roughly from the data I've looked at, it's much like rehab. There's about a 2 to 5% chance they'll stay lean. Even if they get lean, most people who lose the weight through diet and exercise and lifestyle have the odds stacked against them and they will relapse back into the obesity.

Alex Clark (40:57)

So there is no way that it's healthy to get that 1112 year old on it. And then if that's the case where you only have a 2 to 7% chance of staying lean, they're going to be on that drug for life. And then we have no idea people being on these drugs for that long, right?

Dr. Tina Moore (41:14)

No. We have data on GLP1s going back 20 years on, you know there's, there's been type 2 diabetics on exenatide and loraclutide for a long, long time. And in fact the data coming out is showing significant reductions in all cause mortality, significant reductions in cancer, cancers. It's correlative. But the data that's come out in the past two months alone is shocking. Like the longevity potential of these peptides. They really are not the villain that everyone's painting them to be. I don't know about these super high doses and I'm not saying throw a kid on Ozempic and call it good. There's a massive amount of intervention that has to happen there. But let's look at all the tools we have and use them responsibly.

Alex Clark (41:59)

We talk one on one for a sec. Are you drowning in student loan debt right now? Do you feel like there's no way out? Are you discovering that your entire family is affected by it? If you've got private student loan debt and are behind or just default, you got to call my friends at WireFi WI refinances private student loans that others won't touch and provide you with a custom loan payment based on your ability to pay. They can reduce your monthly payment and your total cost and they don't care what your credit score score is. WiFi is not a debt settlement company. You can tell your dad that you'll receive a low fixed interest rate that you couldn't get anywhere else and a pathway to making all the stress and worry come to an end. Just give them a call at 888-502-2612 that's 888-502-2612 or go to y refi.com that's letter y r e.com if private student loan debt is wrecking your life, it doesn't have to call wifi at 888-502-2612 or go to wi.com may not be available in all states There has been a lot of confusion about fluoride. So let me say this as plain and simple as possible. The United States government themselves just admitted that fluoride is linked to lower IQ in children. You must avoid it in everything. Your drinking water, your toothpaste. Yes at the dentist only drink filtered or glass bottled water and use fluoride free toothpaste. My favorite is Zebra. They make their toothpaste with xylitol instead and have a mint or coconut brand which kids do super well with with beautiful branding you're going to love to display in your bathroom and ingredients that you can feel safe having your family exposed to. There is no better option than Zebra for toothpaste. They also have non toxic floss and an incredible clean deodorant line that is completely unisex. You can use it. Your husband, your teenagers, men, women, kids, they all love Zebra. They're also made in the usa. They are openly conservative and Christian owned. I take a lot of pride in the brands that I choose to promote on here. I say no to 98% of them. You can ask my ad team. It really drives them nuts. In fact most of the sponsors on my show are people that I've asked myself to become a sponsor because I love the product like Zebra. Go to yay zebra.com and use code Alex for 10% off any order. That's yay zebra.com use code Alex for 10% off non toxic floss, toothpaste and deodorant. If somebody listens is like I have a huge event coming up, I've got a wedding and I want to lose, you know, 10 to 20 pounds in a very quick amount of time. Do you like Ozempic for that?

Dr. Tina Moore (44:29)

No no, because it's not a quick drug. It's slow, It's a slow process. This is slow and low.

Alex Clark (44:35)

So what would you say to somebody who wants to lose that amount, about that amount of weight quickly?

Dr. Tina Moore (44:39)

There's no quick weight loss, first of all.

Alex Clark (44:41)

Okay, no more.

Dr. Tina Moore (44:43)

I would say no more than a pound a week is a good idea, period. And I would say, obviously, let's look at all the aspects of their health, let's look at their hormones, let's look at their gut health. I mean, there's no silo here. This is.

Alex Clark (44:56)

Are calories really like this evil character when it comes to losing weight?

Dr. Tina Moore (45:00)

Not as much as I think people chalk it up to be. No.

Alex Clark (45:03)

So just counting calories is not enough. You're not going to just lose weight by like only eating this amount of calories a day.

Dr. Tina Moore (45:09)

You can lose weight that way. But I think the short sightedness on that, that I see with a lot of these, you know, gym bro guys, very smart men and women who promote that they are, are not considering losing weight's one issue. It's keeping it off. That's the real issue. If you ask any obesity doctor that's board certified in obesity, which I am not, but again, I'm not, I'm not trying to have the obesity conversation. They will tell you that it's the keeping it off part. So you can lose weight in a myriad of ways. Keeping it off is an entirely different story.

Alex Clark (45:39)

What are some ways that insulin resistance shows up on skin?

Dr. Tina Moore (45:42)

Oh, that's a good question. I just got asked this on another pod. So you'll see an increase in pores size is not uncommon. So you might see blackheads starting to form. You will see skin tags. You can see cherry angiomas show up. You can see, you can actually, if it gets really bad and it starts to get into pcos, you'll start to see hair falling out of the head and hair growing in weird places. So they'll get hair growth in certain places and hair loss in other places.

Alex Clark (46:09)

My grandmother has tons of skin tags and she is for years, decades, and then had multiple heart attacks. And we didn't know till she ended up so bad she ended up in the hospital. And then they told her, you know, that you've had several heart attacks. Nobody even knew. She didn't even know that she had had heart attacks. So weird. But I thought about the skin tag thing because I feel like I, that was something I hadn't heard until recently. And I was like, oh my gosh, she had that Sign that outward, sign that there was some stuff going on. Maybe, maybe, you know, things could have been intervened there.

Dr. Tina Moore (46:41)

Yeah. You can also get darkening of the skin and we'll see this more in folks with darker skin tone. So people of color will have it' called acanthosis nigricans. They'll get like a fuzzy, almost velvety darkening sometimes on the back of their neck or on their. Around their ankles. And I'll see this in children. And I'm. This. Just seeing a child with metabolic dysfunction brewing is heartbreaking. And just knowing what they're up against, it's. That's a tough road. So that's where I will come in with interventions if need be. I don't treat children, but if I had a child and I was considering this, I would want the parent to understand that this is a lifelong battle with lifestyle interventions. But we also have some tools we can bring in. Again, use responsibility. And it doesn't have to be that way. They don't have to go down that road.

Alex Clark (47:26)

What are the best breakfast foods? Like the most ideal?

Dr. Tina Moore (47:31)

This is a good question. I love your questions. I like eggs and meat. Just, you know.

Alex Clark (47:37)

Thoughts on oatmeal?

Dr. Tina Moore (47:38)

I'm married to a farmer, so I never have been a fan of oatmeal. I feel like oatmeal is just a terrible way to start a day.

Alex Clark (47:46)

I heard that it makes it turn, put your body into ultimate stress like you're running from a tiger.

Dr. Tina Moore (47:51)

Well, I think any kind of carbohydrate breakfast is going to do that. At least Oatmeal is not super refined, so you've at least got more of a whole grain going there. But I mean, that's just not sustenance for me, in my opinion. I would definitely encourage people to start with protein. Starting with carbs is going to set you up for crazy insulin spikes all day. So not a fan of oatmeal. Oatmeal. I've got. I've got issues with oatmeal for a lot of reasons.

Alex Clark (48:12)

Why is strength training non negotiable?

Dr. Tina Moore (48:15)

There's so many different reasons why strength training is beneficial besides just muscle mass. So muscle mass is going to be your currency of your metabolic health. Like that's going to be your literal insurance suit for your sustainability, your immune system, your overall ability to withstand storms of any sort, being, you know, it, whether it be viral or chronic illness like cancer, your ability to age well and have good bone density so that you don't fall and break a hip, all of those things. Are contingent on your muscle mass. But most importantly, the way that your body uptakes glucose into the cell and utilizes it is contingent on your muscle and not just your muscle mass or amount, but you actually squeezing the muscle and activating the muscle. So we get so hung up on insulin as being the only way to get glucose in the cell. There are other ways and exercise hits on several of those other ways. So it's, it's just non negotiable. If you want to age well, if you want your hormones to be nice as you get older, if, if you want your skin to be nice, if you don't want to look like a melting candle. We don't want to be frail. We don't want to be frail. Ladies, you're a thin woman. You going into your elder years. If you don't stay active. Is it osteoporosis is skinny white girl disease.

Alex Clark (49:29)

Oh, great.

Dr. Tina Moore (49:30)

So just, you have to stand. I know. I was too. I was a really lean, lean, lean young woman and I got to my 30s and I thought I'm going to fracture if I fall over. So strength training, is that in insurance? As you want to weather the storm.

Alex Clark (49:45)

How can you know for sure if somebody is a candidate for hormone replacement therapy symptoms?

Dr. Tina Moore (49:49)

First of all, I'm less interested in their labs as to why they're requesting hormone replacement therapy. And then second of all, what do their labs say and then what's their age and what are some of the goals and outcomes they're looking at? So short term and long term goals, I'm going to. This is how I use GLP1s. I dose in physiologic doses, I titrate up until we get symptom relief and then we back off and we test to make sure that we're keeping things in check. And that's the same way I do hormone replacement. And I think that hormones are. I've been on hormone replacement at some level since my mid-30s, so I'm not messing around. I'm not going to break a hip when I'm old.

Alex Clark (50:27)

True or false? If your cholesterol is high, you need to be avoiding salt, meat and eggs.

Dr. Tina Moore (50:32)

Oh, that's so false. That's so false. So salt, salt would be more for, you know, gets, gets clumped in with the high blood pressure.

Alex Clark (50:40)

Right.

Dr. Tina Moore (50:40)

They say to stay off the salt. That's actually an insulin issue. If you have high blood pressure, I want to look at your insulin and your insulin resistance first and foremost. That's why the blood pressure goes up. It's not the salt's fault, but salt will drive that if you are insulin resistant. So if salt makes your blood pressure go up, you probably have some insulin issues. Number two, I think that cholesterol has been vilified. But all our hormones are made out of cholesterol. Our brains made out of cholesterol. Our neuron sheaths are made out of cholesterol. Cholesterol will start to go up, up as your body's need for hormones starts to wane. So your body, naturally, as we age, we start to lose our hormone profile. Our hormones are made out of cholesterol. Our cholesterol goes up to match that and mitigate that. But then we medicate it away and send people into dementia. It's. It blows my mind. The whole statin conversation is never made any sense to me as human beings.

Alex Clark (51:31)

Are we all just sitting ducks and we might just get some kind of crazy disease one day and that's just how life goes.

Dr. Tina Moore (51:39)

I think it's a, it's always a game of Russian roulette a little bit. But I think that there's so much we can do to mitigate disease and chronic disease. And if we're not pulling all the strings that we can. And of course, I mean, like, I had wine on the way here because my plane got delayed. And I'm not a saint. I'm not living like a perfect human. But I do most of the things that I can. I get myself to bed on time. I exercise regularly. I get.

Alex Clark (52:02)

What's bed on time? What's, what's ideal bedtime for everybody?

Dr. Tina Moore (52:05)

9:30.

Alex Clark (52:06)

Why 9:30?

Dr. Tina Moore (52:07)

Because my farmer husband said so. Goals? No, because you want to go to sleep with the sun waning. So when the sun starts to set, you know, actually my rule is when my dog goes to bed, when my dog puts himself to bed, it's time to go to bed.

Alex Clark (52:21)

Well, my dog is a psychopath and he's. That's when he likes to be awake, is when I'm going to bed. So that wouldn't work for me. What would you say to the person who's listening to this? They're like, gosh, I'm still on the fence. Like, I have one foot in, one foot out. I don't know if Ozempic's right for me. I don't know know if semaglutides are right for me. Like, what do you say to them?

Dr. Tina Moore (52:39)

Just get educated. I have a ton of education out there. There's more and more data coming out every day. It's really not that hard to find. Like I said this paper in Nature. I can even send you the link. It was a really nice rundown, but I have a four part video program where people can get more information. I have a ton of podcasts on the subject on my show, the Dr. Tina Show. And my goal is really just to educate people so they go in with informed consent. Something we've been missing for the past several years. I think that's one of the big reasons I actually was interested in talking about this subject is because we denied informed consent over the past few years with the going intervention. And I think it's important that people have all the information that they need, good and bad. And there are definitely some downsides to this. There are some things that people need to be aware of and there are certain people that are not going to qualify for this and this is not a great idea for them. I'm not saying it's this magic panacea for everybody, but having knowledge, going into any treatment intervention that you take and going in with an informed doctor who actually, actually discusses it with you, I think is the ticket.

Alex Clark (53:35)

If you could prescribe one remedy to heal a sick culture, it could be physically, mentally, or spiritually, what would it be?

Dr. Tina Moore (53:41)

Sun. The sun's amazing. If you eat well and you take good care of yourself and it heals a lot of things. Just really the light of the sun. Not even so much as just bathing in the sun and getting a tan, but the sun. We are, we are light deprived. We are sun deprived.

Alex Clark (53:57)

How can somebody work with you as their doctor?

Dr. Tina Moore (53:59)

Oh, I'm not taking new patients anymore, Dr. Tina.

Alex Clark (54:03)

All right, so if they want your advice, they can just DM you or listen to your podcast.

Dr. Tina Moore (54:07)

Yeah, listen to the podcast. I, I have a program that I'm laying all this information down in detail and that's where my clinical brain is. And so they can find that after they go to through my four part video series. It's called OIC Uncovered. It's on my website.

Alex Clark (54:19)

And what's your Instagram?

Dr. Tina Moore (54:20)

It's Dr. Tina. D, R, T, Y, N A. Awesome.

Alex Clark (54:22)

Thank you so much, Dr. Tina, for coming on Culture Apothecary.

Dr. Tina Moore (54:25)

Thanks for having me.

Alex Clark (54:29)

Oh my God. Okay, first of all, she is just hilarious. Ball of fresh air. Like just super fun off camera, which I appreciate. Yeah, there was some things that she said that like, I don't know, man, I don't know that I, I'm on board, but like, I like having people on like that that we do share so many different worldviews when it comes to health and wellness. But like, she had a little something different to offer. Not every guest is going to be somebody that you fully 100 agree with. Maybe you did agree with everything she said. Maybe you agree with nothing. Maybe you agreed with bits and pieces. And I think that kind of of keeps things interesting. So kudos to Dr. Tina Moore for being so freaking brave because basically no one else in our space is going to say they're pros and big at all. So I thought that was, that was juicy. We release new episodes every Monday and Thursday, 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern. Thursday's episode is going to be with the leading doctor and researcher on all things seed oils. She has written books on seed oils. She knows exactly what they are, what is and isn't a seed oil. She will talk to us about the best and worst foods that you could eat at your Thanksgiving dinner next week and exactly what seed oils are doing to your body. The science behind why they are bad and should be avoided. It is a virtual episode between her and I, but I sent a camera crew to her to film. So even though her and I are in the same room, it's still extremely high quality and like the best virtual looking interview that I have ever done. So you'll still want to watch that on the real Alex Clark YouTube or the culture Apothecary. Apothecary Spotify. So don't be like bent out of shape. That is virtual because it sounds amazing and it looks amazing. That being said, I'm Alex Clark and this is Culture Apothecary.