46 - Healing Migraines Naturally - Ozempic, the new hot drug in town - Does it help migraines?
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Leslie: Today I'm talking to Mary, who runs our awesome Facebook community, about the hot new celebrity drug, Ozempic. How are you, Mary?
Mari: Hello. I'm good. I have not actually heard of Ozempic until today, so I'm kind of curious. What is it? What does it do, and is it actually good for you?
Leslie: Yeah, I guess you haven't had a chance to read US magazine lately?
Mari: Nope, I don't really read that very often. I spend most of my time reading grad school books nowadays.
Leslie: I wanted to talk about this because we had a question in the Facebook group about this new drug. It's really been hitting the press within the past month. I heard about the drug when it came out, but just suddenly within the past month, it just exploded because the Hollywood celebrities are using it and they're getting very, very thin on the drug. Like I say, it's being promoted in US Weekly, People Magazine, Tmz, this type of stuff.
Mari: Well, I mean, it sounds good, right?
Leslie: Right. Everybody wants to lose weight.
Mari: Right. It seems to be that one and the other one, is it mounjaro?
Leslie: Yeah. Now, I had not heard of this one. Apparently this is the hot one by you.
Mari: It seems to be the miracle drug that everybody has been looking for, like there's a lot of hype about it.
Leslie: So yeah, this mounjaro, this is the same class of drug as Ozempic, right? So, you know, you have different pharmaceutical companies, they all have their own brand, but it's basically the same class of medication. So what I hear being promoted mostly is the brand name, Ozempic, or the generic is Semaglutide.
Mari: Hmm.
Leslie: People might have heard the generic name, Semaglutide. Let's talk about this. Like I say, the hype is there because people are taking this. It's an injection. They're taking this injectable drug and losing a ton of weight. So obviously this gets people really excited. You have some people in your circle that have lost weight on it.
Mari: Yeah, I have. And so far, only a handful of people I have talked to have said they didn't have any side effects, but to me it's kind of like that wait and see thing because it's still so new and most people haven't been on it for very long. So I don't know. I'm very skeptical and, gosh, back when the HCG diet was the big thing.
Leslie: Oh yeah.
Mari: But I do remember the same kind of buzz and hype and excitement around it. And then I actually had a really close personal friend lose about half their hair from using it. So I don't know, like I'm just, hmm. I'm not so sure we wanna jump on this new bandwagon yet.
Leslie: Mm-hmm. Yeah, your intuition is really serving you on that one.
Mari: Yeah. Yeah.
Leslie: I actually have a friend who works at a med spa.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: What is happening is a lot of med spas are having compounding pharmacies fill the semaglutide, sort of the generic version of this. So I reached out to my friend who works at the med spa and I said, “Hey, you know, does the doc there do this?” Oh yeah. This is a huge money maker for the med spa. They've had thousands of patients go on this. My friend actually went on it last year, and so I heard from her experience, which we'll talk about.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: The drug was developed for type two diabetics. Okay. Diabetes is a condition where people cannot pull the glucose out of their blood and into their cells very efficiently.
Okay? So when we eat food that breaks down into glucose, and those are gonna be the plant foods that we eat. Those plants are made out of long chains of glucose, also known as carbohydrates. So when we eat plants, our digestive tract is gonna break apart those carbohydrate chains and release the glucose that are on those chains so that glucose goes into our bloodstream.
Under normal metabolism, we run on glucose. Okay? So the glucose goes into the bloodstream, our glucose level rises, our blood sugar level rises. This signals the pancreas to release insulin. So everybody thinks of insulin right along with diabetes. So when the pancreas makes the insulin and releases it into the bloodstream, the insulin helps the cells bring the glucose into them. And again, under normal metabolism, our cells are using glucose for their fuel.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: So the glucose can get into the cells without insulin, but it's harder for the glucose to get into the cells without insulin. It's possible, but insulin really helps the cells sort of grab the glucose and pull it into the cell. When our insulin is working efficiently, when our blood sugar goes up after we eat, the pancreas makes a little bit of insulin. That insulin works very efficiently and the cells grab that glucose and pull it into them, and then they use that glucose to generate their cellular energy, and then the blood sugar level goes back.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: So what happens when people have deficiencies within these three principles that are required to maintain and restore our health? If people have been following the podcast, there are three things that we have to do to maintain our health and maintain our insulin sensitivity. I'm not going to go into great detail into these three principles on this podcast.
I cover them extensively most of the time. But if someone starts to become deficient within these three principles that are required for good health, they become less and less sensitive to their insulin. The insulin becomes less and less efficient at helping the cells pull that glucose into them so they eat plant foods, the glucose goes into their bloodstream.
The pancreas says, okay, let me put the insulin out here, but the insulin isn't working as well. So the glucose stays in the bloodstream, and then the pancreas says, well wait a minute, there's still glucose here. I guess I better make more. As this continues to develop, people eat, their blood sugar goes up, the glucose gets higher and higher in the bloodstream, and the insulin level gets higher and higher in the bloodstream because it's not working as efficiently. And so you need more and more to get the glucose out of the blood and into the cells.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: So when this occurs, this is called type two diabetes.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: Okay. Type one diabetes is an autoimmune condition that usually develops in childhood or early adulthood, where the immune system actually destroys the cells and the pancreas that make insulin.
And so in type one diabetes, the person cannot make the insulin in the pancreas. And so they eat plants, they eat glucose, and it's very hard to get it into the cells because they can't make the insulin anymore. That's type one diabetes. Type two diabetes progresses later in life. Although, unfortunately now the health of our children is getting so poor that now you're seeing type two diabetes develop in children, which you know, used to be unheard of.
Mari: Right.
Leslie: But type two diabetes, the person still has the ability for the pancreas to make the insulin. Okay? So we have high glucose and high insulin. Eventually, as type two diabetes progresses, but this takes years, eventually the pancreas gets so fatigued due to overwork, because it just keeps pumping out the insulin.
It's like, oh, the blood sugar… I need more insulin, more insulin, more insulin. Eventually the cells and the pancreas that make the insulin sort of burn out and they say, I can't do it anymore. And then the type two diabetic becomes insulin dependent. That is, they're not able to make their own insulin anymore.
Type two diabetes, I think most people are aware, reached epidemic proportions because people's health has declined so much, particularly over the age of 50.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: Diabetes drugs, they're always working on new diabetes drugs. And because so many people have diabetes, these are going to be blockbuster drugs.
Mari: Oh, for sure.
Leslie: Right? Because there's a tremendous market for them. So we have this backdrop of this epidemic of type two diabetes, the pharmaceutical industry is putting its focus on developing what are called biologic medications.
Mari: Mmm.
Leslie: So there's a difference between what is in the pharmaceutical world called a drug and
what is called a biologic medication.
Mari: What exactly does that mean? Does that mean a live thing that's coming in your body, or does that mean it's replacing the function of your body? Help me out here.
Leslie: Yeah, yeah. No, you're on the right track. So a drug in the pharmaceutical classification is a chemical molecule that has a biochemical effect. The chemical molecule may come from a natural substance. Particularly in the past, most drugs were derived from plant molecules that were modified because you can't patent a naturally occurring molecule.
Most drugs used to be based on molecules from plants that had, you know, different plant molecules that have a biochemical effect in the body. So most drugs are molecules that are derived from plant molecules, but a drug is a chemical molecule that has a biochemical effect on different biochemical pathways.
Now, a biologic medication is a type of medication that uses a naturally occurring substance in the body or a naturally occurring substance in another living organism.
Mari: Hmm.
Leslie: So under the umbrella of biologic medications are ozempic, the new CGRP antagonist like Ajovy, Emgality, Kai Nitec, the pill form of CGRP antagonist, the newer drugs for autoimmune conditions, the newer chemotherapy agents and vaccines. So biologic medications are using molecules that are chemical molecules that can be made in a laboratory or they are identical. Two molecules that are occurring in the body, or a slight modification so that they can patent it, but they are from naturally occurring molecules like antibodies, proteins, hormones, viral or bacterial components.
Okay? So the FDA approval process for biologic medications is different from the approval process for drugs. The biologic medications do not have to go through as stringent drug trials as what are classified as drugs.
Mari: That's interesting.
Leslie: Uhhuh, and it has a lot of ramifications for the people taking these.
Mari: Mmm.
Leslie: When we're looking at a drug, they have to have various phases of trials. The last trial stage has to be completed with trial participants before a drug is approved. There's a little bit of a loophole with biological medications. The FDA said, well, you know, it's a naturally occurring substance in the body. Or it’s naturally occurring from a bacteria. We'll have the public do the last part of the trial.
Mari: Okay, so basically we're giving this a seal of approval, but not fully going through the whole process, and we'll just see what happens once it gets out into the real world.
Leslie: We'll gather the data after the public takes it and then that'll be kind of the final stage of the trials.
Mari: Oh.
Leslie: Now people are not being told this. And so you can imagine why the pharmaceutical industry is putting its resources into developing biologic medication.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: So the area of research is transitioning from drug research to biologic research because you don't have to do the same trials.
Mari: Little bit easier. Still profitable.
Leslie: Mm-hmm. Because the drug trial process is extremely expensive.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: You know, the final phase is where you are enlisting a large number of people for a long time to flush out any long-term side effects.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: Right. The first trials are, if we inject this into an animal, do they die right away?
Mari: Right.
Leslie: And then for each stage it's a little, well the animal didn't die right away.
It's letting it go longer and longer and seeing what the longer term effects are. Well, for biologics, we're all the guinea pigs in that last phase.
Mari: Yeah,this is new to me. I'm like, oh geez!
Leslie: Mm-hmm. This is why, like I say, I can't emphasize enough… This is why drug development has moved to this biologic area. When you look at drug advertisements now, the new drugs that are all biologics, this ozempic, semaglutide. This is mimicking a hormone that is naturally occurring in the body.
Mari: Hmm.
Leslie: So the main action of this hormone is to stop your stomach from digesting your food as quickly as it normally would. So if you eat a little bit and your stomach is real slow, you're gonna feel full faster.
Mari: And longer.
Leslie: And longer. Exactly.
Mari: I do know, a lot of my friends have talked about how they just don't feel hungry.
Leslie: Right. So this semaglutide molecule has other impacts on the pancreas, okay? It prevents the liver from making glucose. So it kind of slows the liver down from making glucose, so it has other effects within the body. But the weight loss aspect is believed to be due to slowing down the emptying of the stomach and then people feel full and they don't want to eat.
If you starve yourself to death and you can starve yourself, if you're feeling full all the time, well, your body is going to go into survival mode and start burning your fat.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: That's kind of a high level overview of why this has become a celebrity, you know, fad drug and why US Weekly is talking about it. Because some people are getting these kind of dramatic weight loss effects because they're basically starving themselves without the feeling of hunger.
Mari: So, I mean, I'm just going to maybe ask a silly question. If they haven't tested it through the whole drug process before it hits the market for type two diabetes, I'm guessing that it hasn't been tested for just weight loss either or is that a wild idea?
Leslie: No, exactly right. So this is called an off-label prescription. All drugs are approved for particular usage for particular diseases, okay? A physician, and myself included as a naturopathic physician, I have prescribing rights. I can prescribe drugs, so physicians are at liberty to prescribe drugs for any usage that they feel is applicable to the situation.
Okay? If you are negligent and you prescribe something and somebody's injured, you could be sued for that, right? I mean, there are consequences if physicians are prescribing things that are off-label or outside of the standard of care and they injure someone. But physicians are not bound by law to only prescribe, say Topamax, for the specific conditions that are approved for Topamax. If they feel somebody would benefit from Topamax, even if that condition isn't on the list, they are at liberty to do that. So this is considered for weight loss, right? The drug is approved for type two diabetics, but if you can get a physician to prescribe it to you, quote, unquote, off-label, the physician's not breaking a law by doing that.
There may be questionable ethics or something like that involved, but it's not against the law. There has been a run on semaglutide. Apparently the price is shot up and it can be very difficult to get because so many people now are using it for rapid weight loss.
Mari: Well, and I don't know if you know this, but I kind of follow along with what's going on with the one I was talking about and the drug company is giving them coupons. So it's like, okay, here's your prescription for $25 for maybe the first three months and insurance companies are not willing to pay for it for the off-label purpose.
So at the third or fourth month, you're like, oh, it's a thousand dollars a month now.
Leslie: Yeah. Mmm.
Mari: I feel like it's a little bit of bait and switch of the drug companies there. You know what I mean? Let's get you hooked on this because it works for you and then we're going to switch. We're going to change the way we play the game.
Leslie: Right. Yeah. They do that with a lot of the migraine drugs. You know, the CGRP antagonists are quite expensive. They'll give people a coupon for three months and then you know, you're on your own.
Mari: Yeah.
Leslie: And so particularly if you go to a med spa and they write you a script that's going to be filled at a compounding pharmacy, that's going to be a cash pay out-of-pocket prescription.
And yes, I have heard that it can run a thousand, $1500, $2,000 a month depending on how many milligrams you need.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: My friend has taken this medication, so this is very interesting. At first she lost weight and then she needed to go from one milligram to two milligrams to get the same weight loss.
Then she needed to go from two milligrams to three milligrams. So this again, when we manipulate the body's biochemistry, when we suppress symptoms, the body is going to fight that suppression. I have a free training on this that will link to. I've done a podcast on why this happens. Chronic migraine sufferers have experienced this phenomenon with their migraine medications.
When we go in and try to play God with our biochemistry, the body fights that. So my friend experienced just exactly what I would predict would happen. What used to take one milligram, now takes two, now takes three. And when you're paying cash, it might be a thousand dollars a month for a one milligram syringe, might be $1,500 a month for a two milligram syringe, right?
The cost is going to go up as you need more and more milligrams of the medication. And then eventually it totally stopped working for her, which again, people experience this with their other medications.
Mari: Yeah. Did she gain all the weight back right away?
Leslie: Absolutely. She gained the weight back.
Mari: mm-hmm.
Leslie: I asked her, “Does it work as well as US Weekly is saying it works? What's the deal?” And she said, for some people it works, works as in quotes. The objective is to lose weight, not work, in the sense of actually improving your metabolic health so that your body is at the weight that it is supposed to be.
So it works for some people like you would see on the cover of US Weekly. But for most people it really doesn't work that well. And she wasn't posing for before and after pictures. You know, with her experience, she wouldn't be on the cover of US Weekly.
Mari: But did she have any side effects?
Leslie: Oh, yes.
Leslie: So she had a whole host of digestive side effects in addition to the lowered appetite. When I was reading about it, they actually have a name for it. The tendency towards violent and urgent loose stools. This is one of those, right? We've seen these with a lot of weight loss stuff. There was one 10 to 15 years ago where the advertisement actually told you to bring an extra pair of pants with you. They actually said that in the commercial. You remember that one?
Mari: I didn't see that, but why am I not surprised? I believe it's called explosive diarrhea.
Leslie: Correct. Right, exactly. Everyone's worst nightmare.
Mari: For real.
Leslie: She definitely had the loose stools. She didn't feel hungry. You know, the gas, the bloating. I mean digestive upset.
Mari: Mmm.
Leslie: And there are a whole other host of side effects, including headaches. So if we're already struggling with head pain this is not going to be a great one from a side effect profile. So yeah, we certainly are going to have that, the reason why people are losing weight is because of a side effect of the medication.
Mari: Right.
Leslie: So when our appetite is poor, that means that our digestive function is poor as well.
Mari: So it's interesting we look at it like, oh yeah, I don't have an appetite. But in reality that’s a symptom in and of itself. Now we've given ourselves another symptom.
Leslie: Correct. Absolutely. When our digestive function is good, we have a robust appetite. We feel like eating things. If we have a low appetite, it's a protective mechanism that our digestive tract generates because it's like, well, if I can't break this food down, I don't want her to put a whole bunch in here, so I'm just going to make her feel full.
Mari: Yeah.
Leslie: So the fact that we have a low appetite, it's not actually a good thing.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: Even if we didn't have the explosive diarrhea and the gas and all the other kinds of stuff, nausea. So that's a great way to not eat, to feel nauseous.
Mari: Right.
Leslie: We have a whole host of digestive tract symptoms. Of course, we're not going to feel hungry. Right? Our digestive tract is just begging us not to put food in here because it's trying to figure out which way is up.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: Okay.
Mari: I just want to throw in there, that's no way to live either. Being nauseous and miserable and not ever eating, it's not the fun way to do life.
Leslie: Yeah. Right. So let's talk about the effects of doing something like this within the context of our health. Okay. Let's go back to what I call the three principles. So there are three things that we have to do to restore and maintain our health. The first principle is that we have to get the nutrients that our cells need.
How are we going to do that? We have to be able to eat food with nutrients in it, and then we have to have good digestive function so that we can break the food down and extract the nutrients from the food. Then, we have to get the nutrients into the bloodstream attached to carrier molecules. We need to have adequate circulation to deliver these nutrients to the cells.
This is one of the requirements for good health and for us to feel well, because when we are in a state of health, we don't have symptoms. What do we think the impact to our health is going to be to inject a hormone like substance that totally disrupts our digestive function? So much so to the point where we don't feel like eating and therefore we start to use our fat deposits and become quite thin.
You know, these celebrities.Why is this causing a buzz? Because you have these celebrities that are already quite thin, right? It's not like they're heavy to begin with. Now, they're even thinner.
Mari: Right.
Leslie: It's like we're putting an atom bomb right into this first principle. I don't even know what word to use to describe doing this to people.
Mari: Horrendous.
Leslie: I mean, just the level… I'm gonna get on a soapbox here. How far do we have to go in conventional medicine to continue to undermine and destroy people's health under the guise of helping?
Mari: Right.
Leslie: Let's tie it back to the poor diabetic for which this drug was developed. The diabetic, the type two diabetic is a type two diabetic in the first place because there's a blocker deficiency within this first principle, let alone the second and the third.
So now in the guise of helping them, we're going to give them something that further destroys the first principle. I mean, people stop the madness here! If we are overweight, the body hangs on to excess fat, if we have a deficiency or blocker or a missing piece within these three principles.
When we're in a state of health, our body composition, lean, muscle mass, our bone mass, our adipose tissue… It's in the balance that it is supposed to be for us. Some people are naturally going to be leaner. Some people are naturally going to be heavier, right? But whatever that is for us, when we are in a state of health, our body is going to achieve that. The problem that we face now is that our technology has allowed us to get a glimpse into the biochemistry of the body. A drug like this is able to be developed because of advances in our knowledge of the biochemistry of the body.
Mari: Right.
Leslie: So when I was in naturopathic medical school 13 to 17 years ago, our biochemistry professor was a very well known geneticist and biochemist who had taught around the country at various medical schools.
He was a real master of the science and art of biochemistry and genetics, and he talked about how the knowledge of human biochemistry is exponential because of the advances in technology where we can see into these pathways, we can see into the cell, we can see into the proteins and the dna, the rna.
And he said when he first was in graduate school, when he first started teaching medical students, biochemistry class was a fraction of what we were going to learn. The advances had progressed exponentially so we had to learn a lot of biochemistry.
Mari: Yeah.
Leslie: I had to memorize every known biochemical pathway in the human body. It's quite a class.
Mari: Right.
Leslie: And they are continuously discovering that 15 years later. He's retired now. But the medical students, naturopathic or otherwise, that are coming into their biochemistry class now, they have to learn more than I did at the time because we have new knowledge. But what are we doing with this knowledge?
I use my knowledge of biochemistry to understand how these three principles are actually playing out. I understand if something goes right, because we know if something doesn't go right in these biochemical pathways, we know what symptoms are generated. That's called pathology, right? That's another whole series of classes.
So we know we have all of this knowledge, but how are we using and applying this knowledge?
Mari: Right. That kind of makes me mad that we, let's put some more energy into curing cancer rather than making sure that people are, you know, in the negative on their weight. I don't know, I have a whole soap box about the beauty industry myself, but that doesn't feel like a productive use of our power and knowledge.
You know what I mean? It's a sad thing.
Leslie: It's a market, you know. I mean, what is the prescription drug revenue and the over-the-counter revenue, including the natural, uh, supplement industry? I mean, what is the revenue around weight loss products? I couldn't even imagine the billions of dollars.
Mari: Oh yeah, for sure.
Leslie: I think it's wonderful and it is a benefit for us to understand the biochemistry of the body and the pathology that results when biochemistry is not able to run appropriately.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: We should be using that knowledge to restore people to health.
Mari: Right.
Leslie: You know, and again, they technically did not create this medication for weight loss. I mean, I don't know. I'm speculating. This is just totally me speculating. I think when they realized that this biologic medication that they created to treat type two diabetes, when they realized it had the side effect, they probably also realized the off-label revenue.
Mari: Mm.
Leslie: I'm guessing, I'm going to go out on a limb.
Mari: Given history, like didn't we talk about Viagra when it came out.
Leslie: Right, right.
Mari: Given the history that you know about how drug companies work, I would say that's probably a safe assumption.
Leslie: Yeah. But let's put the current fad usage and off-label usage aside. Type two diabetes is a very, very serious condition.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: When we have too much glucose in the bloodstream, day after day and year after year, that glucose causes a lot of problems in a lot of parts of the body because it's sticky.
Glucose is sticky, and when we have too much of it in the bloodstream, it starts to stick everywhere. It sticks within the little tiny tubules of the kidneys, in the eye, in our fingers, in our toes. We can't get the circulation now to areas because it's all clogged up with this sticky glucose. And then we start to have tissue damage.
So type two diabetes is a very serious condition that people can help. I have had many, many clients over the years reverse their type two diabetes.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: It is something that if your pancreas can still make insulin, we can get this turned around. Okay? Once your pancreas burns out and you no longer have the capacity to make insulin, it's very, very tough to turn it around.
It's not out of the realm of possibility, but it's very tough. So for a type two diabetic, we want to get on this right now and get this turned around. Work within the three principals. Restore health. Get the insulin working efficiently again, and then you don't have type two diabetes. Does this drug do that? No, it doesn't.
Mari: Hmm.
Leslie: It manipulates your pancreas, your liver, and your digestive tract. Okay. The ultimate net gain of that is a temporary reduction in your blood sugar. Every time we manipulate our biochemistry we manipulate our organs. The body fights. So my prediction is you're going to have all these type two diabetics on this medication. Their blood sugar is going to go down, and then eventually their blood sugar is going to go back up.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: First, they're going to need more and more of it at greater and greater expense to the economy in our medical system, in our insurance system.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: And then eventually it's going to stop working because that's what happens with everything when you don't restore your health and you just kind of tinker around with biochemical pathways. Just like my friend who took it to lose weight. Yeah, she lost a little weight at first and then she had to go to two milligrams and three milligrams and then it stopped working. Then she didn't want to pay for something that wasn't working anymore out of pocket. So she stopped and then she gained the weight back.
Mari: Right.
Leslie: We have to stop this, guys!
Mari: Yeah, it just makes me sad that, I mean, same thing with migraines. I think that people are equally desperate to get rid of migraines as they are to lose weight. Like those two things probably are some of the most desperate desires. I don't want to be in pain anymore and I don't want to be overweight.
And it's because our society drives this. You feel like you're not worth anything if you are overweight, which is really sad. But it makes me so sad that we are paying billions of dollars to either of those industries to fix it, and yet it's really not a magic bullet like we want it to be.
Leslie: Right, and you know, no one should be shamed for their weight. Nobody should be shamed for their migraines. Nobody should be shamed for their type two diabetes. However, being overweight, I have been overweight. I haven't felt good when I've been overweight.
Mari: No, it's not a fun experience.
Leslie: Right. You don't feel good when you're carrying around excess weight.
You don't feel good when you have a migraine or when you have type two diabetes. It is unfortunately for the most part, a symptomless condition until it gets really bad and you start to have tissue damage because of the glucose. And that's the real insidious part of type two diabetes. At least with our migraines, we're feeling some symptoms to alert us to a problem.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: If we're overweight and we're not feeling good, we have some symptoms of that excess weight that are alerting us to a problem. Type two diabetes… You can have high blood sugar and have very subtle damage taking place, and you may not even be aware of it. I'd rather have migraines and I'd rather be overweight and feel the effects of those symptoms.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: Because then I know, wait a minute. I could take action. I'm experiencing these symptoms because something's not in a state of health here. I've got some missing pieces and some blockers, and you know what? I can change that. Absolutely. I agree with you. People should not be made to feel bad for any type of chronic health condition. We deserve to feel good.
Mari: Well, I think that's why it makes me angry. Because we're being told if you pay money for X, Y, and Z, you'll be healthy, you'll be happy, you’ll feel good, whether it's emotionally or physically. Those are very empty promises much of the time. That's where my anger comes from.
Leslie: Absolutely. It's an empty promise. We are doing things that are going to degrade someone's health even more.
Mari: Yeah.
Leslie: People don't realize it because they've been told everything's genetic or for some reason no one knows why you've got type two diabetes. None of that is true, but people are told this over and over again and so if that's true, I guess my only option is to take this injection once a week and before you know it, you're not eating.
We don't run on Starbucks, frappuccinos and unicorn dust. We run on nutrients and we have to eat food.
Mari: I thought you were going to the Doritos again. I was like, now back up. No. Unicorn dust is fake. Yeah, I agree. We have to have something in our bodies to keep us going. I mean, it makes sense when you say it like that, but for some reason we're missing the whole boat there. You know?
Leslie: I'm not saying something that nobody knows, and yet we all act like nobody knows this.
Mari: It's very confusing.
Leslie: So we have to stop the madness, folks! We have to stop doing this to ourselves. We have to stop buying this nonsense.
Mari: Yeah.
Leslie: Because if the demand isn't there, the drugs aren't used. And we are getting to a point in this country… I'm gonna get up on my soapbox again, but we are getting to a point in this country, I mean, I'm 50 years old.
The health of our population over the past 50 years, we are getting sicker and sicker. People may not have migraines, they've got plenty of other things that are trouble. Right. We're seeing it in our children now, so we can't keep going. Unlike these folks, and you know it intuitively, you know it in your heart that this is not right, that this is not the answer.
So we've got to, we have to stop this, we have to take control over our health and we have to do things that are going to actually restore our health because our body has an amazing ability to heal and recover even from things like type two diabetes.
Mari: So I'm just going to ask another question. So we're talking about things like the drug industry, the supplement industry, the diet industry, like those are really, really big beasts to take control over.
Leslie: Well, and then there's the food industry too.
Mari: Yeah, and it's like as an individual, most of us don't have that much clout to really do much about that.
So what are things that I can do as an individual, that are within my power to turn things around? How do I make it work in my own life? Do you know what I'm saying?
Leslie: Anything changes because one person, by one person decides ENOUGH.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: And you can look through the history of humanity. There are always systems of oppression. There are always corrupt institutions. This is a permanent fixture of human civilization, human life on earth. You can go back to the Pharaohs, you can go back to the historical account in the Bible, the civilizations that predate the Bible, our earliest records describe the corruption of human institutions, and this is what this is. We have an institution that is reporting to do things that are of benefit to humanity and over and over and over again, what they give us are things that are a detriment to us.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: And you can see this, like I say, this is a fixture of every civilization on earth that institutions become corrupt.
And the only thing that has ever stopped these institutions and reformed these institutions is for individual by individual to say, I'm not gonna do it. We are being told culturally too, because now people are really waking up that we have a lot of corrupted institutions and we have a lot of institutions that are kind of putting the thumb on people.
We're really culturally becoming very aware of this. Listen to the messaging about what to do about that. It's like we're supposed to wait around for the institutions to reform themselves.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: That's never happened.
Mari: I feel like we're supposed to go change the laws. And again, most average people don't necessarily have a lot of clout in that area.
Leslie: The laws are part of the corrupted institutions.
Mari: Exactly. Yeah.
Leslie: So, yeah, but it's interesting that when we are watching the news, which is paid for by the pharmaceutical advertisements, the news. The news reporting guides us in exactly this way that you're describing. We need a law. We need this or that. We need to change. We need to get these companies to do something different. No, we don't need to do any of that.
Mari: Mmm.
Leslie: We need to stop participating in the corruption.
Mari: Isn't it like they say, one of your strongest votes is where you spend your money, right? If we no longer spend our money on weight loss drugs or magazines that encourage us to be stick thin, then who is their audience… they stop making money.
Leslie: I know people are saying, but if I don't take my med, I'm gonna be in agony. I get it. I'm not telling you to cold turkey your medications. But let's do something right that restores your health so that you can get off of these things. We all know they're not improving your health. This is not news to people is what I'm saying. Everybody knows this. Everybody knows that they don't have a Topamax deficiency.
Mari: Right.
Leslie: I'm not saying put yourself in agony, you know, cold turkey things. I'm not saying that at all, but we've got to make a change. We've got to change course when we know we're on the wrong course, and we are living in a time where these institutions have become so corrupted.
Mari: Mm-hmm.
Leslie: And this is just the latest. I mean this. Just like I say, they're developing something for type two diabetes, a very, very serious illness that, you know, causes death and disability of the highest order, that can be turned around, can be put in full remission if it is caught in time and people take action in time.
And here we have a drug that further undermines their health, which they know is going to make them billions of dollars off label by having people starve themselves. I mean, this is the level that we're dealing with. We have to stop participating in this!
Mari: Yeah.
Leslie: And we can't wait for the laws. The FDA has been captured, you know, look up regulatory capture and you're going to see, you know, this is the FDA, all other kinds of industries.
The food industry for example, the individual has so much power because we decide what we're putting into our body. We decide what course of action we're going to take.
Mari: Right.
Leslie: But they don't want us to feel empowered. They want us to feel helpless and just, you know, the system has got their thumb on us and we're just going to have to wait around until this party or that party comes into power.
No, no. They have us right where they want us with this type of messaging.
Mari: In action. We were talking about that in school yesterday. It was like, if we're just standing there watching things happen, we're complicit in what's happening, and it's the same kind of idea. If we're just sitting here doing nothing, then we're participating in that way.
Leslie: Yeah. And you know you're not going to change your neighbor. You may not even change your husband.
Mari: Well, I've been trying for 16 years now, but that's a whole different story.
Leslie: But the only person we can change is ourselves.
Mari: Yep.
Leslie: That's it. And when we realize that we have so much power That's why they don't want us to realize it.
Mari: And I was just going to add to that, that in addition to the power, we're just saying, you know what… Love yourself enough to take care of yourself. You know.
Leslie: Yeah. I love that. Let's end on that.
Mari: That was a great exploration of this situation. Isn't it interesting? It touches so many different areas of life, food industry, diet industry, medical, everything like our emotional wellbeing. We covered everything in one episode.
Leslie: Thank you so much, Mari. I really appreciate you and thanks for joining me again this week. I'm glad we covered this.
Mari: Of course. We'll see you guys next time.
