Welcome to Wellness on Mass. I'm Dr. Nicole Sapphire, and this is your weekly rundown.

Now I am going to start by apologizing for my voice. I, well, I don't have one. I was battling a little bit of bronchitis and just a normal crazy week.

And here we are without a voice. So I apologize, but we're doing the rundown because you deserve it. So we have some good

news in the news cycle right now. Researchers release data on a once-weekly injectable drug,

very similar to the GLP-1s, but it works a little bit differently. It's in phase two trials. People on

the medication lost about 20% of their body weight, which puts them kind of in the ballpark of the GLP ones.

The reason I like this, well, I like choice when it comes to medications and I don't like monopolies on the market.

So the more medications that come that can help people to lose weight, in my opinion, the better.

There's also an oral medication, a tablet that's in

clinical trials right now as well. Now, the big thing for me is no injection, no pill,

these are not magic drugs, okay? They cannot replace the basics of real food, movement,

sleep, and stress management. We cannot be substituting these

medications for healthy habits. That being said, obesity is a chronic and complex disease,

and it's not all about willpower. So there has to be some options for people to help get a jumpstart.

My biggest concern is what we have seen when people start these

medications, once they go off the medications, not only do they gain their weight, pretty much right back.

Oftentimes they gain more weight than they started with. So it works the opposite. Now we'll have

an even more overweight person unless they have just completely decided to sign up for

lifetime use of this medication, which, to be honest, I think a lot of people are doing that.

Here's the problem. We don't really have that long-term safety data to show that lifetime use

of this medication is okay. So I find that a little bit concerning. We know that there's some

side effects. We already see the side effects. So people take these medications with known risks, but there may be more risks that we haven't even identified. Now, the second topic for a rundown today, it's kind of funny. I roll my eyes at it. And when I say funny, I don't really mean funny ha-ha, but funny in like a chaotic way that, again, makes me roll my eyes at it. And when I say funny, I don't really mean funny, ha-ha,

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