Three major Cochrane reviews commissioned by the World Health Organization now offer the most comprehensive assessment to date of GLP-1 receptor agonists like Ozempic, and the results are both impressive and sobering. Tirzepatide produced average weight loss of about 16% over 12 to 18 months; semaglutide about 11% over one to two years; liraglutide a more modest 4–5%. Those are meaningful numbers. But the reviews also flagged that a large share of the included trials were funded and substantially designed by the companies that manufacture these drugs. We know from prior research that industry-funded studies are more likely to return a positive finding than a null finding — this has been clearly established in the literature. It doesn't necessarily invalidate the results, but it warrants appropriate caution. Two other concerns stand out. First, weight regain after stopping treatment appears common, raising questions about whether these drugs address root causes or primarily manage symptoms while patients remain on them. Second, long-term safety data remain limited, particularly for cardiovascular outcomes in lower-risk individuals. From a functional medicine perspective, these drugs may have an important role, especially for people at significant metabolic risk, but they're most useful as part of a broader strategy that addresses why the metabolic dysregulation occurred in the first place.

Most people think of ashwagandha as a stress and sleep herb, and that reputation is well earned. But a 24-week randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial just published in the Journal of Medicine and Life found something worth paying attention to: participants taking 300 mg of ashwagandha root extract twice daily lost an average of 8.46 kg, compared to just 2.41 kg in the placebo group. The mechanism connects directly to cortisol, the primary stress hormone. Chronic stress elevates cortisol, which drives visceral fat accumulation, ramps up appetite, and increases cravings for calorie-dense foods. In this trial, serum cortisol dropped significantly in the ashwagandha group — from 13.91 to 8.90 mcg/dL over 24 weeks — and food craving scores fell by more than twice as much as in the placebo group. As I've long believed, stress and weight gain are rarely separate problems. Treating one often helps the other. While stress management is not as important as diet for weight loss, it is certainly part of the picture, and reducing cortisol load can make it meaningfully easier to maintain good dietary choices. Ashwagandha appears to work here by modulating the HPA axis, reducing cortisol-driven appetite signaling rather than suppressing hunger through stimulants. No serious adverse events were reported, and lab parameters remained normal through the full six months.

Since PepsiCo bought Siete and changing ingredients. What do buy now???

1. Vitamin C In addition to its role in various metabolic and physiological functions, your body uses vitamin C to protect your immune system, and researchers have studied the efficacy of vitamin C as a therapeutic treatment in the prevention of cancer, diabetes, atherosclerosis, the common cold, stroke and heart disease. Vitamin C improves neutrophil chemotaxis, a process that betters the ability of neutrophils (a type of white blood cell) to move toward sites of inflammation or infection and increases the body's ability to fight disease. Finally, vitamin C also protects against reactive oxidant species, reducing the risk and severity of a variety of illnesses. 2. Korean Ginseng Korean ginseng also known as Panax ginseng, possesses strong antioxidant and immune-stimulating properties. Korean ginseng helps regulate immune cell function, including macrophages, T cells, B cells and natural killer cells, and improves inflammation through its high content of a variety of pharmacological compounds, like ginsenosides and acidic polysaccharides. In most cases, it is ginseng root extract that is used to maintain immune homeostasis, although the other parts of the plant can be used as well. Ginseng root is often consumed raw or as a juice, tea or powder, and some studies have suggested that daily consumption of Korean ginseng may decrease oxidative damage and improve immunomodulatory activity while presenting no adverse side effects. 3. Astaxanthin Astaxanthin is a carotenoid antioxidant that possesses potent immuno-modulation properties, including the ability to increase interleukin production, a type of cytokine expressed by white blood cells. Additional studies have found that dietary intake of astaxanthin may heighten immune response while also reducing DNA damage and inflammation, and astaxanthin may play a protective role in immune function by limiting free radical damage to immune cells. 4. Shiitake Mushrooms Medicinal mushrooms and their benefits have been studied extensively for many years, however, recent research has revealed that this traditional oriental therapy may also modulate the immune response by activating lymphocytes and dendritic cells, thereby up-regulating the production of cytokines.

When the USDA erroneously decided all animal fat and meat were poison, Americans were told to eat more plant foods, like soy. Soy was touted as a perfect protein and source of fat to replace meat, lard and butter. Soybean oil was marketed as a versatile cooking oil that wouldn’t increase your cholesterol, textured protein crumbles made in a lab were smashed together and dyed to look like hamburger patties and soybean oil was hydrogenated to be solid at room temperature. “Eat margarine,” they said, “it's better than butter,'' they said. Well folks, it turns out hydrogenated vegetable oil is a source of trans fat. And eating trans fat not only increases your risk of heart disease but the Food and Drug Administration now prohibits food manufacturers from adding the major source of artificial trans fat to foods and beverages. But, I digress, let’s get back to the soyification of the world. So the government declares all animal meat and fat bad, processed plant foods are better. AKA “we know better than nature what is healthy”. So, cheap soy floods the market. And now you can pick up 80% of the items in the grocery store and see soy in the ingredient list. Soybean oil, lecithin from soy, soy protein, textured vegetable protein (also soy), vegetable gum, vegetable broth, vegetable starch, this list goes on. The 4 Dangers of Eating soy: #1 Weed-killer in Soy Soy is a leading food source of glyphosate (the weed-killer Roundup). Oats, wheat and corn are up there as well and you’ll notice I don’t recommend eating those either. Glyphosate is a synthetic herbicide patented by the Monsanto Company and now manufactured and sold by many companies in hundreds of products. Glyphosate has been associated with: - Cancer - Liver damage - Reproductive and developmental issues According to the Environmental Workgroup (EWG) genetically engineered soy has the highest levels of Roundup: “Crop scientists have genetically engineered soy to survive blasts of Roundup so farmers can spray this chemical near crops to get rid of weeds. But some so-called “super weeds” resistant to Roundup have developed. In turn, some farmers use yet more Roundup to try to kill those hardy weeds. This leads to more Roundup chemicals being found on soybeans and ultimately in the food supply.”