It patches a misconfigured reward system pathway in the brain using hormones.
> There are two plausible places GLP-1 drugs could lower weight: the body or the brain. In the body, it could change stomach contraction rate, hormone production, etc. In the brain, it could control the mental sensation of hunger. To separate these two effects, scientists bred rats that only had GLP-1 receptors in the body vs. in the brain. The results were unequivocal: Ozempic and its relatives work in the brain. Although they have some effects in the body, these are short-lived and not really relevant to their mechanism of action for weight loss.
This should've been obvious the moment there was evidence GLP-1 agonists were preventing addictive behaviors, versus solely digestive system effects. Interestingly, this works by crossing the blood brain barrier, so the next question is: can you speed up the effects by temporarily opening that barrier using ultrasound such is done for Alzheimer's treatment [1]? Also, what does an fMRI look like when someone is being treated with a GLP-1 [2]?
> There are two plausible places GLP-1 drugs could lower weight: the body or the brain. In the body, it could change stomach contraction rate, hormone production, etc. In the brain, it could control the mental sensation of hunger. To separate these two effects, scientists bred rats that only had GLP-1 receptors in the body vs. in the brain. The results were unequivocal: Ozempic and its relatives work in the brain. Although they have some effects in the body, these are short-lived and not really relevant to their mechanism of action for weight loss.
This should've been obvious the moment there was evidence GLP-1 agonists were preventing addictive behaviors, versus solely digestive system effects. Interestingly, this works by crossing the blood brain barrier, so the next question is: can you speed up the effects by temporarily opening that barrier using ultrasound such is done for Alzheimer's treatment [1]? Also, what does an fMRI look like when someone is being treated with a GLP-1 [2]?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BGtVJ3lBdE
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10342891/