Your patients are counting on you to help them choose the right path!
Most people struggling with excess weight desperately want to lose it
Media coverage of GLP-1 medications is unprecedented
Patients are asking for these medications every single day
They are looking to you for guidance
Are you steering them down the right path?
High demand for these anti-obesity medications coupled with access problems has created a chasm. As is so often the case, a lot of companies have rushed in to fill that chasm – often with minimal to no regard for safety and/or evidence-based care.
Obesity is a disease. Treatment involves so much more than writing a prescription.
Providing high-quality, evidence-based care means addressing 6 things:
FDA-Approved Medications
(when appropriate)
A prescriptive, low-glycemic nutritional intervention with adequate dietary protein
Intensive behavioral treatment based upon the four pillars of Obesity Medicine
Routine body composition analysis
When patients engage in a comprehensive treatment program, they lose substantially more weight than those taking medication and are “trying to eat better”
Most clinicians don’t have the time – or the training – to help patients with all of these things.
That’s OK!
As is the case with so many other conditions, you have to make a decision:
TREAT or REFER
At Heartland Weight Loss, we provide comprehensive, whole-person care. We practice evidence-based medicine encompassing all four pillars of treatment recommended by the Obesity Medicine Association.
When we say “We treat patients with dignity and evidence-based medicine,” we mean it!
Contrast this with:
Most online GLP-1 prescribing companies and med spas are focused on profiting from patients’ desperation to obtain these medications. History taking, including screening for contraindications, is rarely thorough. Oversight is minimal. More often than not, the medications dispensed are bootlegged copies of the real medications.
Most clinicians are familiar with compounded medications. They have existed for decades. Many of us have a compounding pharmacy that we trust. However, compounded GLP-1 medications are not the same thing as compounded hormones or topical creams. The molecules used to make the FDA-approved GLP-1 medications are still under patent. There are no generic versions available to purchase. That means the drugs used to make these medications are coming from labs that are not subject to FDA oversight. There is no routine testing to verify accuracy, potency, or purity.
In addition to putting patients at unnecessary risk, giving a patient a prescription for an anti-obesity medication without also implementing an intensive lifestyle intervention almost guarantees they will have suboptimal results – and will regain the weight after stopping the medication. Data tells us that when these medications are used in the real world (without a corresponding comprehensive lifestyle intervention), their efficacy is significantly decreased.
