Exenatide Weight Loss 

WHAT IS EXENATIDE?

Exenatide is a medication that falls into the GLP-1 agonist class of drugs. GLP-1 stands for Glucagon-like peptide 1. GLP-1 is secreted when we consume carbohydrates and fats. It stimulates release of insulin, suppression of glucagon, slower gastric emptying, and increased satiety (fullness).

Exenatide affects these receptors and causes changes to various hormones involved in regulating body weight: insulin, glucagon, and leptin.

Benefits of Exenatide for Weight Loss

  • Feel full faster

  • Stay full longer

  • Diminish cravings

  • Turn food into energy quick

  • Lower Leptin levels that store body fat

  • overcome insulin resistency

  • Hormone regulation with hormones that cause weight gain

  • Helps slow food leaving your stomach

  • Helps prevent your liver from making too much sugar

  • Helps the pancreas produce more insulin when your blood sugar levels are high

  • Can help control blood glucose

  • Can reduce hyperglycemia, especially after meals

  • Can reduce fasting insulin and fasting glucose

  • Can reduce hemoglobin A1c

  • Can decrease appetite and caloric intake, while inhibiting weight gain

  • Has been shown to lower triglyceride levels and oxidative stress from high LDL

  • Induce weight loss in obese patients

  • Helps decrease leptin and increase leptin sensitivity

  • Can increase the conversion of white fat into energy

Leptin – This is KEY!

Leptin is a hormone that is produced by your body’s fat cells. It is supposed to tell your brain that — when you have enough fat stored — you don’t need to eat and can burn calories at a normal rate. Leptin’s main role is long-term regulation of energy, including the number of calories you eat and expend, as well as how much fat you store in your body. People who have a lot of excess weight also have high levels of leptin.

Our brains should know that we have plenty of energy stored. Sometimes our leptin signaling doesn’t work and we develop leptin resistance. This is when we have an abundance of leptin, but the brain doesn’t see or recognize it. When your brain doesn’t receive the leptin signal, it mistakenly thinks that your body is starving even though it has plenty of energy stored. This condition is now believed to be one of the main biological contributors to obesity.

Leptin can determine if you lose weight and how much. GLP-1 agonists like Exenatide can help lower leptin resistance. It does this by helping to change the biochemistry of the body and at the same time decrease the rise in leptin resistance once you start losing weight. This helps to naturally reduce your appetite, increase your metabolism and increase fat burning capacity. Correcting this allows for weight loss to occur and more importantly helps you keep off the weight that you have lost.

Signs of Leptin Resistency

  • Being overweight.

  • Hold Belly fat

  • High levels of inflammation

  • Inconsistent sleep patterns

  • Finding yourself unable to lose weight, no matter how hard you try.

  • Experiencing heavy food cravings, especially high-fat, high-sugar or “junk” foods.

  • Seem to feel better when consume carbs or sugar foods

These factors can damage your endocrine system and metabolic function, leading to leptin resistance. Unfortunately, the very factors that contribute to developing leptin resistance’s can increase and become symptoms of leptin resistance; e.g., overeating leads to leptin resistance, then leptin resistance’s triggers overeating.

What Causes Leptin Resistance?

Leptin resistance usually develops over time due to three primary factors: (1) too little sleep, (2) too much stress and (3) too much of the wrong foods. Other factors that can contribute to its development include:

  • Overeating

  • High insulin levels

  • High triglyceride levels

  • Too much sugar, especially high-fructose corn syrup

  • Toxin overload

  • High stress (and resulting high cortisol levels)

  • Yo-yo dieting (alternating starvation with binge eating, especially)

  • Too little sun or time spent outdoors

  • Excessive snacking, especially late-night snacking and snacking on high-fructose, simple carbohydrate, overly processed foods

Insulin

Exenatide also helps reduce insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is when cells in your body start resisting or ignoring the signal that insulin is trying to send out—which is to help glucose enter our cells from the bloodstream. Insulin is also a very important hormone involved in weight loss. High insulin levels make it almost impossible for your body to burn fat.

Insulin blocks an enzyme called hormone-sensitive lipase (HSL). This hormone is responsible for the mobilization of fatty acids from fat cell stores. If levels of insulin are high, it blocks this enzyme. Studies show that HSL is decreased in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus, and this may be a consequence of elevated insulin levels. Excess insulin also has the added problem of promoting fat storage.

Exenatide helps sensitize the body to insulin levels and helps to lower blood glucose levels. It also helps reduce fasting insulin and glucose levels. Once insulin levels are stabilized to normal levels this may also improve other hormone imbalances (testosterone for example) which will naturally result in weight loss and a reduction in symptoms associated with those imbalances.

GLP-1 agonists like Exenatide help reduce insulin resistance and lower blood sugar. This then activates hormone-sensitive lipase and results in more fat burning activity over time.

Glucagon

Glucagon helps increase blood sugar levels while insulin lowers blood sugar levels. They are opposites. For hormone-sensitive lipase (fat burning enzyme) to be activated, insulin and glucagon (from glycogen stores) need to be at relatively low levels. High glucagon can also interfere with normal glucose control which in turn can alter how your body burns energy.

Exenatide and other GLP-1 agonists help reduce glucagon levels while simultaneously reducing insulin resistance. Both of these changes promote more normal blood glucose levels and help promote proper liver metabolism of glucose and help adipose tissue burn fat. Glucagon is just as important in the regulation of glucose levels in the body. Treating both insulin and glucagon leads to normal glucose levels and weight loss.

Exenatide helps naturally improve your metabolism, through its effects on leptin levels. Leptin feeds back to your hypothalamus and helps set your body set point – the number of calories your body burns which in terms alters your appetite.

Remember, our body is constantly trying to match the number of calories you burn to the number of calories that you consume.

This is an injection which ics completed twice per day. For more information, call your nearest MedShape clinic to get started!