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Get the clarity you need on the hottest topics in health and wellness with Second Opinion. Hosted by Rosemarie Beltz, this podcast brings you fresh perspectives from experts, innovators, and disruptors tackling life-changing issues. Each episode unpacks the latest research, debunks the hype, and delivers insights to help you make informed decisions. If you're ready for engaging, enlightening, and occasionally unexpected takes on health and wellness, tune in and discover your second opinion.
00:00:04 - Rosemarie Beltz
Welcome to Second Opinion. I'm Rosemarie, and if you've ever wanted a second opinion on some of the trending topics in health and wellness, you are in the right place. Each episode I sit down with experts, innovators, and even a few disruptors to bring you fresh perspectives on the issues that could change your life from age, rejuvenation and brain health to the weight loss drug revolution and how to reinvent your career. Together, we'll dig into the latest research, question what's hype and what's real, and give you the insight that you need to make your own choices about health and wellness. So if you're ready for a second opinion that's engaging, enlightening, and maybe even a little unexpected, let's get started. This episode is our season one finale, and it's a good one. If your relationship with food has ever felt more emotional than physical, if you've been told to just eat less and move more. And no, that's not the whole story. Or if you've looked in the mirror and wondered, I'm doing everything right, so why isn't it working? This conversation is for you. My guest is Dr. Adrienne Youdim, a triple board certified internist and obesity medicine specialist, author of the transformative book Hungry for More and host of the healthbite podcast. She's a former medical director at Cedars Sinai, now in private practice in Beverly Hills and online nationwide. She is also a faculty member at both UCLA and Cedars Sinai and has been featured on various news outlets such as CBS, Fox, ABC, NPR, the Doctors, Dr. Oz, W Magazine, and the LA Times. The list goes on. Dr. Youdim blends science story and soul, helping patients uncover the deeper hunger that drives so many of our health struggles. Today, we're diving into the truth about GLP1, medications, midlife metabolism, epigenetics, and why emotional hunger might be the most overlooked health strategy of all. This is Second Opinion. And this is Dr. Adrian Udim. Dr. Youdim, thank you.
00:02:14 - Adrienne Youdim
Hi Rosemarie. It's so great to be here with you.
00:02:17 - Rosemarie Beltz
I feel like I know you because I've listened to your book. I came across it organically and I just loved your transparency, your authenticity, the science behind everything. So just thank you so much for being here.
00:02:34 - Adrienne Youdim
It's a pleasure.
00:02:36 - Rosemarie Beltz
If you could share for people who might not be familiar with your work, how and why obesity medicine, and then also your approach, your approach is really unique, one that I really resonated with and a little bit with that. If you could start talking about your book. What was the catalyst for this approach. And why do you feel that people need to know about this different strategy now. Why now?
00:03:08 - Adrienne Youdim
Yeah. So I guess to your first question, there's a story of serendipity, of how I stumbled upon obesity medicine and, you know, changes that happen in my life. One thing led me to another. But if I really were to be honest and to dig into how or why this work is so important to me, we all have a relationship with food. You know, in terms of food, being emotional, being spiritual, being family, community. There are so many things that food, food means to us, either personally or in terms of how we've grown up. And even if you think back to, you know, how we were birthed, the hormone oxytocin, which signals the birthing process and which also allows for a mother's milk to come in, is the very same hormone that is intricately involved in loving, bonding and connection between mother and child. And so this relationship between food and emotion, food and belonging and connection is literally hardwired in our neurobiology. I started working in this field really kind of as a doctory doctor. I say, you know, a white coat doctor doing all the doctor y things like writing prescriptions and offering science based diets. And while I still support all of those things and prescribe all of those things, it became apparent to me that there was always this other hunger in the room, an underlying emotional hunger, a spiritual hunger. And when we are able to lean into that hunger and ask ourselves what it is that it is signaling, essentially what is it that we are hungry for, it offers a unique opportunity to not only address the weight issue, which is kind of the somewhat superficial layer, not to be dismissed though, but is kind of like the entry point. It allows us to really dig into and respond to what it is that we are truly seeking. And so in that way, hunger to me is something not to be suppressed, not to be shamed, but rather something that we can lean into, learn from, growth from, and in that way really improve our lives.
00:05:49 - Rosemarie Beltz
Well, and I think I don't know again why I resonated with you so much and why I started this podcast. It's like where science meets soul, where there is so much more to it. We've got the biology, yes. That, you know, makes sense, but then there's this whole other part, and it's like when I looked at the research of just, you know, it's no secret that the. The diet industry, I mean, it's like, what, globally like or just in the US like a $90 billion I mean, it's ridiculous, right? And we've never been more supplemented. We're more hacked, we're more tracked. Our phones, watches, rings. But yet the obesity number, which, yes, is it. Like you said, it's the superficial, but it's. It's the health that comes along with it, where the numbers just keep going up between, you know, heart disease that I always, you know, cover, and then just the obesity rate. So is this the piece? Like, what do you. We're missing the mark somewhere because we're spending all this money, but yet people are just more. They're just more. I don't know. I don't feel like anyone's getting any healthier. Or are they? I don't know.
00:07:01 - Adrienne Youdim
I mean, there's so many metrics of. Of how our soothing is leading to our disadvantage, whether it's rising, you know, overweight and obesity and excess weight, or, you know, drinking increased. Severe drinking increased 17% in women during the. The pandemic and has continued. Our devices and our phones, those also are a marker of unhealth or poor health. So there's many ways in which we. We use distractions or soothing to distract from our underlying, you know, distress, and that's leading to poor health outcomes. And not only that, but it is also preventing us from using that as a pathway. Right. So if we can use that hunger, that desire, and really kind of double down on what it is, it's trying to tell us that it's actually an opportunity to understand that need and to meet. Meet that need in a way that is durable and in a way that hopefully will make us less likely to soothe and to experience poor health as a result. And I don't think we're having these conversations. We're having a lot of conversations about mental health. We are. We do have more resources than we ever did, but I don't think that we're having the really hard conversations dealing with the shame that comes around it, dealing with the desire to hide or to mask or gloss over, and the recognition that whomever you are, wherever you are, we all have these basic human needs and we all suffer from the same distress. You know, these are universal. And that is actually the main point in Hungry for More. And the reason why I wrote this book was to share how universal those unmet needs are. And so I think if we can shift the conversation just a little bit more, you know, like, now we're open about talking about mental health and addressing mental health, but if we can shift it a little bit more to this nuance of what's really vulnerable and hard to talk about and yet is so universal.
00:09:39 - Rosemarie Beltz
I found it interesting in your book when you shared all the patient stories. 1. Well, I love the way you weaved your. It's almost like a personal memoir. I don't know. You weave your personal life into the patient stories, which I found, really. And it was seamless, by the way. It was just like one minute I'm listening to one story, and then all of a sudden it's your story. So it was really well done, in my opinion, anyway. But I found when you mentioned shame, it's that people come to you. It's like this shame, right? Like this universal feeling of people will come to you because they feel this shame of feeling overweight and unhealthy, and then they come to you for help, and then they stop coming to you because of shame. I. It's like this. I felt, oh, my God. Yeah, like, how many times you're going for help. That's what drove you there. And then you're like, oh, I didn't do the work, or, you know, I gained five pounds, or I didn't lose any weight, or these. It's just. I don't know. I just feel like this conversation needs to be talked about more. Like you said, we are talking about it more, but. And as we. Because a lot of my audience is also in midlife and body dysmorphia. And it's, you know, not a teenage issue, just amongst my friends and my peers where if we could talk a little bit about these feelings in midlife, like, what do we. In your experience, like, what is driving this even more? Like, we're supposed to feel more confident. And in some ways we do, where we're like, we could care less about, you know, in some things, but when it comes to our bodies, there's this. It's even worse. I don't know. Even if you have a partner, whether you have a partner or you're, you know, single, I don't know. It just feels like this body shaming all of a sudden has just been really relevant again.
00:11:27 - Adrienne Youdim
Well, I think if you think about those of us who are currently in midlife, we grew up in the time of, like, Seventeen magazine and Slim Fast commercials and, you know, a time in which when we were in the single digits or barely in the double digits in age, we were really inundated with all of this messaging about our bodies. And we were given these kind of prototypes of. Of what to aspire to or what we should be. And those things don't go away. You know, like, I. I can remember in great detail flipping through those magazines, I can remember the taste of that Strawberry Slim Fast shake. And these things really become ingrained in our psyche, you know, So I do think part of it is cultural, societal. And, you know, we. We were growing up at a time. It's still very prevalent now, but at least we talk about the. The counter to that, which is fat shaming or body positivity, which, you know, we can talk about it later. I have various feelings about that, but at least there's this counterculture, right, to that messaging, which we didn't have. And so we grew up with that. And now here we are in midlife, and not only. So we do have kind of that baggage, so to speak. But then let's talk about what else is happening right now. Many women perhaps put aside their careers or change the trajectory of their careers for their children. Now we are empty, nesting. Our children are starting to leave the house. It's a time in which we are in transition. We are redefining our identities as mothers, as, you know, professionals. And so I think there's a lot happening there in terms of shifting lives and lifestyle and shifting identities. On the other hand, our bodies are changing. We're suffering or we're extreme, experiencing not only in the changes in the way our bodies look, but in the changes in the way our bodies function. We may be having symptoms of menopause or perimenopause, which precedes menopause or can precede it by up to 10 years. There's a very concrete relationship between estrogen and our brain function. So many of us are experiencing brain fog. Um, our cognition is changing. It's temporary. But we know that these changes are impacting our. Our perception and our actual function. So suffice it to say that it's complicated. Yes, Many layers. Some that are physiologic, some that are cultural, some that are, you know, the fact that we're in this liminal space and transitioning in our lives, and so all of that results in changes in us, changes in our thoughts and our feelings that then invariably get reflected in how we feel about ourselves. And the easiest way to reflect that, I think, is when we look in the mirror.
00:15:00 - Rosemarie Beltz
Gosh, there, like you said, we could go on and on between physically, what's going on. Now you're bringing in this emotional. Metaphorically, what's going on. And then I think what I'm trying to get into is just we've got all these emotional. These emotional aspects that you're talking about. And then how, when you're. When you're dealing with patients and you're seeing patients, how do you help them connect the two, the physical and the spiritual? What's going on, the hunger? Because I know it's like when people come to you, I'm sure everybody wants to see results now. So what is actually going on with the body? So sometimes I feel like if you know better, you do better. So what's actually going on with hunger? If we could talk a little bit about physical hunger and then how it relates to emotional hunger so people can kind of connect the dots there, right?
00:15:55 - Adrienne Youdim
So it's. The science behind this is really fascinating because our hunger is really dictated by a bunch of hormones, a bunch of chemicals that get released by the gut, the pancreas, fat cells, and these chemicals, or hormones then dictate at the level of the brain whether or not a person is hungry.
00:16:18 - Adrienne Youdim
And it's. It's obvious perhaps to point out that when we eat food, certain hormones, like GLP1, by the way, the one that is mimicked in the drug Ozempic or Wegovy or Manjaro or Zepbound, you know, these GLP1 analogs, they are copycats of a hormone that we normally release when we eat food. That hormone, amongst others, will travel to the brain and say, hey, we have food here. You can go ahead and. And dial back that hunger. Right. Which makes a lot of sense. What's interesting is that when we are experiencing difficult emotions, when we are stressed, it causes dysregulation in those hormones. So another one, which is called ghrelin, this is one that actually signals hunger, not fullness like the one that, like the GLPs.
00:17:14 - Adrienne Youdim
But ghrelin signals hunger. We know that when people are stressed, they secrete or they release more of this chemical or hormone called ghrelin that signals hunger to the brain even when they're fed, even when they're sated. So it shows us that emotional hunger literally can be masked or can be presented as a physical hunger.
00:17:40 - Adrienne Youdim
And so the question, as you started is, yes, if, if these two. If emotional and physical hunger are so intricately intertwined, how do we tell emotional from physical hunger? How do we tell these two apart? And that's where I really go into mind, body practices. And again, you said it. How do we connect the mind to the body? We culturally really separate the two. And. And in medicine, we have separated the mind from. But we know that the mind and the body are very, again, intricately intertwined.
00:18:22 - Adrienne Youdim
And in order for us to recognize that relationship, though, we need to still ourselves, we need to calm ourselves so that we can really become attuned to what, what is happening in that moment? What is the messaging that is happening between mind and body? And that's the. That's. It's simple, right? It's simple, but that is what's hard to do. And that's why there can't be a quick fix here. Because there is no quick fix to slowing down and being aligned or being open to your, your inner workings, your inner wisdom, your intuition, what your mind and body are trying to tell you. There is no shortcut to that. I wish there was. We all want it, including myself. But the fact remains that there is no workaround to this. And so we can continue to bang our heads against the wall, wall and wish otherwise, right? But the reality is the reality.
00:19:40 - Adrienne Youdim
And so at some point, and this happens often in midlife, we recognize that all the banging, you know, of our fist against the wall is not going to get us to what is durable and true, which is that when we slow ourselves down, then we are much more likely to be less reactive, less on autopilot, and able to understand what it is that hunger is for.
00:20:22 - Adrienne Youdim
What is that hunger really trying to tell us? And I do this work now, not only in the office, but in the corporate space with high achieving leaders, professionals, executives. These are the people who have been coming to my practice for the last 20 years. And I relate to them because I'm also a high achieving professional that has been driven by all those things that high achieving professionals have been driven by until we are not right. It is always said what works in the first half of life, all that striving and driving and pushing, no longer works in the second half of life. Why? Because many of us have actually achieved a lot of what we were trying to achieve. And yet we find ourselves still itching, we find ourselves still hungry. And it dawns on us that collecting the accolades or the achievements is not scratching the itch. It's not addressing the hunger.
00:21:35 - Adrienne Youdim
And so this is a time that while it is fraught with a lot of, you know, changes like we discussed, that can be taxing or difficult, it's also a beautiful opportunity because we finally get to a point where we can't continue or perhaps we choose not to continue in the way that we have. And that's. That's an opportunity, right? It's not. It should be viewed as something beautiful, an opportunity to change and to really lean into what the wisdom that we've collected over the last several decades and over the first half of life.
00:22:18 - Adrienne Youdim
And we do that through stillness. And actually there are practices that are, you know, validated in science but grounded in ancient wisdom that help us cultivate that stillness and cultivate that inner wisdom, whether it's breathing, meditation, expressive writing or drawing, movement practices, guided visualization. And I take my executives through these practices in an eight week course where we deal with the head, I teach them the science, we deal with the body, I teach them how to be attuned to the signals in their body and we deal with the heart. We build community with like minded peers in small groups to cultivate these practices that help us attune to our inner wisdom. Wow.
00:23:20 - Rosemarie Beltz
So it's not even, it's just like a whole body practice and then it's almost like, then the weight is like a, a result of that as well. Right. It's like, that is just like a, you know, a beautiful sun side effect of all the other things that you, when you go within. So another coach I, I work with, she's like, it's not when you, you come across an issue, it's never the issue, it's how you respond to the issue. That's the issue.
00:23:45 - Adrienne Youdim
That's exactly right. And, and by the way, the people in my courses are usually not, haven't, are not seeking me out for weight or haven't sought me out for that problem. But the very things that I kind of organically was doing in the office alongside writing prescriptions for GLP1s, it was 20 years ago until now, I was doing this work with patients unknowingly, right. Not really knowing this, the practice behind it. But when I became more versatile in mind body medicine and I became a practitioner of mind body medicine, I was able to bring this work into a broader context, which is really what, what high achieving professionals were seeking and were not getting. And so it really is to help them become more grounded, less reactive in their work and in their lives, more intentional, more purpose driven the way they want it to be. Right. We all want to be purpose driven in our lives and in our leadership, whether that leadership is in our household or in our community or in our organizations. I mean, that's, that's the point, right? That's if, if we can stop for a moment and think about why the hell we're doing everything that we're doing, it's to actually have purpose, to create meaning and when have we been dealt with a time in which this is more relevant and more important When. When there is so much uncertainty in the world around us, there is so much change. Even for people who were welcoming the change, it can be dizzying and it can be scary to think about all the changes that we are experiencing in our political lives, in our world, politics and changing dynamics around the world, and also changes that are happening in our backyard. How our children are growing up. This is different than how we grew up. And how do we navigate that change and that uncertainty in a way that is intentional, in a way that's not reactive and causes more harm? If I think about what's happening right now in the world on our college campuses, and I have a child who's in college and another one who's on the launching pad to be leaving in the next few months, and as a Jewish mother who's navigating anti Semitism on college campuses, and you don't have to be Jewish to be feeling this tension, right? There is tension out there right now. That just happens to be the flavor that is impacting my personal life. The number one top of mind goal I have for my community, and I mean that as the world around me, my world community, is to help people manage their reactivity. Because trust me, when I read something on in the news or I get off the phone with my daughter, I liken it to a rubber band. You know that rubber band, you stretch it out so far and it's just ready to like spring off, right. I feel that inclination, the outrage, the fear, the upset. But I also know that that reactivity is not going to serve me. It's not going to allow me to show up as the kind of leader that I wish to be in my household, in my community, and in my workplace. And so I use these practices regularly in order to navigate and to manage my own reactivity. And it's hard, but it's also really rewarding to be able to, in that moment, you know, ratchet it back down, remind myself what really matters and how I can purposefully show up in a way that allows me to address that. Or if I go, if I answer to that autopilot or that reactivity, how I can make things unravel, which is not what any of us want, right? No.
00:28:21 - Rosemarie Beltz
And my hat off to you. I don't have children. I'm the aunt, but I look at my nieces and nephews. It's, yeah, it's a definitely challenging times we're living in, for sure. And so I don't know what it feels like to be a parent, but just caring about Children in general. I can't imagine how you feel at all, because it's. I. And you're sending your children off to. I'm gonna digress because that's the way it goes. I kind of go off on tangents, but it's important to talk about, you know, but it's like, you know, you.
00:28:51 - Adrienne Youdim
You're.
00:28:52 - Rosemarie Beltz
You're sending your children off and. But then I'm gonna actually circle back around because you talk about this in your book. You talk a lot about your parents, your ancestry, and how you beautifully then weave into epigenetics just how our ancestry and our genes and our environment is how it then affects our gene expression. So if you could maybe expand into that, because I feel like people would be interested in that. I know. I feel like I geek out on the science a little bit about that. And you hear these things like runs in families or how we get our habits or, you know, where did this come from? So I feel like this is worth mentioning, you know, now the second part of our life, we have a time we can, like, maybe dissect some of these things out a little more.
00:29:38 - Adrienne Youdim
Yeah, I do. I agree with you. I think it's. I think it's fascinating as well, and it is relevant to the conversation around obesity and weight and our relationship with food. And so let me just go back a second and just give you kind of genetics 101, which is that, you know, we. We all know about genes. Those are the. The parts of our DNA which code for specific, what we call phenotypes. So that those are physical manifestations like our eye color or our stature, our height. Right. So our. Our likelihood to have certain diseases. Right. Like there's certain types of cancer, for example, that are passed down in families. Okay, so those are the actual genes, but then the majority of our DNA is not the genes, but it's the fluff around the genes what actually determines whether or not those genes get turned on or turned off. And it's funny because, you know, we used to call a lot of that. We used to call that, like, junk DNA or, you know, like, we just thought it was fluff. But we now know that it's that DNA that is involved in epigenetics, which essentially is that our environment, our experiences, will literally determine genetically whether those genes turn on or off. Okay, so if we have a likelihood for obesity. Right. Or there's several genes, and we don't actually have an obesity gene, but there are various genes that. That dictate excess weight, that gene can be Turned on and off by whether or not our parents were smokers, by whether or not our parents ate healthy or exercised right, by whether or not they had access to food. So one of the studies that I talk about in the book is the. The. Oh, my gosh. I think it was the winner. It's not the winner Dutch study, but it'll come to me. I'm having a. I'm having a brain fog lapse. But essentially the study is, it was done in the 1940s, around World War II. And because the Dutch have such great documentation of medical records, they were able to document what happened to those children who were in utero during the Dutch famine. So there was a period of time around the war in which food was rationed, and these people got very minuscule amounts of food on the order of 400 to 600 calories, and they maintained medical records of those children that were born or that were in utero in that time. So basically, their mom was consuming very limited calories while they were in utero. But they also have data and information on the siblings before and after. And they've carried out this. This information collecting, you know, 60, 70, 80 years later to see what actually happened to those children as compared to their siblings. And one of the things that came out which is relevant to this conversation is that children that were in utero were more likely during the famine, that is, were more likely to have obesity than their siblings. And so that is a genetic thing. It's not a genetic thing. Like, my mom had blue eyes and gave it to my siblings and to myself. It's a genetic thing in terms of epigenetics, because of the experience that my mom had while I was in utero impacted the likelihood for me to go on and develop obesity. And so this time of scarcity that the mother was exposed to translated in an epigenetic way into a greater likelihood for obesity. And if you think about it even in, like, a spiritual sense. Right. That scarcity inherently put into this child's being perhaps this desire or this fear of not enough and the body literally hung on to calories more, or the child literally wanted to consume more. And it's. It's complicated, Right. How it actually manifests.
00:34:46 - Rosemarie Beltz
Yeah.
00:34:47 - Adrienne Youdim
But these children went on to be more likely to develop obesity. And so there are things that happen in our genetics that aren't actually genes that get passed down, but are genetically getting passed down.
00:35:09 - Rosemarie Beltz
Wow. No, I found that fascinating when I was reading the book. Whether it's scarcity or even too much of something how it's like you gotta find that and our parents are just doing the best they can and let's face it, all of us, you know, it does. Also what I could really relate to is that this loyalty, right, when you know how hard your parents work, I mean, that's like a whole other conversation when you know the sacrifices and the things that they did for you and then how that translates to perfectionism. Again, so much great things in the book that we cannot cover in an hour. But I just really, I'm so glad we're touching on this because I feel like, I don't know, I just feel that everybody could benefit from knowing this and maybe not be so hard on themselves. I feel like if you understand these things, then again, like why I'm glad we touched on this in the science because then if you know better, then you can make, you can understand why we are the way we are and not. And even be less judgmental to our. Because I know I'm guilty, right? I don't know, I'm not perfect. But it's like, you know, you blame your parents for things. They're just doing the best they can, what resources they have. But so I found this to be a really cool, just a really interesting topic. So thank you for expanding on that some more.
00:36:27 - Adrienne Youdim
I do want to just touch on something that you mentioned, which is the self compassion piece, which is the first, which is the first chapter of the book, Hungry for more talking about having compassion for ourselves. And actually that is not only the nice thing to do, but it is actually the effective way to approach habit change. We know that if we can be more self accepting and more self compassionate, we're more likely to adhere to the behaviors that do result in change, the changes that we wish to seek. And so having this kind of lighter approach to ourselves, a more self compassionate approach really is important to point out because it is, it is an opportunity or a way to make our ability to adhere to change more durable.
00:37:23 - Rosemarie Beltz
So what would you say, would you say that was one of the main components, like with your experience with patients? What would be say in midlife? What is say the common denominator to long term success when it comes to weight? And like you also said, it's like it's not like we arrive, right? I love when you say that. It's not like we arrive and like all of a sudden, you know, it's like we meet our weight and that's the end of it. How the weight, it always goes on no matter what phase we are But I would love to get your thoughts on what is like that lasting common denominator that the people who seem to, you know, achieve some sort of self acceptance or just, you know, where they feel good in their body. What is that common denominator that they seem to all. Yeah, yeah, possess.
00:38:13 - Adrienne Youdim
I mean, have as you know, the, the book is like 40 or so or 30 hungers. Right. And that's because, and, and as you mentioned early on I related to every single one. So there isn't like the, the one thing, unfortunately. But if I were to say the, the one thing that I think really permeates in my patients who are in this mid, midlife and also personally, it's this. And it's not just women by the way. I mean, men too, right? This, this time of life is this draw towards stillness and quiet, you know, not wanting to do as much, not wanting to be out there as much, not wanting to be as busy and just people really craving solace and quiet and calm. And it is in that place that we have our greatest aha's. And so, so I would say if there's one thing that I could encourage people to do is to stop like doing and stop fighting against yourself and just kind of be still, you know, and just kind of take a pause. Learn to incorporate pause into your day to day life. Be okay with, with not busying and not producing and not striving, whether you're religious or not. And I don't consider myself religious, even though I'm very much tied to my traditions. A certain degree of like surrender, right? Like a certain degree of letting go of you can't control everything around you. You know, the pandemic was the biggest slap in the face in that regard. You know, we lost control. And I think we feel the same now in this time of life. So if we can just let loosen the reins a little bit, take it a little bit slower and just have a little bit of surrender and faith, not necessarily in a higher power, which I think is helpful if you can just say, you know, hey, you know, universe, there's certain things that I just can't do and so I'm going to just hand it over. But even faith in yourself that if you give yourself the time and the space that something will evolve, that your answers will come to you. And I think this is really important because I'm all for doctors and gurus and coaches and therapists and all of those things, right? I use them and I provide that service. But I also think that we all know Our next step. We all know our next. Right. Action. We all know what we need for ourselves in our own lives. But we can't know that when we're constantly jumping from thing to thing and place to place and busying ourselves. And so if we can evoke some of that quiet and stillness, I think that is probably the most impactful thing we can do, particularly at this time of life.
00:41:49 - Rosemarie Beltz
Thanks. I mean, I know so many amazing women that are. And men, like you said, that they get to this midlife point. It's like, we do know we have the, you know, I know you said tools are nothing without process. You talk about that in the book. And, you know, they. They do do the right thing. Say they are. I'm gonna just, like, tap into some levels of frustration is that, you know, they are. They've done the work. They feel like, you know, they. They take care of their bodies, they take care of their health. They feel like they're doing all the right things, like textbook. Like, I do this. I do this. You know, I eat good. I go to the gym, I meditate. I. You know, I try to be a great mom. I'm working. I'm doing all these things. And then the weight. I'm sure just because. And then the weight comes on, because I just feel like midlife. There's. It's. It's happened to me. I'm like, what in the world? Like, whose jacket is this? This can't be my jacket. Like, what the heck? I, you know, you. I do spinning. I go, yo. You know, I'm juicing. I'm doing all these things. And then things are just not fitting. And then I just want to, you know, bring up the topic of GLP1s, because it's just so much into conversation. And also, who are these medications really appropriate for? I know a lot of people that are now dabbling in it, whether they're microdosing, but they're getting them from their doctor, they are getting prescribed from physicians. What are your thoughts about this culture? I don't want to put you in a position. Yes or no, because I know it's all case by case, but just maybe some things that people can think of. Who are these medications right for? And. And if you could elaborate a little bit, too, about, you know, boosting your natural GLP1. Cause I feel like there's a lot of people that. I don't even think they realize they could do that, to be honest with you. I think that. I don't think people realize that their own body produces GLP1. So if you could just touch upon this. Cuz I feel like people are really grasping and struggling a little bit. Some people.
00:43:53 - Adrienne Youdim
So I mean the first thing I want to say is that we should be okay with sneezes in our lives. You know, the number of people who come and say, you know, I was this at 20 and now I'm, you know, I want to be, I want to look how I looked when I was 20. But I'm, you know, 48. First of all, I hear you sister. You know, I wish I, you know, I wish my springy springy as it was when I was 20. But the reality is that it's not, you know, and we need to have a little bit of like self acceptance and just like. And I say this with love and also as someone who's in it, you know, we need a reality check, my sisters. We are not 20, period. And so there needs to be a little bit of, of recognition and permission for us to be in different seasons of our lives. So that's number one. Number two, there are definitely a class of people who, who are candidates for these drugs. Our guidelines say that people who have a diagnosis of obesity which is a BMI of 30 or greater. I know people have issues with the number, they have issues with bmi, but the truth is that for most population or for most of us, and there are, there are population specific cutoffs. So I will say that. But at a BMI of 30 or greater, that is when cardiometabolic conditions can ensue like diabetes, pre diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, that BMI is a cutoff because it is the time during which most people start to develop cardiometabolic abnormalities or if people have a lower BMI and already have one. So if they're quote overweight, which is again a certain height for weight, for height ratio and already have diabetes or hypertension or something, some comorbidity. They are technically candidates for what we call anti obesity medic medicine. We don't even call them weight loss drugs because that would suggest that everybody is a candidate and I am all for them. In the right people, done in the right way, they can be life changing. I also know that a lot of physicians are prescribing it. They're not. You don't have to be an obesity medicine specialist like I am, but you do have to have knowledge about the drug. I don't go around prescribing Accutane. You know, I could, but it's not my wheelhouse, you know, like I don't know how often I'm supposed to get pregnancy checks or, you know, what else I need to worry about. I don't prescribe it. So if, if people are prescribing these drugs, then the onus is on them and on the patients who are requesting it, them that your physician is knowledgeable. Dose it in the right way. Escalate the dose at the right time. Don't go too fast so that people are experiencing significant side effects which then will preclude them from being on it. You know, I have patients who say, oh, I was losing. I don't know, I lost like eight to ten pounds in the first month. And then my patient, my physician increased the dose. I started throwing up and I had to stop. Why were we increasing the dose when you were already experiencing weight loss? And why is the goal 20 pounds in the first month when all of that is coming from muscle anyway and is going to make weight maintenance so much, you know, more challenging? So I'm just throwing things out there that are like personal pet peeves, but it is nuanced. And, and the onuses are not only on our physicians or our prescribing, our prescribers, but the onus is also on us. Like, we are now a informed society that has to advocate for themselves. And so advocating is not just getting access to a medication, but it's doing it, using it in the right way for the right person and in the right way.
00:48:04 - Rosemarie Beltz
No, thank you. That's why I wanted to ask you, because I know so many people dabbling in all of this, and they might see one doctor, but they're not telling another doctor. And it's like, whoa, you know, you can't. I mean, there's a. Like you said, there's a place for everything, right? And depending on who you are getting, just because it's a doctor doesn't mean it's the right doctor. So I just wanted to. That's why I wanted to ask you about this. That. That's, I guess, everything within reason. So we talked a lot today, but before we wrap, I want to give you just ask you a couple of things. So before we wrap, is there one truth about hunger or health that you wish every listener could hear today? Like, what would be that one takeaway message that people could. A message you want to leave people with. And how can people find you and how can they work with you and continue this conversation?
00:48:58 - Adrienne Youdim
Well, I would say the one message is that hunger is universal. It's not something that is experienced by just a few or that is reserved for people who are struggling with their weight or who are clinically obese. Hunger is universal. It's physiologic. It's also spiritual and emotional. And when we can address that hunger, then we really have the opportunity to live our lives in the way that is best for us. Our hunger is a tool and it's trying to get our attention for a reason that is to our benefit. And yes, I love this work. I do this work in the office with patients. I have courses for high achieving professionals called Resilient Minds. I give keynotes in workplaces around the country, all of which can be found on my website, which is doctoradrianyudeem.com you can also find my book and my podcast, Healthbite on the website.
00:50:10 - Rosemarie Beltz
Thank you so much. And is there anything we didn't cover today that you would like to touch upon?
00:50:16 - Adrienne Youdim
You know, I think that was a good little whirlwind of information. Yeah, I really do. Don't you?
00:50:26 - Rosemarie Beltz
I do. We could go on and on. And then I want to real quick. It was like Adele. It popped in when it was talking about acceptance. That was the name of the woman in the book. When it came, I was like, I know Adele. I've been Adele.
00:50:39 - Adrienne Youdim
We all have, Rosemarie. We all have. And you're welcome.
00:50:44 - Rosemarie Beltz
We all have. That's why I just thought it was so brilliant. Okay, well, for sake of time, you're a very busy lady and I've held you hostage for an hour. So with that, that is a wrap for today's episode of Second Opinion and the season finale for season one. So a huge thank you to Dr. Adrienne Udim for closing this season with compassion, clarity and clinical insight. From GLP1s and emotional hunger to midlife metabolism and identity, this conversation reminds us that wellness is about more than weight. It's about understanding what we're truly hungry for. If you've enjoyed today's conversation, please subscribe, rate and leave a review. It helps others find the show and fuels our midlife community. So stay tuned. Season 2 is launching soon with fresh episodes, bold guests and new segments. We're also so excited about Second Wind, where we spotlight inspiring midlifers rewriting their next chapter. I'm Rosemarie Belt. Until next time, stay well, stay curious, and remember, it never hurts to get a second opinion.