Ozempic Vs. Glucose Monitors (feat. Sharam Fouladgar-Mercer) #685

People regain, on average, 60% of their lost weight within a year of stopping GLP1 drugs and the regained weight may be disproportionately fat rather than muscle, potentially leaving people worse off than before they started. I feel like, instinctively, a lot of people who listen to this podcast may have felt like that already, but now, finally, we have the evidence. So what to do about it? We have some solutions today on Biohacking News. Hello, welcome to Biohacking News. I'm Tony Wright and today, my guest is the man who's on a mission to kill obesity and we have a couple of really interesting weight loss stories. He runs a CGM company, a continuous glucose monitor. I'm sure many of you have tried them, many of the rest of you are interested. And we've got this one story about, and this was from Cambridge University. People regaining, on average, 60% of their lost weight within a year of using drugs like as-em-pic GLP1 drugs and the regained weight is not good weight. And then the second story, which is that a lot of people in our world like CGMs, you'll go to a biohacking or a wellness conference and a lot of people will be wearing CGMs for fun or maybe for something more. And John Hopkins argued that for people without diabetes, CGM evidence is scant. So that's really interesting too. My guest today has been obese and overweight. And so he stopped guessing and he built the science. Sharon Fulagart-Murse is the co-founder of SIGNOS, the first ever FDA-cleared glucose system for weight management. And we're going to geek out on CGMs today and look at those stories today as well. As well as talk about the McDonald's boss who's been very, very, very, very, very, very healthy. And I'm going to be talking about the last few weeks. Sharon, how are you doing? I'm doing great. Great to get a chance to come up. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for coming on. So I'm really fascinated to chat to you. I do feel like a lot of people who listen to this podcast will be familiar with the general concepts of CGMs, what we can go into them a bit. But of course, a whole conversation around weight loss, weight management is just changing so insanely over the last six months, years, two years, isn't it? That must change how people see your product as an alternative to GOP ones like gas. Yeah, it's a really interesting point. The world has changed so much and just the conversation has changed so much. And I think what's interesting is when you see what's going on in the market and some of the excitement around what's possible and what's happening is we're forgetting the fact that 75% of us American adults are now overweight or obese. It's one of the arguably the worst problem in arguably one of the wealthiest countries in the world and yet this problem is persisted for decades. And so the excitement around having a solution that can help more and more people is very powerful. And frankly, GOP ones are really an exceptional tool and they're actually complementary to what what CIGNOS does and happy to talk more about all that. Yeah, well, what do you stop by telling us what CIGNOS does exactly? Yeah, happy to. So really what we're what we're focused on is tackling the obesity epidemic here in America. And a little bit of the background, I grew up as an obese kid in my early years and I fluctuated between between that and being in shape and being obese again. And so my parents when I was younger, for me, had a bunch of sports. I got happy. So I got happy, went to college to play. And from there what was interesting is the part of the story that I skip over generally is is having the potential opportunity to go play in the NHL versus going off into the working world and joining a startup. But even six, seven years ago, I was obese again. So like many Americans just up and down and up and down on that weight spectrum. And the thing that was was frustrating was and I experienced this in particular in college they'd say, "Hey, Sharon, you're the same height weight age gender as your team made over here. Where you have this so dialed in, we'll put you both on this specific caloric number that is your goal, 2,540 calories a day or whatever it might be. And at the end of the day, we eat the same three meals and the same three quantities and do the same on ice or plometroporcal. I regain a half pound. My friend would lose a half pound. We'd repeat all that the exact same the next day and have a different outcome. And meanwhile, I'd have a number of my teammates eating 5,000 calories a day not gaining a pound and it would drop me nuts." And so seeing how our bodies were so different and responded so differently was something that's really stuck in my brain. It's just only calorie counting for so long, clearly missed an aspect of our metabolism and sleep and all the different aspects that they go into this. And so the traditional nutrition and advice assumes everyone's metabolism works the same and it does it. If you eat something after having slept for 9 hours last night, your body is in a process to sit and have a different outcome than if you slept for one or two hours last night. And that factor, there's about 50 different factors that go into that sleep and stress and exercise and food and just in food. The order you eat the food in, how long it takes for you to consume that, all of these aspects together play a part. So we really had SIGNOS set out to show that real time personalized feedback on this. An impact of food and exercise and stress and sleep could make people create these sustainable healthy life changes. And so we're really focused on how do we position SIGNOS's differentiated platform that drives behavior change. And it's really not just simply wearing a CGM or wearing a smartwatch. It's integrating these actual insights to help users to modify their behavior and really forcing those outcomes that require this guided intervention. And so that's the goal. And so we combine this FDA-CGM technology with a behavior change system and that's what we are really excited about. Yeah, I want to ask you about the FDA clearance of the site because that's pretty cool. And obviously, people who listen to this podcast, we're already quite on board with tracking. And I think CGM's is like the ultimate extension of that, for example, the ure ring gives the geek so much data. And I guess what I'm fascinated by with you guys is that you're obviously making a real attempt to make the data as actionable as possible. And I told you before we started recording, I first used a CGM 10 years ago. I was basically trying to figure it out all on my own. What does that mean? And now you've got beautiful, you've got pretty dashboards now, haven't you? You know, making it a little easier so it's not as, you know, you don't require the PhD statistics that you might have needed a couple of decades ago. So really the goal is, how do we help you drive these behavioral changes? How do we reduce the friction required? It's hard enough trying to lose weight as it is. And you feel like you're not in control and it's just trouble. It's how do we remove all the friction as much as possible? So say do with this to make this as easy as the process as possible. And so what we've really tried to change or really bring into the forefront is the fact that we're going to show you how your body reacts, how your metabolism reacts. We're going to show you how that changes throughout the day, throughout the hour, throughout the week. We're going to show you how that intersects with the exercise you might be doing or your favorite foods that you might be consuming. And there's a reason why we all feel like we have a friend that walks by a cinnabon and that walks by and just smells the thing and feels like they eat weight. We all have friends that walk in and eat whatever they want and feel like they don't gain a pound. And it's like, why is that the case? And it doesn't just boil down to genetics. And it's like, hey, how can we help you act more like one of those than the other? And I think too many of us are stuck where we feel like our metabolism are not set up in a way or we're not optimizing them in the right way for our bodies. Yeah. I'm trying to put a muscle in my mouth. But I'll probably annoy a lot of people. I'm not trying to lose my own, trying to gain weight. But it's so hard. I should be honest. I should use one of your sigma-fits again because to be honest, that would probably really help me try and figure out how to put it on weight as well. It's a challenge. It's a challenge I could tell you. It's a challenge when you're trying to take your weight in any direction and then keep it there. And I think that's what makes it. I think that's what conceptually makes this novel, which is I think everyone at some point in their life has been able to successfully gain or lose weight. I think everyone's been able to successfully lose a couple pounds here or successfully gain a couple pounds there if that's their goal. I think the problem that we've all faced is how do you do that and then keep that off? And I think that is really the hardest piece because if you look at some of the GLP one of the stuff that we've been talking about, the data showing that the Irish person gains that weight back within 12 to 18 months. Yeah. The weight gain, you gain back when you're doing it sort of on your own comes back, but it's a lot longer period of time. And so really I think the key is on the weight management journey. It's how do you help lose the weight and keep that off? That is the key. Yeah. And you thought, "Bring this. This is biohacking news after all." And that was the first story that I wanted to look at. There's the last few days you just referenced it in Cambridge. People regain on average 60% of their last weight within a year of stopping GLP one drugs. And the regained weight may be disproportionately fat rather than muscle, potentially leaving people worse off them before they started. So is it so is you're offering the exit plan basically on you from that. I think and you bring a great point and those stats get worse if you go beyond just 12 months, if you got to 18 months, they get even worse. I think the reality is is as we look at helping Americans and people across the world, it's how do we teach you how to fish. How do we teach you the behavior change? And we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the point of a surgery or a point of a drug is it doesn't teach behavior change. It's not what they do. And so when you look at the clinical studies for GLP One Drugs, for example, it's used conjunction with diet and exercise. And I think in the real world, a lot of folks will not do those pieces and they'll lose some weight and half of it will be muscle and half of it will be fat and then they'll gain the weight back and they won't gain that muscle back. And so the key is it's not whether GLP One's are are great or terrible. GLP One's are a really powerful tool, but it's how do you wrap that in a solution or a system that ensures that they drive the right level of efficacy for you, but also ensure that you can maintain that level of success when you ultimately want to get off that. And that is where I think the uniqueness and the key of how signals can help is we can provide that diet and exercise wrapper by ensuring that we can teach the individual what works for their metabolism. And then you can also use that to see how your metabolism is getting optimized when you're on that drug, for example, you're on the GLP One. So I think there's a whole host of ways that we've seen some real success, whether you're using that at the beginning of your journey, whether you're using that with a GLP One or whether you're using that to graduate off the GLP One. Yeah. You're being very dip-formatic about GLP One's. So I was very impressive. But I guess you're going mainstream, aren't you? You've got to you've got to you've got to tickle the boxes for people. Well, I think I think GLP One's a powerful tool and I'm not my hair to knock them and say, you know, people should shouldn't take them. I would argue, of course, that GLP One's are designed for a particular common variability with a certain BMI. And if you have five pounds to lose, that you know, you should not be on a GLP One. I think everyone would agree with that. But the reality is they can give you a bit of a jump start. And as you go through this experience, you really all of us want to make sure that we are getting our best bang for the buck. We're spending the money on the GLP One. And we want to make sure we have the level that we're excited about. We want to make sure that we keep that success that we manage, that hard one success that we managed to get with the drug. And so whether you decide to take the GLP One or not, so you notice there's a great solution independent of or with the job. Yeah. And like, there's amazing start. You've got 85.7% of your members report weight loss within the first 30 days. That's absolutely amazing. And what I'm quite surprised about with that is when you think about something like a Zem Pick, it doesn't require any just take care. Then you know, you just wait. Go actually you all are asking people to pay attention as well. So that's very impressive. Yeah. So, you know, when the GLP One goes through this process, it's really, it's helping change the appetite. But the metabolic education changes the behavior. And so we're really supporting the education and the sustainability during and after the medication use to teach those metabolic habits, if you will. And if you can't, and if we don't understand how specific foods, how meal time, how movement affects our bodies, we're going to default back to the old patterns as soon as that appetite returns or as soon as we get off medication, because at the proper weight management plan. And so many of us that are on on the GLP One's lack the guidance on the fuel or in the lean mass or the nutrition nutrient sufficiency. And so you could even face under eating your muscle loss as a result of some of those pieces. And so really as you think about this, it's less about whether to use one or the other. I think it's the decision is up to the individual, but it's really around, how do we make sure that you have the support system? How do you make sure? How do we make sure you have the wrapper under metabolism where you can understand how to optimize it? Whether you're on this or not. And then you can use that for the rest of your life. It's almost like it's the first solution it's designed and not keep you on forever. And that's it. Yeah. Sort of angle or approach. It's helping you throughout the journey. And how do we help you maintain that throughout? Yeah. I am running a series of webinars at the moment to help you become an author in 2026. One of the wonderful things about this podcast is that I get to work with so many people who are real experts in their area. And I found that's not just the guests. It's you listening as well. So many people are interested and involved in some way as an expert in the health, wellness, longevity, personal development, field, activity field, whatever it might be, a lot of entrepreneurs listening as well. And many people spend years thinking about writing a book, but something always gets in the way. So if you would like to build wealth, earn while you sleep and write your expert book in 2026, come to one of my forthcoming webinars and running a series of events, you can go to totally write and dot com slash expert to author. That is totally write and dot com slash expert to author. I've written nine books published in 13 languages. You may know that if you listen to this podcast for a while, and I've got the formula that took me to best seller status. And it is surprisingly straightforward. Now in this special masterclass, I'm going to show you the exact process. Thousands of authors have now used to publish a book that builds authority and revenue. I've been working on this for two decades. And now I'm sharing it with you in this masterclass. So come to the forthcoming webinar. There's a few on the way. If you go to totally write and dot com slash expert to author, you can secure your spot. I'd love to see you there. So many people spend years thinking about writing a book. Let's make it happen in 2026. A lot of people in this world in our world do like to use CGMs for all sorts of different reasons. I know you gained weight recently and used the opportunities to test your own products. What happened? Yeah. So this is story. I haven't told very often. I actually went through the experience of gaining the weight back. And for context for folks that don't know, I was the first person on signos, of course, and lost a bunch of weight on it. And as I was going through this experience, I was like, oh, this is amazing to be able to do this or what about this or how does this work? And so I started coming up with, oh, this is the product. This is the feature. This is the next thing. This is the next iteration we should start building. And pretty soon when you're far enough divorced away from the moment you lost that weight, you forget the friction. Yeah. Yeah. How easy or how it was. And so some of the things that I would suggest that I'd say, oh, this thing seems like a great idea. Of course, this would work. And things that other people would suggest, it's like, oh, that's that might be too simple. People might not do it. And you quickly start to realize, once you go in, you know, you don't have the appreciation of whether someone will actually do it or not until you're sort of quote unquote dog food in your own product. And so for me, because my weight fluctuated throughout growing up, it was actually not very difficult to gain the weight back. Although it was in the early days, more fun because I really started to eat whatever I could to gain the weight back. But after a certain point, you're like, all right, this is clearly night. Now a job when you're trying to actively gain the weight back, did I take a funnel away from it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The reason I brought that up is when you're going through that experience, and I put myself on that journey a second time, I quickly realized some of these things that were that seemed really powerful or too complicated. There's too much friction involved. There's too much effort. And some of the things that seem simple, where it almost seemed like the technology and AI were baked into the user interface to make it as simple as possible actually ended up performing better. And you don't have that appreciation until you go through that experience. So that really helped from a dog footing perspective to do that. Yeah. Wow. That's real commitment to the course. Well done. That's great. These early days, this is a news-based show. And something that people have been talking about, a lot on social media recently, is the McDonald's boss eating a hamburger. You've seen that, right? I'll see that. You guys should do a mock-up of that, but with someone wearing a CGM at the same time with this yellow result. He's a lot of flack for that, besides of the bike. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I like that advertising I do. Yeah, yeah, it's good. You can have that one for free. Now, what I think you just mentioned a few moments ago, 75% of Americans are overweight. That's basically everyone, isn't that? I suppose it's quite scary, quite exciting for what you're doing. It's just amazing, isn't it, really? And I don't know the figures for the rest of the world. It's probably a little bit less than America, but quite a lot. And my podcast is about 50% US, 50% UK in the rest of the world as well. But it's just an amazing number, isn't it? Yeah, it is staggering. It is scary for sure, given how large that number is. And the rest of the world is catching up very quickly. And around major cities and large countries and countries that are even that larger, really starting to catch up with this obesity epidemic. And this joint epidemic around type 2 diabetes. And so you now starting to see in the United States, 88 million US adults have prediabetes. And the serious part is more than percent of them are unaware that they have prediabetes. And so I think if you combine that with the fact that many of us are shocked by foods we assumed were healthy, actually are spiking our glucose levels, it's a recipe for a bit of a disaster. And if you think about this when you go to a rash crop and you say, I'm going to eat healthy, I'm going to order a big salad. And then come back and you're like, I gained some weight on wonder what that is. And if you were to look at the data with signals, that would have helped you identify like, oh, you had a big glucose spike. Why was that? It turns out the dressing and the salad had a ton of sugar in it. And you don't know that. And you think you're eating healthy, you think you're doing the right thing. And then you struggle against that journey and feel like you're pushing a boulder uphill as you say, I'm doing the right thing, but don't see the corresponding results. And so it's half the battle is figuring out how do I know what I'm putting my body, how does that fit with my metabolism. But the other half of it is how do we make sure that we give you the right behavioral change to figure out what to do with the right time? It's not as well, our goal is not to put everyone on a keto diet. That is not sustainable from a long perspective. It's how do we figure out the right foods, the right carbs for you that fit your body. And they'll be different. And we see this all the time. Someone will have oatmeal and they'll have a huge spike. And someone else, someone else's metabolism, I have oatmeal and their body's almost flat. And so, yeah. And there could be the same, you know, individual in terms of the height and the weight and age and all of that. And then metabolism is different and processed that differently and it corresponds to a lot of different factors. And so giving the knowledge to know and then figuring out what to do about it. So it's not just, oh, let's remove those things. It's like, hey, how can we help you go for a walk? How can we help you swap out the worst performing thing in that concoction of six things you had for breakfast? How do we figure out how to blunt the absorption of that? There's a host of things that we're going to help you as that journey to ensure that as you're going through it, you feel like you have that support and then we can nudge you along with the road. You mentioned keto. I was keto for about a year and a half and looking back, it didn't really suit me, but it was quite interesting. And I think when I first used to CGM, I think I was sort of low-carbish. And one of the things I found very interesting and I've never really had a chance to discuss it, but you're the perfect person to ask. Is that at the time I was working in TV at Sky and I would go in in the evenings and be working in the evenings and have a canteen evening meal? What I thought was low-ish carb in the evening and it would really spike at times, it would spike my Greek-based levels. And I started to figure out, I think what it was was they were cooking the carrots and the vegetables and a lot of seed oils. Is that something that you've seen as a thing or not? Because it felt to me that that was a thing, but I haven't actually spoken to anyone else who's noticed that wearing a CGM. Yeah, there's a number of things that could go or factor into this and so without knowing exactly what you ate, it's hard to make the comment. A couple of things could play a part. One is when you are a keto diet fairly strictly and you're having instead of having no carbs, you're on low carb or having a low carb meal, that could have an effect. Another thing is when you have that meal. And so you don't start to see this and this is really interesting, which is if you have a meal right before you go to sleep and let's say there are some carbs in that meal and then you go right to bed. Your glucose spike will be very different than if you ate that same exact meal for breakfast. A traditional spike is going up and is going down over one to two hours, over a couple hours of here, what's it say. If you were to eat that meal that we just described right before you bed, you go to sleep, your body essentially shuts down and you're not using that excess glucose. So your glucose stays fairly high in the bloodstream for a lot longer period of time and we've looked at it. So again, it depends on what you ate, but we see situations where someone eats goes to bed, the glucose spike stays high for almost eight hours, comes back down as their body starts to wake up or the don effect occurs, the donphan on them. And at that point, what's happening is they wake up and they didn't feel like they had a good sleep, of course. They felt very unrested if you will. But the other thing is they, if they were to go and measure their lab work that morning, their lab work would come back and be like, oh, you're everything's good. Everything looks pretty flat, everything looks healthy and you don't realize for the eight hours at night, you know, you just really did not do favors for your body. You had a terrible sleep, but the lab work says, you know, everything's great. And so you're just missing that key window. So that's another impossibility. And the third one is how alcohol factors in it and affects how your your body processes that food and it often will cause a delayed glucose spike to a molecule. And so what, what generally would happen when you have food and you have a, you probably process that and you have a glucose spike, you know, whether it's 30 minutes later or an hour later or an hour and a half later without a lot, it could be three or four hours later. So that plays a part as well. Of course, I'm just guessing in what you ate and you could have those things, but those are all different factors that can go into how your body might have a response that is different than. And this might be a little bit hippy, dippy, but actually, you know, my, that, as you know, because I know you've done plenty of TV appearances yourself, quite a stressful environment. I used to do a lot of evenings and late nights. And it wasn't like I was relaxing at home with friends having a, you know, really slow digestion was hunched over my food scooping it in before going back to the TV studio and staying up until two o'clock in the morning. That's not an optimal condition for digestion for recovery or for just sort of eating a meal in a healthy way, which could be interesting. That is a, that is a great point as well. And that's another one, which is if, if you were to have the exact same meals throughout the day or the week or whatever, instead of consuming them at a rapid pace, instead of let's say five, 10, 15 minutes, you consume them over a 45 minute period or an hour, you would, you would lower your glucose automatically without changing, just by slowing down how quickly you're eating. And it's really interesting because all of these things that we've been told by our parents to do when we're kids, like, don't eat late at night, right before you go to bed, chew your food, slow, you know, I'll give you. Here, each your, your leafy greens first before you, the rest of your meal, all of these things you see in the data, but for many, for many of us, we do not do those things that we were told to do. And it's not until the moment at which you see how it affects your body and real time that you decide you want to make the change because you feel like you're in control and it's not someone telling you what to do. It's your decision. And that's where they were. It gets pretty exciting. It's like, how do we give you the agency to realize you're in control and make the decision? And here's how it affects your body and here's a small tweak you can make to optimize that. And I think you just highlighted a great point, which is the speed at which you eat is a really important factor for how your body is going to start processing glucose and have a huge stuck. Yeah. And so do your members, do they wear a CGM all the time? Or do they sort of cycle 14 days on, 14 days off? And it depends on what your goal is generally when someone's, when someone starts signals they're on 24/7 until they hit their weight loss goal. And then folks will, you know, it depends how many months, or sorry how many pounds they have to lose. But once they hit their weight loss goal, then it's about how do we maintain and keep that weight off that we've been successful hit? At that point, it's up to the individual. Some people want the 24/7, you know, continuing that trajectory. And others are like, hey, I want to maintain this. And so can I have it? Can I wear it every other time? It's aware, you know, that like we just talked about a couple weeks off. And so I think that's a, it really depends on the individual and how much they feel like they want to have that support as they go to maintain. Because it's the two pieces like we talked about, some losing the way and then keeping it off. Yeah. Now, Sean, our second new story is that John Haltkins said recently that people without diabetes, those without diabetes, CGMs are actually not necessarily that helpful. What they said was, evidence is scant for their youth. And I thought it'd be pretty interesting because obviously you've run a 35,000 people for a clinical trial. You've got FDA clearance as well. Somebody's right. So I just wonder what you thought about that because it's very interesting. And obviously a lot of people in our world do like CGMs. What do you think of that as, buddy? Yeah. And I think one of the reasons why we did our study is when I started the company many years ago, there were a lot of studies on how CGM affects, how you can look at that to affect glucose. And everyone knows how glucose and insulin play are interrelated. And so some of the data that connected everything all throughout didn't exist back then. And so we sort of, as we were starting the company, we made a conscious decision to say, how can we create this company in a way that has a level of a clinical rigor that hasn't existable? before, how do we do a medical study with tens of thousands of people as part of us to look at the connection between glucose and weight or metabolism and weight and figure out how to optimize for that. So that was something that we got really excited about in the early days because that data, you know, if you were on to take 10 years ago, wasn't as prevalent. Over time, more and more data has occurred, but I think our study is one of the largest to look at that. We're actually going to be releasing that recently in those results this year, as we put that together, so I'm excited to come back and talk to you about that one that's built. Yeah. Yeah. And it's occurred to me in the past that CGMs, at the moment, obviously glucose related, but what you could do with the device light yours is measure quite a lot of other stuff as well. I don't know, is that a possibility for the future? Because presumably if you can put a device in a little pin prick in someone's arm and it's sit at 14 days and read blood measurements, it could do other stuff as well as be a CGM. It certainly can. And so, number of CGM manufacturers are working on what's called a multi-analytes solution that evolved going beyond just glucose measurements. Yeah. I think that is something that is potentially particularly interesting. And it really depends though on the goal and the outcome you're trying to drive. And so that extra analyte or those extra analytes will be a function of what's the outcome that you are focused on. But yeah, right now there are multiple companies that are working on it today. Mm-hmm. Okay. Great. Well, I guess if that sort of technology does come to pass, you guys are in a pretty good place to take advantage of it. Yes, we're excited. We're excited. We're going to go on and we'll be thrilled to take advantage of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It has made me think, I'm going to give it another go. It's been a while. And I'm going to give it a go again, especially like way more cops than I used to. So I think it is time again to see exactly what's going on. So I'm going to be checking out everything that you guys do at SIGNOS. Tell people where they can find you and yeah, everything they sort of need tonight. Yes, please. So if you come to signos.com, s-i-g-n-o-s.com, you'll be able to select the plan that is the best hit for you based on how long you want to be on SIGNOS and generally pertains to where you are your journey. But go there, you'll flick shut now and you'll be able to switch to Sid and it's the liberator right here doing it. Awesome. Sean, thanks for coming on. Really appreciate it. Thank you for outing me. I appreciate the time. That is it for this podcast. Thank you so much for listening. As always, we'd really appreciate the review on Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you are listening. and we'll see you next week.