Welcome to The Morning Dose, your weekly update on all things peptides, TRT, fitness, anti-aging, and everything in between.
We’ve got a great newsletter for you today, covering peptides, intermittent fasting research, and the next big players in the weight loss peptide industry.
Grab some coffee, and get ready to dive in.
In this week’s edition of The Morning Dose:
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Image source: General Mills, Inc
Weight loss peptides like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro continue to soar in popularity, and we all knew it was only a matter of time before other companies tried to get in on the profits.
This time, we’re not talking about another drug company with a new peptide…
We’re talking about some of the biggest food manufacturers on the planet.
Major companies like General Mills and Nestle, the parent companies behind brands like Nature Valley, Pillsbury, Lean Cuisine, Kit Kat, and hundreds of other brands are preparing to enter the weight loss food market.
Specifically, they’re beginning to work on high-protein meals and meal replacement shakes to go along with your weight loss peptide protocol.
One of the main concerns with weight loss peptides is lean muscle loss.
Any time you’re in a calorie deficit and losing weight, you risk losing muscle, especially when you don’t have much of an appetite and your protein intake drops. Maintaining a high protein intake, along with resistance training, is critical to maintain muscle during a diet.
To combat this, major food manufacturers plan to release high-protein meals specifically marketed toward Ozempic users to help them preserve muscle.
Apparently, these new meals will be the secret to preserving your muscle.
So if you’re using weight loss peptides and are concerned about your protein intake, you can keep an eye out for special meals to go along with your diet…
Or in the meantime, simply use a regular protein supplement to boost your daily protein.
It’s hard to imagine how these meals will be any better than a standard protein shake, so keep an eye out for the marketing you’ll see in the coming years, and don’t be fooled into believing these foods are any better than the current protein snacks on the market.
For this week’s peptide spotlight, we’re going to look at a newer hair loss peptide that’s rarely mentioned, PTD-BDM.
PTD-BDM, which stands for Protein Transduction Domain-fused Dishevelled Binding Motif, works to proactively prevent hair loss from within, unlike other topical treatments that are applied directly to the scalp.
The mechanism behind PTD-BDM is quite technical, so if you’re interested in the nitty gritty details, you can read our complete guide right here.
In short, this peptide works by inhibiting a natural process that prevents the development of new hair follicles, so naturally thinning hair is unable to restore itself.
This inhibition caused by PTD-BDM slows hair loss and allows the growth of new hair follicles.
Unfortunately, this is a relatively new peptide, so we don’t know much about the side effects, and there aren’t many user experiences to reference.
However, the mechanism is quite interesting, and this is a peptide to keep an eye on if hair loss is a concern. PTD-BDM may very well become a powerful tool for restoring growth as we learn more, but for now, we’d categorize this as promising, but still in early research stages.
If you’re reading this newsletter, you’re interested in health and longevity, and you’ve probably have heard about intermittent fasting . If you haven’t, intermittent fasting refers to the practice of restricting your food intake to a specific window of time.
Some experts say that intermittent fasting is a powerful tool for fat loss, anti-aging, cellular health, and everything in between.
Other experts warn that going for long periods without food is the fastest way to lose all of your hard-earned muscle, and fasting is a terrible idea.
To make things even more confusing, even celebrities have hopped on the fasting bandwagon, with actors like Hugh Jackman using intermittent fasting. Jackman claims 16/8 intermittent fasting, which is eating for 8 hours and fasting for 16, helped him get in shape for Wolverine movies.
With January right around the corner, you’re sure to be bombarded with diet advertisements, and somewhere along the way, you’re probably going to hear about the many benefits (or downfalls) of intermittent fasting.
It’s time you know the truth.
Earlier this year, the first study to look at 16/8 intermittent fasting, one of the most common types of fasting, was published.
With this method, all food is consumed in an 8-hour window, so you might eat your food between 12 pm and 8 pm, consuming zero calories the rest of the day.
Anyway, this study looked at participants in their 20s and 30s, and all participants had at least 5 years of strength training experience.
Half the group followed the 16/8 fasting plan, and the other half at their meals at 8 am, 1 pm, and 8 pm each day.
Participants were told to track their calorie and macro intake prior to the study and keep those targets the same throughout the entire process. Researchers tracked all kinds of data, including muscle mass, strength, and a variety of hormones.
The results?
Those following the fasting plan lost about 3.5 pounds on average over 8 weeks, while the normal diet group didn’t lose any weight.
Researchers propose that this is due to the increase in adiponectin in the fasting group, a hormone that signals your brain to burn more energy, but the fasting group also entered the study eating less food and may have already been in a calorie deficit.
So fasting might cause an increase in fat loss, but there’s one other thing…
The fasting group experienced hormonal changes similar to what you’d expect from any calorie deficit: testosterone and IGF-1 levels decreased (this happens in any calorie deficit), levels of several pro-inflammatory cytokines decreased, cortisol levels increased, insulin and blood glucose levels decreased, triglyceride levels decreased, and T3 levels decreased.
So it seems that intermittent fasting might offer some additional fat loss, and almost certainly causes the hormonal we’d expect from any other type of diet.
Our advice?
If you enjoy fasting, great! It seems like it might be beneficial for fat loss and hormonal health.
If you hate it, you can follow any other diet that helps you get into a calorie deficit, and experience the same results.
As always, whether or not you practice intermittent fasting, if you’re worried about the low testosterone from dieting or fasting you can speak with a hormone expert, like our friends at Fountain TRT.
They’ll be able to keep an eye on your lab work and decide if TRT could benefit you, or if your levels will return after your diet is over.
We cover anti-aging and TRT all the time, but here’s some good news for all of the women out there.
Researchers have recently found that consuming flaxseeds, specifically the lignans found in flaxseeds, may alter the gut microbiome and reduce breast cancer risk.
Before we go any further, this study was done in mice. The mechanism is still promising, but we haven’t shown this in humans just yet.
There’s still so much we don’t know about how the gut microbiome interacts with the rest of the body, but the more we learn, the more we realize just how important gut health is.
In the study, researchers examined the relationship between the gut microbiome and microRNA, which impact gene expression.
They found that flaxseed consumption among mice altered the relationship between the gut bacteria and the microRNA, and can potentially decrease breast cancer risk.
We know that the fiber found in flaxseeds is also beneficial to the human gut, so if further research in humans shows the same relationship, eating more flaxseed may be a great way to help lower your risk of breast cancer.
Until then, flaxseed is known to be full of health benefits, as it’s high in omega-3s and supports cardiovascular health, so you may want to consider adding some to your daily nutrition.
There’s no harm in adding flaxseed to your diet, and further research may just prove that it’s even more beneficial than we already realize.
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-The Morning Dose
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Disclaimer: This content is NOT medical advice. The information included in these emails is intended for entertainment and informational purposes only.