The Ozempic Revolution: Unveiling Obesity Science and Solutions with Dr. Alexandra Sowa

[00:00:03] Hi, I'm Dr. Russell Thackeray and welcome to Resilience Unravelled, a podcast with new ideas, new thoughts and new thinking about resilience. Guests with remarkable stories, products and services that can really power up your own mindset and resilience. You can also go to our site for more information, to ask questions or to access some of our resources at resilienceunravelled.com. Let's get started.

[00:00:32] Hi, and welcome back to Resilience Unravelled. And it's my joy to meet a new guest tonight. Dr. Alexandra Sowa is with us all the way from the United States of America across the pond. Alexandra, is that right? It is. It's so nice to be here. Thank you. And where in the world, where in the States are you from?

[00:00:54] So I am currently calling to you from my home in New Jersey, my home office, which is right outside of New York City, which is where my practice is located. I'm coming over there in a few weeks. That'll be nice. I should definitely drop in and have some injections from you, I hope. Do I get a discount? We'll see. And we'll see if you want to after this chat.

[00:01:17] If I showed you below this level, you probably say I should. But then so what's going to be interesting today is you've written books, you've got all sorts of expertise in a particular subject I'm fascinated in. Front edge of science a little bit now, although it's becoming a little bit more mainstream, but can't wait to talk a bit more. But first of all, why don't you just tell us a little bit about yourself? Yes. So I'm Dr. Alexandra Soa. I am an obesity medicine physician.

[00:01:40] I am dual boarded in internal medicine and obesity medicine, and I've been practicing for over 10 years in my specialty. I am also a mom to four little humans. So I am pretty busy over here. What else can I tell you? I actually you like this. I actually before I went to medical school, I went to the Central School of Speech and Drama, and I have a master's degree in theater.

[00:02:07] So that's an unexpected twist to my journey of going to a doctor. But it's actually something that I take with me in all of my patient encounters. I think I learned to really respond and to listen and to really be centered in what I was doing. So I loved my time in London. Oh, you were in London. Oh, I didn't realize you were in the London region.

[00:02:34] Oh, so basically, if we need to do this podcast and you need to do it in the style of a fried egg or you need to do some interpretive dance, we can join in together, can't we? I totally could. But you know what? There was something I realized when I did my education. I loved being creative and I loved the arts and I loved theater, but I didn't love it as much as all of my classmates. And I thought to myself, this probably isn't the right career path to me because I know it's going to be hard.

[00:03:00] And so what else do I what else have I loved and want to move forward with? And actually, that's how I ended up going into medicine. And in the United States, we have some. It's a little bit different than my understanding of how education works internationally. But when I was an undergrad, I actually had two majors. One was in the sciences and one was in the arts. So I was allowed to do both. And at a certain point I had to pick. But here I am 20 years later doing podcasts and writing books and out in the world.

[00:03:28] Yeah, it's an interesting theory because actually a lot of the arts really do support the sciences and backwards and forth and forth and such. It's that thing about whole brain stuff, which is a subject for another day. So you got into so being a physician such like. So why those two subjects other than the obvious thing that they there was that's a demand that's never going to go away. But why choose those subject areas? The subject of obesity medicine. Yeah.

[00:03:51] It really goes back to my early education and my interest in health was in public health and preventive health and global health. And I always wanted I was curious and how do we prevent disease progression?

[00:04:06] And so when I opted to go to medical school and treat the individual and work on with the one on one, I was still driven to prevent disease and not just treat end stage disease, which is where the majority of Western medicine focuses its energy is we treat you once you've been sick. And I didn't love that. And I wanted to be much more holistic in my practice, even though I embraced evidence based Western medicine.

[00:04:34] And then I found so I became pretty disillusioned, actually, in my training because I was like, oh, I thought there'd be a place for prevention and keeping people healthy, but I don't see it. And then I found this small emerging field. It was so small when I was training of obesity and metabolic health medicine. And the concept is we know that we can help a lot of end stage disease by encouraging people to get to a healthier weight and healthier metabolic health.

[00:05:03] And we've learned that the majority of chronic disease comes from metabolic dysfunction. So if I could help people achieve that earlier in their life and help them with actually fruitful weight management, not no yo dieting, but just helping them achieve weight loss once and for all, then I could really set people up for reduced disease and reversal of disease. And so when I found the field, it was really a no brainer for me.

[00:05:26] And I've never looked back and I frame everything I do for patients in this concept, this lens of how do we optimize your metabolic health for future disease prevention? And it's an astonishing thing, isn't it? One might argue that before you prevent, you have to stop being addicted first, don't you?

[00:05:42] And one of the challenges about the food industry is that it seems to have a vested interest in creating the conditions where people with the need or the physiology or whatever it might be to become obese, that are almost creating the need for the treatments, aren't they? So this idea of creating the need and giving people treatments is there. And that idea of prevention is really quite radical, isn't it?

[00:06:05] Because part of the prevention thing is to stop yourself getting addicted or caught up in the sort of marketing cycles in advance. And I think what's interesting about obesity has been there's been quite a sort of simplistic way about thinking about health and being in such a wish as calories in, calories out. And then there's been a huge number of diets and fads and trends and themes and such like about actually once you're large, this is how we get you small again.

[00:06:34] But then you're large again, so you become small again. So you're addicted, you're treated, and then you're on this sort of never-ending treadmill loop, aren't you? And it seems hard to know how you'd break that cycle. And this is why I wrote the book, The Ozempic Revolution, because it truly is the first thing we've had to really help break the cycle of constant oyo dieting and up and down and up and down.

[00:06:58] And what I think is very important for people to understand, and I walk people through in the book, is the science of obesity. Obesity is a disease, and it's very complex. And as you alluded to, it all stems from hormonal dysregulation, and it really has to do with the brain. So everyone thinks obesity is about movement and food, but really it's neurohormonal dysregulation. And our brain has become broken by the environment around us.

[00:07:27] It's multifactorial. It is the type of food we eat. It is the environment we live in. It's the toxins in the air. It's the microplastics we consume. It is many things. Something very specific happened around 1980, where we went from having a steady population of people who are about 10% to 15% of the population did suffer from obesity. That was genetic.

[00:07:49] And then around 1980, it just started skyrocketing and has gone up every year since until very recently we saw a small downtick, likely due to the GLP-1 medications. And around 1980, we started making ultra-processed food to feed many people. And there was a bit of a food sourcing crisis. And there was also the ability to make packaged foods and put it on shelves and bring prices down, and there were corn subsidies.

[00:08:17] And that is likely the root cause. And so you are correct in what you are saying is that, and I think this is very important for people to understand, we have the disease of obesity. We need to treat that differently than we treat prevention. We need to focus on prevention for future generations. In the here and now, just focusing on food source and exercise is not going to help us actually resolve the obesity epidemic.

[00:08:45] Because time and time again, we show that just eating better, exercising more, and trying to make people rely on the concept of willpower, it just doesn't work. And that is because these hormones take over. And I think it's very important for people to understand that. That's fascinating. You sparked at least 73 questions in my head as you were chatting there. And as a result, I can't remember the single one I was thinking about. But you said something really significant there about ultra-high-processed food and obesity.

[00:09:12] And I think the thing that's interesting about your obesity, there's a correlation with cancers, with lack of longevity in life, with all sorts of different issues around being dementias, all that sort of stuff. And I think the World Cancer Foundation implied that 40% of all cancers were directly or indirectly attributed to weight and health and fitness. So that's quite interesting. That's why it matters. Never mind the social impacts and the well-being things. But I like the way you're talking about this.

[00:09:42] Because I think a lot of people are characterized as being just fat, greedy people because you're overweight. And it's a thing. And it's the thing that's out there. And there are people who overeat. And there are people who are overeating. And it's not a disease. It is just a way of life, for example. And it's that classic thing about everyone being characterized by the people who actually need the help. So we end up with this vast majority of people who are talking about being obese, but they're not actually in that cycle of the illness.

[00:10:11] They can actually cure things with willpower. So we can focus. Even in the example, though, of people overeating and they're just responsible, there may be something underlying it where it's not as easy as just saying stop, right? So we have binge eating disorder. That is a disease. That's true. We have. And also, is it not also just a product of the environment? I often talk about my grandmothers. I write about them in the book. They are an inspiration behind why I'm in this field. I come from a family of hardy stock.

[00:10:40] And my grandmothers both were clinically obese and died from obesity-related complications at the end of their life. And they tried very hard their whole lives to lose weight. And they were always talking about the next best diet. And my grandmother talks about when she was a child, they didn't have processed food. Her mother made one little piece of cake, one cake on Sundays. And they'd have it for the whole week. And they had five children. And she was overweight even from childhood. And her siblings weren't. And she had a lot of food.

[00:11:08] And she had a lot of food. And there was no access to bunches of food to overeat. Had she had access to even hyper-palatable, ultra-processed foods, she probably would have wanted to eat that and eat that. And I think that's an example of it's the environment around us that often will allow us to just make epigenetics and the environmental storm around us even worse. So I wouldn't even go as far as to say that some people are just making the decision.

[00:11:37] I think it's driven by many things that we can't see and can be quite silent. Yeah. But we have to be careful not to over-medicalize the problem and say that everybody needs a drug. Oh, no. I'm not saying that at all. But I also think that what we need to say is that how do we determine medicalized? Should we also be looking at the fact that, I think this would interest you, many cases of adult obesity stem from adverse childhood events.

[00:12:04] So we need to be looking at the root cause of why someone is reacting in a certain way and how do we treat that earlier. And I don't think everyone needs a blanket medication by no means, but I think we need to be looking differently at how we actually medicate. And often that's through food and alcohol and things that aren't great. Yes, that's the self-soothing thing that food can give you. That's interesting. So you're going to talk to us about a Zen pick list today. It's a drug everyone's talking about. You've written a book about it. We'll get into it.

[00:12:30] And it's a source of much amusement in these parts because I think it's the patent or the drug companies is in the Scandinavian lands. Is it nowhere? Sweden. Isn't it Denmark, in fact? Because there's talk of any move on Greenland will produce a withdrawal of all of the Ozempic from the States, which will create all sorts of problems over there. I don't know what we would do over here without it. It would be very funny. I think some of us are quite looking forward to that. It'd be very amusing.

[00:12:56] But let's talk a little bit about Ozempic and GLP and what it is and then maybe a little bit about how it works. And then I know it's all covered in the book, but it's nice for us to be able to get to grips with it here. Yeah. GLP-1 medications cover this. It's a class of drugs that have been around since 2005, actually. The newer iterations have gotten all of the attention, the weekly versions of the medication, the Ozempic, Wegovi.

[00:13:25] And we now have newer versions that don't just have GLP-1 in it, but also have GIP. And we hear those as Manjaro and Zepbound. So to take a step back, what are they? These medications are synthetic versions of a hormone that naturally occurs in our body. And I talk about this in the book when we talk about the hormones that become dysregulated. GLP-1 hormone is part of this balance of what should keep our body in a normal energy state. So a lean energy state.

[00:13:55] We eat the food we need to eat. We process it efficiently. And then we go on. But as we've talked about, the world around us and our habits in this world and our response to it have led to an energy imbalance. And where our hormones become really broken inside of us and they don't respond in the same way. So we develop resistance to the hormones that are supposed to balance the ledger. So we develop insulin resistance, which is better known. Leptin resistance.

[00:14:25] Leptin resistance actually causes damage in the brain when we see this hyperpalatable food over and over again and really becomes quite addicted. And leptin resistance develops. And then we also have resistance to our native hormones like GLP-1. And the medication is thousands of times stronger than our native hormone. And this is why it is so effective. And it works in three big ways. It talks to our brain.

[00:14:55] It talks to our gut. And it talks to our pancreas and helps manage our blood sugar. And this is why we see such amazing blood sugar stability and its use in type 2 diabetes management. And its coordination effort all over our body also leads to very significant weight loss averages that are on par sometimes with bariatric surgery. And this is why this has been such a revolutionary class of medications.

[00:15:22] It should be noted that, and I really want people to hear this, there are a lot of supplements. And I don't know if you're seeing this over in the UK too, but in the US we're starting to see things that are like naturally boost your GLP-1 and gut boosters. Those don't work.

[00:15:40] And the reason that they don't work is because the synthetic version of the hormone lasts weeks in your system versus the natural GLP-1 that lasts seconds. Right. And so that's the big difference. The synthetic version is very close to what our body makes, but it's just much stronger. And a good analogy for people to understand how this works is if you have or know someone with hypothyroidism.

[00:16:05] So if your thyroid stops responding to the hormones in its body, in your body, telling it to make the appropriate level of thyroid hormone, we have to supplement you with synthetic hormone that takes its place. And you likely will need that indefinitely to support your thyroid. And it's the same thing with GLP-1 medications. Okay. You have given me tons to talk about that.

[00:16:30] Is it the case that actually the medicine was created for diabetes treatment and this sort of obesity or the weight loss thing was like a side effect, a bit like the Viagra effect? Is that true? Yes. So we first realized its use for managing blood sugar. And then in clinical trials, you started to see, unlike the majority, the first generation of type 2 diabetes management drugs where there would be weight gain, you would give someone insulin and you would see significant weight gain. We actually started to see loss.

[00:16:59] And this is what happens in many clinical trials and how drugs are developed. It's used for one reason. And then you start to see that it has use in other areas. Okay. So that's good. It's always nice to know that sometimes the unintended consequences are more significant than the basic thing. Okay. So I'm going to ask you an obvious question now, but I think it's an obvious question needs to be asked. So I hear lots of people self-medicating with Ozempic. This is a really bad idea. Tell me why. This is why I wrote the book because I was starting to see the same thing in the United States.

[00:17:29] People are like, okay, I need to lose weight. I'll just get this drug. What people don't realize is that in order to achieve health on this medication, which is the goal, this really is the goal. The goal is not thinness on the medication. And most people who need to use this for weight loss, they will not achieve a place of thinness that is considered desirable, but they will achieve health. And the medication is not a magic wand.

[00:17:52] And you could do yourself a real disservice by just going on the medication and not understanding what you need to do to get to health. And so in the book, I walk people through the foundations that I've perfected in my practice of treating thousands of people. That starts with habits, real strong habits of how to set yourself up for success and then moving into how to eat so that we maintain muscle mass and we minimize side effects and that we're looking at this holistically.

[00:18:19] And then the most important part, I think, is working on your brain because your brain is one of the most complicated self-sabotaging aspects of long-term weight management and long-term health changes. And we are only human. And so it's very important that people are prepared for what their brain is going to tell them and what things that they're going to need, questions they're going to get from friends. And they need to identify their values in this.

[00:18:49] Why are you doing this? And I think that's overlooked here. And I get worried that people are saying, I'm just taking this with my own dosing protocol and I'm going to self-manage this. And they're skipping over, why are you here in the first place? What do your labs show? What is your true metabolic health? Do you have things like sleep apnea? Is there underlying childhood trauma that we need to address? We need to be looking at the whole of a person and not just give them a shot. Yeah.

[00:19:19] Because I don't know if this is true or not. I'm guessing that you, and I know people who've had it, I'm guessing that they had it and then they stopped. It's not a lifetime problem, is it? Sorry, it's not a lifetime solution. It seems to be something that actually helps you almost stem the tide so you can put these new and good habits into place. Yes, but no. Yes. So these medications aren't just appetite suppressants.

[00:19:48] And that's the amazing thing about them. They actually give people the bandwidth in their brain, if you've heard people talk about this, to make the habit changes. And you just need to know what to do and they will do them. Their brain for the first time will tell them, I actually want to eat whole foods and I want to eat broccoli and lean proteins. And I'm happy with that. And now that I'm losing weight, I actually, and I'm not constantly thinking about food, I'm going to get myself up and go to the gym. And people will tell you that they are just given a clarity in how to live on these medications.

[00:20:17] With that said, the vast majority of people who achieve success on these medications, 95% will need to stay on the medications to continue with their weight loss, their blood sugar management, and all of their habit changes that they put into effect. And even if they do all of those things, if they're working out, if they're eating perfectly,

[00:20:42] they will still likely gain weight because their body had become dysregulated and deficient in that hormone. And that's why we need to start it in the first place. So the hormone dysregulation becomes permanent in a sense, which is so the drug constantly manages the gap between dysregulation and sort of a steady state. And that's really hard for people to wrap their heads around. I think people better understand it when I describe it, like in terms of treating hypothyroidism,

[00:21:09] or if you have high cholesterol and your doctor asks you to go on a statin for prevention, it's the same concept. In the majority of cases, sometimes lifestyle will allow you to treat and then come off the drug. But in the majority of the cases, people need to be prepared that they will be staying on this. And that's another reason that people shouldn't be self-medicating, because if you're going on it and off of it, then in essence, you're just using this medication to help yourself with your diet,

[00:21:34] which we know is actually more harmful to your body than not. Yeah, you really are messing with your hormone system then if you're going off and on it. Okay, so many questions. So I'm glad you're at the book, because I'm going to be buying it in a minute. I thought I was going to get a free copy, but I'm going to have to spend money. I don't know how you didn't get one. I'm sorry. We'll get it to you. That's okay. I forgot what I was going to say. So I've been looking at research and such like around GLP.

[00:22:00] And what's interesting is that now it's starting to be used for other things other than obesity and diabetes. There's actually some work going on around Alzheimer's, dementia, and all these other things. And I'm wondering whether it's going to knock out whole classes of other drugs. I wonder what you think about that. Well, it may. It may well do that. But I will caution.

[00:22:23] We are in the early stages of many diseases where we use GLP-1s. Now, I will say that with a caveat. We do know that actually GLP-1 usage improves sleep apnea. There's kidney protection. There's heart disease and peripheral vascular disease prevention, stroke prevention. We have a lot of FDA approvals for diseases other than the original two indications.

[00:22:51] So I think we will get more, especially in the field of Alzheimer's. But we're really early in the stages of deciding whether or not this is good for general prevention or if you have specific genetics or specific metabolic use criteria. Right now, where we're seeing the benefit is actually in people with the disease. And it's slowing progression in a large percentage.

[00:23:17] And that's very exciting because we haven't had a lot of breakthroughs in the treatment of dementia and Alzheimer's. But I do see that being extrapolated out into the world where people are like, I should just go on it now. And we don't know that's actually going to do anything for you. And there must be risks. There must be issues of taking it. There must be people who can't take it, for example. Mm-hmm. It's generally a very well-tolerated drug, even though the headlines might have you think otherwise. The way it works, we talked about its effect on the brain and the gut.

[00:23:46] A byproduct of that are some side effects, specifically gastrointestinal. You'll have nausea. You'll have occasionally vomiting. That's very rare. Some constipation, diarrhea, and some fatigue. And generally, those things wane over time. And especially if you know how to manage them. I have a whole chapter in the book dedicated to how to get ahead of your side effects and know what's kind of normal. It's so well-tolerated that actually, I'm not saying this is best practice, but there really aren't any labs that we need to check.

[00:24:15] It's not harmful to the kidneys or harmful to the liver. There are specific metabolite abnormalities that we see with it. And that makes it unusual, actually, because generally most medications long-term, you need to check what's going on. We tend to see only positives on your lab results. But there are things that happen when we lose a lot of weight. You can get gallstones. That's not the drug causing gallstones, but the gallstones can cause problems. And that in turn can cause more problems. And so we need to be on the lookout for that.

[00:24:44] We avoid this class of drugs in people with a very specific family history of endocrine tumors called MEN type 2 and medullary thyroid cancers. There is a lot of fear that these drugs cause increased thyroid cancers. They don't. We are screening more for thyroid lumps and bumps now that so many people are on these medications and they're seeing potentially just a higher rate of diagnosis, but it's not a peer correlatory.

[00:25:14] We have to keep studying these drugs because we will find small little pockets of populations that might have some side effects. And I think that's the risk here of just self-medicating is that we always need to make sure that the benefit here outweighs any risk, even if it is small. Interesting. So my understanding is it's an injection, is it? It's not a pill. It's mostly an injection. So right now, semagulatide and trazepatide are weekly injectable medications and those

[00:25:43] get the most attention because they're the most efficacious for both weight management and blood sugar control. We have pill versions. They're not used widely yet. And we have more better, more efficacious, better tolerated pill forms in development. And that will hopefully bring the costs down of these drugs. Yeah. Okay. That's interesting. Interesting. So if I, so basically you're a practicing doctor, you're in the States.

[00:26:09] This is great in the States, but it's slightly more tricky over here because of course we have a national health service with the budget and I know the drug is approved. Is it a situation where you go to your doctor and you say, Hey, these are my symptoms. I'm obese and I've got a problem with blood sugar. Can I have some of a Zen pick? Or do you rock up to your doctor's surgery and say, I'm desperate for a Zen pick. What do I need to do? How big do I need to be to get it? Of course, an Zen pick might not be the actual answer that you're looking for.

[00:26:38] So what's the best way to get the best results from your doctor on this? That's a great question. I think that in the United States, I always say if your doctor gives you pushback and you're pretty certain you meet criteria and would benefit, then you need to find a specialist and someone who understands. As this drug has become better understood and we see the downstream health benefits, I think more and more doctors are becoming willing to understand about the drug and prescribe it. I think doctors also want to hear that you're willing to do the work.

[00:27:06] Like you're like, I read the Ozempic Revolution and I'm doing the habits and I'm doing the food. And a lot of times, unfortunately in the past, I feel like doctors would not, they wouldn't believe people. And they were saying, look, I'm doing everything I possibly can. And I haven't changed anything about my food and my intake and I'm exercising more and I'm just gaining weight. And I think a lot of people were blown off and I don't think patients deserve that. So if you feel like you're doing the right things or you really can't do anything more,

[00:27:32] it's time to really talk about how can medications help you achieve health? Interesting. So your website is getsowell.com and on it, you also have a bunch of, oh, who's that person? There you go. It looks like you. You've got all sorts of other things like electrolytes and other sort of products, fibers as well. Is that because you need to balance other things or does it, is it having an effect on your fiber or your electrolytes where you need to do something with that?

[00:28:01] So I discovered early on in my practice, and again, I was one of the early adopters of GLP-1s in this country because I had the specialty training. I discovered that my patients needed a protocol, a supplement protocol to help them minimize side effects. And then all of our societies have come out with studies saying, look, people need hydration, they need added fiber, and they really need to prioritize their protein. But because people's appetites are so suppressed at the beginning of this journey, and generally

[00:28:30] appetite comes back, and that's normal, and I tell people about that, don't panic. The medication will still work. But at the beginning, not only is your hunger decreased, but your thirst mechanism is shut off too. And so you don't feel well if you're dehydrated. You don't feel well if you're not getting in protein, and you'll lose muscle over fat. And so I developed, it's called the SoWell GLP-1 support system. We're not available in the UK yet, but we're available in retail in the US and on our website.

[00:28:58] And it really helps people stick to the habits. We have it in little stick packs intentionally, because people forget so much as to eat breakfast on this medication. And so you'll, it'll be like 11 o'clock, one o'clock, and you'll be like, I haven't anything to drink. Okay. I got my electrolytes. I got my big water. I'm going to at least get a pack of protein in. And I'm a fan of whole foods, but I'm also a person rooted in reality. And I've treated so many patients that I know that not everyone is going to get up and cook themselves two scrambled eggs because one, they really just might not have the appetite for it.

[00:29:29] And two, they're rushing out the door. And so we meet people where they are with these products. I'm really, as a person and as a physician, I'm on a mission to help destigmatize the use of these medications and to destigmatize treatment of obesity. And these products are part of it. I made them specifically for GLP-1 users. And I didn't want them, I didn't want them to feel like they were taking their grandma's like fiber supplement. I didn't want them to have to hide and be shameful of the fact that they're on these

[00:29:55] meds, which people have had, have felt like for so long, but we're entering a new territory where people are, oh, no, this is just treatment for anything else. That's absolutely fascinating. So you've written a book. It's on your website. It's called The Ozempic Revolution. It's by Dr. Alexandra Sower, because that's your name. Why did you write it? I wrote it with HarperCollins and we are being, we were released in the UK this month, which is exciting.

[00:30:20] I wrote it because I saw this misconception that the medication was a magic wand and that people weren't being educated properly in the doctor's offices because honestly, the majority of doctors don't know too much about these drugs and how to help people on them. And I thought, listen, I have this knowledge and I've been using them for over 10 years, these medications. I'm going to put everything, my framework, my SO methodology, as I call it, and I put it into the book.

[00:30:47] I've always been a big believer that the patient deserves to be a full participant in their care. And I think traditional medicine has been because I said so, not here is the back and forth conversation. And so this book is that. This book helps you understand if you're a good candidate for it, how obesity works, how the drugs work, what you will need to do to be successful on them. It's also for the person who's been on the medications and is feeling like they haven't had all the support.

[00:31:17] They're feeling a little stalled. They're feeling a little lost on it. And it's also for anyone who knows somebody on these medications, because I think often people will come from a place of fear. If their sister, their best friend, their husband is on these meds and they're like, wait, do I support them? What do I think? How do I help them? And so this book goes through patient journeys. It goes through the science and it really just helps you become an informed participant in your care. Interesting. Just when you're chatting there, I thought I'd have a quick look on Amazon and see if

[00:31:47] it's easy to find it. It's on there on Amazon. There are other people who've written books also called The Zen Pig Revolution, but that's very naughty, isn't it? Let me tell you, they're all knockoffs. Make sure you buy Alexander Soa. That's what I was going to say. Because the book has done well. This is crazy. It's whack-a-mole. They're all these AI-generated books. I have no idea what's in them and they look like mine. I'm glad you said that because there's cookbooks and diet plans and all sorts of old stuff. And a book even written, a cookbook inspired by you.

[00:32:17] Yes, it's not. It's not. And we're trying our best to get off Amazon, but it's like a huge battle. It's nuts. So make sure you're buying the right thing. So I think that's the point I was going to make. So that's great. What else should I be asking you? We know where to get the book because it's on Amazon. I've just told you that. And there's all other bookshops. And I know you can get it from your website, but you can get it straight on Kindle. It's much, I'm not going to say it's much cheaper, but anyways. Also, you can get it on audiobook. I did do the recording.

[00:32:46] And I think that it often, I've had people, it's the best compliment. People have been getting it on both audio and buying the hard copy because they said it's like an instruction in their ear and they can just take it on the go. But then also to have the reference of the hard copy has been very helpful to them. I've been so honored that so many clinicians are using it now as part of their practice because most doctors don't have the bandwidth, the time or the knowledge to give this full education.

[00:33:14] And so they're just writing it along with their prescription, which I think is so great. So it's been nice. It's been nice to have such a great reception because I'll tell you, I was a little bit fearful and I still have naysayers and I have people on Reddit coming after me and saying that this is like shilling a diet or something. And if anyone reads the book, there's, this is not a diet book at all. This is a health book and this is an information book and it's a guide to success on these medications.

[00:33:42] So I'm happy that the world has turned to a place that they're willing to embrace a conversation around this topic. And there are other people like Dr. Peter at here, who has got a massive podcast, who talks about this sort of stuff. And I think your approach is really great because what you're trying to do is lay the science out to give people the information to make informed decisions. All right. I think I could ask you another 53,000 questions, but I'm just going to be respectful of your time today and say I probably shouldn't. It's been an absolute joy to talk to you.

[00:34:11] I've learned so much and it's been fascinating. And I suspect this won't be the first book you write. And I suspect we may see each other in the future on the launch of the second, perhaps. What about that? Well, see, first I need a nap. But I have to say, I'm sorry, I hope this is not trivializing it, but in the audio book with your fantastic training and drama and speech, I mean, you didn't do a scene in the doctor's surgery when you were doing all the voices, did you? Because that would have been awesome. I didn't.

[00:34:37] But the editors behind the audio book, they were like, wow, we don't have doctors who are able to do it in one take. And I was like, thank you. My degree was worth it. Brilliant. Look, it's been an absolute pleasure. GetSoWell.com. Dr. Alexandra Soa. Go and get the book. Go get fit. Go get healthy. Go on. And you can find me on social at Alexandra Soa MD. And I'm pretty good to respond over there too. Oh, you're really? Okay. There you go.

[00:35:06] Any other plugs we need to get in before we head off? I think that's it. Alexandra's been great. Thank you so much for joining me tonight. It's been an absolute education. I've really enjoyed myself. You take care. Hi, I hope you found that episode useful and entertaining. If you want to support our work, please go to resilienceunravel.com and you can become a member there as well. You can also send us a question there and even apply to do a podcast.

[00:35:34] You can also leave a review on Apple Podcasts or any of the other podcast hosts of your choice, as well as getting hold of some useful resources about resilience and a whole lot more. Join us next time on the next edition of Resilience Unraveled.