Adam Torres and Dr. Eldad Einav discuss weight loss.
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Show Notes:
What are the recent changes contributing to the weight loss revolution? In this episode, Adam Torres and Dr. Eldad Einav, CEO & Founder of myW8, explore the weight loss industry including medication such as Ozempic.
About Dr. Eldad Einav
Dr. Eldad Einav is an NYU-trained, board-certified cardiologist and a Diplomate of the American Board of Obesity Medicine. He is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology and a member of the Obesity Medicine Association.
Currently located in Beverly Hills, Dr. Einav still serves as the Director of Cardiometabolic Health at Lourdes Ascension in Binghamton, NY. Having years of experience in both Cardiology and Obesity care, Dr. Einav provides life-changing weight loss results to many of his patients.
About myW8
Offering a cardiologist-led, evidence-based weight loss program with a focus on achieving meaningful cardiometabolic health benefits. The program boasts an exceptional medical lineup, including a Cardiologist and obesity specialist, registered dietitian, certified health coach, and exercise physiologist. Their combined knowledge creates a comprehensive strategy tailored to your heart’s wellness.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. Okay, so today my guest is Dr. Enav, Dr. Eldad Enav, and he’s the CEO and founder over at MyWay in Beverly Hills, California, and he’s also Medical Director at Lords Ascension.
Dr. Enav, welcome to the show. Hi, thank you for having me. All right. So I’m excited about today’s topic. So really the weight loss revolution with new, highly effective medical treatments. And I’m excited to get into that. And just to get us kicked off here, maybe give us a little bit of an overview of how you got involved and how you got into the entrepreneurship side and founding my weight.
Sure. I’m a cardiologist and I’m also an obesity. A medicine specialist, and I got into obesity years ago because I think obesity is directly related to cardiovascular risk. And so I’ve been doing obesity medicine for a while, and I had my own private practice and alongside my, day job as a doctor as a full time cardiologist in upstate New York and at some point They asked me to join the hospital and build their weight loss program so I sold my practice to the hospital and I Started working for them.
And then I moved I relocated to California to Los Angeles and then I started my own practice and my vision is to Change the care for a overweight and obese. Usually it’s been an industry of vanity weight loss, but now that we have highly effective treatment, we know that we can revolutionize the health and the heart health and the metabolic health of people and do it for health reasons, not just to get into a dress, but really a, It’s a game changer.
And so what I like that you bring that up because I feel like sometimes the weight loss industry kind of sometimes gets a bad rap, right? Maybe let’s talk about earlier in the years, but what people don’t understand is that like, not always because of media is that it’s, it’s more than just. It’s like, there’s, you know, it’s, it’s health, it’s, you know maybe give a little bit of a vantage point from your side of things, like the medical benefits of like the epidemic, right?
Of what, what we’re in right now. Oh yeah. I mean, the epidemic is, is really concerning because Almost two thirds of the American population are in either overweight or obese. and the trend is still going up. There’s no there’s no reduction in weight or even.
You know, recent surveys have shown that this is still a very big concern and the cost for health care and and the cost in terms of a the health consequences for people so that can really. Take off years of life. It depends how much weight you have on and on. If you have excess weight, then it’s related to heart attack, stroke, cancer, liver disease, pulmonary disease, you name it, everything.
It’s really, really affecting everything. And of course, the cost, but the effect on your health and quality of life. Is really tremendous, and we didn’t have a silver bullet for it until recently, and I do want to go into that. But before we do, I want to go a little bit further into the problem, because I don’t want to assume that people know, like, so what, what do you, what do you think some of the contributing factors are that lead to this, like, continual, like, you know, increase in weight, and, Over time, like what are some of the, I mean, I mean systemically by the way, I mean, as a system, not necessarily one person.
Right? Well, I can talk an hour about all the . Gimme a little, gimme a little hint. It’s multifactorial. Mm-Hmm. There’s so many issues, and it’s not only, I mean, yes, there is genetics and yes. Mm-Hmm. there is a, what we call a nature part of it, but. The nurture part of it is the environmental factors are huge and the industrial world is, is is good in providing more nutrition.
We actually have now. We used to have an issue getting food, now we have an issue resisting food. Right. And cheese could be, wow. That’s, that’s, that’s something to think about. I just gotta pause there for a second. That’s, that’s something to think about. Go ahead. Go ahead please. . Yeah, I mean, don’t forget weight was years ago.
I mean, we’re talking about centuries. It used to be only. A problem of the rich, right? Yeah. People didn’t have weight on and you can see that. So the affluent always had the, you see paintings of people that are more chubby and have excess weight. These are the, the aristocrats. The wealthy people, yeah.
Yeah, the wealthy. But now, People with disadvantage, poor people are the one who suffer from excess weight more and we can talk about. So there’s a huge disparity here because there are less. They’ve been less educated about it. They have less access to food. They have less access to physical activity.
They have less access. To a lot of things that make them more susceptible for obesity, but it’s, it’s, but, you know, the food industry also has a role here because the food industry is not for bad. You know, they don’t have bad intentions, but they want to make money, right? They want to make, so if they want, if they produce like a yogurt, they want the yogurt to taste better.
, and how do they make it taste they add sugar to it and all sorts of stuff that are not necessarily good for you. And this has made the food industry We produce what we call hyper palatable foods, and these are highly processed food that, you know, that you eat it and you say, wow, this is so good.
So, almost like an addiction, right? So when you eat it, you want more. Yeah. Yeah. So this is part of obesogenic environment. the hyper palatable and processed food is part of it. And it’s, it’s going on. And you see, even for kids that the. The yogurt has a lot of added sugar into it.
And if you now remove the sugar, people don’t want to eat it because it’s not tasty anymore. I mean, cucumber doesn’t have a taste and vegetables are. It’s kind of not attractive anymore, but if you wow, I never thought about that. So part of that is because your taste buds have gone, like they’ve been eating this hyper, you said hyper palatable food.
Cause I want to add that to my lexicon hot. What was that term again? Hyper pellet. I don’t, I don’t have, I didn’t have that one before. For you today, I can tell you, these are the foods that you eat and you say, wow, this is like fireworks in palatable food. We should have that. We should have this tomato sauce that has tomato, more, more, more salt, more, more, all sorts of additives that make it yummy.
Right? And You know, I like food, but I’m just talking about how people consume more and more food in the ones that are less healthy because they taste better. They’re also. Comforting and, and that goes, but there are other causes of a obesity in the environment. Like, for example, the walkability.
I mean, a lot of people don’t walk anymore. they have, they go even to pick up the mail. they go with a car and, I have to use a Fitbit tracker. I mean, they’re not, they’re not paying me by the way, but I, I got to use one of those because if not, I’ll, catch myself. Cause I, you know, I don’t, I’m, I record all day.
So that’s not a lot of moving. I mean, I have a standing desk, but even walking back and forth, talking right now, how many steps can I really get? Right. So if if I don’t track it, like I’m done, I’ll go a whole day with like 2000 steps. And it’s like, yeah, that’s not. You’re not going to be too well if you do that lifestyle has become so sedentary and we used to walk and we more back in the day we used to we didn’t have remote control even to the tv people.
I actually walked to the TV to change channels. Oh yeah, to turn it. Can you imagine that? Yeah. The youngins right now. Hold on. The youngins that are listening to this right now are like, what is he talking about? That’s impossible. It was true. It was true. That was in my lifetime. Believe me. I’m not that old.
Mine too. Mine too. I mean, you tell it to Gen Z, they will say, no, you must be kidding people like walking all the way to the TV to change channel. Yes, that happens. And, you know, all these movements, all this lifestyle is, these are all things that add up. They add up to even, even, believe it or not, even a, AC everywhere and climate control.
We didn’t use to have that. And you know, the body needs energy to get rid of heat, to make yourself warmer. So now everything is optimized. Every office has the. optimal temperature, right? God forbid it’s a little bit too hot or a little bit too cold. then we’re not gonna, we’re gonna be uncomfortable.
So we have we always take the elevator or the escalator and so on. So these are part of it. This is to answer your question. What is the obesogenic environment and what causes obesity? But this is, so, It’s all these factors together. Mm hmm. I wanted to set the table. Come on.
I’m at a lot of little pun or two here. All right. I wanted to set the table for this feast. All right. So now we’re talking about the weight loss revolution. Now there, there’s some treatment for this, right? Like there’s some changes, but let’s go into that part of it. Yes. So we have decades and decades of a diet culture, right?
People would say, if you do this, if you exercise, if you eat diet and every, you know, depends what’s the diet is your, it could be low carb, it could be high carb, could be plant based, could be, could be intermittent fasting, could be All this, if you do that, and not to talk about magazine diets, lose 20 pounds in this weekend and look great.
And people think that if they follow a diet and if they change their exercise regimen, It will solve the problem. And, you know, it does, it can do it short term. The problem is maintaining this weight. And most people cannot maintain weight loss, even with the best lifestyle intervention. And why there are many reasons why it’s hard to keep the weight off both biological, as I said, nature and nurture, but the fact of the matter, and it’s backed up was by science.
The majority, yes, there are people that can read a book, they can get inspired by someone, and they can shed weight and keep it off for years and years and years. I call them the unicorns of weight loss. I was just going to say the unicorns, the mythical beasts, whatnot. Yeah, yeah, these are unicorns. We’re talking about most of the population, and you know that.
Most people wanted to lose weight. They try doing it and they gain it back, and sometimes even gain more. That is the problem, and this is what caused culture. And people start feeling deceived about it. It is made them feel bad about their body. They are criticizing themselves. They are scrutinizing their Body there, and it’s really the results were terrible, both in the actual results of weight reduction, whether that was not achieved, but also.
And the psychological effect off culture and you can listen to that people it contributed to eating disorders and all sorts of problems because of this. A cycle of a, it’s called weight cycling, right? And also it’s linked to bad, a bad health outcome. So, and we did have. So, what is the solution for that?
We couldn’t do that with any, any. Intervention. So, so they tried multiple medications. What would be the perfect silver bullet for that? And over the years, they have a lot of agents that were used and tried most of them were. Withdrawn from the market because of all sorts of concerns, mostly cardiovascular concerns, they made people die more or go way back when.
Yeah, I was reading about like Orson Welles. I was reading his biography recently and he was talking about his early days when actors needed to. Lose weight, right? Like they’re what they were feeding them and like to do it quickly. And I was like, yeah, it was dangerous time way back. Thank you. So they had, they use them sediments.
They use all sorts of agents. You’re if you remember, there was in the nineties was that sense and craze. Oh, yeah. Yes, I do remember that. Huh. So the fence in and it’s pretty effective, not as effective as, as, as really as, as today’s medications, but it was more effective than the, the previous ones, but it caused a cardiovascular harm.
So it was withdrawn from the market and there are a bunch of others that withdrawn because of heart problems and for psychiatric problems and. We couldn’t get any drug that would really be a both effective and safe, right? Because we want you to lose weight, but we don’t want to harm you. And we don’t want you to make you.
You know, make you suffer a bad complication. Right? Of course, so recently, and we’re talking about over the last couple of decades there were, there was a development or the emergence of the new, a class of medications that’s that is called GLP 1 agonists, right?
So so those are a class of medications that mimic a, a gut hormone that is affecting both the gut and the brain. Make the gut move less or they. Stomach empty slower makes you full, right? You eat, makes you full. And also it affects the areas in the brain that are regulating hunger. Right. And by doing both and we achieve a very significant weight loss and what is the significant weight loss?
We are talking about 10 to 15 percent of your initial weight. So we didn’t have that before. And the news, really the change, the game change now is that know now that it’s not only effective or highly effective. We know that this is also safe. And not only that it’s not harming your health, it’s improving your health.
So there was a big study recently showing that if you take like somaglutide, which is one of those GLP 1 analogs in called Rigovir or Ozempic, depends on the indication. It is also improving your heart health, preventing heart attack and stroke. Wow. And this is, this is, this is really a game changer.
We never had, ever, a medication. This is the only and we told me about last November that we had this clinical trial published. Oh, wow. So that’s pretty that’s recent. Yeah, that’s very recent. And this is a, this is 1 of the. Big landmark trials that, you know, historically will be, you know, remembered as the trial that showed, yes, you can lose weight and a lot of weight with medications and this medication can cause you.
10 percent weight loss, or even 20 in some patients. Now they have terzapatite, which is Eli Lilly’s a Z bound or Monjaro. They have a little bit more efficacy of around 20 percent or even more. And now there are in the pipeline, there are like five drugs in the pipeline with similar mechanisms, a little bit different.
But the same type of class but we see all those 15, 20, 25, even more, 30%. So we’re starting getting to the point that medications could be almost as effective as bariatric surgery, almost, I think in the future. If I, if I had to, I mean, I’m, I’m not a prophet, but I think if you have the means and you have And also, if you can tolerate some of those medications, you can achieve whichever weight you would want to under supervision, right? You need to be under close supervision and you will be able to remove most of your excess Weight excess weight. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s, there’s a tricky here.
You need to lose fat and not muscle. You need to do it with the right medications. You need to do it with a doctor or close supervision. So, now, there’s a lot of. Bad players, quote unquote, that I just, I just what I call ozempic mills that just give this to everyone with very little medical supervision.
And those medications have a lot of side effects. This is the truth. And you need to really. Take care of the patient. You have to monitor them. You have to see them. Sometimes they can have a bad side effects. Sometimes it’s not getting there where they want. So and sometimes they get them, they lose too much and maybe muscle and they don’t get the healthy results.
So. It’s not like I, so now there are pharmacies that are sending those medications direct to consumers and and, and I don’t think it’s, it’s, I don’t think it’s safe. Maybe you can do it for cosmetic treatment, like like creams, like Minoxidil shampoo or whatever it is. But this is a little different.
This is a systemic. This is an injection. It’s a systemic treatment. It has serious side effects and you have to take it seriously. Well, Dr. Einav really appreciate you coming on the show today, and I know that’s our time with you. So that being said, if somebody wants to learn more about my weight and to continue the conversation or to learn more about your work, how do they do that?
Well, first of all, they can reach out to me through my website. It is my. W a dot com can send a contact form and I can them back. but in, just a quick overview, what I’m doing is I’m a cardiologist. So I treat you for weight loss to get the best results.
That science or clinical trials are showing us with a focus on your heart health and metabolic health and longevity and quality of life. And I do it with a lot. I have a registered dietitian in house. I am. doing a lot of a lot of a monitoring and visits and and I aim at not only weight loss is not only the quantity, but also the quality of the weight loss and also optimizing all the risk factors for heart disease and cardiovascular disease, but also for people that have heart problems, not only risk.
If they have heart failure or atrial fibrillation or coronary disease, they will benefit a lot from this type of weight loss. And it’s better to do it with a program that is more cardiocentric than just go to just a service that doesn’t really monitor you or. Or really knows what they’re doing.
Amazing. And we’ll, and for the audience, we’ll put that website in the show notes so that you can just click on the link and head right on over and connect with Dr. Anab and his team. And speaking of the audience. If this is your first time with Mission Matters or listen to an episode and you haven’t hit that subscribe button yet, I don’t know what you’re waiting for.
Hit that subscribe button. We have many more mission based individuals coming up on the line and we don’t want you to miss a thing. Dr. Anav, again, it has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
