This is the Catered Daily podcast for Friday, January 31st, 2025.

I'm Caleb Brown.

GLP ones are a popular weight loss drug.

Think Ozympic and Wigovie.

They may have potential to help those with drug and alcohol problems get more control over their cravings.

Nicholas Ravelle runs Casper, a group aimed at addressing addiction at scale.

He says the regulatory environment surrounding GLP-1s could be considerably more open to the needs of people suffering from addiction.

We spoke last week.

Nicholas, if you don't mind, give us a clear sense of what we know with some certainty about

GLP1s and their therapeutic value. Well, there's a lot of evidence now for high efficacy with low adverse events for diabetes, for weight loss,

for a bunch of other conditions, you know, related to those areas. And where my organization

works is on addiction medicine, breakthroughs in addiction medicine. And so one of the really remarkable things we're seeing

is that the same reduction in cravings for food

that people have experienced with GLP1s

and have led to the usage in obesity,

that same craving reduction also applies to alcohol,

other substances, opioids, stimulants, smoking, things like that.

And, you know, just to have some caution about this, what should we know about them before

doctors start telling their patients, you know, you really ought to consider these for this

other problem that you

are having.

Well, we need a lot more research focused in the addiction uses.

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