This Is My Journey | The GLP-1 Podcast

In the UK, a man born today can expect to live to seventy-nine, but only to stay in good health until around sixty-one. For women it's eighty-three, with good health also ending at around sixty-one. That's nearly two decades at the end of a life spent unwell, and according to the Office for National Statistics, healthy life expectancy has just fallen to its lowest level since records began. So many of us fix our eyes on a number on the scale, get there, and think the job is done. It isn't. The job was never the number. The job is those eighteen years. In this episode I'm joined by Dr Gareth Patterson, known to many of you as The Irish GP. A fellow Northern Irishman, Gareth trained at Queen's University Belfast before qualifying as a General Practitioner, and has spent the past four years working in primary care in London. Alongside his clinical work he has built one of the most trusted health education platforms online, covering disease prevention, lifestyle medicine, mental health and wellbeing, with one aim: giving people practical, evidence-based information so they can make informed decisions about their own health. We talk about what's really filling those years of poor health, and what healthy actually means once you've reached your goal. Gareth explains the numbers every adult should know about themselves and how to get them checked, why high blood pressure is so easy to miss, and what the free NHS Health Check does and doesn't catch. We look at whether type 2 diabetes remission is real and what it takes, why so many people are putting off cancer screening, how much strength training is actually enough, and which of sleep, alcohol and stress makes the biggest difference if you could only fix one. 🎙 Hosted by: Marc McKee 📍 Featuring: Dr Gareth Patterson, GP and creator of The Irish GP CONNECT WITH DR GARETH PATTERSON 📸 Instagram: @theirishgp 🎵 TikTok: @theirishgp CONNECT WITH MARC 📲 TikTok: @my.journey.with.marc 📸 Instagram: @my.journey.with.marc 📺 YouTube: @myjourneywithmarc 🎧 Podcast Instagram: @this.is.my.journey.podcast 🎧 Podcast: https://www.myjourneywithmarc.com/podcast SOURCES Office for National Statistics, "Health state life expectancies, UK: between 2011 to 2013 and 2022 to 2024", published 19 February 2026. Office for National Statistics, "National life tables: UK, 2022 to 2024", published 10 December 2025.

Nine point one per cent of adults in England now screen positive for a possible eating disorder. That's around four point two million people, up from six point four per cent in 2007, and among sixteen to twenty-four year olds it's one in five. Separately, a BMJ analysis pooling 281 studies across 36 countries found that around fourteen per cent of adults show signs of ultra-processed food addiction, the same rate as alcohol addiction. So when a medication quiets the voice that's been arguing with you since you were a teenager, what has actually just happened in your brain? And what happens when it comes back? In this episode I'm joined by Dr David McLaughlan, a Maudsley-trained consultant psychiatrist and one of the UK's leading voices on addiction. David is a visiting consultant at Priory Hospital Roehampton, UK Clinical Director at the Clean Slate Clinic, and Academic Secretary of the Royal College of Psychiatrists' Addictions Faculty. He co-founded and leads Curb, a digital therapeutic for people who want to change their relationship with alcohol, built on three years of Innovate UK-funded research and published in the British Journal of Psychiatry Open. He's also a three-time British Masters swimming gold medallist. We talk about what food noise actually is, psychologically and neurologically, and why it going quiet for the first time in adult life can feel emotional rather than just convenient. We ask whether food addiction holds up as a framing to an addiction psychiatrist, how the H.A.L.T. technique (hungry, angry, lonely, tired) can interrupt an urge in the moment, and what we actually know about people on GLP-1 medications drinking less. David explains what happens when food was doing a job, soothing, numbing or rewarding, and the medication takes it away, what his research on relapse tells us about how change really happens, the psychological work worth doing while the medication does its work, and how someone who spent thirty years believing their weight was a willpower failure can make peace with it. About Clean Slate Clinic David is UK Clinical Director at Clean Slate Clinic, a certified social enterprise and member of Social Enterprise UK that helps people change their relationship with alcohol. It runs a doctor-led alcohol detox programme you can do safely at home, with daily clinical check-ins through detox week, followed by ongoing aftercare and recovery support for the rest of the year. The service is registered with the Care Quality Commission. Social enterprises put their mission first, and they rely on people hearing about them. If anything in this episode struck a chord, for you or for someone you love, have a look at what they do and give them a follow. 🌐  Website: https://cleanslateclinic.co.uk 📸  Instagram: @cleanslateclinic 👍  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Cleanslateclinic 📞  Phone: 0203 835 4705 🎙  Hosted by: Marc McKee 📍  Featuring: Dr David McLaughlan, consultant psychiatrist and co-founder of Curb Connect with Dr David McLaughlan 📸  Instagram: @drdavidmclaughlan 📲 Contact: [email protected] 🔗  Clean Slate Clinic: https://cleanslateclinic.co.uk/ 🏥  Priory Hospital Roehampton: https://www.priorygroup.com/consultants/dr-david-mclaughlan Connect with Marc 📲  TikTok: @my.journey.with.marc 📸  Instagram: @my.journey.with.marc 📺  YouTube: @myjourneywithmarc 🎧  Podcast Instagram: @this.is.my.journey.podcast 🎧  Podcast: https://www.myjourneywithmarc.com/podcast Sources NHS England Digital, Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey 2023/24, Chapter 13, published 27 November 2025. Gearhardt AN et al., "Social, clinical, and policy implications of ultra-processed food addiction", The BMJ, 9 October 2023.

Last October researchers presented one of the largest studies ever done on this. Nearly 548,000 matched pairs, comparing people on GLP-1 medication against people who were not. At twelve months, the GLP-1 group had 76 per cent higher odds of telogen effluvium, the shedding kind of hair loss, and 40 per cent higher odds of non-scarring hair loss overall. The telling detail is what happened at six months. The signal wasn’t there yet. It only appeared at twelve. Which is exactly what you would expect if the trigger is the speed of the weight loss rather than the medication itself. In this episode I’m joined by Dr Aamna Adel, a London-based consultant dermatologist who specialises in hair loss in both adults and children, and who is communications lead for the British Hair and Nail Society. She qualified with distinction from Barts and The London, trained in dermatology at Oxford University Hospitals, and practises at 152 Harley Street. Online she has built a following approaching three million people. In September last year she launched rhute, a scalp-first haircare brand born out of her own experience of hair loss, which sold out its first serum within an hour off a waiting list of twenty-three thousand people. We talk about what telogen effluvium actually is and why rapid weight loss sets it off, what that twelve-month timing tells us about cause, whether coming off the medication would stop it, how long regrowth genuinely takes and why the short new hairs make people panic, what helps with real evidence behind it and what people are wasting their money on, why almost nobody has been formulating for the scalp, what she was seeing in patients that made her design a stamp rather than a dermaroller, how living through her own hair loss changed the way she treats other people, and the signs that mean you should stop trying things at home and see a dermatologist. ABOUT RHUTE Founded by Consultant Dermatologist Dr Aamna Adel, rhute combines HairScience with clinically proven results. At the heart of the range is the bestselling Density & Repair Serum (https://rhutehair.com/products/serum), a daily, lightweight scalp treatment powered by 16 high-performance actives to support hair growth, reduce shedding and strengthen the scalp barrier. The results speak for themselves: 93% saw reduced hair loss 80% found their hair looked and felt thicker 79% noticed an increase in volume Take your hair journey further with The Density Rhutine – a targeted three-step system designed to treat, stimulate and strengthen. Treat: Triple Density Complex Pre-Wash Hair Oil - https://rhutehair.com/products/density-complex Stimulate: Precision Dermastamp - https://rhutehair.com/products/rhute-dermastamp Strengthen: Density & Repair Serum - https://rhutehair.com/products/serum Great hair doesn't happen overnight. It starts with science, consistency and the right rhutine. CREDITS 🎙 Hosted by: Marc McKee 📍 Featuring: Dr Aamna Adel, consultant dermatologist and founder of Rhute Connect with Dr Aamna Adel 🔗 rhute: https://rhutehair.com 📸 Instagram: @dermatologist_adel 📲 TikTok: @aamnaadel 🏥 Clinic: 152 Harley Street, London Connect with Marc 📲 TikTok: @my.journey.with.marc 📸 Instagram: @my.journey.with.marc 📺 YouTube: @myjourneywithmarc 🎧 Podcast Instagram: @this.is.my.journey.podcast 🎧 Podcast: https://www.myjourneywithmarc.com/podcast Sources Akiska YM et al., TriNetX US Collaborative Network analysis of 547,993 matched pairs, presented at the EADV Congress 2025, abstract published in EMJ Dermatology, 30 October 2025. Observational study, so it cannot separate the medication from the rapid weight loss itself.

A whole generation of people are coming off GLP-1 medications, looking in the mirror and wondering what to do about what they see. In this episode I'm joined by Olivia Falcon, an award-winning journalist and the founder of The Editor's List, the UK's leading cosmetic concierge. Olivia is the former health and beauty director of Tatler, where she edited thirteen of the Tatler Cosmetic Surgery Guides, building an unrivalled contact book of the world's best aesthetic and wellness practitioners and personally road-testing very nearly every non-invasive treatment out there. She has worked at British Vogue, is a contributing beauty editor at Country and Townhouse, and writes regularly for The Times, Condé Nast Traveller, The Daily Mail, Grazia and The Telegraph. She hosts The Editor's List Live in London, sits on Annabel's wellness committee, and has spoken openly on ITV's This Morning about her own experience with Ozempic and Mounjaro. We talk about her own journey and what surprised her, what genuinely works for a face that has changed after significant weight loss and what is being oversold, what is actually worth paying for and the most common waste of money she sees, how to vet a practitioner and the red flags that should make you walk straight back out, what separates the very best practitioners from the merely competent, how honest aesthetic content and endorsements online really are, and where the line sits between looking after yourself and chasing something that isn't achievable. 🎙  Hosted by: Marc McKee 📍  Featuring: Olivia Falcon, founder of The Editor's List Connect with Olivia 🔗  Website: https://editorslist.co.uk 📸  Instagram: @TheEditorsList 🎟  The Editor's List Live: https://editorslist.co.uk/events/ell27/ Connect with Marc 📲  TikTok: @my.journey.with.marc 📸  Instagram: @my.journey.with.marc 📺  YouTube: @myjourneywithmarc 🎧  Podcast Instagram: @this.is.my.journey.podcast 🎧  Podcast: https://www.myjourneywithmarc.com/podcast

When you change on a GLP-1, everyone asks how you are doing. Nobody asks your partner. In 2023 there were 102,678 divorces in England and Wales, and the marriages that ended had lasted a median of twelve point seven years. These were not whirlwind mistakes. They were long marriages, with mortgages and children and shared history, that came apart anyway. And here is the thing nobody has measured. When one person in a couple changes dramatically on a GLP-1, their body, their confidence, the way strangers look at them, the way they walk into a room, what happens to the other one? There is no study for that. There is no leaflet that comes with it. There is only what actually happens in the therapy room, week after week, when two people who love each other find the ground has moved underneath them. In this episode I’m joined by Jonathan Van Viegen, a Canadian couples therapist and relationship coach, a Registered Psychotherapist in Ontario with a Master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy and more than a decade of clinical work behind him. Jonathan has built an audience of hundreds of thousands of people online with blunt, jargon-free relationship advice, built on a principle I love: connection beats chemistry, every time. He describes himself as the therapist your therapist follows, and his stated mission is to help save a million marriages. His first book, Choosing Us: Stories and Strategies to Strengthen Your Marriage from Inside the Therapy Room, is published by Jossey-Bass on 3 November. We talk about what actually walks into his therapy room when one person in a couple changes fast, the insecurity on both sides of it and why the partner who stayed the same is the person nobody ever asks about, the two questions almost nobody can honestly answer yes to underneath, why people do not take action when they do not truly believe they will succeed, what being chosen and cherished looks like as a behaviour on an ordinary Tuesday, what the therapy internet has got wrong about attachment styles and triggers and labels, what a better conversation actually sounds like and how to start one, the question to ask your partner about what makes them want to stay, what new attention and new confidence does to a marriage, and what genuinely reignites desire after years together. 🎙 Hosted by: Marc McKee 📍 Featuring: Jonathan Van Viegen, Registered Psychotherapist (Ontario) 🔗 Connect with Jonathan Van Viegen 📸 Instagram: @jonathanvanviegen 🔗 Website: jonathanvanviegen.com 📖 Book: Choosing Us: Stories and Strategies to Strengthen Your Marriage from Inside the Therapy Room, published by Jossey-Bass, 3 November 2026. Pre-order: jonathanvanviegen.com/book 🔗 Connect with Marc 📲 TikTok: @my.journey.with.marc 📸 Instagram: @my.journey.with.marc 📺 YouTube: @myjourneywithmarc 🎧 Podcast IG: @this.is.my.journey.podcast 🎧 Podcast: www.myjourneywithmarc.com/podcast 🎧 New episodes every Tuesday at 6am. Sources referenced in this episode: Office for National Statistics. “Divorces in England and Wales: 2023.” Published 2 July 2025. 102,678 divorces in total; median duration of marriage at divorce for opposite-sex couples 12.7 years. No published research currently exists on relationship outcomes following rapid weight loss or transformation. That gap is stated in the episode as a gap rather than filled with an estimate.

Ninety-one per cent of people who have actually taken these medications would recommend them to a friend who was struggling with their weight. Now ask those same people whether they've told their friends they're on it. That figure comes from a survey of nearly thirteen hundred UK adults published in BMJ Public Health. The same study found people who had taken these drugs were around seven times more likely than people who hadn't to reject the idea that they're unsafe or unproven, a mismatch the researchers themselves flagged between what the public assumes and what the people living it experience. Only nine per cent first heard about these medications from a healthcare professional. Sixty per cent first heard about them from the news. In this episode I'm joined by Dr Treena Orchard, an anthropologist, author and activist whose work on sexuality, gender and health sheds new light on how people behave in the twenty-first century. She's an Associate Professor in the School of Health Studies at Western University in Ontario, and the author of Sticky, Sexy, Sad: Swipe Culture and the Darker Side of Dating Apps. Her next book, Vulnerbro, looks at men, masculinity and vulnerability. In 2025 she was named a YMCA Woman of Excellence for Social Justice. We talk about what happens to your sense of self when your body changes faster than you do, why identity lags so far behind the mirror, the disclosure dilemma and what people are really afraid of losing, why this particular medication has been moralised when nobody demands you disclose your blood pressure tablets, what the advertising for these drugs is actually selling, what happens inside a long marriage when one person changes and the other didn't sign up for it, how differently the world treats a body when that body changes, and why almost no men talk about any of this. 🎙 Hosted by: Marc McKee 📍 Featuring: Dr Treena Orchard, Western University 🔗 Connect with Dr Treena Orchard 📸 Instagram: @treenaorchard 🔗 Website: treenaorchard.com 📖 Book: Sticky, Sexy, Sad: Swipe Culture and the Darker Side of Dating Apps 🔗 Connect with Marc 📲 TikTok: @my.journey.with.marc 📸 Instagram: @my.journey.with.marc 📺 YouTube: @myjourneywithmarc 🎧 Podcast IG: @this.is.my.journey.podcast 🎧 Podcast: www.myjourneywithmarc.com/podcast 🎧 New episodes every Tuesday at 6am. Sources referenced in this episode: Auerbach N, Liu VN, Huang DR, Clift AK, Al-Ammouri M, El-Osta A. "What are community perspectives and experiences around GLP-1 receptor agonist medications for weight loss? A cross-sectional survey study in the UK." BMJ Public Health 2025;3:e002519 Rad J, Melendez-Torres GJ. "Critical discourse analysis of social media advertisements for GLP-1 receptor agonist weight loss drugs." BMC Public Health 2025;25:2996

Sport England's Active Lives survey puts it starkly: 11.8 million adults in England, nearly one in four of us, are classed as inactive. That means less than thirty minutes of moderate movement in an entire week. Now put that next to what happens on GLP-1 medication. In the STEP 1 trial of semaglutide, roughly 39% of the weight people lost was lean mass. Not fat. Muscle and bone. The scaffolding you need to hold your body up for the rest of your life. So the number on the scale goes down, everyone congratulates you, and something you can't see is quietly going down with it. In this episode I'm joined by Dr Ash Bowden, a UK-trained, Australia-based GP with a background in Sport and Exercise Science, known online to a lot of you as Doctor Do More. He's passionate about lifestyle medicine, physical activity and health literacy, and he makes movement feel like something you do rather than something you're told off about. We talk about what's actually happening to muscle and bone during rapid weight loss and how worried people should be, what "protect your muscle" looks like in practice on a Tuesday evening when you're exhausted, how to start moving when you have no energy in the early weeks, where to begin with resistance training if a gym feels intimidating, whether walking is genuinely enough, what movement does for maintenance that food alone can't, and where to start if you have a bad back, sore knees, a disability or a lot of weight still to lose. 🎙 Hosted by: Marc McKee 📍 Featuring: Dr Ash Bowden (Doctor Do More) 🔗 Connect with Dr Ash Bowden 📸 Instagram & Facebook: @doctordomore 🔗 Clinic: domoremedical.com.au 🔗 Connect with Marc 📲 TikTok: @my.journey.with.marc 📸 Instagram: @my.journey.with.marc 📺 YouTube: @myjourneywithmarc 🎧 Podcast IG: @this.is.my.journey.podcast 🎧 Podcast: www.myjourneywithmarc.com/podcast 🎧 New episodes every Tuesday at 6am. Sources referenced in this episode: Sport England, Active Lives Adult Survey (Nov 2024–Nov 2025, published April 2026) Wilding et al., STEP 1 trial, New England Journal of Medicine, 2021, body composition analysis

The volume goes. The skin envelope stays. And there is a line somewhere between what a good skincare routine can do and what only an operating theatre can do, a line almost nobody in the beauty industry has any commercial interest in drawing clearly for you. Here's something that might surprise you. Everyone assumes the weight-loss injections have triggered a tummy-tuck boom. But BAAPS's own audit shows UK cosmetic surgery actually fell two per cent in 2025, with abdominoplasty down four per cent. Meanwhile in the United States, more than 800,000 aesthetic patients were using a prescription weight-loss medication in 2024, and one in five of them had already had surgery. In this episode I'm joined by Dr Frank Agullo, a double board-certified plastic surgeon based in El Paso, Texas, known to three and a half million people online as Dr WorldWide. He trained at the Mayo Clinic, holds certification from both the American Board of Plastic Surgery and the American Board of Surgery, and is a Clinical Associate Professor at Texas Tech's Paul L. Foster School of Medicine. He's the founder of Southwest Plastic Surgery, where patients fly in from as far as Canada and South America. We talk about why the skin doesn't know you lost the weight the healthy way, what actually happens to the face, breasts and midsection and why they behave so differently, what "Ozempic face" really is underneath, what a topical can genuinely do and where it stops, how stable your weight needs to be before surgery is sensible, whether loose skin really retracts if you wait, and what before-and-after culture online completely hides. 🎙 Hosted by: Marc McKee 📍 Featuring: Dr Frank Agullo, MD, FACS 🔗 Connect with Dr Agullo 📸 Instagram: @realdrworldwide 📲 TikTok: @realdrworldwide 🔗 Website: www.agulloplasticsurgery.com 🔗 Connect with Marc 📲 TikTok: @my.journey.with.marc 📸 Instagram: @my.journey.with.marc 📺 YouTube: @myjourneywithmarc 🎧 Podcast IG: @this.is.my.journey.podcast 🎧 Podcast: www.myjourneywithmarc.com/podcast 🎧 New episodes every Tuesday at 6am. Sources referenced in this episode: BAAPS Annual Audit, procedures performed in 2025, published 2026 American Society of Plastic Surgeons, 2024 Procedural Statistics Report, released 25 June 2025 (GLP-1 figures from the survey component, US only)

Coronary heart disease kills more than twice as many women in the UK as breast cancer. More than 800,000 UK women are living with it right now. And if you asked most women in midlife what they should be most worried about, I don't think heart disease is the answer you'd get. Menopause changes where a woman stores fat, how she processes sugar, what her cholesterol does and what her blood pressure does. Weight, hormones and cardiovascular risk are all one system. But they get treated by three different people in three different appointments, if you can get the appointments at all. In this episode I'm joined by Dr Komal Patil-Sisodia, who is triple board-certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Obesity Medicine, and is also a Menopause Society Certified Practitioner. She has practised for over seventeen years and is the founder of Eastside Menopause and Metabolism in Redmond, Washington. She's Executive Medical Director of Medical Specialties at a local hospital system, hosts the Clearly Hormonal podcast, and has been named a Top Doctor by both Seattle Met and Seattle Magazine. We talk about what actually changes in a woman's metabolism through the menopause transition, why heart disease is so badly under-appreciated in midlife, where GLP-1 medications fit for a woman in her forties and fifties, what the evidence says about HRT and GLP-1s together, what tests women should be asking for and aren't, and where to start if you've been told more than once that it's just your age. 🎙 Hosted by: Marc McKee 📍 Featuring: Dr Komal Patil-Sisodia, MD 🔗 Connect with Dr Patil-Sisodia 📸 Instagram: @drpatilsisodia 📲 TikTok: @drpatilsisodia 🔗 Website: www.eastsidemm.com 🎧 Podcast: Clearly Hormonal — www.eastsidemm.com/podcast 🔗 Connect with Marc 📲 TikTok: @my.journey.with.marc 📸 Instagram: @my.journey.with.marc 📺 YouTube: @myjourneywithmarc 🎧 Podcast IG: @this.is.my.journey.podcast 🎧 Podcast: www.myjourneywithmarc.com/podcast 🎧 New episodes every Tuesday at 6am. Sources referenced in this episode: British Heart Foundation, UK Cardiovascular Disease Factsheet, January 2026 (2024 mortality data, ONS)

It's not the nausea people find hardest. It's the hair. A systematic review published in April 2026 pulled together twenty-four studies and found hair loss occurred at six cases per thousand patient-years on GLP-1 medication, against zero point eight on placebo. More than a three-fold increase. And when you're eating a fraction of what you used to, the nutrients have to come from somewhere: one study last year found 98.6% of people on these medications were below the recommended intake of vitamin D alone. In this episode I'm joined by Nyrah Saleem, a clinical pharmacist and independent prescriber, and an award-winning health creator who shares evidence-based advice on skincare, hair health and nutrition with over half a million followers. She's the founder of Nyra Nutrition, a pharmacist-formulated supplement brand. We talk about what's actually happening when your hair starts shedding and whether it's the drug or the weight loss, how long it really takes to come back, whether anything genuinely speeds that up, the nutrient deficiencies worth worrying about, and which supplements are worth your money and which are expensive gimmicks. She also covers how to read a supplement label properly, what interactions to watch for alongside these medications, and the things people are too embarrassed to ask a pharmacist. 🎙 Hosted by: Marc McKee 📍 Featuring: Nyrah Saleem MPharm 🔗 Connect with Nyrah 📸 Instagram: @healthwithnyrah 📲 TikTok: @healthwithnyrah 📺 YouTube: @Healthwithnyrah 🔗 Nyra Nutrition: https://www.nyranutrition.co.uk 🔗 Linktree: linktr.ee/nyrahsaleem 🔗 Connect with Marc 📲 TikTok: @my.journey.with.marc 📸 Instagram: @my.journey.with.marc 📺 YouTube: @myjourneywithmarc 🎧 Podcast IG: @this.is.my.journey.podcast 🎧 New episodes every Tuesday at 6am. Sources referenced in this episode: Gupta AK et al., "GLP-1 therapies and hair loss: a systematic review of current evidence and implications for counseling", Science Progress, 17 April 2026 Vitamin D intake data: Frontiers in Nutrition, April 2025 (n=69)