Benefits of coaching

In studies, patients who stopped medication, stopped exercise and stopped dieting, regained 2/3 of their weight over the course of a year. That’s not terrible news. They didn’t regain all of their weight during that year. It actually took 5 years to regain it all! For that reason, reports of regaining double are overblown.

The point is, coaching will increase the chances you maintain your goal weight after stopping the medication. But if you don’t want the coaching program, we do offer a non-coaching program that still includes a bluetooth-enabled scale, a journal and baseline labs.

How to get started

After scheduling a consultation by purchasing online here, we’ll schedule your lab work through LabCorp (or you can send us recent labs that include a CBC, CMP, HbA1c and TSH) to frontdesk@ph-ps.com. After reviewing your labs, you can purchase your medication subscription of semaglutide (active ingredient in Ozempic/Wegovy) or tirzepatide (active ingredient in Mounjaro) online and we’ll send the medication to you on ice every 28 days.

Once you receive your medication, contact us for an injection training via FaceTime or ZOOM. At the time of your injection training, we’ll schedule you for your first coaching call the following week. You’ll inject yourself in the abdomen or thigh once per week. Your card on file will automatically be charged every 28 days and we’ll send out four pre-filled syringes with the correct dose every 28 days. When you reach your goal weight, in 3 months or 12 months or whenever, you have the ability to turn off your subscription through the Patient Portal here. You’re not locked into the medication subscription for any predetermined period of time. Your destiny is in your hands!

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You have two ways to obtain Ozempic/Wegovy (semaglutide) or Mounjaro (tirzepatide):

1. Compounded semaglutide or tirzepatide from a compounding pharmacy or…
2. A Prescription for the name brand drug Ozempic/Wegovy (active ingredient semaglutide) or Mounjaro (active ingredient tirzepatide).

The Benefits of the compounded semaglutide or tirzepatide are as follows:

• Medication shipped to you
• No hassle at the pharmacy
• No lines
• No insurance hassles
• No backordered medication

Drawbacks of compounded semaglutide or tirzepatide:

• Out of pocket cost
• May not be able to access semaglutide or tirzepatide from a compounding pharmacy in the future due to FDA regulations

The Benefits of a Ozempic/Wegovy or Mounjaro prescription:

• Insurance may cover some or all of the cost

Drawbacks of Ozempic/Wegovy or Mounjaro prescription:

Moujaro/tirzepatide: Whether you’re getting your medication directly from a compounding pharmacy or getting a prescription submitted to a traditional pharmacy, you will sign up here for the $600 monthly subscription of Mounjaro/tirzepatide. You will be charged $600 every 28 days for the first 6 months and after each charge, we will ship 4 prefilled syringes to you for your once per week injection or we will submit a prescription to the pharmacy of your choice that has the medication and dosage in stock.

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Results of weight loss program

The data is in! Based on the results of our weight management program, our patients have lost an average of 7.7 pounds in only 4 weeks on the lowest, introductory dose of semaglutide!

We’ll continue to track all of our patients with surveys and follow up appointments to get the most complete “picture” of weight loss, but the initial results are very exciting. Keep in mind that every 28 days, our patients get the next higher dose of semaglutide in 4 prefilled syringes for their once-per-week injection.

Extreme weight loss

So with each higher dose, we should continue to see more and more weight loss. Remember that this is the average weight loss. We did have patients who lost a moderate amount but we also had patients losing over 15 pounds and even over 20 pounds in the first month! Pretty amazing and we wish everyone could see those same results.

It’s impossible to know for sure what makes one patient lose more than another but certainly diet, exercise and avoiding high carb and highly refined sugars helps. We’ll continue to track this data and publish it every month.

Where we get our semaglutide

We are getting semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, from a compounding pharmacy. These results would not be possible if the semaglutide we’re sourcing wasn’t a duplicate of the active ingredient found in the name brand drugs. And I don’t believe this large number of patients in our program would lose that much weight with diet and exercise alone in such a short period of time. So in other words, any doubts people may have about semaglutide from a compounding pharmacy should be put to rest.

Mounjaro (tirzepatide) on tap?

The compounding pharmacy we’re working with is also working on a duplicate of Mounjaro’s active ingredient, tirzepatide. Once that is available, we will offer it to our current and new patients since the data suggests an even greater appetite suppressant effect from Mounjaro due to the combination of a GLP-1 (glucagon like peptide) receptor agonist and GIP (glucose dependent insulinotropic polypeptide). Time will tell.

Pricing

For pricing on our weight management program, click here. For pricing on the medication subscription monthly fee, click here. And if you’d like to schedule a consultation, you can pay for the $100 consultation fee here and it will go towards the cost of the weight management program.

Lastly, if you do lose weight and eventually decide you would like body contouring surgery, the weight management program fee will go towards the cost of surgery. To check pricing on all of our body contouring procedures, click here.

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We’ve received questions about how we’re getting semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, since it’s currently so backordered.

We’re ordering our semaglutide from a compounding pharmacy. Never heard of a compounding pharmacy? That’s ok, chances are you’ve used medication from a compounding pharmacy before.

Examples of what a compounding pharmacy offers:

• Allergic to a dye or certain ingredient in a medication? A compounding pharmacy would recreate that medication without the dye or allergen
• Have a child, or elderly parent that can’t swallow the pill form of a medication? A compounding pharmacy can recreate the medication in liquid form
• Ever received botox or filler at a doctor’s office? The topical numbing cream placed on the skin prior to treatment was made at a compounding pharmacy
• On bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT)? From a compounding pharmacy.
• Medications that are in short supply, including medication for COVID, can be produced by compounding pharmacies too

This last example is why we’re able to get semaglutide. It’s on the FDA’s shortage list, and as such, the FDA allows a compounding pharmacy to duplicate a commercially sold drug that’s currently unavailable or in short supply.

So what if semaglutide is removed from the shortage list? There are two schools of thought on this point.

If brand name medications are taken off the FDA shortage list, it’s possible compounding pharmacies will no longer be allowed to manufacture semaglutide. The other school of thought is that because most compounding pharmacies are combining B-12 or L-carnitine with their sterile compounded semaglutide, they are making a materially different compound than the patented version of semaglutide manufactured by NovoNordisk. And as such, compounding pharmacies can continue producing a novel version of semaglutide with this additive.

Which school of thought will win out? The FDA has not weighed in on this question yet.

Generic vs “Generic”

Also, we may use the term generic when referring to our compounding pharmacy version of semaglutide. We are aware that generic within the context of pharmaceuticals can mean a drug that is being manufactured after a previous name-brand drug has lost its patent protection. That’s certainly not the case here because Ozempic and Wegovy have not lost their patent protection.

But we will sometimes reflexively refer to our semaglutide as generic because it is 1) an alternative way of saying the medication is not a name brand, which is certainly generic in some contexts and 2) less confusing for most patients. Regardless of whether we use the term generic or replicated or analogue, it is the same active ingredient whether it was created at a compounding pharmacy or at a large pharmaceutical company that makes “generic” drugs.

Quality standards of compounding pharmacies

In regards to the quality of medications produced by a compounding pharmacy, the facility we get semaglutide from is considered an “outsourcing facility,” as defined in The Drug Quality and Security Act, of 2013. That law created a new section, 503B, in the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. As such, an outsourcing facility is overseen and inspected by the FDA, along with state regulators.

Under the law, outsourcing compounding pharmacies must comply with section 503B and current good manufacturing practice (CGMP) requirements. In other words, they have very high standards to keep.

And we’ve had a great experience with this compounding pharmacy providing our semaglutide. It’s a relationship that predates this particular drug. So for now, we have a robust supply of semaglutide and will maintain at least a 6 month availability while supplies last.

If you’re not in our program, read more about semaglutide here and prioritize scheduling your consultation by paying online here.

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