Kourtney Kardashian’s Lemme Brand Launching ‘All-Natural’ Ozempic Alternative
Kourtney Kardashian’s vitamin and supplement brand, Lemme, is launching a line of weight loss supplements, including an “all-natural” GLP-1 Ozempic-like alternative. Raymond Hall/GC Images/Getty Images
Lemme, the supplement brand founded by Kourtney Kardashian Barker, is releasing an “all-natural” weight loss supplement called Lemme GLP-1 Daily.
In spite of the name, the product is not a GLP-1 receptor agonist like Ozempic or Wegovy.
The product contains natural ingredients such as Eriomin lemon fruit extract, Supresa saffron extract and Morosil red orange fruit extract.
Lemme, the supplement brand founded by Kourtney Kardashian Barker, announced that it is releasing a supplement called Lemme GLP-1 Daily aimed at providing consumers with an “all-natural” way to manage their weight.
In spite of its name, however, the product does not contain a synthetic GLP-1 hormone and is not a GLP-1 receptor agonist like Ozempic or Wegovy.
Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs mimic the actions of the hormone GLP-1 by activating its receptor, which leads to weight loss and lower blood sugar, among other benefits.
Lemme GLP-1 Daily instead contains natural ingredients such as Eriomin lemon fruit extract, Supresa saffron extract and Morosil red orange fruit extract.
The product is meant to “boost the body’s GLP-1 levels, reduce hunger, promote insulin sensitivity and support healthy weight management,” according to a company press release.
The daily capsules will be available for purchase on the brand’s website beginning September 16 and will be sold via a subscription model at $72 for a month’s supply or $90 as a one-time purchase.
But how effective is the product for weight loss? Here’s what to know about the potential benefits of the natural ingredients in Lemme GLP-1 Daily.
Lemon fruit extract
Small clinical trials of Eriomin lemon fruit extract found that this compound didn’t help people lose weight, but it may offer other benefits.
A small study of people with prediabetes and type 2 diabetes who took Eriomin for 12 weeks showed that there was no effect on body weight, body mass index (BMI), lean mass, fat mass or waist-to-hip ratio.
However, those who took Eriomin saw on average a 5% decrease in their blood glucose and a 17% increase in the hormone GLP-1, compared to those who took a non-acting placebo.
Another small 12-week study of people with prediabetes also found that Eriomin had no impact on weight. But there was a 22% increase in blood levels of GLP-1, and an increase in beneficial bacteria in the gut.
Bacteria in the gut can influence your weight by affecting how food is digested, how fat is stored, and whether you feel full or hungry.
Eating a wide variety of high fiber foods such as whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds — and limiting intake of added sugars and highly processed foods — can also support healthy gut bacteria.
Saffron extract
An 8-week study of 60 women with overweight found that those who took a saffron extract had decreased snacking, compared to those who took a placebo.
GLP-1 drugs work, in part, by reducing appetite and feelings of hunger, which can help people manage their weight.
However, studies of saffron extract have not shown a large effect on weight when the compound is used alone.
A meta-analysis of 25 earlier studies looking at the benefits of saffron extract found that people with obesity who took this compound saw decreases in their waist-to-hip ratio.
There were also decreases in weight, BMI, waist circumference, and hip circumference. However, these changes were not statistically significant, which means saffron extract may not offer any additional benefits compared to a placebo.
Two other studies, including a review paper of previous studies and a small clinical trial in people with type 2 diabetes, also found that saffron extract didn’t help people lose weight.
Other studies have examined the benefits of saffron extract for people with diabetes, such as improving blood glucose control and cholesterol levels. Some of these studies were done alongside other supplements like cinnamon and ginger or in conjunction with aerobic or resistance exercise.
Red orange fruit extract
The clearest weight loss benefits are seen with Morosil red orange fruit extract.
A six-month study found that people who were living with overweight lost an average of 4.2% of their body weight while taking Morosil, compared to 2.2% in people who took a placebo. The Morosil group also saw larger decreases in hip and waist circumference, fat mass, and fat distribution.
In contrast, one study found that people who took semaglutide — the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy — lost 15.8% of their body weight over 68 weeks.
Learn more about how to get GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Wegovy from vetted and trusted online sources here:
How to Get Ozempic: Everything You Need to Know
Where to Buy Ozempic Online
How to Get Wegovy for Weight Loss In Person and Online
How to Get a Wegovy Prescription Online
How to Get Zepbound: What We Know So Far
Where to Buy Zepbound Online
How to Get Mounjaro (Tirzepatide)
Where to Buy Mounjaro (Tirzepatide) Online
Are supplements useful for weight loss?
Mir Ali, MD, a bariatric surgeon and medical director of MemorialCare Surgical Weight Loss Center at Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, Calif., has concerns about how supplements used for weight loss are sometimes promoted.
“GLP-1 medications stimulate hormones in the body and have the same effect as those hormones. So when people claim supplements do the same thing, I think that’s a bit deceptive,” he told Healthline.
And while “for some people, a natural, herbal supplement can be effective, there’s no convincing evidence that the supplement is going to have a significant effect on weight loss.”
Libu Varughese, MBBS, an endocrinology physician and medical advisor of Aeroflow Diabetes, told Healthline that he would like to see more scientific evidence before recommending the use of natural GLP-1 supplements.
However, if you do choose to use a dietary supplement, do so with caution, he said, and watch for any negative side effects.
The Food and Drug Administration has information for consumers on safely using dietary supplements.
Amy Lee, MD, head of nutrition for Nucific, suggests that people who want to lose weight naturally, think of supplements as just one component of a weight management program.
People also need to make “behavioral changes that result in decreased caloric intake and increased energy expenditure through movement and exercise,” she told Healthline.
Ali said certain diets have been shown in clinical trials to support weight loss, including ones that involve eating fewer carbohydrates, such as the keto diet and paleo diet.
“These diets are based on minimizing carbohydrate intake to direct the body toward burning fat,” Ali said. “That’s natural. There are no medications involved. No supplements. It’s just eating the right things to promote the burning of fat.”
These kinds of diets are even helpful for people who have had bariatric surgery or are taking a GLP-1 medication, he said, “because if you’re not eating the right things, you won’t see as much results.”
Takeaway
Lemme, the supplement brand founded by Kourtney Kardashian Barker, is releasing a supplement called Lemme GLP-1 Daily to provide consumers with an “all-natural” way to manage their weight.
In spite of its name, the product does not contain a synthetic GLP-1 hormone, and it is not a GLP-1 receptor agonist like Ozempic or Wegovy.
GLP-1 drugs mimic the actions of the GLP-1 hormone to lower blood glucose and promote weight loss.
Lemme GLP-1 Daily contains natural ingredients such as Eriomin lemon fruit extract, Supresa saffron extract and Morosil red orange fruit extract. Clinical studies show that these compounds may promote modest weight loss, decrease hunger and appetite, or boost the body’s GLP-1 levels.
These 4 Factors Can Impact How Many Pounds You’ll Lose on Weight Loss Drugs Like Ozempic
Four key factors can greatly impact how much weight people lose while taking GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, Victoza, and Saxenda. Daniel Llao Calvet/Getty Images
Researchers have used real-world data to identify key factors for long-term weight loss for patients taking GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy.
The study identified the type of medication, dosage, treatment indication, and medication persistence as four of the most important factors.
GLP-1 drugs are powerful agents for weight loss, but cost and access are still barriers for many Americans.
Millions of Americans have taken Ozempic or similar GLP-1 drugs to lose weight, but sustaining that weight loss long-term has proved difficult for many of them.
However, new research suggests there are four factors that could be key to improving these outcomes.
Researchers from the Cleveland Clinic looked at electronic health records of nearly 3,400 patients prescribed one of two different GLP-1 drugs — semaglutide ( sold under the brand names Ozempic and Wegovy) and liraglutide (sold under the brand names Saxenda and Victoza) — to see how various factors like dosage, indication, and biological sex affected weight loss at one year.
Their findings were published this month in Jama Network Open.
Researchers looked at how these factors affected weight loss in two ways: total percentage change in body weight and whether an individual lost 10% or more of their body weight. The 10% mark is clinically significant, as hitting that benchmark is known to improve other comorbidities like high blood pressure and chronic disease risk.
They identified four factors that appear to be the most significant for long-term weight loss, some of them obvious and others more complex:
The type of medication (active ingredient) – Did the patient use semaglutide or liraglutide?
The dosage – Was the patient using a high or low-maintenance dose?
Treatment indication – Was the medicine prescribed for type 2 diabetes or obesity?
Medication persistence – Did the patient have any gaps in access to their medication?
“Our findings provide timely data on longer-term weight outcomes in patients receiving treatment with injectable semaglutide or liraglutide for obesity or type 2 diabetes, as well as identify key characteristics that could inform the probability of achieving sustained weight loss of a magnitude large enough to provide clinically significant health benefits,” Hamlet Gasoyan, PhD, lead author of the study and a researcher with Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Value-Based Care Research, told Healthline.
How the four key factors impacted sustained weight loss
Gasoyan and his team used the Cleveland Clinic electronic health records for 3,389 patients who were prescribed either semaglutide or liraglutide from July 2015 through June 2022. In order to be included, patients had to have a BMI of at least 30, indicating the person had obesity.
More than half the patients were female (54%) and had an average age of 50. The cohort was predominantly white (68%) but included significant Black (20%) and Hispanic (7%) populations.
At the one-year mark, four factors appeared to have the largest influence on sustained weight loss. Here’s how they affected whether or not patients would achieve 10% or greater weight loss:
Active agent: Patients who took semaglutide were more than twice as likely compared to those taking liraglutide.
Indication: Those prescribed their medication for obesity were also more than twice as likely than those with type 2 diabetes.
Dosage: Patients taking a higher maintenance dose of their medication were 1.5 times more likely than those taking a lower dose.
Persistence: patients with persistent coverage (access to their medication) were more than three times as likely as those who had the least access.
Patient sex was also an important factor. Females in the study were 1.5 times as likely to hit the 10% benchmark as males.
Two of the factors may seem obvious: active agent and dosage. Basically, the kind of medication prescribed and dosage affected the weight loss outcome.
Semaglutide resulted in more than double the average weight loss of liraglutide (5.1% versus 2.2%). However, that’s nothing new: prior studies have shown that semaglutide is simply more effective for weight loss than liraglutide.
Evidence has also pointed to higher maintenance doses of semaglutide being more effective for weight loss than lower doses.
Indication is complicated. The evidence is clear that patients prescribed a GLP-1 for obesity tend to lose more weight than those with type 2 diabetes, but why that’s the case isn’t so obvious.
Caroline Apovian MD, a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the co-director of the Center for Weight Management and Wellness at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, told Healthline that these findings are essentially confirmatory of prior research.
It’s the fourth factor — persistence — that has grabbed the attention of Apovian and other obesity experts.
Learn more about how to get GLP-1 medications like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Zepbound from vetted and trusted online sources here:
How to Get Ozempic: Everything You Need to Know
Where to Buy Ozempic Online
How to Get Wegovy for Weight Loss In Person and Online
How to Get a Wegovy Prescription Online
How to Get Zepbound: What We Know So Far
Where to Buy Zepbound Online
How to Get Mounjaro (Tirzepatide)
Where to Buy Mounjaro (Tirzepatide) Online
Persistence is the biggest key
“What this study adds is really diving into that persistence question. Nowadays, the conversation tends to focus on the idea that these are really great medications, but are patients actually taking them?” Beverly Tchang, MD, an endocrinologist, Spokesperson for the Obesity Society, and Assistant Professor of clinical medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, told Healthline.
“This creates a very clear relationship between that persistence and the degree of weight loss,” she said.
As effective as GLP-1 drugs are, access has proven to be a major roadblock for many Americans. With the soaring popularity of these drugs, patients across the United States have faced shortages, with manufacturers unable to keep up with demand.
Cost and insurance coverage have also been problematic for many patients. The monthly cost for GLP-1 drugs can easily reach $1,000 or more before any insurance coverage or rebates are applied.
If patients can’t afford their medication or can’t access it, they won’t take it. It’s as simple as that.
This latest research helps to illustrate that dilemma.
Gasoyan and his team found that at the one-year mark, only 40% of patients had persistent medication coverage, which they defined as a cumulative lapse in coverage of less than 90 days.
But those that did have persistent coverage demonstrated significantly more weight loss (5.5%) compared to those with the least (1.8%) — less than 90 days of coverage for the year.
The data “reinforces that persistence is key to achieving meaningful weight outcomes with these medications,” said Gasoyan.
“If we avoid therapeutic interruptions with these medications, whether that be due to shortages or insurance coverage, then we will have better persistence with these medications and more weight loss,” added Tchang.
The bottom line
GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy are powerful weight-loss tools. However, long-term weight loss outcomes can be affected by a variety of factors.
In a new study, researchers identified four of the most important factors for long-term weight loss in patients taking a GLP-1 drug. These include the kind of medication, the dosage, the indication, and medication persistence (how long the patient continuously took the medication).
Medication persistence is essential to long-term weight loss, however access and cost related to GLP-1 drugs continue to be roadblocks for many Americans.
Ozempic: GLP-1 Drugs May Help Prevent 34,000 Heart Attacks and Strokes Per Year
GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy may help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and prevent more than 34,000 heart attacks and strokes a year. Iparraguirre Recio/Getty Images
GLP-1s, the class of drugs including Ozempic and Mounjaro, treat diabetes and obesity, but some have also shown significant cardiovascular benefits.
Millions of Americans might benefit from taking GLP-1 drugs for cardiovascular disease.
New research suggests GLP-1 drugs could prevent up to 34,000 strokes and heart attacks annually.
GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, Mounjaro, Wegovy, and Zepbound are powerful tools for treating diabetes and aiding with weight loss, but a new study suggests these medications could also help prevent cardiovascular disease, heart attack, and stroke in millions of people, suggests new research.
Previous clinical trials have shown that some Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1s) can help prevent cardiovascular disease. However, those benefits have only been demonstrated for secondary prevention in high risk individuals: those who’ve previously experienced a heart attack or stroke or have established cardiovascular disease.
However, new research from Dandelion Health, a company specializing in “real-world data and clinical AI,” indicates that GLP-1 drugs could have broad implications for the heart health of millions of Americans, potentially preventing more than 30,000 heart attacks and strokes each year in the United States.
Since prior trials have been limited to high risk individuals, Dandelion wanted to investigate what the potential health benefits could be among people with only mild or moderate CVD who had never had a prior heart attack or stroke — a population comprising tens of millions of Americans.
That’s an important demographic, but it is difficult (and expensive) to study in a clinical trial setting.
By using AI-driven algorithms to sift through real-world data — everything from electrocardiogram readings to physician notes — Dandelion claims it is able to “assess treatment efficacy faster and at a greater scale than ever before.”
How GLP-1 drugs can provide cardiovascular benefits
“What we showed was that patients who initiate treatment with GLP-1s have a lower cardiovascular risk after three years than similar patients who are not taking GLP-1s,” Nick Gossen, Head of Growth at Dandelion Health, told Healthline.
“Our study is consistent with some of the clinical trials that have gone through the FDA and gotten approval,” he added.
Dandelion’s research emphasized several findings:
GLP-1s could potentially serve as primary prevention for heart attack and stroke for patients with obesity and mild or moderate CVD — about 44 million additional patients in the US.
Patients taking GLP-1s had a 15-20% reduction in MACE (heart attack and stroke), which is consistent with clinical trials conducted by Novo Nordisk, the maker of Ozempic and Wegovy.
Using predictive AI, the company found that patients taking GLP-1s would see a cardiovascular benefit in under two years.
Those findings are promising but should be taken with a grain of salt. The study itself has not yet been peer-reviewed, though Gossen said that they are currently pursuing that.
“This is intended to be a proof of concept: It’s pretty clear that there’s a signal there. With additional work and peer review and going through the FDA process, we think this is a very practical demonstration of how AI can be used both to shape clinical trials and make them more inclusive and lower cost,” he said.
Earlier this year, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new indication for the obesity drug Wegovy.
This marked the first time that any weight loss medication was also approved to prevent cardiovascular disease, heart attack, and stroke. Ozempic, which shares the same active ingredient as Wegovy, but is indicated to treat type 2 diabetes, received FDA approval for a cardiovascular disease indication four years earlier, in 2020.
Clinical trials from Novo Nordisk, the manufacturer of Ozempic and Wegovy, have consistently shown the benefits of these drugs in preventing cardiovascular disease in patients with obesity and type 2 diabetes. The results of the Sustain-6 trial, published in 2016, showed that in patients with type 2 diabetes, Ozempic reduced the risk of death from cardiovascular disease, heart attack, and stroke by 26 percent.
The more recent Select trial cleared the way for the FDA’s approval of Wegovy’s CVD indication by demonstrating a 20% reduced risk of MACE in patients with obesity.
Learn more about how to get GLP-1 medications like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Zepbound from vetted and trusted online sources here:
How to Get Ozempic: Everything You Need to Know
Where to Buy Ozempic Online
How to Get Wegovy for Weight Loss In Person and Online
How to Get a Wegovy Prescription Online
How to Get Zepbound: What We Know So Far
Where to Buy Zepbound Online
How to Get Mounjaro (Tirzepatide)
Where to Buy Mounjaro (Tirzepatide) Online
Questions remain about GLP-1s and primary prevention
Chad S. Weldy, MD, PhD, a Cardiologist at Stanford Medicine, told Healthline that GLP-1s are clearly promising for CVD prevention.
“The past 10 years have now fully established the remarkable benefit of GLP-1 therapies in those overweight and obese individuals with diabetes as well as those without diabetes and established cardiovascular disease,” said Weldy.
However, making the leap from using GLP-1 for secondary prevention to primary prevention is a large one due to the difficulty and expense of a clinical trial — a fact both he and Gossen acknowledge.
“It is highly likely that GLP-1 drugs will provide benefits for primary prevention to prevent cardiovascular disease as measured by MACE outcomes. The challenge is how this potential primary prevention clinical trial is designed,” Weldy told Healthline.
Since heart attacks and other major cardiovascular events are relatively uncommon in this generally healthy population, such a study would require potentially tens of thousands of participants and many years of follow-up. All of those parameters would also make it tremendously expensive to conduct.
Not impossible, but difficult and unfeasible.
While Dandelion’s research may be a proof of concept, Weldy cautions that it is still a long way from being a substitute for randomized, controlled clinical trials, which are the “gold standard” for medical research and essential to the FDA approval process.
Additionally, he notes that the suggestion of expanding GLP-1 prescriptions to tens of millions of Americans — therapies that are expensive and potentially lifelong — represents its own unique challenges to the U.S. healthcare system.
“If a large trial is performed for GLP-1 therapy, enrolling anyone who is overweight or obese without known CVD, and…we see a significant reduction in CV events from a primary prevention perspective, a big question would be, “Who do you not treat with this therapy?” Weldy asked.
The bottom line
GLP-1 drugs have the potential to reduce the number of heart attacks and strokes in the United States by as much as 34,000 annually, according to Dandelion Health.
To reach that goal, GLP-1s would need to be prescribed to tens of millions of Americans with mild or moderate CVD.
Experts told Healthline that GLP-1s are a promising line of drugs in the fight against cardiovascular disease but that more research will be needed before they could be indicated for primary prevention of CVD.
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