Eva (00:00):
Hi friends, it's Eva. Over on our other podcast called Meet the Doctor, I had a chance to meet the provider who sees Kami for her Semaglutide. Her name is Cassie Layne, and like many of us, Cassie lost a significant amount of weight and kept it off. We hope you enjoy meeting Cassie, and if you're anywhere in Indiana, you can see her in person or through telemedicine. We hope you enjoy this special episode of Meet the Doctor over here on Less of You. You're listening to Less Of You. I'm Eva.

Kami (00:35):
My name is Kami.

Eva (00:36):
Come with us as we confront our reasons for being obese while losing weight on semaglutide and roasting our past selves. I'm so happy to introduce to you a nurse practitioner today. Her name is Cassie Layne and she's the owner of Monarch Health and Wellness and The Shot Spot in the state of Indiana, and her practice is in Crown Point, which is in northwest Indiana. Welcome, Cassie.

Kami (00:59):
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Eva (01:01):
Tell me a little bit about your practice and what you do. I know a lot of what you're doing right now is helping people with GLP-1 medications like Semaglutide and Tirzepatide, but why don't you give us an idea of the whole thing?

Kami (01:14):
Yeah. So I created Monarch Health and Wellness a little over two years ago. I was working and I wanted to do something that I enjoyed and something I had interest in the evenings and on the weekends, and it just exploded and took off. We started out doing weight loss and IV infusions. And weight loss, we've seen a lot of good results. We've seen over 4,000 patients already getting close to 5,000 at Monarch Health and Wellness, and we specialize in weight loss. We use several different medications, Zepbound, we have compound Tirzepatide, compound Semaglutide, we use oral medications like Contrave, phentermine, low-dose naltrexone. So there's a wide variety of medications that we can use for weight loss just depending on the patient's history, what they've used in the past and just different factors.

Eva (02:07):
So when you're prescribing, are you helping people figure out what's going to be both the most effective but also the most affordable, whether they're covered by insurance or not? Is that kind of how that's working out?

Kami (02:19):
Yes. Actually, when I first opened, compound medication was just kind of compound Semaglutide, Tirzepatide was just starting to become popular. And we do take insurance at Monarch Health and Wellness, so we take most insurances for your office visit. So you're just responsible for your copay or your co-insurance or your deductible. We do find that probably 80 to 90% of our patients, their insurance does not cover weight loss medication. So that means it's all out of pocket. And when I first started, Semaglutide, it wasn't crazy expensive, but I was going by what people were telling me, oh, you need to mark it up, this and this. And honestly, anybody who knows me knows that I don't buy anything unless it's on sale or I have a coupon, right? And the medication was $250 a month to start out with. I felt bad telling people that, oh, it's $250 a month.

(03:17):
If you want to lose weight, you got to pay this. And I felt guilty, I felt bad for charging that to be honest with you. And then one, it was January, I don't remember when it was, and I was like, you know what? I'm not charging this anymore. I'm like, we're doing $98. And one of my friends was like, are you sure you want to do that? I'm like, well, I'm a nurse practitioner, that's our job. We want to help as many people as we can, and not everybody can afford $250 a month or more to lose weight, right? So I reduce the medication considerably and I still feel bad charging $98, but that's just what it costs. These medications are expensive, so that is a factor. Cost is a factor. Not everybody can pay a hundred or $500 a month for weight loss medications. So that's where Phentermine is $25, $27 in our office. Or you can go to the pharmacy and it's probably 30 or 40. So that's a much better price because getting healthy should be accessible for everybody. It really should be. It shouldn't be only for the Kardashians on Ozempic, right? That's not how it should work. So yeah.

Eva (04:26):
Yes. So with 5,000 ish patients now that you've helped, that's a lot.

Kami (04:32):
Yes. We've had a lot of success stories. Really a lot.

Eva (04:35):
Yeah, I want to hear some of those. That's where I'm going. And can you think of any standout patients whose stories you can kind of share?

Kami (04:43):
Yeah, and I'm sure he doesn't mind, but yeah, so probably I think he was my seventh patient. I call him lucky number seven. He doesn't mind. His name is Rich. He always battled with his weight. He was my seventh patient. I actually met him, I was doing a little event at Any Time, fitness handing out my brochures and things when I first started, and he got an injection. And then later on he made an appointment with me and we got him on medication. He has lost well over a hundred pounds now all while having a shoulder surgery. So he wasn't able to exercise. Just anybody who knows, Rich, knows his determination and he was determined to make some life changes. And I think for some people the medication is just kind of a kick in the butt, like a start, and then it's up to the patient to kind of do more than that.

(05:35):
So I always say, no one made Rich do 5Ks and 10Ks. No one makes Rich go to the Peloton studios in New York City and work out. No one makes him do those things. The medication didn't do that. That's all Rich doing that. The medication for him, I think was just a tool to get him started, and then he just went off after that. So that's one patient in particular. And might I say, I also, when was this maybe last year we did an InBody on him. I wanted to check his muscle mass to make sure that he wasn't losing much muscle, which I kind of didn't think he was because he was exercising regularly. And the medical assistant brought it to me and I looked at it. I said, well, this is wrong. You need to do it again. And then I looked at it and I was shocked by how he had no body fat and all this muscle, and it was absolutely, it was accurate. Just glancing at it though, I told her, I said, this is wrong. You need to do it again.

Eva (06:37):
That InBody can be a little fickle. Yeah.

Kami (06:40):
Yeah. So that amazed me by how much muscle mass he actually had and how much low body fat percentage that he had. So that's one person in particular. But we have lots of stories, lots of patients. Some days we'll have patients all day on my schedule, 50 pounds, 70 pounds, 42, just lots of big numbers. But again, those big numbers don't come after just a couple months. That's a lot of consistency and determination, and anybody who's battled with their weight knows that you fall off the wagon, you fall off, you eat whatever, you don't exercise, but you get back on and that's how you get the steady weight loss. You always got to get back on.

Eva (07:23):
It's like having guardrails on your wagon, I think.

Kami (07:27):
Yeah. Actually one patient, I said, oh, I haven't seen her in a while. And she said, or no, I said, oh, you fell off the wagon, huh? And she said, I fell off the wagon. The wagon went down the street. I have no idea where that wagon is. And I just laughed.

Eva (07:42):
You can always get the wagon back.

Kami (07:44):
Exactly. Exactly.

Eva (07:47):
So have you taken the medications yourself?

Kami (07:50):
Yes, I have. I started, this was, I don't even know when, probably in 2021 I saw where Ozempic could be approved for insulin resistance and pre-diabetes. I was prescribed Ozempic and I took it, and I didn't really honestly know a lot about the medication at the time cuz I did orthopedics, completely different. And I lost 15 pounds and I didn't even try. And I noticed that I really wasn't hungry for dinner. I just wasn't eating a lot in the evening, and for some reason I stopped taking the medication. I have no idea why. And I gained maybe five pounds back and then several months, maybe a year later, I got back on it. But I've been on Ozempic when the $25 coupon was readily available. I've been on Zepbound and then I've been on the compounds as well.

Eva (08:43):
Do you remember your highest weight and are you willing to share that, the stats with us?

Kami (08:50):
So the highest I've ever been that I can remember was 260 pounds. I've battled with my weight most of my life as a lot of overweight people have. And I actually had weight loss surgery, that's on my Facebook group as well, kind of like my story. So I battled with my weight my whole life. It's something I'm probably always going to battle with because it's a chronic condition. It doesn't just disappear. You got to put a lot of work into it. And then in combination with medications, you can help control your weight.

Eva (09:22):
I have your photo from your Facebook page on the screen.

Kami (09:25):
Yeah.

Eva (09:26):
Is that 2010 before you had weight loss surgery?

Kami (09:29):
Yes, I had surgery. I think I want to say it was 2011 or 2013 maybe. Yeah.

Eva (09:37):
Yeah. It's remarkable.

Kami (09:39):
Yeah.

Eva (09:41):
Well, nicely done.

Kami (09:43):
Thanks.

Eva (09:45):
You've probably heard everything at this point, and I'm wondering if there's myths or misconceptions you hear all the time that you can kind of help us clear up.

Kami (09:54):
So like I said, we've seen close to 5,000 patients at this point. Especially a while ago, you were hearing all over, oh, you're going to have stomach, what they call it, stomach paralysis.

Eva (10:04):
Paralysis.

Kami (10:05):
You're going to have stomach paralysis, you're going to get pancreatitis, you're going to have thyroid cancer. We have never had any cases of bowel obstruction or gastroparesis, this bowel paralysis that they're talking about related to GLP-1 medications at all. We have seen none of that. We have not seen any cases of pancreatitis. We have not seen any cases of thyroid. What have we seen? A whole lot of nausea, acid reflux, gerd, and a whole lot of constipation, just more or less GI issues that are very manageable. These medications are all the rage now, right? They're all over the place. I turn on my computer and all I see is Ozempic. There's stories about it everywhere, and I've seen recently where FDA is warning about these medications and no, they're not. Some of these stories, they're just half truths. It's just sensationalized. They're just putting a bunch of stuff out to get people to read it. I was talking with someone about this not too long ago that when you're overweight, you're always thinking about, oh, this doesn't fit, or you're pulling your shirt down, or you're always thinking about your size, whether it's in relation to what you're eating or going on a diet or your pants are too tight or whatever. And then when you lose weight, you don't think about that stuff anymore. You have more room in your brain for other stuff, cuz you're not thinking about that all the time, you know?

Eva (11:31):
And it's almost instantaneous when you start the medication.

Kami (11:35):
True.

Eva (11:36):
Which that's one of the miracles about it, is that you get your brain space back before you get anything else.

Kami (11:43):
Yeah.

Eva (11:44):
Because you're not thinking about food. That immediately goes away, and I found that to be just so unbelievably freeing.

Kami (11:52):
Yes. I had one patient, and I still tell this to other patients as well, that this medication works very well for food noise for a lot of people. And she had always struggled with her weight, struggled with some eating disorders when she was younger, and I put her on, I think she was on Semaglutide. And the next month we followed up with her and she looked at me just straight, just serious, she's like, is this how normal people feel? Because she wasn't constantly thinking about her next meal or snacking or food. It was an afterthought.

Eva (12:28):
Game changer.

Kami (12:29):
Yeah, for sure.

Eva (12:31):
Well, if someone's listening today and they would like to find out more about you or possibly coming to see you or doing telehealth, how do you suggest that they go about doing that?

Kami (12:43):
So if you're in the area, northwest Indiana, so you can just go on our website, MonarchHealthandWellness.net. You just go and make an appointment. You can also follow us on Facebook and Instagram, Monarch Health and Wellness. If you are in the state of Indiana and you're not close to Monarch Health and Wellness, we also do telehealth. It's called The Shot Spot, so that is TheShotSpot.net. We have Nikki and Debbie who are fabulous, who've been doing weight loss management for quite a while. Everyone loves them. So I think that's really good for people who maybe have already been on the medications, they're going to a med spa paying $600 a month for medicine, or that just don't need the accountability and the support that an in-office appointment would need. So that's great for that. And then we're also on Facebook and Instagram as well under The Shot Spot. I think The Shot Spot Indiana.

Eva (13:38):
I'll make sure we put all those links in the show notes so they're easy to find.

Kami (13:41):
Okay. Sounds good.

Eva (13:43):
Thank you, Cassie. It was so nice getting to know you today. I am really glad that we got to meet you.

Kami (13:48):
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Eva (13:51):
Follow us on Instagram @LessofYouPodcast. Are you confronting the same challenges and have a story to tell? I'd love to hear your story on our Skinny Shot Stories podcast. Contact me for more details at skinnyshotstories.com. If you're a doctor and would like to learn more about sponsoring this or any of our cosmetic surgery and weight loss podcasts, go to LessofYou.com. Less of You is a production of The Axis, theaxis.io.