I’ve been using Modere’s Curb, a supplement intended to produce healthy GLP-1 levels.
I started taking it in late October, hoping to lose enough weight (3 to 5 pounds?) that I could stop taking Rauwolfia to handle my blood pressure.
My weight dropped 2 pounds in late November, to 149. Since then my weight has been more stable than before. Any remaining trend has been too small to measure. I suspect that the timing of my weight loss is due to getting more exercise than usual the last week in November.
The initial doses had some clear cognitive effects that wore off after a few hours. It felt like I was able to think clearer, was more cautious, and felt less anxious.
I felt like I was driving more responsibly the first time I tried driving while under those effects.
Those short-term cognitive effects became much less clear after the first week, and now seem to have vanished. I’m probably still getting subtler, slower-acting benefits.
I tried varying the dose, being more careful to take it on an empty stomach, and taking several days off of it, but none of those were effective at recreating the orginal effects.
Most of the effect on my weight is due to less binging on nuts and pumpkin seeds. I could probably avoid the binging on nuts and pumpkin seeds by strictly prohibiting them from my diet, but it’s probably healthier to eat modest amounts of those fairly regularly.
I think I started eating slightly fewer calories after the first dose, and I’ve probably been consistent since then about avoiding overeating.
It definitely didn’t feel like I had more willpower. It’s more like I feel less need for willpower. I maybe feel slightly less interest in food; if so, it’s likely due to something like a better ability to prioritize my longer-term goals over immediate gratification than to feeling sated or food tasting less good.
I’m maybe a little more absent-minded, but not in a way that caused memorable harm. It’s more like I’ve become better at prioritizing what to pay attention to, and that sometimes means neglecting minor tasks.
I experienced one mildly annoying side effect twice (i.e. not enough evidence to confidently blame it on Curb). My pulse felt like it was pounding unusually hard for an hour or two after the first time I took Curb during a strenuous hike. I saw no further signs of that effect for three months, then felt it again, this time later in the evening after a strenuous hike, lasting for maybe half an hour. I measured my pulse at 77 beats per minute, compared to my normal resting rate of about 50.
Curb is reported to have the same risk of muscle loss that GLP-1 drugs have. This is mostly a concern if you succeed at losing weight.
Curb is probably safer but less effective than the comparable drugs.
It looks quite low-risk, since most of the ingredients are clearly food. The ingredients that look most suspicious to me are green olive leaf and chromium picolinate. The latter is a pretty safe supplement of unclear effectiveness. Green olive leaf has been commonly used in Mediterranean diets for centuries. The other ingredients are fruit extracts and resistant starch. I wonder if the resistant potato starch is what causes potatoes to have an unusual high satiety index score.
So by the standards of luck-based medicine, it’s got a great risk reward ratio.
It tastes good. One modest downside is that I’m supposed to drink 8 ounces of water with it, which is often more water than I want.
I suspect that my lack of weight loss over the past two months is partly due to getting a bit less exercise than usual. I’ll correct that soon.