[Angela Foster] (0:00 - 0:09)
There are so many women in midlife who are doing everything right. They're eating well, they're exercising, they're taking their supplements, they still struggle with cravings.

[Sarah Kennedy] (0:09 - 0:43)
Oh, that's called food noise. It's well researched now. It is real, it is published.

It really is not about willpower. Your appetite centre is in your hindbrain, in your primitive brain, which is called the hypothalamus. When you decrease your calories by 25%, your hunger will double over four months.

Going into peri or postmenopausal, your oestrogen has decreased, a lot of things happen with that. And unfortunately, you have to reduce your calorie intake by 200 calories a day just to stay the same.

[Angela Foster] (0:43 - 0:47)
When you crave things, very rarely do people ever say, I just have this craving for broccoli.

[Sarah Kennedy] (0:49 - 0:54)
Your cravings have gone up and everything is telling you to eat because your hormones have decreased.

[Angela Foster] (0:55 - 1:20)
Sarah, for the last 16 years, you have been deep into the research on natural appetite suppressants and the gut brain appetite signalling. Why is it that there are so many women in midlife who are doing everything right? They're eating well, they're exercising, they're taking their supplements, but they still struggle with cravings, belly fat, and sometimes just that sort of constant stream of thoughts about food.

[Sarah Kennedy] (1:21 - 2:13)
Oh, that's called food noise. And actually, it's well researched now. There is actually some different little questionnaires you can take about what food noise you have.

So it's not just in your brain. Well, it is in your brain, but it's not just in your brain. It is real.

It is published. Why is going into peri or postmenopausal, your oestrogen has decreased and a lot of things happen with that. And unfortunately, which I always think is so desperately unfair, just to put it in really simple terms, you have to reduce your calorie intake by 200 calories a day just to stay the same.

But yet your cravings have gone up and everything is telling you to eat. So that is just a fact. It's because your hormones have decreased.

[Angela Foster] (2:14 - 2:48)
I think the other thing right about midlife is there's so many things coming at us. We just have so much responsibility and we're often termed the sandwich generation. And I think some of those cravings are prompted by stress where the brain's kind of looking for something, a dopamine hit, or even if you have a really stressful day, you might be craving chocolate in the evening or some carbs because your body's actually trying to get you to wind down and stop.

But often we feel we have to earn that rest. How much do you think this is down to willpower and discipline versus what's going on with our own biology?

[Sarah Kennedy] (2:49 - 4:43)
Well, first of all, I just want to debunk the whole thing about willpower. It really is not about willpower. Your appetite centre is in your hindbrain, in your primitive brain, which is called the hypothalamus.

And let's just go, it's in your hindbrain, right? When you decrease your calories by 25%, your hunger will double over four months. And that is because your hindbrain is saying to you, you're going into famine.

You might be. You need to eat now. And in fact, that's what drove us out of our caves.

Otherwise, we'd all be lying there going, yeah, you know what? It's raining. I'm not going out there.

So there's a hindbrain. And then you have this human that has this forebrain, and that's what we talk about, the front brain, which has our willpower. Now, it sits over the hindbrain, but you put hormones, you put stress, you put lack of sleep, you put tiredness, you put alcohol, anything, and the little forebrain comes off, and you've got this primitive hindbrain that goes, woohoo, we're off.

And just to give you an example, I always say, and maybe it isn't everyone, but I always say, how many people have eaten hot chips late at night after they've had a few glasses of wine? They don't need the hot chips. They don't need.

But that willpower, which was holding you there, has suddenly fallen off. And your hindbrain said, woohoo, you know, I want to eat something. And that's what happens with stress.

That's what happens with tiredness. And all of those, it's actually, is it a reward? Or is it just because that little hindbrain saying, I want to eat, and that's what happens.

[Angela Foster] (4:44 - 4:53)
And then we're kind of driven to do this before we sort of even realise what we are doing. How is lack of sleep causing more hunger?

[Sarah Kennedy] (4:54 - 5:42)
Well, I think it's just that tiredness that, you know, I talk about that forebrain, that cognitive that talks to you, you know, and you're like, and when you're tired, you're just like, oh, you know, I can't be bothered, just give me something. And that's when the hindbrain comes So it's not a need to eat. It's not a calorie deficit.

Is it a partially a reward? Is it partially a pick me up? But really, it's that hindbrain overriding your forebrain to say, yes, you can have it.

And remember, it's a very primitive brain. And it is driving you. It wants to keep your metabolic set point.

It basically sabotages any type of weight management, because it wants whatever weight you are, it wants to keep you at it.

[Angela Foster] (5:42 - 5:59)
I think that's the thing a lot of people struggle with is this metabolic set point. And when they hit a plateau, we hear a lot about GLP-1 medications. Now, many people have tried them.

Not many people really truly understand what GLP-1 does in the body. Can you break that down simply for us?

[Sarah Kennedy] (5:59 - 7:59)
I think many people would have heard about the gut-brain axis. And what happens is that when you eat, your food digests and it goes down into your digestive tract. And that actually activates, probably 45 minutes to an hour later, the release of appetite-suppressing hormones.

They've got many functions. They stimulate, but they've got many functions. But most of it is to drop that post-eating glucose and to tell the brain subtly, you can stop eating.

Otherwise, we would pop. So it is a natural hormone in your body. And we have a number of other hormones.

We release CCK, which is also an appetite-suppressing hormone, GLP-1, GIP, and PYY. These are all natural, and they're all signalling the body. You've eaten, we're going to help you flatten your peak in glucose, and we're going to work with you and tell the brain.

So it is a natural what it is. So these are natural hormones. When you have a GLP-1 receptor agonist, so I'm talking about an ozempic, a wagovi, a z-poud, these are synthetic.

They have mimicked your natural hormone, GLP-1, and with z-poud, GIP. So they've taken that natural hormone, and they've synthesised it, but they've cooked a couple of molecules so it lasts for seven days. Normally, it would last for probably two to three minutes.

It lasts for seven days. It's a synthetic hormone. You inject it, or now you can take an oral form, and it basically replaces your natural hormone.

It saturates your receptors, and it's very high, and it goes, you don't want to eat.

[Angela Foster] (8:00 - 8:41)
So it's what you're saying then, these medications, they're lasting for seven days at the time when we're injecting them, but when we are kind of falling back on our natural hormones that are being produced, as we've eaten a meal, these get produced, and they just last for a few minutes just to kind of take us over that bump. So for example, you've just had a meal, and you're like, I kind of fancy something else, something to put a full stop at the end of it, something sweet, for example. If you sit with it, quite often, that feeling will go away.

So is that our natural GLP-1s and GIPs that are basically telling us, the signalling is actually, do you know what, you've had enough to eat. You don't need anything more. And is that what's disrupted in some people?

[Sarah Kennedy] (8:41 - 10:54)
Oh, it's fascinating. That lasts longer than that, but what's happening is food is going down your intestinal tract like this, and it's getting the receptors, or your little L-cells, to release. So each hormone may last for two to three minutes, but it's carrying on as it goes down through your intestinal tract.

And yes, that's what they're doing. But interesting, as I said, when we eat, probably it will start to happen about 45 minutes to an hour, because remember, it's got to go through your stomach and into your upper digestive tract. So I'd always say, you know, I don't know if you remember how your mother used to say, chew 10 times, don't eat so fast.

And that's because they didn't know the reason. But the thing is, if you eat slower, it's going to reach your intestinal tract before you've finished eating. We eat so fast, we're always on the run.

I'm hungry, I'm going to grab something, I'm going to eat it. And your brain will not be telling you, you're full, for about 45 minutes to an hour later. And really, they're quite subtle, subtle signals.

But I always say to people, think of it like when you've eaten a really big dinner, let's say Christmas Day or something like that. And then suddenly an hour, an hour, probably an hour, an hour and a bit later, you go, oh, I'm so full. I wish I hadn't eaten that much.

Well, that's that signalling that's happening. Signalling is happening from your stomach, it's happening from your brain, it's happening all over your body. And that is your natural release.

But it is quite subtle, which is why when you inject it, you're getting it at this, what we would call a supraphysiological level. So after a meal, you would usually, let's just talk GLP-1, you would increase about 300%. You inject probably at about 3000%.

And then it goes down over the seven days. So you are not hungry at any stage.

[Angela Foster] (10:55 - 11:36)
Which is why we're seeing issues around protein sufficiency and other nutrient sufficiencies is because in the case of our natural GLP-1s and GIPs and other hormones that you mentioned there, when we're eating, we're getting signalling that, oh, you've had enough now, you can kind of take a break for a few hours, you don't need to eat again. Whereas in the case of these injectables, the signalling is, you don't need to eat. So you could be literally starving on a high enough dose and not actually get the signal to go eat.

So we see these dramatic weight loss. Yeah. How are then, when we're taking these things, how do they differ from natural sort of appetite suppressants that we've had in the past?

[Sarah Kennedy] (11:37 - 13:02)
Well, there aren't really any natural, I mean, there are, and we'll talk about Calico, but if you looked at the ones in the past, they were fibre, or what we'd call fillers, which fill your stomach with a fibre and theoretically, because you've got a descended stomach, will make you feel fuller. The traditional ones were a caffeine-based, which hyped you up, so your metabolism was higher. Or we used to call them, we'd call them filler fast or laxative.

They'll make you pass it through quicker. They were the traditional natural appetite suppressors or weight management. What we have now, the one that we have, was developed by the New Zealand government over 16 years and 30 million in research.

So what it does, it goes down, the small capsule, it dissolves in the upper digestive tract, and it stimulates or super stimulates the release of your own appetite suppressing hormones. So GLP-1 is released at 600% versus 300%. So we get a larger behavioural change, such as, you know, as we talked about, decreased hunger, decreased craving, and an average of an 18% reduction in calorie intake.

[Angela Foster] (13:03 - 13:05)
And what's in this that's causing that?

[Sarah Kennedy] (13:07 - 17:16)
Very briefly, it's fascinating. In 2009, all primary research in New Zealand, or just about all primary research, is done by the government. And I talk about Blue Sky, and we have large research institutes.

We also have, like many developed countries, an obesity problem. So they put out in 2009, a request for a proposal across all of these government agencies for something that could help us with an obesity problem. A particular institute came back and said that they would, they had a hypothesis that they would find a plant-based, a natural plant-based extract that suppressed appetite.

Quite fascinating, why did they have that hypothesis? Part of it comes from Scotland. In the times of famine, in the Scottish Highlands, they chewed very, very bitter heath berries to suppress appetite.

And in fact, Charles II, apparently, gave it to his mistress to get her to lose weight. But anyway, that's what history tells us. So there was some historical and then some modern evidence of using very bitter substances.

They got back a $20 million grant from the government, and then went on to prove that this works. Now, I'll just back up a little bit. What it's doing is, and I talk about evolution again, very, very bitter in evolution could have meant toxic.

So on your tongue, you have 25 bitter taste receptors. So if you eat something very bitter, you'll spit it out. If it goes to your stomach, you'll probably feel a bit nauseous.

And you'll either go, I'm not going to eat that again, or you could vomit it up. But if it goes below your stomach, you know, there's nothing your body could do. So I'm thinking about a coated seed or something like that.

And so it's got down past your tongue, past your stomach, into your digestive tract. And what it does is it activates these little bitter taste receptors right the way through your gut to release these appetite suppressing hormones that go to your brain and go, hey, this might not be good for you, stop eating. So a very, very clever and elegant way that your body told you to stop eating something that could be toxic for you.

So taste buds on your tongue are actually right the way through your gastrointestinal tract. And these very clever scientists actually took 300 biopsies from the humans right down through their gastrointestinal tract and mapped them all out and then proved that these produced these appetite suppressing hormones. So quite never been done before, quite revolutionary.

They knew it would work in the laboratory. So they took it into their first human clinical. So would it work in humans?

So they had this very expensive trial because they had all of the participants were cannulated or they took the lids off them. I think it was every 20 minutes. And they could show in giving this extract an hour before an eat to your full lunch and an eat to your full snack that they increased these appetite suppressing hormones by 600% in the body and got an 18% reduction in calorie intake.

So we are basically using the evolutionary biology of the body to do this. We are hacking your body by saying, hey, you could have eaten something bitter, may not be good for you. And we're releasing these natural hormones telling you not to eat so much.

[Angela Foster] (17:16 - 18:43)
If you're getting value from this show, the single best thing you can do to help us keep bringing you the highest calibre guests is to subscribe or follow wherever you listen or watch. It takes 10 seconds, but it genuinely makes a difference to the quality of the guests we bring you week after week. Very interesting.

So you're going with the natural mechanism of the body and just helping it sort of upregulate itself, but not to the same extreme as a drug would do where you'll then losing appetite. Do you know why I see this has benefits? And I'd like to speak to you more about how this works in practise.

But I think one of the things that people struggle with when they're losing weight, and I'm guilty of this just in day to day, is that when you're a parent, for example, and you've got kids around, they're eating sometimes at different times to you, or you're working from home, so you're around food all of the time, is it's what you call the licks, the and the dips, right? And we completely underestimate what that little teaspoon of almond butter might do when you're adding it onto your kids porridge or onto their sourdough or something like that. But these tiny little bits when you finish up something they were having, and you're not hungry, but you're also not full.

And there's actually quite a few hundred calories that you can consume over the course of the day, just through these little bits that if you didn't have access to a kitchen on tap whenever you wanted it, you wouldn't be. I'm sure this can help with things like that.

[Sarah Kennedy] (18:43 - 20:42)
Totally. And we get a lot of feedback back from that exact thing. I've stopped finishing my child's meal.

I can, you know, because you feel full, it's suddenly your brain goes, it's interesting, like I intermittent fast, so I use it for that. But if I'm going out, say on a work dinner, and I know I'm going to eat late, but I'll be going to a cocktail party before, I'll always take it, because I know I'm going to get there, it'll be about six o'clock, I'm going to be ravenous, because your brain is, and I'm going to want to eat, and I'm going to eat all of these little hors d'oeuvres or canapes and so on like that. And you're just like, you know what, I'm fine.

I'm absolutely, I will have a glass of wine. But you know, I'm fine. And then I'm not going to eat.

So I, you know, you can use it in all of these, like a lot of feedback we get is, you know, if you want to take it an hour to an hour and a half before a main meal. And the reason being is, you want it to go down to dissolve in your upper digestive tract to stimulate those hormones. So when you go to eat, you're just not going to eat as much, you're going to eat less.

So you want to stimulate them before the 45 minutes before it gets down. So you don't eat as much. And what we get is a lot, because it lasts for four to six hours.

So we get a lot of feedback with everyone, men and women saying, I don't snack after dinner. Because remember, it lasts for four to six hours. And a little bit like, you know, you're not really hungry.

It's that reward thing. As you said, after dinner, I want something sweet, or I want something salty. It's the first time I've managed to relax today.

You know, but when you're full, you're like, yeah, nah, I don't need it. So lots of lots of feedback from that.

[Angela Foster] (20:43 - 21:00)
So you're taking it an hour or so before your meal, are you then still you still have an appetite to sit down and enjoy your meal? It's not taking that away? It's just is it just limiting the amount that you're going to have?

Or even as we were just saying there, the propensity to actually just overeat beyond what you should be?

[Sarah Kennedy] (21:00 - 22:45)
You just won't, you will feel full faster. And I know it's a tag line, but it is so right. Because remember, we've stimulated those hormones.

Before you've eaten, your food comes down, it stimulates a bit more, and you just you will eat, on average, 18% less. And put that in context, which depends on the person, but it's usually about 200 to 220 calories per meal, which is like sort of like a hamburger, not a huge Big Mac, but a hamburger. So yeah, it just allows you to do that.

We say an hour to an hour and a half before, what we're really saying is take it on an empty stomach. These are delayed release capsules. So you want them to go through your stomach to that upper digestive tract.

If you have food in it, they might get trapped along the way. There's not going to be any harm, but they may not be as good. So like, I think, as I said, I intermittent fast, just because I'm lazy and the fact that, you know, it saves me 15 minutes in the morning.

And, you know, it just also probably saves me three to 400 calories, you know, just as easier. But I'll take mine sort of eight or nine o'clock in the morning. And that will see me right the way through to lunchtime.

And I can walk past, you know, the muffins or anything at morning tea and go, you know, I'm okay without being tempted. So it's once again, but you know, if you're just getting used to it, I'd say, you know, and all you're wanting to limit your meal sizes, take it, you know, an hour, an hour and a half before it really wants to be on an empty stomach.

[Angela Foster] (22:45 - 23:20)
It interests me. I think for many women, when they're on a, on a weight loss programme, they, they hit a plateau, they see some results and then they get to this plateau and almost that last little bit that really gives them the joy of getting back to how they feel at their best can be really difficult to take off. And it isn't that, that many calories necessarily, but it's about having the right macronutrient structure and the right exercise to support it.

It sounds like this is something that you could take even just before your largest meal of the day, just to kind of take the egg off. It's not something you have to take with every meal.

[Sarah Kennedy] (23:20 - 24:14)
No, totally. We say before lunch and for dinner, but you can mix that around, but absolutely, and that'll stop that picking afterwards. It'll stop a whole lot of things.

I think, you know, something we talked about, remember, you know, it's reduction in hunger and reduction in craving. If you are menstruating in that luteal phase that everyone talks about, PMS, that is your increase in hormone then, and you, on average, woman will eat 200 calories more. And this will, and it's that craving because your body's saying, hey, you couldn't plant an egg.

I need you to eat up. So this actually, taking calicurb in that week or 10, well, probably a week, so then we'll just take that edge off the craving. Not off your mood, not off your mood, but it will off your craving.

[Angela Foster] (24:15 - 25:30)
The craving, yeah. I want to come back to the mood, actually. I think what's really interesting what you're saying there about the luteal phase is, I think, you know, we do burn more calories in the luteal phase.

I think the difficulty, isn't it, is that when you crave things, very rarely do people ever say, oh, I just have this craving for broccoli or some cravings. Craving often the things that you feel you shouldn't be having, the sugary things, the chocolate, which are also often contributing then to the breakouts that you feel you get in the luteal phase. So I kind of, I like the flexibility of this, that actually it's not even something that you necessarily need to take every day.

Depending on the individual, it might be that you're like, I just find this provides me some really nice support in that last week of the month, for example, or they find, you know, the other kind of things I think about is when you're travelling, right, summer's coming up, we're travelling a lot and we tend to overindulge a little bit when we go on holiday. But also, as you were saying earlier, when we're underslept, we see a rise in ghrelin and a reduction in leptin, which tells us we're full. So then this has really good, an opportunity really there to take it and actually kind of reduce some of the sort of overeating that we do because we are either tired or travelling or out with friends or doing different things.

I like that flexibility of it.

[Sarah Kennedy] (25:30 - 28:22)
And also, well, we get a lot of feedback from people like, hey, you know, I've been on a cruise, but I haven't put on any weight because I've been taking my Calicub. So yeah, coming in out of it, you know, I'm going into a Christmas period or going. So I travel all the time.

So, you know, we used to say gin was mummy's little helper. I say Calicub is mummy's little helper because I know I'm not being patronising, but I literally have it in my handbag all the time because, you know, travelling and I'm in and out of airports and airports are appalling for any healthy choices. And so in fact, a very good friend of mine who's an air hostess said the meals are actually very high fat because they make people more rested and go to sleep easier.

I don't know whether that's true. Maybe they just say it, but, you know, just helps you in all of that travelling and in between, you know, time zones, all rest. So yeah, you can come in and out of it.

Well, we always say that when you first go on to Calicub, we have an onboarding of a week, which just allows your body. So take one a day for two days, take two a day for two days, and then get up to four a day, you know, two before each meal, they're tiny capsules. And we do that because you need your body to get used to that super stimulation of these appetite suppressing hormones.

And you know what your dosage is like anyone, everyone is different or physiologically different. And around 5% of the population, we call super tasters, they just have more taste buds done through the gastrointestinal tract, I will be able to stay with one capsule. So that's why we have the onboarding.

So you can come in and out of it, you'll know what you're going to be what what dosage you'll be able to do. It is a biologically active product. You it works in an hour.

It's not you don't have to take it for four weeks. It actually works in an hour. The other thing about it, I probably didn't say is it's 100% natural, it is vegetarian.

It actually comes from an extract of hops, hops that are grown in New Zealand, they're extracted using supercritical extraction. And then that's sent to the US, and then they're made in these delayed release capsules, which are all vegetarian. So incredibly safe, because it's only focused on the gastrointestinal tract.

All we I shouldn't say all we're doing because it's 16 years of research. But what we're doing is we are stimulating or super stimulating your own release of your natural hormones.

[Angela Foster] (28:22 - 28:30)
Does that have an effect on blood sugar regulation, and things like that after taking other other effects, not just appetite reduction?

[Sarah Kennedy] (28:31 - 30:39)
Yeah, it certainly does reduce what we'd call the post meal glucose peak. It brings it down. We have just finished our fourth human clinical, which was on 150 patients, men and women, BMI between 25 and 35 over six months.

And there we have the first set of data back, which will be published this month on weight loss and body composition. And the results are stunning. I can't talk about them till they're published, but the results are absolutely stunning.

But the second thing they're doing is measuring all the bloods over that six months to show the you know, the Hb1ac, so the glucose and different things. The other thing I think that we're excited about is we upregulate. When you come off a GLP-1 injectable, or we come off a synthetic, what most people don't realise is you've downregulated your hormones, your natural hormones.

Whenever you have a synthetic hormone, you downregulate natural hormones, because they don't need to work. They all go on holiday. They're like, hey, I don't need to do anything.

It happens with testosterone. It happens with a lot of hormones. So what happens is when you've been on a synthetic GLP-1, your natural hormones have gone to zero, which is why when you come off them, people get this insane hunger.

It's just like, I want to eat anything. And that's part of the reason for the rapid weight gain. So you really want to use something like Calocurb to act as this incredible safety net, which is going to re-stimulate your own gut-brain access to work, and really allow you to start monitoring your diet or making healthy choices.

[Angela Foster] (30:39 - 32:49)
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You're actually plunging your own ones right down. And so I think people do worry about that. So they could use it as a transition to sort of segue off back into normal life and then just take it as needed afterwards.

[Sarah Kennedy] (32:50 - 34:14)
I say it's not an if, it's a must. You have taken quite a while and spent a lot of money. No one wants to put that weight back on.

But you have to be able to transition off onto something. And you have to be able to stimulate that gut brain access. I mean, it literally has gone on holiday, probably packed up the dog and gone on holiday, you know, depending on how long you've been on it.

So yeah, you know, you have to do that. And we know that we upregulate, we upregulate. So if you come off calicurb, you're not going to go into the same decline.

Because I kind of think of these little taste receptors in the L cells, we're kind of exercising them every day, we're sort of pushing them to do so we're upregulating. And also as you get older, you know, all of these things decrease, we're not as responsive as we were when we were younger. You think with children, how often they go, I don't want to eat.

And you're like, oh, you must eat. Their gut brain access is absolutely switched on. And they're saying, I don't feel like it.

I don't want it. I'm not hungry. But we have a we have decreases in our, we have a whole lot of mental things that are going on.

But we also, our gut brain access is often not disconnected, but it's not as good as it was.

[Angela Foster] (34:14 - 35:59)
I mean, there's so much to that, isn't there? When you look at it, I think, you know, we're all born with the ability to or the vast majority of us to actually regulate appetite really well. And then a lot of it is kind of conditioning, because actually, if you put a child, I've noticed this with mine, you give them healthy food.

And then there's also other food around that they can eat. But they've never had it as a way of, for example, helping them get over something stressful, or they've been upset, and then you give them something. If you've never done that, their own signalling hormones will simply just say, yeah, as you said, Sarah, I'm not hungry, but I feel like it, there might be ice cream there.

But I just don't fancy it. And I'm fine with that. And I think so many of us sort of miss out on that in a way for someone, then I think it's just helpful to understand, because we've got a couple of groups of people here.

So we have the I'm going to find the right dose for me. And I'm going to use it when I'm travelling in the luteal phase, maybe going through perimenopause for these sort of isolated incidences, or maybe just blocks of time, or it's Christmas, Thanksgiving. And I think that sounds really useful.

And you can get to know your own dose. The other two groups that you've mentioned, one is somebody who is actively looking to reduce their weight now, and they need to find that dose. And the second one is the person transitioning off.

Yeah, so if we take the first group, he was saying that build up slowly start by taking one. Yeah, I'm just thinking for someone who doesn't want to quite a lot of my listeners will find that they experience bloating or digestive discomfort. So if they're taking it an hour before they eat their meal, that will then show them will it their level of appetite because as you said, no one wants to get to the point where they've eaten their meal, suddenly all these receptors are activated.

This feels really horrible. So is that the right part low dose?

[Sarah Kennedy] (36:00 - 38:35)
Well, the low dose as you get the super stimulation, what and why we're always very open about that around up to 10% of people will experience a laxative effect or a softening of the stool. And that's why you start, you know, sort of we say low and slow is over five days. And if you're getting an effect after one capsule, keep it at one capsule.

If you get, but the laxative effect is a one off and happens an hour after you've taken it, and your body will adjust to it over 24 to 48. I mean, it doesn't keep going on. It's just a one.

You know, I kind of say to people, it's not a bad thing, because your gut brain access is really working, you do actually have these bitter taste receptors. And it's working well. So all things good and just allow your body to get used to it.

So that's really what we're trying to do is just go 5% of people Yeah, you know, they might just stay on one capsule. And if you're feeling the results, just leave it like that. But it does work in an hour.

So it's that you don't have to take it for four weeks. It is you'll take the capsule when you get up to two. And then you'll be like, Oh, I want to eat, I do want to eat.

And then suddenly, you'll be like, I'm full. But you are well, you won't be bloated, but you'll just be full. You are full.

And you just, I always remember the first time I took it. It was presented to me in 2017. And I was out with a group of girlfriends for dinner.

And I'm sort of dealing these around the table, like I had some test capsules, like a drug dealer, and I'm dealing them around. And I had, we just finished eating. And we had, because we're New Zealand, a leg of slow cooked lamb.

And normally, you know, you'd sort of pick at a lamb or do you know, like the crunchy bit. And I just sat there and I thought, I'm full. I can't eat anymore.

And it's sort of like, it was such a relief for me, because, you know, it was like, I'm okay. I'm full. I'm going to, you know, step away.

And after always having this love-hate relationship with food, I actually sort of, it almost quietens everything. Well, it does. It quietens everything down.

It takes that noise away.

[Angela Foster] (38:35 - 38:51)
So liberating for many people. With somebody who is transitioning off a GLP-1, would they still need to build up the dose? Or because their own natural hormones have been suppressed over the time of it, would they then start on a regular dose as part of that transition?

Or what's the best way?

[Sarah Kennedy] (38:51 - 39:40)
I'd probably do it still over five days. And depending on how long they've been on the injectables, if you've been on them for quite a while, I'd probably, because you titrate down over a month, I'd probably start combining them, you know, in a month. If you've only been on them six to eight to nine months, I'd probably start two weeks before you titrate off.

Absolutely. They're completely different. We're stimulating your natural hormones that's injecting in a synthetic.

You're titrating down one and then you're bringing another one up. So either a month or two weeks. The longer you've been on an agonist or a GLP-1 drug, it's more likely the longer it's going to take to bring those natural hormones back up.

[Angela Foster] (39:41 - 40:07)
So actually you can transition between the two, as you say, you're coming off one and beginning Calocur. The last thing I want to speak to you about was the mood regulation, because I think we touched on it very briefly. This is so important.

So because of the way these GLP-1s affect appetite, they also affect other areas of the brain. There has been some recent articles around how it can impact things like motivation. Can you explain a bit more about that?

[Sarah Kennedy] (40:07 - 41:15)
I don't know about motivation, but certainly we talked about the hindbrain and the addictive centre sits very close to the appetite centre. So certainly people may feel like they're less addictive. They're all into play of one another, but I don't feel like my wine so much, or I don't feel like drinking so much.

These are all hypothesis at the moment. These are all anecdotal. There have been no clinicals that say, yes, this stops an addictive behaviour, but I think you can gather with a number of anecdotals coming back.

Mood, I haven't read anything about mood, but certainly addictive behaviour I have. I think sometimes for people, that joy of taking away that constant food noise is liberating. That losing weight without fighting your body the whole time is liberating because you're having this inner battle the whole time.

[Angela Foster] (41:16 - 41:30)
It's so true, and I think it's just, as you say, it's noise. You feel like you're thinking about it all the time. It's super interesting.

You mentioned that you have just done a whole new set of research that's coming out. When can we expect to see that research published?

[Sarah Kennedy] (41:30 - 41:49)
We're hoping later this month, so later in June. The results are stunning. I'm absolutely thrilled by them, and that was done on both weight loss and body composition, so I'd love to come back.

They're quite stunning.

[Angela Foster] (41:50 - 42:06)
That's really interesting because I think one of the things people worry about is that muscle loss when they're using things like GLP-1s and the other implications that it has on metabolic health, so very, very interesting. Is there anything that I haven't asked you, Sarah, that you would like to share with our audience?

[Sarah Kennedy] (42:06 - 43:14)
No, I think, look, we are still partially owned by the New Zealand government, so everything we do must be absolutely at the highest standard. We are a science-led company. We continue to invest a very large amount in our clinical science, which is quite unusual in this, and they're all done on humans.

I'm very, very proud that two of our clinicals have done one totally on women and the other on women and men. That is very unusual in clinical studies because women are difficult. We have hormones where men don't, or not the hormones that we have.

So, you know, we have just such a raft, and we continue to invest in science. So, yeah, it's a wonderful, it's a great product for everything we talked about. Also remember it lasts for four to six hours, so it will be degraded out of your body within 24 hours.

[Angela Foster] (43:15 - 43:50)
Yeah, I love that, and it's just, it's completely natural, plant-based, as you say, and just has so many different ways of using it. I love this idea as well for people who have been using a GLP-1, how they can transition off it. I think it's going to help a lot of people because that's, you know, a fear for so many.

What do I do when I'm still taking it? Yeah, totally. Super exciting, super exciting the work that you're doing.

We will put a link in the description for people to go and check it out with a special exclusive listener discount code. Where can people find out more about everything you're doing, Sarah, the research that you're sharing? Please, please share.

Sure.

[Sarah Kennedy] (43:50 - 44:21)
So, it is just C-A-L-O-C-U-R-B.com, and you will find all the science, you know, how it was developed, where it comes from, and, in fact, how it works. And it's a simple story, but it seems complicated. I love bringing it back to evolution and the fact that we have, we've kind of hacked our natural evolutionary process in our body.

[Angela Foster] (44:21 - 44:27)
And just sort of enhanced it, given it a little bit of help. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing all this. It's been really fascinating talking to you.

[Sarah Kennedy] (44:27 - 44:29)
Thanks, Angela.

Sarah Kennedy of Calocurb explains why food noise spikes in perimenopause: falling estrogen raises cravings while the hindbrain overrides forebrain willpower under stress or poor sleep. She contrasts natural appetite hormones (GLP-1, GIP, CCK, PYY) with pharmaceutical GLP-1 agonists, which run at roughly 3,000% physiological levels versus the body's natural 300% rise - explaining rebound hunger after stopping injectables. Calocurb, a hops-derived bitter compound, stimulates a 600% natural hormone rise for an 18% average calorie reduction.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

Why food noise isn't a willpower problem, and what's actually happening in your hindbrain versus your forebrain when cravings take over

How declining estrogen in perimenopause changes your calorie needs even as cravings increase

What GLP-1, GIP, CCK, and PYY actually do in your body, and how they differ from each other

How pharmaceutical GLP-1 agonists compare to your body's own natural hormone levels, and what that gap means for nutrient intake

Why coming off a GLP-1 medication can trigger intense rebound hunger, and what's happening hormonally during that transition

How bitter taste receptors throughout your gut influence appetite signaling, and why this evolutionary mechanism matters

What role the luteal phase, travel, and sleep deprivation play in cravings, and how timing strategies can offset them