Several patients have forwarded me the same kind of message over the past two weeks. An email from a wellness clinic. A post from a trainer. A headline asking, in one form or another, did the FDA legalize peptides. Something did happen in late July. It is worth walking through carefully, because the event and the way it was described are not quite the same thing. What Happened on July 23 and 24 The FDA's Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee met over two days to consider se

A patient came in recently with a printed menu from a wellness clinic. Fourteen peptides, each with a short description, each priced by the month. She wanted to know what was known about them. That turned out to be a longer conversation than either of us expected, because the list combined compounds that have almost nothing in common. Some have been studied in tens of thousands of people. For others, the human research has not really begun. The word "peptide" was the only thi

You forgot a name you have known for years. You walked into the kitchen and could not remember why you went in. A word sat on the edge of your tongue and refused to come. And underneath it all was a quieter thought. Is this how it starts. If you have started to worry about memory loss, you are not alone, and you are not necessarily in trouble. I hear this concern in my office more than almost any other, and most of the time the person across from me is fine. But most of the t

For the first time, eligible Medicare Part D patients may be able to access a GLP-1 medication for weight management for no more than $50 per month. If cost has been the reason you or a patient has been waiting, that barrier is about to drop significantly. Here is what you need to know about how this works, who qualifies, and what to do next. What Is the Medicare GLP-1 Bridge Program? Eli Lilly launched the Medicare GLP-1 Bridge program, effective July 1, 2026. Under this pro

Dr. Jeffrey Shukhman, DO | White Olive Personalized Care | Woodland Hills, CA Most of my patients tell me caffeine does not affect their sleep. Sleep studies prove them wrong every time. This is one of the most common things I hear in practice. And I understand why. You drink coffee in the afternoon, you fall asleep just fine at night, and you wake up feeling more or less the same. The connection seems invisible, so it is easy to assume there is no connection at all. But

You got your bloodwork back. Your doctor said everything looks fine. Your testosterone is in the normal range. But you still feel off. Less energy than you used to have. Drive that is not what it was. Your body composition is shifting in ways that do not match your effort. You cannot quite explain it, and neither could your doctor. Here is what most standard panels do not check: your free testosterone levels in men are not the same thing as total testosterone. The number your

You are training. You are eating well. You are doing most of the things you have always done. But something has shifted and you can feel it. Less strength than you expected. Less energy than you used to have. Your body is not responding the way it used to, and nothing you try seems to close that gap. Most of the advice you will find online points to diet, to effort, to stress management. Very little of it points to the actual mechanism. And the mechanism is where this gets in

Dr. Jeffrey Shukhman, DO | White Olive Personalized Care | Woodland Hills, CA When a patient tells me they want to age well, I am not reaching for their cholesterol panel. I am looking at three longevity markers most people have never had measured. A standard annual physical captures a narrow slice of your health. It tells you where you are today. What it almost never tells you is where you are headed. The longevity markers that actually predict long-term health outcomes and

By Dr. Jeffrey Shukhman | White Olive Direct Personalized Care You have probably seen it by now. NAD IV infusions at wellness clinics. NMN capsules on longevity podcasts. NR powders being sold next to protein shakes. The marketing is confident. The price tags are significant. And the promises, "more energy, slower aging, better brain function, longer life,"sound exactly like what most people want to hear. So, do NAD supplements actually work? I went through the clinical resea

You have described the symptoms more than once. Fatigue that does not improve with sleep. A flat mood that is hard to explain. No motivation, no drive, no real interest in things that used to matter. Your libido is gone. You are losing muscle no matter how consistently you exercise. Your labs come back normal. You are told it might be stress, perimenopause, or just the season of life you are in. Sometimes an antidepressant is offered. What almost no one checks is testosterone

You went to your annual physical. You asked good questions. Your labs came back and your doctor said everything looked normal. But something still does not feel right. Weight that will not budge. Energy that is not there. A feeling that your body is working against you even though you are doing the right things. This is one of the most common patterns I see in new patients. And one of the most common explanations is a test that almost no one orders. It is called fasting insul

Many people ask themselves: why don't I have motivation to exercise? You have made the plan more times than you can count. You set the alarm. You meant it. And when the moment came, the drive just wasn't there. Not a little low. Completely absent. Most people call that laziness. I call it a signal worth paying attention to. Why does the motivation to exercise disappear? There is a documented biological phenomenon called inflammatory sickness behavior. When the body is dealing

You did everything right. The medication worked. The weight came down, your energy improved, and for the first time in years the scale was moving in the right direction. Then you stopped. And within months, weight gain occurs after stopping Ozempic. If that is your experience, you are not alone and you did not fail. You are part of a pattern that research is now making very clear and that most physicians are not talking about with their patients before they write the prescri

You followed the protocol. You took the medication. You dealt with the side effects and stayed consistent. And the scale barely moved. Or you felt sick enough that you had to stop before the medication had a real chance to work. If that is your experience, there is something important you may not have been told before you started. Genetic variation plays a significant role in how well GLP-1 medications work and how severely patients experience side effects. For some patients,

You have been reading nutrition labels. Choosing the lower-calorie option. Watching portions and doing what you were told to do. And your energy is still low. Your weight is not moving. Your last blood panel was not what you hoped for. If you have been asking why counting calories doesn't work the way it should, the answer often comes down to what those calories are doing to your metabolism rather than how many there are. This is one of the most common and frustrating pattern

PSA results 2 years apart When a PSA result comes back elevated, most men immediately assume the worst. That is understandable. But PSA does not only rise with cancer, and understanding what else can cause it to go up is where good clinical judgment begins. What Can Raise PSA Besides Cancer Several common conditions and circumstances can push PSA upward, none of which involve cancer. An enlarged prostate, known as benign prostatic hyperplasia or BPH, is one of the most common

White Olive Direct Personalized Care | Dr. Jeffrey Shukhman | whiteolivedpc.com When I sit down with a new patient and we talk about weight, I am not thinking about calories first. And when someone asks me why does weight come back after Ozempic, my answer is almost always the same. It is not willpower. It is not the medication failing. It is four metabolic patterns that were already working against them before the prescription was written — and that are still there after it

Dr. Shukhman reviewing labs with a patient If you live in Calabasas or the surrounding communities and you're paying any attention to what's happening in medicine right now, you've heard about GLP-1 medications. Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, Zepbound. You've probably seen the weight-loss headlines and the before-and-after photos. What you may not have heard, and what I want to talk about in this post, is that the medical community is starting to look at GLP-1s in a very differen

A Journey of Transformation For seven years, I followed the path I was trained to take. I saw patients in short visits, often back to back. I reviewed charts, checked boxes, and adhered to a system that kept moving, regardless of how I felt about the care I was providing. I was a good doctor. I genuinely cared about my patients. However, caring alone was not enough when the system prevented me from meeting their actual needs. The Breaking Point The moment that finally pushed

The idea of a weight-loss pill naturally gets attention. For many people, a daily tablet sounds simpler, easier, and less intimidating than a weekly injection. And now that Wegovy tablets are part of the current U.S. prescribing information, it is reasonable for patients to ask an important question: Are Wegovy pills as effective as the shots? The honest answer is: They appear to be effective, but injectable Wegovy still looks somewhat stronger on average based on the current