EDGEWOOD, Ky. — Adam Crawford went from delivering babies for 15 years to specializing in weight loss as one of the medical directors at Figure Weight Loss in Edgewood.

Something about new beginnings motivates him. Crawford said Figure Weight Loss is a nutrition-based weight loss program that tries to get people to think about how they’re eating meals on a daily basis.

“We've come up with a program that seems to work for the majority of people who come through,” Crawford said.

While he stresses nutrition and exercise, because of his medical background, he’s also able to prescribe medication to patients.

In recent years, many people have come in wanting to discuss drugs used to treat diabetes.

“Along comes the GLP-1s like Ozempic and Mounjaro, and there’s a million different names out there," Crawford said. "But they really help in the evenings. If you’ve done a good job eating during the day, one of the things these medicines do, they help the food stay on your stomach longer, so in the evenings, you’re just not as hungry."

"These medicines can be used for good, but they can also be used for evil. It’s the importance of going to a physician, somebody who specializes in weight loss, to get these medicines, as opposed to ordering them online from Mexico or wherever they’re going to come from.”

Crawford said the top medication Figure Weight Loss prescribes is Phentermine, a stimulant.

“Which is a medicine that I believe is the best thing out there to facilitate changes, because it keeps you focused,” he said. “By using both of them (phentermine and GLP-1s), we can keep the doses down, keep the side effects down, but still have the benefit of two different medicines and the things they do uniquely differently.”

He said the GLP-1s work well for many people, but he’s also sure to make patients aware of potential side effects.

In the short term, side effects can include nausea, reflux and constipation. He said long-term effects can include bone and muscle loss, as well as mental health effects.

“People experience a little lethargy, and some people actually get depressed on this medicine,” Crawford said. “We’re learning that it does do things to your brain.”

That’s what happened to Brenda Combs, a diabetic who had success when she first started taking Ozempic.

“I started taking this for my diabetes because my diabetes was out of control,” she said. “I had weight loss, and my A1C went way down; it did control that quite well.”

But as her dosage went up, Combs said she started experiencing mental health issues that she never had before.

“I started getting confused, and it just wouldn’t stop; it kept taking off," she said. "It was like pinball machines in my head. “I started getting confused, and it just wouldn’t stop; it kept taking off," she said. "It was like pinball machines in my head. My brain stopped. It was the weirdest stuff ever."

"It was just like, I’m going crazy. That’s the first thing I thought.”

Things then got worse.

“I started self-harming,” Combs said. “I didn’t know how to deal with emotions anymore."

"May of '23, I tried to commit suicide, because I started thinking about how I could commit suicide, for no reason, how I could commit suicide. And I tried it.”

Combs said she felt alone but then started seeing articles of others having similar experiences. She opened up to her doctor and stopped taking Ozempic.

“When I came off the shot, it’s like, where have I been?” she said. “I wasn’t there on these drugs.”

She’s encouraging others to do their own research before they consider taking drugs like Ozempic. 

“There are other ways to take care of your diabetes besides going on this shot,” she said. “This is not embarrassing. Other people need to know about this.”

Crawford said issues seem to be dose dependent.

“The discussion is always, what are you eating? Because it always comes back, to lose weight the right way, is about eating and not restricting,” he said. “If you go about it that way, the side effects can be minimized, and I really don’t have any qualms with prescribing these medicines as long as you’re thinking about eating.”

Like so many things when it comes to health, he said it’s not a one-size-fits-all issue.

According to the American Diabetes Association, Kentucky has the country’s sixth-highest rate of diabetes, costing the state about $5 billion annually as of 2022.