{"id":584356,"date":"2026-08-29T21:58:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T21:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/584356\/"},"modified":"2026-08-29T21:58:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T21:58:12","slug":"glp-1-microdosing-for-inflammation-what-happened-to-my-hs-crp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/584356\/","title":{"rendered":"GLP-1 Microdosing for Inflammation: What Happened to My hs-CRP"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Estimated5 min read<\/p>\n

The Optimized Man is a biweekly email column from our editorial director as he tries out the latest, greatest, and weirdest health and wellness innovations so you don\u2019t have to. Sign up here <\/a>to get the next one.<\/p>\n

IN THE PAST two weeks alone, I\u2019ve been encouraged to microdose the following: psilocybin<\/a> for lightening my mood; Accutane<\/a> for shrinking my oil glands (and, supposedly, my pores); doxycycline<\/a> for treating my rosacea; and plyometric jumps<\/a> for supercharging\u2014apparently even shortening\u2014the objectively worst day at the gym<\/a>. I\u2019m generally happy to humor people when they tell me how to optimize my body or my mind, but there are limits to what I\u2019m willing to do. Some light tripping on my daily commute? I\u2019m listening. Plyo jumps? Get real.<\/p>\n

There is, however, one microdosing bandwagon I\u2019ve hopped on, and I\u2019m not sure whether or how to get off.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m one of those people with chronically elevated inflammation markers and no obvious reason why. Inflammation is basically your immune system\u2019s alarm system. When you cut your finger or catch a virus, your body releases inflammatory chemicals to fight off the threat and begin the repair work. That kind of short-term inflammation is useful\u2014even necessary. But when the alarm never shuts off, the body can remain in a state of low-grade, simmering inflammation, and over time that chronic and often invisible irritation has been linked to a murderers\u2019 row of health conditions (heart disease, diabetes, cancer, dementia).<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve known that mine has been stubbornly high since I turned 40 and started paying attention to a line item in my blood work called high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, or hs-CRP. It\u2019s a protein the liver produces when the body is under inflammatory stress, and doctors often track it as one signal of systemic inflammation and cardiovascular risk. For years my numbers have been \u201csomething to keep an eye on\u201d\u2014thanks, doc!\u2014and though I\u2019ve been tested for pretty much everything that might cause it, there\u2019s no good explanation.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve tried the usual low-hanging fruit (diet<\/a>, sleep, exercise, etc.) and none of it has worked. Then early last year a friend of mine\u2014very fit, supersmart, aggressively skeptical of wellness BS\u2014told me that his inflammatory markers came down after he started taking a very small dose of a GLP-1<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You probably know these drugs<\/a> as Ozempic and Wegovy, and they\u2019re best known for curbing appetites and thus rendering some of the formerly fuller-bodied people in your life\u2014who honestly looked fine before\u2014virtually unrecognizable. But researchers have also begun noticing something else: A lot of people taking GLP-1s<\/a> show declines in inflammatory markers, too.<\/p>\n

Some of the benefit likely comes from weight loss, but there\u2019s also evidence that GLP-1s may help quiet some of the processes that keep the immune system all fired up. In other words: The same drugs currently reshaping how we think about our weight may also be part of a much larger\u2014and stranger\u2014project of quietly optimizing the body from the inside out<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I asked my doctor\u2014the same one who has spent years tracking my CRP with mild concern\u2014about trying a small dose. He told me the research was still early and that most of it had been done on people with diabetes, obesity, or heart disease\u2014there was very little good data on someone like me. Plus, the drugs aren\u2019t without trade-offs: nausea, G.I. woes, and rapid fat loss that can take lean muscle with it if you\u2019re not careful. Still, he said, it might be worth a try.<\/p>\n

I started with a weekly shot of a very, very small dose, before ramping up to a weekly shot of a merely very small dose. The most immediate effect was, as predicted, feeling full all the time\u2014like, really full. Nausea is too strong a word. It was more like that feeling after your second pass through Thanksgiving dinner: the visceral certainty that another bite of anything would be a very bad idea.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf your BIOMARKERS improve but your EXPERIENCE OF BEING ALIVE does not, what exactly have you OPTIMIZED?\u201d<\/p>\n

The effect on my relationship with food was interesting. I still enjoyed what I put in my mouth, but the constant mental chatter about food\u2014the \u201cshould I have a snack?\u201d voice\u2014basically disappeared. When I went out to dinner, I ordered normally, ate until I felt satisfied, and then just\u2026stopped. No heroic willpower required. The plate would still be half full and I\u2019d think, Yeah, I\u2019m good.<\/p>\n

Because I wasn\u2019t eating as much and I was being super intentional with the food I chose, I did lose a few pounds. Nothing drastic, but enough for people to feel entitled to comment on how I looked. (Thanks! And: rude.) Thanks to my trusty InBody scale<\/a>, I could track the changes, and I took some comfort in seeing that I was losing more fat than muscle. I didn\u2019t experience any of the other major side effects; I\u2019d been especially worried about the various forms of anhedonia that some users report\u2014the so-called beige-ing of the world\u2014but I felt pretty much okay. The sensation of feeling stuffed all the time subsided, too, and I settled into a pattern of eating smaller meals and rarely snacking. There are worse ways to live.<\/p>\n

After three months I went in for blood work, and my hs-CRP had dropped by 73 percent from the previous year.<\/p>\n

I am not a physician, but even I can see this is not a subtle improvement. Which is great, right? Problem solved. Except subjectively\u2014day to day, hour to hour\u2014I feel the same. In a way, this makes GLP-1 microdosing a bit of an outlier in the self-optimization game, which tends to value speed, sensation, and visible results. Cold plunges<\/a> feel invigorating. Nootropics<\/a> promise mental clarity. Even a new workout program announces itself immediately through new and foreign soreness<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This, by contrast, is optimization by way of a lab report. If your biomarkers improve but your experience of being alive does not, what exactly have you optimized\u2014other than a statistical version of your future self you may not meet for decades, if ever? Is that worth a shot in the butt once a week, for the rest of your life?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m still deciding, and maybe I\u2019ll start to feel the impact of the diminished inflammation as my body keeps aging. (God willing.) If you\u2019ve had any experience with microdosing a GLP-1 and have some advice for me, I want to hear about it.<\/p>\n

More from the Optimized Man…\"Headshot<\/p>\n

Richard Dorment is the editorial director of Men\u2019s Health and Women\u2019s Health.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"5 min read The Optimized Man is a biweekly email column from our editorial director as he tries…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[287593,2519,287592,2117,2120,134,207184,2462,524,111,139,69,161788,287591,251090],"class_list":["post-584356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-medication","tag-collection-the-optimized-man","tag-content-type-feature","tag-contentid-484f2ab3-1525-4a3b-957b-18d7f3ba7ec4","tag-displaytype-standard-article","tag-hasproduct-true","tag-health","tag-issyndicated-false","tag-locale-us","tag-medication","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-read_time-5","tag-shorttitle-can-microdosing-ozempic-fight-inflammation","tag-sponsored-false"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}