How Calibrate Improves Metabolic Health

Metabolic health isn’t just about metabolism. It’s how organs, hormones, cells, and molecular messengers respond to food, sleep, exercise, and emotional health triggers. Below, we’ll explain what that means and how Calibrate combines lifestyle changes with medication to help our members achieve metabolic health.

The body in and out of balance

Over thousands of years, our bodies have evolved to respond to specific inputs from our surroundings. 

But here’s the problem: Because we’ve changed our lives quite a lot in the past few centuries, our bodies are not equipped to respond to many of the current environmental inputs. 

Take sleep, for example. In nature, as night falls, darkness triggers the production of melatonin—a hormone that helps us sleep. But in our modern lives, we experience bright light right up until bedtime, and this results in less melatonin and less sleep.

When we sleep poorly, our bodies perceive that something is wrong and (through stress hormones) signal our systems to store energy rather than burn it. The result? Weight gain.

The Four Pillars of Metabolic Health— the foundation of sustained results

Sleep is just one example. At Calibrate, we’ve broken the inputs needed for optimal metabolic health into four key factors: food, sleep, exercise, and emotional health. Because they’re so foundational, we call these the Four Pillars of Metabolic Health. Here’s what they are and why they matter.

• Food: What we eat affects insulin sensitivity, hormones, and gut microbiome. 
• Sleep: The quality, duration, and consistency of sleep can directly influence metabolism and alter appetite. 
• Exercise: Activity increases metabolism. It also builds muscle mass, which improves (among other things) insulin sensitivity.
• Emotional Health: Mood and stress levels can influence triggers and hormones that affect how the body responds to nutrients. It can even shift eating habits and, over time, metabolism and weight. 

GLP-1s— How Calibrate members kickstart their progress 

Factors like moving more or eating better might look simple, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy—it takes time to turn these into habits. For this reason, Calibrate supports members with a type of medication called GLP-1s/combined GLP-1s.

In our bodies, GLP-1s are powerful hormones made by the gut that send signals to the brain to address the aspects of underlying biology that are most important for weight loss and metabolic health. GLP-1s/combined GLP-1s work across the body to address metabolism, digestion, and appetite and fullness. 

Studies show that GLP-1 medications  are more effective when combined with lifestyle changes. More crucially, GLP-1s only work as long as individuals  take them—and cost and coverage can be limiting factors. This means that if people  don’t build the right healthy habits before tapering off, they’ll gain back their lost weight back. 

How GLP-1s and the Four Pillars work together

You can think of GLP-1s/combined GLP-1s as training wheels on a bike. They’re there to help move members forward and build momentum as they’re learning to pedal. But once they know what to do and have developed the habits that will sustain those physiologic changes, they can remove them and stay balanced all on their own. That’s what Calibrate is here to help your employees with, and we have the results to prove it.