Your Body Already Makes GLP-1. Simple ways to support it
Updated: 12 hours ago
Every GLP-1 conversation these days goes straight to injections. And those drugs genuinely do help people. But GLP-1 itself isn't some pharmaceutical invention. It's a hormone your gut has been producing since long before you knew what a hormone was. The medications are mimicking something your body already knows how to do.
So I got curious. What actually helps your gut make more of it, on its own terms? That question led me somewhere unexpected: to the vagus nerve, and to a phrase I used to hear as everywhere as wellness noise, "nervous system regulation." I've come to see it differently now.
The hormone that arrives with every meal
GLP-1 is made by cells in your intestinal lining called L-cells. When food reaches your gut, especially fiber, protein, or fat, those cells release GLP-1 into your bloodstream. It slows how quickly your stomach empties, invites your pancreas to release insulin, and lets your brain know you've eaten. A small, steady act of communication, happening inside you, mostly unnoticed.
It doesn't linger. An enzyme breaks it down within a couple of minutes, so your body keeps making fresh amounts meal after meal rather than storing it up. There's something almost restful about that rhythm, nothing hoarded, everything responsive to the present moment.
And what you eat shapes how much you receive. Fiber fermenting gut bacteria produce short chain fatty acids that directly encourage GLP-1 release. Protein does something similar. In one small study of people with type 2 diabetes, whey protein before a high-sugar breakfast more than doubled the GLP-1 response and lowered the blood sugar rise by 28%. Eating protein and fiber first, then, isn't just a nice idea. There's a mechanism behind it, one your body already understands.
The nerve that's been listening all along
GLP-1 mostly speaks to your brain through the vagus nerve, which might be one of the body's most important communication lines. It travels from your brainstem down through your neck and chest and into your gut, brushing past your heart and lungs on its way. About 80% of its fibers carry information upward, from your organs to your brain, and only 20% travel back down. Your body, it turns out, is built to listen to itself far more than to instruct itself.
When GLP-1 is released after a meal, it reaches vagal nerve endings in your gut, which carry word up to your brainstem: enough has arrived, you can rest now. That sense of fullness people chase through medication is something your own nervous system has been offering you your entire life.
Why stress makes it harder to hear
When you're stressed and your body is in fight or flight, digestion becomes a lower priority. Blood moves toward your muscles. Gut motility slows or turns erratic. The vagal signal that would normally say you've had enough gets harder to hear beneath the noise of cortisol and adrenaline.
This might explain something many of us have felt without ever naming it. A meal eaten at your desk, rushed between emails, rarely feels like enough, even when it is. The same food, eaten slowly and with attention, lands differently. That's not imagined. Your nervous system's state changes how clearly your body's own signals come through.
Heart rate variability, HRV, the small natural variation between heartbeats, offers a gentle window into this. Higher HRV tends to mean your nervous system can move more easily into a calmer, rest and digest state. It's not a diagnosis, and it's not something to watch obsessively on a wrist device, but as a quiet indicator of how much space your body has to actually register fullness, it's worth noticing.
What this invites you to do
None of it is complicated. Much of it is what your grandma probably told you, long before any of this had a scientific name.
Eat slowly. Let chewing take a little longer than feels necessary. Even a few extra minutes at the table changes how full you feel afterward, simply because the signal is given time to arrive.
Breathe with a longer exhale than inhale for a few minutes when your day feels tight. It's one of the more reliably supported ways to gently lift vagal tone, and it costs you nothing but attention.
Take a short walk after eating. Ten minutes is enough to measurably soften a blood sugar spike, and it's a small, kind way of moving your body back toward ease.
Early research suggests that humming, chanting, singing quietly to yourself, all engage the same throat and neck pathways the vagus nerve runs through. There's something moving in knowing that practices like chanting "Om," carried for centuries, is something that research is beginning to catch up to.
Sleep matters more than we tend to honor. In one small study, a single night without sleep raised ghrelin, the hunger hormone, and made people feel noticeably hungrier.
Where this leaves us
None of this replaces medication for those who need it. That remains a personal conversation between someone and their doctor. But satiety was never only a matter of chemistry. It's also a matter of communication, whether the signal your gut sends is able to reach a nervous system calm enough to receive it.
Your body already speaks this language fluently. Slowing down enough to listen may be the part of the conversation we've simply forgotten to have.
This is the kind of thing we explore in The Body As Teacher this November. Join the waitlist.
This is not medical advice. Talk to a healthcare provider about anything specific to your own health.
References
Holst, J. J. (2007). The physiology of glucagon-like peptide 1. Physiological Reviews, 87(4), 1409–1439. https://doi.org/10.1152/physrev.00034.2006
*Supports: GLP-1 is made by L-cells, is broken down within minutes, and signals to the brain through gut nerves.
Tolhurst, G., et al. (2012). Short-chain fatty acids stimulate glucagon-like peptide-1 secretion via the G-protein–coupled receptor FFAR2. Diabetes, 61(2), 364–371. https://doi.org/10.2337/db11-1019
*Supports: fiber-fermenting gut bacteria produce short-chain fatty acids that encourage GLP-1 release.
Jakubowicz, D., et al. (2014). Incretin, insulinotropic and glucose-lowering effects of whey protein pre-load in type 2 diabetes: a randomised clinical trial. Diabetologia, 57, 1807–1811. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00125-014-3305-x
*Supports: the whey protein study.
Breit, S., Kupferberg, A., Rogler, G., & Hasler, G. (2018). Vagus nerve as modulator of the brain–gut axis in psychiatric and inflammatory disorders. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 9, 44. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00044
*Supports: about 80% of vagal fibers carry signals up to the brain, and stress affects the gut–brain axis.
Kokkinos, A., et al. (2010). Eating slowly increases the postprandial response of the anorexigenic gut hormones, peptide YY and glucagon-like peptide-1. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 95(1), 333–337. https://doi.org/10.1210/jc.2009-1018
*Supports: eating slowly.
Laborde, S., et al. (2022). Effects of voluntary slow breathing on heart rate and heart rate variability: A systematic review and a meta-analysis. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 138, 104711. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104711
*Supports: slow breathing and HRV / vagal tone.
Reynolds, A. N., Mann, J. I., Williams, S., & Venn, B. J. (2016). Advice to walk after meals is more effective for lowering postprandial glycaemia in type 2 diabetes mellitus than advice that does not specify timing. Diabetologia, 59(12), 2572–2578. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00125-016-4085-2
*Supports: walking after meals.
Kalyani, B. G., et al. (2011). Neurohemodynamic correlates of 'OM' chanting: A pilot functional magnetic resonance imaging study. International Journal of Yoga, 4(1), 3–6. https://doi.org/10.4103/0973-6131.78171
*Supports: chanting and the vagus nerve.
Schmid, S. M., et al. (2008). A single night of sleep deprivation increases ghrelin levels and feelings of hunger in normal-weight healthy men. Journal of Sleep Research, 17(3), 331–334. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2869.2008.00662.x
*Supports: sleep and ghrelin.
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