Nature’s Ozempic

The unexpected benefits of drinking yerba maté

We are currently on a three-month-long journey through South America visiting the countries of Peru, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile. As I’m learning interesting biology-related facts about the places we visit, I will be sharing them with you here. But if you want to see more travel content, check out our YouTube channel!

Drinking yerba maté out of a traditional gourd in Montevideo, Uruguay

As the days grow shorter and the temperatures drop in the Northern Hemisphere, our natural instinct is to huddle up under a blanket watching Netflix with a cup of hot cocoa and a batch of fresh-baked cookies. Winter, with its seasonal blues and a rapid succession of food-oriented holidays, is not good for our waistline. Personally, I used to emerge from hibernation every spring with a few extra pounds and a demoralized feeling of having to start my workout routines from scratch.

This year, I am skipping winter altogether—by heading further south as we approach the December solstice. As we hop from one South American country to another, the days are getting longer and warmer. Here in Argentina, everything is in bloom: the streets are scattered with the yellow fuzz of mimosa flowers and the jasmine smell follows you around every corner. A fugitive from winter, I’m not worried about holiday weight gain; but judging by the rise in Ozempic prescriptions as the holiday season approaches, many people are.  

This new class of blockbuster drugs—GLP-1 agonists, meaning they mimic the activity of a hormone called glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1)—was originally developed to treat Type II diabetes. However, it was the off-label use for weight loss that gave it its blockbuster status. Hollywood celebrities (although few have admitted it) became the marketing face of Ozempic and its cousins, and soon ads promising young girls the coveted “beach body” peppered New York subways.

Ozempic might be relatively new on the market, but the research behind it is decades old. Back in the 1930s, a Belgian scientist identified a hormone responsible for stimulating insulin secretion. Later, in the 1980s, another scientist Svetlana Mojsov, successfully cloned GLP-1 gene, showing that it had glucose-lowering effects. The reason why it works for weight loss is that by stimulating insulin secretion, GLP-1 keeps the blood glucose low and suppresses appetite by binding receptors in our brain in a one-two punch that accelerates weight loss.

The original formulation

But way before Hollywood celebrities and Manhattan moms got their hands on Ozempic, another group of people have been reaping the benefits of GLP-1-mediated appetite suppression: habitual maté drinkers. Yerba maté is a popular beverage in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, where this herb has been consumed for hundreds of years and has become an important cultural staple. And recent research into the nutritional properties of maté showed that it has significant GLP-1 activity, contributing to its “anorexic effects”.

On our recent trip to Uruguay, I saw first-hand just how common maté drinking is in this small Latin American country. Everywhere you go, you see Uruguayans sipping on a metal straw (called ‘bombilla’) sticking out of a round maté gourd in one hand and in the other—a portable box made specifically to fit the hot water thermos and all the other paraphernalia that goes along with the maté ritual. The ‘gourd’ is not just a figurative name—this special maté vessel is actually made out of a bitter pumpkin, hollowed out and cured, encased in a leather shell and a metal lip, to keep your maté warm and impart additional flavor characteristics to the herbal infusion.

The centuries-old maté culture in that region of South America, where it originally came from, is alive and well. It makes me wonder if this habit is contributing to the overall fitness of their populations. The people in Uruguay and Argentina (I can’t say anything about Paraguay, though, because I haven’t been there) are pretty thin despite enjoying the standard Western diet that we blame the modern obesity epidemic on. Could this be because they keep themselves busy constantly refilling their gourds or because of the maté’s special properties?

Yerba maté contains caffeine and related xanthine alkaloids theobromine and theophylline, along with minerals such as potassium, magnesium and manganese. What makes maté interesting, however, is that its extract has been shown to decrease appetite and body weight in mice “by stimulation of GLP-1 secretion and modulation of serum leptin levels”. The active molecules responsible for this effect are dicaffeoyl quinic acids and matesaponins. These compounds are present in other plants, like coffee and artichokes; but unlike coffee, which is typically roasted first and consumed in relatively small amounts, continuous maté drinking delivers a much higher dose of these chemicals.

Ozempic vs the Herb

Obviously, the weight loss effects from FDA-approved Ozempic or its analogs, are much greater than those of drinking maté every day. However, the drug also comes with side effects. Many people taking Ozempic for weight loss experience gastrointestinal symptoms like nausea, while others suffer more serious effects like gallstones and acute pancreatitis. Some even experience psychological effects, including depression and suicidal thoughts—no wonder, since a lot of our serotonin is produced in the gut in response to eating delicious food.

Serotonin is also the reason why we tend to crave more comfort foods in the colder months. As the amount of daylight decreases and we spend less time outside because of the cold weather, it is common to experience the symptoms of seasonal affective disorder (SAD). Natural light stimulates serotonin production in our brain; when we lack this stimulation, we get sad and reach for other things that can make us feel better, like chocolate. Given a choice between being depressed or feeling better by eating a cupcake, our brains will not think twice.

From this perspective, weight gain should be viewed as a symptom (rather than a medical condition in itself) of something else not going well in a person’s life. Biologically speaking, we have built-in systems in place that are designed to give us a feeling of satiety to maintain normal weight—hormones like GLP-1 and leptin being a big part of that system. Where things go wrong is when we become reliant on food for our serotonin because we are not getting it elsewhere or when our food is so nutritionally poor, that we don’t get the satisfaction we crave no matter how much of it we eat.

The physiology and psychology of weight gain is complicated, no doubt. But if you can make small changes—be it replacing your coffee with maté or going for a walk in the morning to get a boost of happiness—perhaps those habits will be more sustaining than getting on the $1400-per-month prescription. After all, if we learned anything from The Wizard of Oz, whenever you are promised a magic cure like “a weekly shot to lose weight”, there is usually something hidden behind the veil.