Along with bodily baseline necessities, Dr. Messer provides that sufferers needs to be screened for disordered eating, together with binge consuming and emotional consuming. This kind of added screening is essential to make sure sufferers obtain weight reduction in a wholesome, sustainable method — each bodily and mentally. She provides the one well being situations that might preclude the usage of the shot are a historical past of gallstones, pancreatitis, or danger components for medullary thyroid most cancers.
Are there uncomfortable side effects or dangers to semaglutide?
Most customers expertise decreased starvation within the few days following the shot and sometimes discover their starvation returning simply in time for his or her subsequent injection. Uncomfortable side effects can embrace nausea, constipation, diarrhea, belching, heartburn, and belly cramping. These results are partially why physicians begin semaglutide prescriptions with a low dosage, and step by step improve doses relying on tolerance.
There are dangers related to semaglutide together with worsening reflux, pancreatitis (probably brought on by gallstones that develop within the setting of fast weight reduction), and elevated likelihood of medullary thyroid most cancers. Dr. Messer additionally warns sufferers at the moment prescribed different medicines in the identical class (GLP-1 receptor agonists) or diabetes medicines (known as DPP-IV inhibitors) towards utilizing semaglutide.
Each consultants echoed the identical sentiment: Semaglutide is supposed for use as a software along with a calorie deficit and lively way of life to realize weight reduction. Dr. Messer additionally shares a glimpse of her sufferers’ diet plan, which considers the uncomfortable side effects sufferers might incur: “[Since] Semaglutide has the potential to trigger constipation, nausea, and reflux, I preemptively place my sufferers on high-fiber, low-fat, calorie-restricted diets to attenuate the chance of those uncomfortable side effects. I additionally ask my sufferers to eat early dinners and decrease alcohol consumption.”
Since fast weight reduction can negatively affect your metabolism and hormones, Dr. Frank explains it is essential to implement way of life modifications together with the drug. “Like all medicines, way of life modifications are important to making sure protected and efficient outcomes,” he says. “Whereas on these medicines, one needs to be cautious to not overeat as it might probably trigger gastrointestinal upset. Semaglutide is merely a medical software for use along side good diet, weight loss program, and train.”
As for the celebrities who’ve reportedly been utilizing semaglutide however are usually not thought-about clinically overweight, Dr. Frank advises towards this kind of use. “Utilizing this drug to take care of a physique weight that’s low for one’s body isn’t the meant goal and is probably a harmful and unsustainable use of the remedy,” he warns. In the long run, utilizing semaglutide solely for aesthetic functions is taken into account off-label use, and hijacks a drug that’s useful for the precise well being situations the drug was created to enhance. (There’s now even a shortage of semaglutide.) This drug — like all prescribed drugs — ought to solely be used when prescribed by a medical supplier who thinks it’s actually vital for a affected person’s well being.
