What Happens When You Stop Taking GLP-1 Drugs?
High patient out-of-pocket costs and side effects are causing a large percentage of people who start on weight loss medications to stop. But a rather sobering account last week shows how most people who stop taking the drugs regain their weight and lose other benefits they saw while on the medicines.
STAT News cited a recently published British Medical Journal review of 37 studies, tallying an aggregate of more than 9,300 participants, in which approximately 50% of the people who started on the drugs stop taking them within one year. The return to baseline weight occurred in an average of 1.7 years.
Weight regain wasn’t the only thing that happened after stopping GLP-1s. Researchers observed reversals in the positive effects from GLP-1s, including reduced cardiovascular risk, and lower blood sugar, cholesterol and blood pressure levels. Notably, the reversals are worse than what happens when people stop behavioral weight loss programs that aren’t based on pharmaceutical interventions.
Excerpted from Forbes
