Key TakeawaysFor some people with obesity or overweight, losing weight may improve health conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes. Medications for those conditions may need to be reevaluated.Only a doctor with full knowledge of your health history should make decisions about changing or discontinuing medications.Not everyone who loses weight will be able to stop medications for certain health conditions.
Key Takeaways
For some people with obesity or overweight, losing weight may improve health conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes. Medications for those conditions may need to be reevaluated.Only a doctor with full knowledge of your health history should make decisions about changing or discontinuing medications.Not everyone who loses weight will be able to stop medications for certain health conditions.
The significant weight loss that often comes with theseGLP-1and GIP receptor agonist drugs may lead to reduced blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar levels. Improvements in those health metrics might mean you could lower the dosages of or stop taking medications like antihypertensives, statins, or insulin.
In fact, if your usage of semaglutide or tirzepatide goes unmonitored, it could lead to dangerously low levels of these health indicators.
“If you are not having follow-up visits with a primary care provider, you may end up with low blood pressure or low blood sugar,”Lydia Alexander, MD, president-elect of the Obesity Medicine Association and Chief Medical Officer at Enara Health in San Mateo, California, told Verywell, adding these can lead to serious health conditions.
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When Can—and Can’t—You Stop Taking Other Medications?
Dina Griauzde, MD, a primary care and obesity physician at Michigan Medicine, told Verywell that physicians taking care of people losing weight should always be monitoring their patients for a variety of weight loss-related health changes. It allows them to determine if other medical conditions have improved or resolved and whether stopping, lowering, or changing a medication is warranted.
Stopping a medication if you no longer need it can also alleviate side effects you may have been forced to tolerate. For example, in about 10% of people who take them, statin drugs to lower cholesterol can cause muscle pain, explainsGina Lundberg, MD, clinical director of the Emory Women’s Cardiovascular Health Center and a fellow of the American College of Cardiology.
“Some of my most challenging high blood pressure patients are very thin people,” she said.
Physicians may also decide that people who are at high risk for cardiovascular disease may benefit from other features of statins or other medications, such as their ability to reduce inflammation.
“This is why regular doctors’ visits, blood tests, and vital sign checks are so important when people lose weight for any reason,” Griauzde said. “My concern now, though, is that many people on injectable weight loss drugs are getting the prescriptions from providers on websites they see only once. Some people never see a physician at all and simply get a prescription based on health information they upload to a website.”
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When and Why to See a Doctor
Obesity specialists typically see patients once a month, especially if they’re new to taking a medication, in order to monitor their weight loss progress and their health. But if you experience certain symptoms between appointments, don’t hesitate to contact a doctor.
“For example, low blood pressure can cause dizziness, lightheadedness, and feelings of fatigue,” Lundberg said. “When patients experience these symptoms, they should discuss medication reduction with their physicians. It is extremely unlikely to get to a dangerously low blood pressure without preceding symptoms that would warn the patient.”
Lundberg encourages patients on weight loss medication to talk to their doctors about individualized blood pressure ranges, whether or not they should be checking blood pressure at home, and potentially even keeping a blood pressure log.
Low blood sugar is important to stay abreast of, too.
“Weight loss can improve glucose metabolism, necessitating a lower dosage of insulin or other diabetes medications to prevent the risk of hypoglycemia and optimize treatment effectiveness,” Mihail Zilbermint, MD, director of endocrine hospitalists at Johns Hopkins Community Physicians, told Verywell. “Improved glucose metabolism due to weight loss can indeed impact the safety and efficacy of medications…[you] may require lower doses of insulin or oral anti-diabetic drugs to maintain blood sugar levels within the target range.”
Discussions with your doctor about whether to begin medication again if you start to regain weight are also critically important.
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What This Means For YouYou should be under a doctor’s care and have regular checkups if you’re actively losing a significant amount of weight.If your doctor determines that you can discontinue a medicine because you have lost weight, make sure to maintain regular appointments. You may need to restart medication if you regain weight.
What This Means For You
You should be under a doctor’s care and have regular checkups if you’re actively losing a significant amount of weight.If your doctor determines that you can discontinue a medicine because you have lost weight, make sure to maintain regular appointments. You may need to restart medication if you regain weight.
You should be under a doctor’s care and have regular checkups if you’re actively losing a significant amount of weight.
If your doctor determines that you can discontinue a medicine because you have lost weight, make sure to maintain regular appointments. You may need to restart medication if you regain weight.
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