You don’t have to simply push through side effects. Eating differently, tracking symptoms, and keeping your prescriber informed can make treatment easier to tolerate.
Be Mindful About How You Eat and Drink
While you may not be able to avoid GI side effects completely, a few simple habits can help lessen their impact, says Natasha Pyfrom, MD, a primary care physician who treats people with obesity at Atrium Health Primary Care Shiland Family Medicine in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
Dr. Pyfrom recommends that you:
- Eat smaller portions.
- Eat slowly and stop eating when you’re full.
- Limit foods that consistently trigger symptoms, such as spicy foods and fried foods. “Tracking the relationship between food choices and symptoms can be helpful,” she says.
- Drink plenty of water.
Speak Up Before Your Next Dose Increase
If side effects are an issue, make sure you tell your doctor — especially before moving up in dose, says Pinto. Your clinician may recommend staying at the current dose longer or making another adjustment.
If you’re losing weight so quickly that it’s resulting in hair shedding or Ozempic face, you might also want to ask your clinician about dialing down your GLP-1 dose to reduce stress on your body.
Keep a Symptom Diary
Pyfrom recommends tracking meals and symptoms to identify patterns. Include your dose day so you and your prescriber can see whether certain foods, portions, or dose changes seem to cause problems.
Protect Your Nutrition
Reduced appetite is expected, but you should still be able to eat enough to meet your nutritional needs and avoid deficiencies that can worsen issues like hair shedding.
Excessive appetite suppression, nausea, or vomiting that prevents adequate nutrition intake is a reason to discuss your dose with your prescriber, says Vinton.
Ask Before Treating Side Effects on Your Own
Before routinely adding a stool softener (to alleviate constipation), antacid (for reflux), or antinausea medication, talk to your doctor, says Pinto.
Before adding another medication to your roster, your prescriber may recommend stepping down to a lower GLP-1 dose, pausing treatment, or switching medications. Tolerability can differ among GLP-1-based drugs; studies have found differences in digestive side effect patterns between individual medications.
“A patient who does not tolerate one medication may do very well on another, so having side effects with one GLP-1–based treatment does not necessarily mean the entire class is off the table,” says Pyfrom.
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