Are you grappling with the side effects of GLP-1 medications? If so, you're not alone. In previous episodes, we've tackled some of the most common challenges that patients face when starting these medications, including sulfur burps and nausea. Today, we're diving deeper into three additional hurdles that can crop up along your GLP-1 medication journey: persistent headaches after injections, exaggerated responses to viral illnesses, and appetite suppression or low desire for food.
These three problems can significantly impact your daily life and treatment progress so make sure you tune in for practical strategies to help you effectively manage these side effects and transform your experience with GLP-1 medications. From hydration strategies to optimizing nutrition, don't miss out on these valuable insights that will empower you to navigate these challenges with confidence.
00:28 - Dr. Rentea introduces the three common side effects from anti-obesity medications that will be discussed in the episode
03:04 - We learn how Dr. Rentea’s mini course can help you get the most out of your GLP-1 medication.
05:39 - Dr. Rentea discusses headaches as a common side effect of GLP-1 medications and gives tips on how to manage them. 07:46 - We learn how viral illnesses can be more prolonged and severe for patients on GLP-1 medications due to compounded effects on intestinal motility.
10:55 - Dr. Rentea talks about managing low appetite or quick satiety when starting or increasing doses of GLP-1 medications, offering tips on nutrition adjustments and hydration strategies.
Quotes
“The majority of the side effects that you might experience, whether it's fatigue or headaches, they really do get better the more weeks that you're on it.” - Matthea Rentea MD
“Remember, if you're not able to work through side effects and your doctor can't help you through them, then maybe it's not a medicine for you.” - Matthea Rentea MD
“These GLP-1s are slowing down the motility of your intestine, so how quickly things are moving through. And when you get those types of viral bugs, they do the same thing.” - Matthea Rentea MD
“We don't want you to get malnourished. And so this is part of making sure that you're getting enough nutrition, but the volume might need to be down.” - Matthea Rentea
Are you grappling with the side effects of GLP-1 medications? If so, you're not alone. In previous episodes, we've tackled some of the most common challenges that patients face when starting these medications, including sulfur burps and nausea. Today, we're diving deeper into three additional hurdles that can crop up along your GLP-1 medication journey: persistent headaches after injections, exaggerated responses to viral illnesses, and appetite suppression or low desire for food.
These three problems can significantly impact your daily life and treatment progress so make sure you tune in for practical strategies to help you effectively manage these side effects and transform your experience with GLP-1 medications. From hydration strategies to optimizing nutrition, don't miss out on these valuable insights that will empower you to navigate these challenges with confidence.
00:28 - Dr. Rentea introduces the three common side effects from anti-obesity medications that will be discussed in the episode
03:04 - We learn how Dr. Rentea’s mini course can help you get the most out of your GLP-1 medication.
05:39 - Dr. Rentea discusses headaches as a common side effect of GLP-1 medications and gives tips on how to manage them. 07:46 - We learn how viral illnesses can be more prolonged and severe for patients on GLP-1 medications due to compounded effects on intestinal motility.
10:55 - Dr. Rentea talks about managing low appetite or quick satiety when starting or increasing doses of GLP-1 medications, offering tips on nutrition adjustments and hydration strategies.
Quotes
“The majority of the side effects that you might experience, whether it's fatigue or headaches, they really do get better the more weeks that you're on it.” - Matthea Rentea MD
“Remember, if you're not able to work through side effects and your doctor can't help you through them, then maybe it's not a medicine for you.” - Matthea Rentea MD
“These GLP-1s are slowing down the motility of your intestine, so how quickly things are moving through. And when you get those types of viral bugs, they do the same thing.” - Matthea Rentea MD
“We don't want you to get malnourished. And so this is part of making sure that you're getting enough nutrition, but the volume might need to be down.” - Matthea Rentea
Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. We're going to call this part three. If you've been following along the past few weeks, we've been talking through different common side effects that are occurring. on these anti obesity medications, a lot of them being these newer GLP 1s. Again, we've had them for 20 years. We're just going to still say newer. So if you are new to finding this podcast, I am an obesity medicine physician and this is what I help my patients with all day long. So when you have, I just want to set the stage here again, When you have proper education on these things, and you are told this stuff before you start, and you have guidance along the road, you can have a really great experience and it doesn't need to be wretched. So, so much of this is mismanagement when people are having side effects all over the place. There's going to be a rare person where they're truly intolerant. It is so incredibly rare. I have not yet encountered one. I have a friend where this was the case, but in my own clinical practice, I have yet to encounter this because there's so much that we can do when starting out. Okay, so today we're going to get down to a few other, not niche things that happen, but these are a few other areas that I commonly encounter. So I want to say the three we're going to talk about today. Again, I'm always going to stress, I don't care about the intro of the podcast. I'm sure you're all. Zipping past it at this point. So, a friendly reminder that I'm a physician, but I'm not your physician. There are some, some of my patients will listen. You're the exception. But everyone else, please talk to your medical team. This is general information and please talk to your team because there are other things that can be going on and we don't want to miss that. Okay, today I'm going to go over three other common things that I see happen. Some patients will get headaches the day after taking their once a week injection. Some people will have an exaggerated response to getting a viral illness, something called gastroenteritis. For example, like a viral bug that goes around daycare or, you know, like think like the common like stomach flu where you're sitting there vomiting and having diarrhea. typically for a day. It might be more pronounced and what we need to think about on a GLP 1 in that scenario. And then the other thing that I see as a common thing is some people are such hyper responders that they have really low hunger or little to no appetite, but they don't want to get malnourished. And And maybe your doctor is not even titrating up the dose quickly, but you're trying to think of, hey, how can I physically get this nutrition in, but where the volume is smaller? So those are the three that we're going to go over today. And then we've pretty comprehensively hit every majority of them. I do just want to put a quick plug here. If you're new to me and you don't know that I offer this, I have a mini course and it's called optimizing fat loss while maintaining muscle on a GLP 1. We'll make sure to link this in the show notes. Again, you can look on this on the, you know, whatever podcast you're listening to for that. But the best place to see these show notes, if you go to rentiaclinic. com forward slash blog, each podcast has an entire written entry. And it is beautiful, the writing that's there, and we link to everything, and there's A whole archive if you want to look back. It is a wealth of information. I feel like we should make that a bonus in the future to, to print those out, collate them for you, and have a winner that would get them because it's a really, really nice collection of things at this point. But we'll make sure to link it there. So it's on my website both under digital courses. It's 97. You have access for a year. And so what's really unique about this course is that I have all these different 10 minute videos. It doesn't really exceed an hour or two. And then there are bonuses that go beyond that because I've added in different material over the time, what people have asked me. But the thing that's really cool and unique about this, number one, you're going to be able to learn a lot of good information in a short period of time. But number two, it's the. that once a month I do a live Q& A call. And so we will send an email to you the week before and we'll say, Hey, do you have any questions? And you fill that out. And so every month you have an opportunity where we can actually dig into these things. You could kind of write out your scenario again, I'm not going to give you medical advice, but I'm going to be able to kind of run you through, Hey, here's what I would think about in that scenario. And I know that a lot of you, you have physicians that are writing these meds for you, but you're not. Getting great education otherwise. And so that educational gap, that was the reason that I created this. In fact, I have some physicians that are actually in the direct primary care world where they're writing these meds for their patients and they're taking excellent care of them, but they know that They don't have time to go through how to get protein, how to get fiber, you know, all the different things to look out for this or that, literally taking people through what to look out for all these things. So I run you through that in this course. That is honestly one of my favorite things that I've ever created. That mini course, the videos are so manageable. and also just the fact that every month we get together on that and then if I see other things like gaps that I see people need this or that, I make sure to add it to that. So again, we will link that mini course in the show notes. You can also go to rentierclinic. com and you'll be able to see that as an offering as well. Okay, so let's talk through first number one, headaches. So again, you're always, I'm going to say this a million times. I can't not, you're always going to talk to your doctor because I want to make sure that nothing else is going on, but it is pretty darn common where the day after people might experience headaches and you know, there's debate. Is it actually a side effect of the medication or is it the fact that people are usually dehydrated that day? I tend to find that it's, I think it's dehydration and people say, no, I'm still having fluids, but usually your food the day right after it is down a little bit, you're not eating and drinking as much. Usually that is going to be the main thing that I'm really going to recommend there that You find an electrolyte product, whether it's a powder or a drink, whether it's a broth, a soup, something that you're going to consume that day that's going to help you with that. The other thing too that's been impactful for me and patients as well is to really look at your pre injection nutrition. Do you actually do a protein drink before you? have your injection? Do you make sure the day before that your nutrition's on point? These things will really have a cumulative effect to sort of blunt the next day how things are going for you. And then the second thing that I want to offer here, if you're doing all of that and you're still sort of, oh, I'm getting headaches, it's that this really does get better with time. This is actually a majority of the side effects that you might experience, whether it's fatigue or headaches, things like that. They really do get better the more weeks that you're on it. So as long as it's not something that's. incredibly debilitating for you and you're able to work through it, right? So remember, if you're not able to work through side effects, your doctor can't help you through them, then maybe it's not a medicine for you. But if you're able to stick with it I'll tell you from my personal experience, I really got a headache, definitely the first few months on it that day after, and then that really, I've not experienced that in months and months. So The longer you're on a certain dose, or once you've titrated fully up and then you're not going up anymore, that is definitely something that I see subside with time. Okay, the next thing that is, this is super nuanced, so if you, if you have sort of veered off and you're not focusing anymore, come back to me right now. I want to talk about a very specific scenario that Guaranteed, you're going to go through this a few times per year and no one's talking about it. And that is, you're going to get a viral illness. So you're going to get something where you're on the toilet a little bit more, if you know what I mean. You're having some diarrhea. Maybe you're vomiting. Maybe you have kids in your life. This is, this is your classic, like your kids in daycare, the beginning of the school year, right at any time after a holiday break, like, it starts to be winter and we're indoors more. That's like the classic time when these kind of viral. GI things go around. So normally before you went on these medicines, you would be sick, I don't know, 24 to 48 hours, like a day or two, if you kind of look up an acute viral gastroenteritis, you look up that term, you're gonna see that it's, it's very acute, like acute resolving. It's a day or two. What I typically see, though, on these GLP ones is that it's longer than that. It's anywhere from three to seven days, usually, that someone's struggling. And so the, the, the, the way that this comes up is that Well, everyone else also got sick. So they know, okay, this is not just me. Or maybe other people didn't, but you got sick. But then you're like, but I'm not better within a few days. And so here's the thing that's happening. We already with these GLP 1s are slowing down the motility of your intestine. So how quick things are moving through. And when you get those type of viral bugs, they do the same thing. So now you're in a scenario where you already had it slowed down, plus we're slowing it down more. So this is why you really don't feel good. I find that It's, it's almost pronounced how people are getting sicker. Not that the medication is doing that, but just the way in which that sort of compounding effect of the two of those things. And so the one thing I want to say is make sure that you talk to your doctor. Do they want you right away to take that next week's injection? So let's say that your injection day is on Sunday. and you got sick on Tuesday, Wednesday, and you're actually still sick leading into it. So you're not back to normal bowel movements. You're still nauseous and sick. You're not feeling good. Maybe your physician will say, Hey, skip one week or delay it by three to four days, or get back to me with X, Y, Z, but get some guidance there. So this can happen when you have the flu. If you have COVID, if you have a GI virus, if it's called gastroenteritis from your physician, many different terms, all meaning. There's a virus on board and it can affect the intestine as far as how fast stuff's moving through. So maybe you don't do that next shot right away. It's not like you're going to regain weight. It's not like anything bad's going to happen, but you might already be having such a hard time getting in protein and fluids and all the things that you're needing. Talk to your physician. This is so incredibly common. Like, I have to walk everyone through this phase. So know that this is a time you should talk to your doctor. You don't just like take another injection if you're feeling super horrible. Get some guidance on that, okay? So I just wanted to really stress that because I just, there's pretty much no patient that I haven't had to walk through that in the past year here. Okay, the last scenario I want to talk through is if you're either newly starting on these meds, or every time you go up on the dose, or just in general, you might be someone where these meds are just highly effective for you always, you might experience that you either don't have hunger, or you have low desire for food, or you find that you fill up really quickly. These are just very common things, and Of course, we want the lowest effective dose, but some of you, this might even happen on the starting dose. So what are you going to do, right? You have an auto injector pen, you're taking it, and this might be weeks and weeks and weeks and months, and you're staying at the intro dose, and this keeps happening. So we don't want you to get malnourished. And so this is part of making sure that you're getting enough nutrition, but the volume might need to be down. And this is maybe opposite from anything you've ever experienced in the past, because typically, In the past, whenever people have usually worked on intentional fat loss, it's usually, I, you have to volume eat because you're so darn hungry and you're like, oh my gosh, I could gnaw my arm off. Give me the biggest salad in the world. And so we get kind of conditioned if I want intentional fat loss, I need to have these huge portions of veggies and huge salads and you know, like a bunch of cucumbers, right? Am I the only one? It's like, what are, what's all the volume I can get? But the zero calorie dressing, okay, that doesn't work anymore. It's not going to work in the beginning on these GLP 1s or necessarily long term. And so if you're at a phase where that is going on for you, I really like the nutritionist Brooke Simonson. She comes in my clinic. She has the podcast, The Health Investment. She comes into my clinic once a month and she leads sessions. I really like her approach. So I followed her for a long time. I kind of got into her world and I was like, okay, marked safe to come in and work. She does have her own program. She does do one on one as well as group. So anyway, just putting that plug out there if you're someone that needs that nutrition help. One of the topics that I had her do within my clinic, I said, Hey, I want us to just talk cause I, sometimes we kind of go over what topic are you going to do that month? And I wanted her to address this. How can we set up? still get in the nutrition, but when the volume is down so that you're not feeling nauseous or, or, you know, any of that. And so she had some, she had three really great ideas and I just want to roughly talk through some of these. Again, none of this is ever comprehensive, but just these are things that, that I recommend as well. So number one, and this is very common to the bariatric community, by the way, I want you to think about fluids. So a lot of the time. If you are having a bunch of fluids with a meal or before a meal, you're not going to be able to get the volume that you need in because your stomach's already full. Fluid moves along pretty quickly, but there's still an element of it needing to move along, right? It's not like lightning speed. And so something that I will recommend to my bariatric patients is to hold water an hour before the meal and 30 minutes after the meal. So if you are someone that's feeling super restricted with the meal, let's hold fluids an hour before, 30 minutes after. Or maybe you always had a drink or like a carbonated beverage with your meals, maybe we go ahead and eliminate that. And so just think about that could definitely be playing a big part for you. The other thing too, like I just spoke about with volume eating, again, that's maybe not the strategy initially. And this is really hard for people to realize because in your mind you've equated, that you need fiber to not get constipated and so you think it means a big salad. I've got some really big news for you. I want you to go and look at the fiber on your salad pack. It's actually not the highest fiber. So you are better off sometimes eating, let's, I'll give you an example. smaller salad or smaller amount of veggies and maybe in the salad dressing, putting some chia seeds. So chia seeds, remember like roughly two tablespoons plus or minus about 10 grams of fiber. So can we throw maybe, and that's going to be ridiculous if you make like a chia seed pudding to put, to put on top of your salad. So, you know, maybe reducing that down, maybe like a tablespoon of chia seeds. If you can put it into your sugar free vinaigrette before, whatever it is, can you then put it on your salad? So, are there ways that maybe we can do a little bit of avocado because avocado has a ton of fiber. Can we get the volume down but the fiber is still there? And that is a little bit of just going to involve some swaps. So, I want you to think about that. And then the last thing that she brought up that I thought was really good is she talked about how fats are really filling. So oftentimes, kind of decreasing, let's say she gave the example with meat, that leaner cuts of things, you might not get full as quickly. And so I just want you to think about if any of that is applying to you. What ultimately is really highlighted here is that you need to, I always use this word detective. You need to do some nutrition audits. You need to see what can I swap in and out. You need to look for, and this is something that again, I want to plug that course of mine. Because we really talk about a lot of different options for, for protein, for fiber. There's really pictures to everything. There's lists, ideas, and you could look in there and be like, Oh, I didn't realize that this had so much fiber, but the volume is smaller. And so you can start to play around with these things. And this is where you get complete mastery over actually understanding nutrition and how to manage this. stuff long term, because I want you to realize just as you're going to decrease the volume but still keep the max nutrition there, you're going to then start to likely have the opposite problem in the future where you might be less volume restricted and now you want to up the volume but you don't know what to change to. And so these are meta skills that you need to learn globally how to manage this stuff. It's not just like this one scenario. You need to know in general, how do I flex? down or up. It's going to help you for the rest of your life. So I'll just put a little plug here that if that course sounds like it's helpful to you to be able to kind of navigate through all these different things. How do I optimally go on this? How do I optimally change things, be able to ask questions, things like that. Again, we'll put the link to that mini course, both in the show notes, rentierclinic. com forward slash blog. You can see for this episode, and then you can also just in general on our website, there's a link for courses on there. Okay, I hope you're having an amazing week. If these things are helpful, tag a picture of the podcast. Take a screenshot on your phone. Tag me on social. I would love to share that so people can hear what made a difference for you. Was there something you heard in it? Was there a little tip a trick? Was there something that I said? I would love to hear that from you. Make sure to tag me, Matea or TiaMD. I'm on Instagram, TikTok. Even Clapper at this point. If you don't know what Clapper is, don't worry. I don't think I'm the biggest fan. But at least we don't get censored on there, so you can find me on all the different platforms. I'm not as active right now on YouTube. To be honest, I like platforms that are super easy to just record on app. I don't want to have to go and edit a bunch of things. I do social media super rapidly. I don't have a bunch of makeup on. I don't have whatever. I literally think of something that came up that day. I share it. I'm responding to comments. So the platform needs to be really easy and YouTube, it is a highly edited platform that I'm not so much a fan of. I get it's huge maybe with time, but that's where I'm at at the moment. So I hope to see you actually in my course. That's the best way to, for us to talk. And we will talk soon. Have a great rest of the week. Bye.