Several of my patients are receiving semaglutide or tirzepatide injections once a week, prescribed not by me but by other clinicians. As you know, semaglutide is a glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1RA), and tirzepatide is a glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) dual agonist (GIP/GLP-1RA). For links to the many articles on this website about these medications, please see Related Pages below.
In each case, I think that prescribing these medications to these patients was appropriate. Typically, these patients have lost about 10 to 30 pounds in just a few months. Amazing!
But I have been surprised (maybe I shouldn’t have been?) that these patients don’t seem to know that GLP-1RAs and GIP/GLP-1RAs not only lead to a reduction in total body weight and fat mass but also cause loss of lean muscle mass.
And, disturbing to me, they say that they were not given any advice specifically about what they should be doing to minimize this loss of lean muscle mass. In this article, let’s learn what we should tell our patients to do. I strongly believe in doing that, whether or not I was the one who prescribed the GLP-1RA or GIP/GLP-1RA.
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