Dr. Fitzer Dissects the News

There is a huge amount of interest among medical researchers in finding a way to maintain weight loss after stopping injectable weight-loss medications. It’s worth noting that similar interest doesn’t exist for any medications we prescribe for other chronic health...

Tapering by Increasing the Time Between Doses A few trials have looked at increasing the time interval between doses, which is also tapering of a sort. One study out of San Diego looked at stretching out the time between doses for a group of semaglutide and...

A few posts ago, I discussed the fact that—absent a change— complete weight regain is the usual expectation for those who discontinue treatment with injectable weight-loss medicines. Only a small number of clinical trials involving these meds put in the effort to...

I am asked this question by my patients all the time. The simple, unvarnished truth is that—in the absence of another medical or surgical intervention—people who quit injectables can expect to regain 100% of what they lost. It usually takes eighteen months or so. I...

Does max-dose semaglutide work as well as weight-loss surgery? In a word: no. I can’t criticize semaglutide, which is a wonderfully effective weight loss medication. People who can tolerate the max dose can expect to lose about 12.5% of their body weight on average...

Why are gastric-bypass patients at risk for alcoholism? There is indeed a connection, and it’s worth knowing about. Before I get further into it, I feel the need to state for the record that I’m not trying to discourage people from considering the gastric bypass. The...