Nausea after 3 months

[Northern Amy]

I’m looking for advice or encouragement to just keep going.

I started Reta mid July and am currently taking 3mg every 5-6 days.

I have nearly constant nausea. It’s the worst for the first 3 days and then it does subside for the last 3, but doesn’t completely go away. When I was taking 2 mg it was the same, but I felt I was losing the other effects, so I increased my dose.

I’ve lost 15 lbs, which I’m happy with, but I don’t feel like I’m building great habits when I’m mostly losing because of how sick I feel.

I make sure my electrolytes are high and I eat /drink as much protein as I can.

Any other suggestions? Can I expect this to ease up?

 

[lessthanhalf]

I have not seen much on the timing of GI side effects on reta, but there is quite a lot of information about Tirzepatide and semaglutide, and there is no reason it should be different. Generally peak nausea is from 2 to 4 months after starting as the dose is going up , and in most people it improves over time. So having it start or get worse at 3 months is pretty common. There is huge individual variabilty in these side effects.
In practice if nausea is a problem stop it for as long as it takes for it to go away, then restart at a lower dose and increase very slowly depending on side effects. Sometimes smaller doses more frequently help with nausea . Due to the very long half life of these drugs it can take 4 weeks after a dose increase to reach peak blood levels of the drug, which is when peak side effects will occur. It is worth checking out https://glp1plotter.com/ as it will show you estimated blood levels with different doses . I found it useful when I had terrible nausea from low doses of semaglutide, in my case it did not get better over time but it does in most people. Tirzepatide has stronger effects on the GIP receptor than reta ( there is data that disagrees with this ), so it might work better if it does not go away. But if you are getting nausea from low doses of reta it is probably having enough of an effect at low doses on appetite to work without having to increase the dose, or at least not much.