Prescription weight-loss drugs
Description
Weight Loss Meds, Are you an adult who has serious health problems because of your weight? Have you tried diet and exercise but haven’t been able to lose enough weight? If you answered yes to these questions, a prescription weight-loss drug may be a choice for you.
Prescription drugs are medicines that a health care provider prescribes for you. You can’t buy them off the shelf in a drug store like you can buy nonprescription medicines.
Just know that you need to use prescription weight-loss drugs in addition to — not instead of — a healthy diet and exercise.
Who can take weight-loss drugs?
Your health care provider may suggest a weight-loss drug for you in some cases. These include if you haven’t been able to lose weight through diet and exercise and your:
- Body mass index (BMI) is greater than 30. This means you’re living with a condition that involves having too much body fat, called obesity.
- BMI is greater than 27. You also have a serious medical problem linked to obesity, such as diabetes or high blood pressure. Weight Loss Meds
Before choosing a medicine for you, your health care provider thinks about your history and health challenges. Then your provider talks with you about the pros and cons of prescription weight-loss drugs.
These drugs aren’t for everyone. For example, you shouldn’t take prescription weight-loss drugs if you’re trying to get pregnant, are pregnant or are breastfeeding. Weight Loss Meds
How well do weight-loss drugs work?
Prescription weight-loss drugs that you can use for more than 12 weeks, called long-term use, lead to major weight loss compared with an inactive treatment that doesn’t use a medicine, called a placebo. The combination of weight-loss medicine and lifestyle changes leads to greater weight loss than do lifestyle changes alone.
Taking these drugs for a year can mean a loss of total body weight of 3% to 12% more than that lost with lifestyle changes alone. That may not seem like a lot. But losing 5% to 10% of your total weight and keeping it off can have important health benefits. For example, it can lower blood pressure, blood sugar levels and levels of fats in the blood called triglycerides. Weight Loss Meds
