Mounjaro: Is it safe?

Jump to: How to manage the side effects of Mounjaro | Side effects, contraindications, and precautions of Mounjaro | Mounjaro isn’t a magic pill | Second Nature’s Mounjaro weight-loss programme

Mounjaro is considered a safe medication for people living with type 2 diabetes and obesity.

Still, Mounjaro’s safety profile includes a combination of common side effects, rarer side effects, contraindications (a specific reason for not taking the medication), and precautions for use.

So, while Mounjaro is a safe medication for most people, like all medications, it comes with risks, and these will be evaluated by your doctor or pharmacist before you receive a Mounjaro prescription.

A randomised controlled trial investigating the impact of tirzepatide (the drug in Mounjaro) on weight loss showed that 68.9% of people on the highest dose of the medication experienced more than one adverse event, the most common being nausea and diarrhoea.

However, only 8.5% of participants stopped taking the medication due to the severity of their side effects.

So, over 90% of participants taking Mounjaro could stay on the medication as they either experienced no side effects or the side effects were mild enough to manage and not impact their quality of life.

However, as Mounjaro is a new medication, we don’t have any follow-up data to understand any potential long-term effects of the medication.

If you’re living with type 2 diabetes or obesity and decide to take Mounjaro, ensure you report any side effects you experience to your healthcare team.

Here’s a list of the most common and mild side effects of Mounjaro:

• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Diarrhoea
• Abdominal pain
• Decreased appetite

Here’s a list of rarer, more serious side effects of Mounjaro (many of these have been associated with drugs similar to tirzepatide, like liraglutide and are listed for Mounjaro as precautionary measures):

• Pancreatitis: Inflammation of the pancreas, which can be serious and require medical attention if symptoms such as severe abdominal pain occur.
• Hypoglycemia: Especially when used in combination with other diabetes medications like sulfonylureas or insulin, tirzepatide can increase the risk of low blood sugar.
• Kidney problems: Dehydration resulting from gastrointestinal side effects can lead to kidney issues, including kidney failure in severe cases.
• Thyroid tumours: In animal studies, drugs that work similarly to tirzepatide have been associated with thyroid tumours. It’s unclear if this risk applies to humans, but caution is advised.

Here’s a list of contraindications and precautions of Mounjaro:

• History of Medullary Thyroid Carcinoma (MTC) or Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia syndrome type 2 (MEN 2): Patients with these conditions should not use tirzepatide.
• Gallbladder disease: Caution is advised due to the potential for gallbladder-related issues.
• History of pancreatitis: Tirzepatide should be used with caution in patients with a history of pancreatitis.

How to manage the side effects of Mounjaro

The most common side effects of Mounjaro are related to our gut and stomach, such as nausea, due to the impact of the medication on our digestion.

Fatigue and tiredness are also commonly reported while taking Mounjaro, and this might be related to how the medication interacts with the brain and our sleep patterns.

Milder side effects on Mounjaro are often transient and will fade as our bodies adapt to the medication.

In the meantime, here’s a list of ways that you can lower the severity of and manage side effects while taking Mounjaro:

• Eat a diet based on whole foods, minimising the intake of ultra-processed foods
• Eat three main meals a day, and include protein-rich snacks in between if needed
• Maintain a regular sleep schedule
• Get daylight exposure every day, particularly in the morning
• Stay hydrated and make water your drink of choice
• Stay active

Mounjaro isn’t a magic pill

Weight-loss injections are designed as additional tools for weight management interventions and shouldn’t be considered lifelong medications.

Instead, they should be used to help you kickstart your weight loss and health journey while you commit to building the habits needed for a healthier lifestyle.

Consider the use of antidepressants for people living with depression. They’re not designed to cure the condition. Instead, they’re designed to allow room for therapy to treat the condition’s underlying cause.

Mounjaro and other weight loss injections, like Ozempic and Wegovy, are similar. They can allow you to make lifestyle changes to support long-term weight loss maintenance.

Mounjaro can help silence food-related thoughts and also give you a boost of confidence with more immediate weight-loss results.

This helps to buy you the time and headspace to understand why your body may have struggled to lose weight previously and to build new long-term healthy habits to keep the weight off for good.

The core focus of our medication programmes is to calm down the feeling of food noise, lower your cravings, and allow you to build healthier habits to keep the weight off for good.

The ultimate goal is to make losing weight feel second nature.

Second Nature’s medication programme

Second Nature currently provides Mounjaro as part of our Mounjaro weight-loss programme.

If you’ve decided to try Wegovy or Mounjaro (assuming you’re eligible), why should you choose Second Nature over other medication providers?

For peace of mind.

Second Nature has worked with the NHS for over 6 years providing weight-loss programmes across the UK.

While our Mounjaro weight-loss programme is private and not currently used by the NHS, we’ve built the programmes focusing on scientific evidence, patient safety, and data security.

We hope that our 6+ years of working with the NHS and building a track record of effective weight-loss results will give you peace of mind to give us a try.