How Do Weight Loss Medications Work?

A new year provides a new perspective, and many people choose the start of January as a time to make a commitment to improve their health and leave this year in a more positive place than how they entered it.

This approach is not always effective for everyone and often takes very different forms, but there is a reason why a lot of people commit to losing weight and start to take steps to change their lifestyle for the better.

Of course, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to losing weight, nobody loses weight at a consistent rate and in some cases, it does not even equate to improved health.

As concepts such as the summermatter cycle suggest, some people may not necessarily lose weight through diet, and successful weight loss is gradual and typically not the aim of a healthy living programme.

In some cases, however, additional interventions are needed, and this often takes the form of weight loss medication available on prescription after consultation with a GP or specialist doctor from a local pharmacy.

There is a wide range of weight loss medications, although only a few of these have been approved to be prescribed or purchased over the counter at a pharmacy at lower doses, with the most recent recommendation being for semaglutide in 2023.

Despite this range, weight-loss medications tend to work using a combination of these three methods.

The first system, as is seen with the medication Orlistat, stops certain nutrients from being absorbed from food, which in most cases is fat. This remains undigested and passes through the body, meaning that fewer calories are absorbed.

This, in combination with a proportionate amount of exercise and a focus on a low-fat diet, can help maximise its effectiveness whilst avoiding the side effects that come from the oil passing through the system.

It may also require additional supplements to offset the potential deficiencies in vitamins such as A, D, E and K, all of which are often best absorbed with fat.

The next system of functionality is metabolic boosters, which cause the body to burn more fat, which increases the level of weight loss alongside effective exercise and a suitable diet.

Whilst some available medications have fat-burning aspects to them, there is no approved prescription medication where the primary action is fat-burning or increasing the expenditure of energy, although several clinical trials are taking place for medications such as those reliant on fibroblast growth factor-21 (FGF-21).

Finally, and most commonly, many weight loss medications work through appetite suppressing; they make people feel more full quicker, so they will eat less. These include medications such as liraglutide (sold under the brand name Saxenda) and semaglutide (Wegovy).

They are typically prescribed to people over a certain body mass index (BMI) who have certain additional health issues that have emerged as a result of this weight, such as high blood pressure or high levels of cholesterol.

As with other forms of weight loss treatment, they will work very well for some people and not for others, and it is essential to seek advice before taking any new medication.