Which drug has the best side effect profile?

tcpnomad

tcpnomad

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How would you describe the side effect profiles across the various drugs currently available?

Semaglutide, Tirzepatide, Retatrutide, Eloralintide, Cagrilintide (plus other less common options).

When choosing among them, what factors guide your decision? Do you weigh side effects against effectiveness?
 
When it comes to keeping side effects manageable, how you titrate up matters about as much as which compound you pick. If I had to put money on the best balance of efficacy and tolerability, Tirzepatide would be my first pick — though that's a gamble, not a guarantee for any given person.

A number of the subscription compounding services use fairly cautious default schedules for starting Tirzepatide: 1mg/week for the first two weeks, then decide whether to move to 2mg if it's going well. After that, reassess for step-ups every 4 weeks. Being patient gives you the best shot at dodging rough sides.

At an effective dose, any of the GLPs will make you feel somewhat different. It's never going to be purely invisible fat loss.

None of this is advice — just something I've noticed.
 
Sure — nausea is likelier if you go with Sema.

Heart rate is one thing Reta can push up.

A thousand ways exist to get hurt or die. Careful out there, all of you.
 
Aladran said:

Honestly, there is no way to know without trying them. Nausea shows up across the whole class, though I have seen anecdotal reports of people who get nauseous on sema and not on tirz, and the other way round
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Out of everything OP mentioned, Elora is the only 1 I don't have. So far I've stuck with just Tirz, since it's been doing the job without issues. It's also the 1 I've stocked up on for around 8-10years +/-. I've also got a decent stash of Reta, including a couple of R10 kits, which I plan to test at lower doses first. On top of that, there are a couple kits each of sema and cagril sitting around in case I decide to experiment with appetite suppressants later. Tirz is working, so my guess is that combining a split dose of reta with tirz will be a good move once I reach that stage. The cagril, and possibly the sema, could end up being useful additions. Still, as you pointed out, the only way to find out is to give them a shot... 👍
 
When it comes to overall side effect rates, I'd say tirzepatide comes out on top, with reta in second and semaglutide third — that's if you're titrating up to max doses.

Cagri tends to produce a lot of side effects. Elora is somewhat unusual: at low doses the side effect rates appear quite low, but once you go higher, things seem to get much worse.

How much weight someone needs to lose also plays a role. Low-dose reta, 1-4mg, delivers decent weight loss with few side effects, and the same holds for low-dose cagri at 1-3mg. So maybe a smaller dose of reta would be easier to tolerate than a higher dose of tirz that achieves the same weight loss?
 
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