Nausea and vomiting are common side effects of Mounjaro and Wegovy, affecting around 1 in 10 users and often occur when commencing treatment and when doses are increased.
Nausea can at time be debilitating and sap all motivation to go about your day.
The following are a few suggestions / tips to consider should you experience nausea and/or vomiting during your treatment:
- Keeping Hydrated: is one of the most beneficial things that you can do to help reduce side effects. Having a glass of water or cup of tea with and between each meal will help you here. Ginger tea is especially useful to help settle a stomach impacted with nausea.
- Small, Plain Meals: another useful tip to help support you with nausea is to have small meals of plain food, avoiding any smells of cooking that may trigger more nausea. Due to the need to limit fat intake whilst nauseous, plain toast, crackers, or biscuits may be useful here. Easily digestible foods will be your friend, such as cooked vegetables, and it is best to try and avoid spicy!
- Small Energy Boosts: it’s vital to maintain your energy throughout the day, so if you are really struggling to eat, having an ice pole (not ice-cream) or water with fruit in it can be good to give you a slight energy boost. If you are finding drinking difficult, try drinking through a straw to limit the amount you take in at a time.
- Choose Food Wisely: finally, opting for plain, cold, savoury foods may help you better than hot or sweet foods, due to the smell and richness. If you experience nausea repeatedly, try to note down when you feel it the worst and aim to eat around this. If it’s in the morning, then try to eat a bit later ensuring that you have time to stay upright between dinner and going to sleep to allow your digestive system time to work.
- Avoid Strong Smelling foods: This can aggravate nausea and make you feel worse.
- Get Fresh Air: Going outside for a walk helps distract you from your symptoms and the fresh air can help alleviate nausea.
- Purchase Anti-sickness Medication: while this is a potential short term solution, it is important to speak to a health care professional before taking additional medication to manage side effects of the treatment. If you experience very bad nausea, please contact us to let us know. We at Simple Online Pharmacy have a clinical team of pharmacists who can assess your suitability for anti-nausea medication and offer advise based on your medical history.
Our clinical team can provide advice on managing symptoms of nausea and vomiting while your body adjusts to the higher doses of GLP-1 treatment.
Vomiting more than three times a day or violent vomiting accompanied by additional symptoms like abdominal pain may indicate that Mounjaro or Wegovy aren't suitable for you, so please monitor your symptoms.
If your urine becomes dark in colour, passing less urine than usual for you or feeling light-headed, could all be signs of dehydration, therefore please contact us or a healthcare professional as soon as possible. Dark urine could also be a potential indicator of an adverse reaction to the medication, therefore in this case please seek urgent medical attention from a healthcare professional, such as a GP consultation or out of hours surgery to ensure that you are looking after your health first and foremost while on the treatment.