Weight Loss Injections - Good or Bad?
Weight Loss Injections - Good or Bad?
Tweaking your diet with pharmacological assistance can help with weight loss in a time and cost-effective manner. Weight loss injections were specially designed to aid people who struggled to drop extra kilograms for a long time. Weight loss injections are a safe, effective, and innovative solution to losing pounds by inducing pharmacological changes. In short, the injection helps your body breakdown the stored fat more effectively – which wouldn’t have been possible with its normal metabolic rate.
BMR, BMI, and Metabolic Disorders
Your basal metabolic rate is the baseline at which your body balances its anabolic and catabolic processes. If your body breaks down more food than storing it, your BMR will be higher – that is why you tend to see individuals who devour everything yet fail to put on weight. On the other hand, slower metabolism and subsequently lower BMR causes your body to store more nutrients instead of utilizing them for normal physiological processes. This could be because of sedentary lifestyles, metabolic disorders, or underlying conditions.
Checking your BMR is not possible outside a clinical setting, thus knowing your basal metabolic index is a helpful inference. To calculate your BMI, divide your weight (in kilos) by the square of your height (in meters). A value that is greater than 25 and lesser than 29 means you are overweight. Whereas, BMI greater than 30 indicates obesity.
Obesity with metabolic syndrome, metabolic disorders, or with conditions like high cholesterol, increased blood pressure, or type 2 diabetes account for the use of weight loss injections. In these conditions, age, old habits, and limited ability to indulge in high-intensity exercises make it harder for the individual to lose weight – thus, weight loss injections prevent these health conditions from exacerbating.
Dosage
Before you begin, a doctor or an expert should be asked to prescribe the dose and timings of weight loss injections. The ideal dose for Liraglutide is usually up to 3 milligrams but is adjusted according to your weight, height, and adipose deposits. Once the dose is set, you can start injecting the weight loss drug through a pen-shaped injection that has the calibrations for convenient dose adjustment.
Lipotropic injections containing B12 as the sole pharmacological component have dosages up to 1,000 milligrams per week.
Route of Administration
Most weight loss injections are administered subcutaneously. This warrants for easy self-administration for people who are amateurs or phobic of injections. You are advised to inject the needle in areas of greater deposits of fatty tissue – this includes the thighs, arms stomach or hips. Since the needle is long enough to penetrate the epidermis and the dermis, it reaches the subcutis from where the bolus is carried through the bloodstream to relevant organs – for first-pass or second-pass effect. This mechanism helps in the activation, distribution, or efficacy of the weight loss drug.
Liraglutide
A common variant of insulin, Liraglutide is a glucagon-like peptide-one (GLP) receptor agonist. This is an incretin mimetic – that is the amount of insulin released through oral administration of glucose is greater than its release through IV glucose. Thus, the gut plays a significant role in increased insulin production and subsequently increased glucose uptake.
Mechanism of Action
Since Liraglutide is an analog of GLP1, it acts of the gut’s receptors for sustained insulin release. This helps suppress appetite long after taking meals, thus giving feelings of satiety. It also reduces gastric emptying time for proper absorption of nutrients and promotes beta-cell proliferation. Moreover, it prevents the spike in glucagon that usually follows after physiological insulin release – thus preventing unsteady blood sugar levels. Initially, it was used as preventive medicine for diabetics but has shown promising results in weight loss.
Lipotropic Injections
Lipotropic injections contain vitamins C, B12, B6, vitamin B complex. They also contain branched-chain amino acids, L-carnitine, and phentermine. As well as a combination of three essential nutrients, methionine, choline, and inositol. Although different variants of lipotropic concoctions are available according to your needs.
Mechanism of Action
Lipotropic shots are not as effective as Liraglutide, but they do help with weight loss through sustained treatment. These can be administered and changed according to your specific needs. The essential nutrients give feelings of satiety and prevent starvation with low-calorie diets. Additionally, the vitamin component of lipotropic shots helps with overall mood improvement, emotional well-being, and increased cognitive function. They decrease fat stores by increasing the liver’s catabolic function.
Lifestyle Changes
Weight loss injections monitor the changes at a cellular level. But the injections should not be considered as a quick fix for all problems. Although these are highly effective in drastically bringing down weight, you must be mindful of making relevant dietary changes to see better results in a lesser amount of time.
Avoiding sugary, high-fat foods especially if you have high cholesterol and are diabetic, will help your body manage your glycogen stores better – that is what the weight loss injections are essentially helping your body to do. Low-intensity exercises like walking, jogging, and yoga can also help significantly instead of keeping up a sedentary lifestyle.
Precautions
With any drug, one must be mindful of the pharmacological interactions it can induce. Liraglutide is approved by the FDA. Yet you must consult your physician before starting a regimen. This becomes especially important if you have either never taken a similar injection before or have been taking any other form of insulin. Underlying, undiagnosed, or inheritable conditions like multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2 and medullary thyroid carcinoma should be ruled out before taking the injections.
In conclusion, weight loss injections are effective according to several studies – especially for stubborn fat around your waist, thighs, and arms. Weight loss injections work primarily through suppressing your appetite at a cellular level. But a rigorous workout routine and diet plan will help with rapid fat burning; this can significantly change the outcomes without solely depending on the weight loss injection. According to a study done by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, obese adults lost five to ten percent of their total body weight in six months with weight loss injections. Several studies are backing their effectiveness as well.
