About Saxenda® weight loss treatment
What is Saxenda®?
Saxenda® is a weight loss drug containing the active ingredient liraglutide. It’s injected into the body each day to help you lose weight. The treatment works best when it’s combined with a reduced calorie diet and increased exercise programme.
How does Saxenda® work?
Simply put, Saxenda® works by making you feel less hungry and fuller when you eat.
Your body produces a hormone known as a glucagon-like-peptide (GLP-1), which helps you to naturally regulate your appetite. Liraglutide copies the action of this hormone, by reducing your appetite, which hopefully means you need to eat less, and you lose weight.
Saxenda® effectiveness
Saxenda® has been proven to be a very effective weight loss treatment, with lifestyle changes, as many as 85% of the people taking it losing some weight.
In a clinical study over 56 weeks, where patients received Saxenda® alongside a reduced calorie diet and exercise counselling:
- Three in five people lost more than 5% of their body weight (that was an average of 5kg)
- One in three people lost more than 10% of their body weight (that was an average of 10kg)
Who can take Saxenda®?
Saxenda® is suitable for people with:
- A BMI of 30 and over
- A BMI of 27 to 30 and have another weight-related ‘co-morbidity’ (e.g. high blood pressure, high cholesterol, sleep apnoea)
The drug always works best when paired with a low calorie, balanced diet and increased exercise programme.
Taking Saxenda®
If you’re prescribed Saxenda®, you’ll have to inject yourself with the treatment each day.
The dosing schedule increases throughout the first four weeks, to make sure your body can tolerate the treatment and you don’t experience lots of side effects. This process is called titration.
The Saxenda® dosing schedule is as follows:
- Week 1 – 0.6mg injected daily
- Week 2 – 1.2mg injected daily
- Week 3 – 1.8mg injected daily
- Week 4 – 2.4mg injected daily
- Week 5 – 3.0mg injected daily
If you can tolerate the 3.0mg dose you will then be kept on this dose for the duration of your time taking the treatment. This is known as the maintenance phase.
After 12 weeks of being on the 3.0mg dose, you'll be asked to check in with your clinician. This is because you’ll only be able to continue with the treatment if you’ve lost a certain amount of weight.
How long does Saxenda® take to work?
Lots of people will lose weight from Saxenda® within the first 12 weeks of using the 3.0mg dose. If you haven’t lost any weight at this point, or you’ve lost less weight than a certain threshold, you won’t be able to continue using the treatment.
What are the potential Saxenda® side effects?
Like with any treatment, there is always the chance that some people will experience side effects.
The most common side effects include:
- Nausea and/or vomiting
- Diarrhoea
- Constipation
- Headaches
Most of these common side effects are mild. They often settle down once you've been taking the medication for a while. Some people's bodies take a little longer to get used to the medication.
Using our Saxenda® service
If you’d like to request Saxenda® for weight loss, you’ll need to go through our online consultation. During this we’ll ask you a series of questions to assess if the treatment is right for you and your weight loss journey.
If our clinicians think the treatment is suitable, you can visit your local LloydsPharmacy to collect your treatment. When you’re in the pharmacy they’ll also check your BMI, just to double check the treatment is still the right option.
After your first pack of Saxenda® with Online Doctor, if you choose to continue with the treatment, you just need to reorder the treatment – don’t worry, we’ll send you a reminder. If you’re prescribed, you can collect it in your local LloydsPharmacy.
If you'd rather go through a consultation in-person and not online, you can access Saxenda® through the LloydsPharmacy Medicated Weight Loss Service. Simply book an in-pharmacy appointment and a pharmacist will assess your suitability for the treatment.
How Online Doctor will support you while taking Saxenda®
If you’re taking Saxenda®, our clinicians will support you through your journey in a variety of different ways.
- When prescribed, you'll be sent a digital info pack in your Patient Record. This will have advice and support resources for your time on Saxenda®.
- You’ll get a follow up questionnaire after you’ve been taking the treatment for around two weeks, to see how you’re getting on.
- We’ll remind you when it’s time to reorder, so you don’t miss out on treatment.
- At certain intervals you’ll be asked to update our clinicians on your weight, to make sure the treatment is still suitable.
- If you’re still taking treatment after a year, you’ll be asked to come back into the pharmacy, so we can update our BMI records to make sure the treatment is still right.
And don’t forget, you can also send our team a message in your Patient Record if you have any questions or queries.
Storing and throwing away your Saxenda pens®
Any Saxenda pens that haven't been used should be kept in the fridge. After being used once, you can keep the pens either in the fridge or at room temperature.
Open pens must be thrown away after 30 days even if they have any treatment left in them. Pens need to be disposed of in sharps bins – you'll be given one of these when you start using the treatment.
We'll let you know how to get rid of the sharps bin and its contents when you're prescribed treatment.
Alternative weight loss treatments
Other than Saxenda®, there are some other weight loss treatments out there, but it’s always best to speak to a clinician about what is right for you.
Other weight loss treatments include:
The NHS has lots of great resources for weight loss diets and exercise programmes which you could also try to help you lose weight or use alongside a medicated treatment.
