Dr.CardioMD said:Steady state is faster than people expect: half-life about five days, so you are at plateau in roughly three to four weeks rather than five.
This is exactly what I could not find anywhere else.
Clinical perspective, offered as context rather than as advice.
Dose-response modeling for tirzepatide: Emax model fitting to the STEP/SURMOUNT dose-finding data shows:
Semaglutide: ED50 ≈ 0.6mg, Emax ≈ -18%, Hill coefficient ≈ 1.3
Tirzepatide: ED50 ≈ 6mg, Emax ≈ -25%, Hill coefficient ≈ 1.5
Clinical implication: most patients achieve >80% of maximal response by the mid-range dose (1.7mg sema, 10mg tirz). Going to the maximum dose provides diminishing returns — possibly not worth the additional side effect burden for some patients. Individualize dosing based on response vs tolerability.
julia.endo said:The mechanism is more central than most summaries suggest.
I am going to disagree with the direction of travel here. The thread has converged on the tidiest answer rather than the best-supported one, and those are not the same thing.
Worth separating that from the pharmacology, which this thread keeps folding into the same question. They behave differently and the advice does not transfer.
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Shop Reference StandardsOne concrete data point for the thread. The boring version of this is the one that works, and the boring version is: measure a baseline, change one variable, wait, measure again under the same conditions. Nobody wants that answer and it is still the answer.