What disqualifies you from GLP-1 treatment, and why that’s a safety feature

Most services are vague about this, which serves nobody. If you are considering treatment, you should know upfront what would stop it — and why those particular lines exist.

The hard contraindications

These rule out GLP-1 treatment. They are not negotiable, and no amount of context changes them:

• **Personal or family history of medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC)**, or **Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia syndrome type 2 (MEN 2)**. This appears on the labelling of every medicine in the class.
• **Pregnancy, breastfeeding, or actively planning to become pregnant.** If you become pregnant during treatment, tell your doctor immediately.
• **A history of pancreatitis**, or a previous serious allergic reaction to a GLP-1 medicine.
• **Type 1 diabetes**, and insulin-dependent diabetes generally, which is a different clinical situation requiring different management.
• **A history of anorexia or bulimia.** Appetite-suppressing medication in the context of a restrictive eating disorder is a genuine harm risk, not a grey area.

If any of these apply, the answer is no — from us and from any legitimate prescriber. A service that says yes anyway is telling you something important about itself.

Conditions that change the approach without ruling it out

A much longer list falls into a different category: relevant, sometimes complicating, but not automatically disqualifying. These include hypertension, high cholesterol or triglycerides, type 2 diabetes and prediabetes, gastroparesis, chronic kidney disease, gallbladder disease or current gallstones, thyroid conditions other than the ones above, GERD, liver conditions, heart conditions, sleep apnea, and PCOS.

For these, the physician is weighing benefit against risk in your specific case, and may prescribe differently, monitor more closely, or decide the timing is wrong. We cover several individually — gallbladder, pancreatitis risk, type 2 diabetes, PCOS.

Why answering honestly matters more than qualifying

It is tempting to shade an answer to get past a gate. Please do not.

The screening questions exist because the risks are real and specific. A physician who does not know about your pancreatitis history cannot protect you from it. There is no version of this where an omission helps you — the medicine does not behave differently because a form was incomplete.

The assessment is also free. Getting a "no" costs you nothing but the three minutes.

If the answer is no

You are not charged for medication that was not prescribed. The physician explains the reason rather than leaving you with a rejection notice, and where a safer alternative or a referral exists, they will point at it.

Sometimes "no" is really "not yet" — a condition to stabilise first, a medicine to review, a pregnancy plan to work around. That distinction is worth asking about.

Take the assessment, and read the Important Safety Information first.