“Stopping GLP-1s doubles your risk of a heart attack, stroke, or death.”
If that headline scared the very bejebus out of you, you’re not alone. It’s been flying around social media and the internet all week. And no wonder. It’s terrifying.
But like most headlines built around a single scary number, the real story is far more nuanced. And when you take a deeper dive, it turns out it’s not so frightening after all.
The Who and What
For the new study published this month in The Lancet Regional Health – Europe, researchers scoured records from 301 diabetes clinics across Italy. They ended up with a list of more than 80,000 people with type 2 diabetes who started a GLP-1 medication with no known heart disease when they began.
They then sorted those folks into two groups: those who stayed on treatment and those who stopped. About 60 percent of the group had quit after roughly a year, while those who stayed on the GLP-1 did so for about three years.
Now here’s where those scary headlines come in. When you look at the folks who had quit the meds, the combined rate of nonfatal heart attack, nonfatal stroke, or death from any cause was about 3.9 events per 100 people yearly. When you compare that to about 2.0 per 100 among people who stayed on the GLP-1, you can see where the screaming “doubled risk!” headlines come from. The association was stronger in people with obesity.
A Closer Look At “Heart Attack, Stroke, or Death”
But one critical detail never made it into those fear-mongering headlines. The stats included death from any cause, not just heart-related death. And those “any cause” deaths make up a big chunk of it.
Now I’ll be the first to admit I’m no mathematician. However, if my math is correct, the numbers suggest deaths from any cause made up around 2.2 of those 3.9 yearly events (per 100 people) among those who stopped, versus about 0.5 of 2.0 among those who stayed on.
In other words, much of the increase comes from people shuffling off this mortal coil, not necessarily from heart attacks or strokes.
We need to be taking a much closer look at that number. The death numbers were larger than the cardiovascular benefit seen in randomized trials of these drugs. That means that something beyond the medication could be driving at least part of the difference.
What the Study Can’t Tell Us
Also, keep in mind this was a retrospective, observational study. In other words, the researchers gathered past data and crunched it.
That doesn’t mean it’s not valuable information. But it does mean it can show association, not cause and effect. In fact, several experts who weighed in on the research pointed out an obvious problem with taking these numbers at face value. People who stop a medication aren’t a random sample.
You may stop a med because they’re sick, in the hospital, battling side effects, dealing with cost problems, or simply not doing well overall. Any of those things could raise your risk whether or not you ever took a GLP-1.
The study didn’t track why people stopped. And the results don’t show that stopping creates a sudden jump in risk, or that people end up worse off than if they’d never started.
Also, it’s important to know that most people in the study took liraglutide or dulaglutide. Only a small number were on semaglutide, and tirzepatide wasn’t even available at that time.
All of them had type 2 diabetes, and even the researchers cautioned that the findings may not apply to people who take these medications for weight loss or other conditions who don’t have diabetes.
When we look at what happened after people stopped their GLP-1, weight, blood sugar, and blood pressure changed only modestly. So the study doesn’t show that stopping might raise risk.
GLP-1s and the Heart
What makes this study so vital is how it fits into a larger picture. I wish more folks would look at it in that context.
- In the SELECT trial of more than 17,600 adults with obesity and existing heart disease, semaglutide reduced the rate of major cardiovascular events from 8.0 percent to 6.5 percent over about three and a half years.
- Tirzepatide is also linked to cardiovascular benefits in folks with type 2 diabetes who are at high risk.
These were randomized trials… the strongest kind of evidence… and they clearly showed that there were benefits for folks taking the medications.
One cardiologist made an excellent point that I think bears repeating. He essentially pointed out that the study doesn’t suggest the drugs are dangerous. Instead, it highlights the protection that comes from staying on them.
Why People Are Stopping GLP-1s
About half of people with obesity stop GLP-1 drugs within 12 months. And they stop for many different reasons. Common ones include side effects, cost, insurance changes, extended plateaus, or the belief that they’ve “finished” their treatment once they reach their goal weight.
We don’t know which of those reasons applies to any of the 80,000 people followed in this study. But we do know what often happens to your weight when you stop a GLP-1.
A BMJ analysis published in January 2026 pooled 37 studies covering more than 9,300 people. Researchers found that people regained weight at an average of just under a pound per month after stopping. At that pace they were projected to likely return to their starting weight around 20 months later.
And, of course, when you pack the pounds back on those old, ugly comorbidities, including higher blood sugar and blood pressure can return. Researchers estimated those numbers would drift back to their pre-treatment levels with about 1.4 years.
Keep in mind those were just projections, the longest follow-up in the included studies was 12 months after stopping, and only eight of the studies involved the newer GLP-1s.
My Take
Here’s where we firmly enter the land of my opinion. And as more research comes in, we may find that I am way off base.
My hunch is the study doesn’t show that stopping a GLP-1 causes heart attacks. What I think it more likely reflects, at least in part, is something so simple it gets overlooked.
These meds lower cardiovascular and metabolic risk while you take them, and obesity and type 2 diabetes are chronic diseases that raise heart risk when they’re untreated. If you stop a treatment that was suppressing those risks, it makes sense that they could start to climb again.
That’s very different from the drug causing some sort of withdrawal effect that triggers heart attacks, strokes, or death. And, of course, this study can’t confirm that. Future ones still may. Or we may find there is a very small bump.
Let’s be honest, I think about GLP-1s more than your average Joe or Jane, and when I do I keep coming back to how we treat other chronic conditions. Almost no one takes a thyroid medication for a few months, feels better, and quits. The same goes for blood pressure or diabetes medications. Obesity is a chronic metabolic disease too, yet GLP-1s are often treated as a short-term fix by patients, insurers, and employers alike.
When insurers drop coverage (an increasingly common problem), or the high out-of-pocket costs of a GLP-1 become unsustainable, people stop, and they may be stopping a treatment that was protecting them. That deserves more attention than it’s getting.
Thinking About Going Cold Turkey? Do This
Considering stopping your GLP-1? Do me a favor. Talk to your healthcare provider first… especially if you have type 2 diabetes.
The point isn’t to give them a chance to talk you out of it. It’s to make sure you have a plan.
You can discuss whether to taper off them, whether another medication should be taken to keep your blood sugar, blood pressure, and heart risk in check, and whether there’s a better way to address the reason you want to stop.
Sources:
Ceriello, A., et al. (2026). GLP-1 receptor agonist discontinuation and cardiovascular events and all-cause mortality in people with type 2 diabetes: A retrospective cohort study. The Lancet Regional Health – Europe.
Lincoff, A. M., Brown-Frandsen, K., Colhoun, H. M., et al. (2023). Semaglutide and cardiovascular outcomes in obesity without diabetes. New England Journal of Medicine, 389, 2221–2232.
Previl, S. (2026, November 11). Stopping GLP-1 drugs could increase heart attack risk for some, study says. Global News.
Science Media Centre. (2026, November 9). Expert reaction to a retrospective cohort study looking at GLP-1 RA discontinuation and cardiovascular events and all-cause mortality in people with type 2 diabetes.
The South First. (2026). Stopping GLP-1 drugs linked to twice the risk of heart attack, stroke or death in people with diabetes.
West, S., Scragg, J., Aveyard, P., et al. (2026). Weight regain after cessation of medication for weight management: systematic review and meta-analysis. BMJ 2026;392:e085304
BMJ Group. (2026, January 8). Stopping weight loss drugs linked to weight regain and reversal of heart health markers [Press release].
