One in eight American adults now takes a GLP-1 drug. Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro — the names have become cultural shorthand for a new era of weight loss. But here is the twist nobody put on the box: stopping these medications may quietly unravel the very thing that made cardiologists excited about them in the first place. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St.

Louis tracked more than 333,000 veterans with type 2 diabetes across three years — one of the largest real-world studies of its kind. What they found was striking. Patients who stopped GLP-1 therapy for as little as six months faced a meaningfully higher risk of heart attack, stroke, and death compared with those who kept taking the drugs. The longer someone stayed off treatment, the worse the picture became.

After two years without the medication, that cardiac risk climbed up to 22% higher than for continuous users — nearly erasing all the heart protection the drugs had built up. Why? Because the body does not simply pause. When GLP-1 treatment stops, inflammation creeps back, blood pressure rises again, and cholesterol reasserts itself.