Adding the numbers, since they settle part of this. For anyone assembling their own picture: Tmax is one to three days, terminal half-life about 165 to 170 hours, steady state at four to five weeks, and subcutaneous bioavailability near 89%. Those four numbers explain most of the questions people ask about timing.

Worth separating that from semaglutide, which this thread keeps folding into the same question. They behave differently and the advice does not transfer.

Correct me if the detail matters more than I have assumed.

Following on from Dr.SurgeonPGH — and this may be the naive question:

Whether anyone has held at a sub-maximal dose long term and kept the result, or whether the maintenance data only exists at 2.4mg?

Dr.NateNeph said:

For anyone assembling their own picture: Tmax is one to three days, terminal half-life about 165 to 170 hours, steady state at four to five weeks, and…

There is a second half to this that has not been said yet. Albumin binding above 99% is the whole reason weekly dosing works, and it is also why the trough matters more than the peak. People who dose late are not losing a peak, they are letting the trough fall, and the appetite effect tracks the trough.

OP back with an update, since a thread like this is useless without one.

Update: the excursion was survivable and the vial was fine. I now keep a cheap fridge thermometer, which costs nothing and ends the argument.

DeniseRN_TPA said:

Albumin binding above 99% is the whole reason weekly dosing works, and it is also why the trough matters more than the peak.

That holds for the injectable. The oral formulation has different absorption behaviour and the dose numbers are not interchangeable, which is worth saying out loud because people quote them as if they were.

Worth separating that from semaglutide, which this thread keeps folding into the same question. They behave differently and the advice does not transfer.