--- title: "Track Side Effects So Your Doctor Can Use Your Notes | Peptyn" description: "How to track GLP-1 side effects so a prescriber can use them: severity, duration, and why injection timing is usually logged at the wrong resolution." canonical: "https://peptyn.orlyn.ai/articles/side-effects-tracking" last-updated: "2026-08-16" --- # Track Side Effects So Your Doctor Can Use Your Notes *How to track GLP-1 side effects so a prescriber can use them: severity, duration, and why injection timing is usually logged at the wrong resolution.* Educational · Not medical advice · 18+ When something doesn't feel right on medication, most people reach for a note app and type something like "nauseous today" or "bad headache." Six weeks later, when they talk to their prescriber, the memory is scattered. The notes exist but add little because they're missing what turns an anecdote into a record: how bad it was, how long it lasted, and where it fell in the week. Published 15 August 2026 · 10 min read · 7 sources Three things separate a useful record from one your doctor will nod at and move past: severity, duration, and timing. Miss them and you have a pile of adjectives. Capture them and you have something a clinician can actually work with. ## Why most side effect tracking doesn't work The common pattern is a 1-to-5 slider: pick a number for how bad the nausea was, tap save. The problem is not that the number is wrong. It is that the number threw away the context that made the event worth recording. Nausea is not one thing. "Mild nausea for a couple of hours, could still work" carries information. "Nausea in waves, worst after eating" is a different report from "nausea steadily all day." A 3 collapses all of those into the same character. Your prescriber cannot unpack it, and neither can you six weeks later. The second problem is timing. "Did this happen" is a much weaker question than "when did this happen, relative to when I injected." Most logs record the first and not the second, and as the next sections show, most of the ones that do record timing record it at the wrong resolution. ## The three elements of a useful symptom record ### Severity: describe, don't rate Forget the 1-to-5 scale. Instead, anchor severity to something you can do. "Mild enough to work, but uncomfortable" tells a prescriber more than a 3. "Severe enough that I had to lie down" is specific. "Barely noticeable unless I moved quickly" is precise. When you reach for free text instead of a slider, two things happen. First, you're describing, which forces you to think about what the sensation actually is. Second, you're giving your prescriber something they can read in context, not a number they have to translate. This is not just a stylistic preference. It is close to how clinical research grades severity in the first place. The NCI Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events, a severity scale developed by the National Cancer Institute and used widely in trial reporting, separates grades largely by what the person can still do.[7] In version 4.03, Grade 1 is "Mild; asymptomatic or mild symptoms; clinical or diagnostic observations only; intervention not indicated." Grade 2 is "Moderate," defined partly as "limiting age-appropriate instrumental ADL," where instrumental activities of daily living refer to "preparing meals, shopping for groceries or clothes, using the telephone, managing money." Grade 3 is "Severe or medically significant but not immediately life-threatening," defined partly as "limiting self care ADL," meaning "bathing, dressing and undressing, feeding self, using the toilet, taking medications, and not bedridden." You are not grading yourself, and you should not try to. But notice what the professional system actually keys on: function, not a feeling score. So write the function. "Skipped the grocery run" and "stayed in bed until noon" are, without any medical vocabulary at all, the exact axis a clinician is already listening for. ### Duration: when it started and when it stopped Write down when the symptom appeared and when it resolved, or if it's ongoing, say that plainly. "Started at 3 PM, gone by dinner" is different from "started yesterday morning and I still have it." Duration is the difference between something that came and went and something that is still going. Those are different reports, and the distinction is load-bearing. MedlinePlus, the National Library of Medicine's consumer drug information, tells readers of the semaglutide monograph to "tell your doctor if any of these symptoms are severe or do not go away," listing the common ones as "nausea, vomiting, diarrhea; stomach pain; constipation; heartburn, burping; runny nose or sore throat; headache."[4] That instruction has a hidden requirement in it. You cannot tell whether something "does not go away" from a log that never recorded when it started. What you should not do is draw the conclusion yourself. Whether a duration means anything, and what to do about it, is a question for the person who prescribed the medication. Your job is to hand over an accurate timeline, not an interpretation of it. If the symptom is still happening when you see your prescriber, write "ongoing for five days" rather than "it's been bad." Ongoing changes the conversation. ### Timing: which day after the injection, not which minute This is the piece almost no one tracks, and it is also the piece most often tracked at the wrong resolution. Write down when you injected and when the symptom showed up. But record the gap in days, not just minutes. Here is why the resolution matters. A weekly GLP-1 does not arrive all at once. The Ozempic label states that "Maximum concentration of semaglutide is reached 1 to 3 days post dose," with "an elimination half-life of approximately 1 week."[1] The Mounjaro label states that "Following subcutaneous administration, the time to maximum plasma concentration of tirzepatide ranges from 8 to 72 hours."[3] The semaglutide monograph in StatPearls describes the same picture, with "peak concentration achieved within 1 to 3 days of initiation."[5] So the exposure curve these medications produce is measured in days. A log built to prove that something happened twenty minutes after the needle is measuring on a scale the medication does not operate on. "Day 2, worst of the week" and "day 6, barely anything" sit on the same axis the label uses. That is a comparison a prescriber can do something with. None of which means clock time is worthless. Write it down, because it costs nothing and it separates "every morning" from "only in the evening," which is a real distinction and a common one. Just log the day offset as well, because that is the axis that lines up with the medication's own timescale. One caveat on scope. Not every GLP-1 is a weekly injection, and the ones taken daily run on a shorter cycle where the day offset carries less of the signal. The general point holds either way: match the resolution of your log to the timescale your own medication actually works on, and the label for your specific product is where that timescale is written down. And the interpretation is not yours to make. Whether a pattern reflects the medication, the meal before it, the week you had, or something unrelated is a question for the person who prescribed it. Record the timeline accurately and let them read it. ## Free text beats ratings, and memory is not data Put together, the format that carries all three pieces is boring and plain: a sentence or two per event. No structured form. No rating scale. A note that reads like what you'd tell someone you trust. "Day 2, queasy from about 2 PM, mostly gone by 5, still ate dinner" is a complete record in one line. Why prefer that over a rating scale? Because a scale is filled in from memory and memory smooths. When you sit down at the end of the week to rate how the week felt, you are averaging and rounding off the days that were different from each other. Writing at the time captures the day instead of the average of the days. The gastrointestinal effects are the ones most likely to come up. StatPearls describes "nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, constipation, and diarrhea" as the most frequently reported adverse effects of semaglutide.[5] Plenty of those days are mild, and mild is exactly where a 1-to-5 scale gets awkward, because a 1 and a blank look the same later. Free text lets you write "barely noticeable, but present" and have it still be there in six weeks. So when people ask how to track GLP-1 side effects, the honest answer is not a better form. Write while you remember, in plain language, with the day and the duration attached. ## What your prescriber can actually do with a record Be careful about what is being claimed here. A log does not decide anything, and this article is not going to tell you what your record means. What a record changes is the quality of the input your prescriber is working from. The first thing it supplies is a distinction that memory flattens. "Every injection, all week" and "the first two days, then nothing" are different reports. Which of those is happening to you is a fact about your weeks, and it is a fact you can only supply if you wrote it down at the time. What follows from it is a clinical judgment, and it belongs to your prescriber. The second thing it supplies is a way to separate the medication from everything else in your life. A symptom that tracks the injection week after week and a symptom that shows up on random days are different reports, and the difference is only visible across several weeks of records. One week of notes cannot show it. The third is less about the medicine and more about the conversation. A record lets you say something checkable. "Day 2 and day 3, four weeks running" is a sentence your prescriber can ask follow-up questions about. "It's been rough lately" mostly ends the exchange, because there is nothing in it to work with. That is the honest case for keeping notes, and it is a narrower case than the usual pitch. Better notes make for a better conversation. They are not treatment. ## When to stop tracking and call instead This is the section that matters most, and it is the one that points away from the app. A record is a communication tool. It is not a substitute for calling your prescriber's office. There are moments when you should stop tracking and call immediately. Which symptoms those are is not something this article is going to invent, and you should be suspicious of any app that does. The approved label has a section written for precisely this question: section 17, Patient Counseling Information, which is the list of things the manufacturer tells prescribers to warn patients about. Below are the symptom descriptions from that section of the Wegovy (semaglutide) label on DailyMed, in the label's own words:[2] - **Acute pancreatitis:** "severe abdominal pain that sometimes radiates to the back, and which may or may not be accompanied by nausea or vomiting" - **Thyroid tumors:** "a lump in the neck, hoarseness, dysphagia, or dyspnea" - **Severe gastrointestinal adverse reactions:** the label instructs patients to contact their healthcare provider "if they have severe or persistent gastrointestinal symptoms" - **Acute kidney injury due to volume depletion:** the label instructs patients to "promptly report" the signs and symptoms of acute kidney injury, or "persistent (or extended) nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea," to their healthcare provider - **Hypersensitivity reactions:** the label records that "serious hypersensitivity reactions have been reported during postmarketing use of semaglutide" - **Acute gallbladder disease:** the label instructs patients to contact their healthcare provider "for appropriate clinical follow-up if gallbladder disease is suspected" - **Diabetic retinopathy complications in patients with type 2 diabetes:** the label tells those patients to contact their physician "if changes in vision are experienced during treatment" - **Heart rate increase:** the label tells patients to inform their healthcare providers of "palpitations or feelings of a racing heartbeat while at rest" Two things about that list. Pancreatitis leads it, and "severe abdominal pain that sometimes radiates to the back" is a specific description worth having read before you need it. And the list belongs to Wegovy. Your own product's label is the one that applies to you, the sections differ between products, and it is on DailyMed under the brand name printed on your box. What is deliberately not reproduced here is what that label tells patients to do about the medication itself. A tracking app has no business relaying that, and the label is where it belongs. The action from this page is one thing: stop tracking and contact your prescriber, or seek emergency care if it is severe. Do not wait for a pattern. Do not build a better note. If a side effect appears suddenly and is unlike anything you've experienced before, call. If a side effect gets progressively worse, call. If you develop a new symptom that you've never had on this medication before, call. Your medication's own prescribing information lists its warnings and serious adverse reactions. If what you're experiencing resembles any of those, call your prescriber or seek emergency care rather than document it. You can read the actual approved labeling on DailyMed, the National Library of Medicine's archive of drug labeling submitted to the FDA, for Wegovy and for Mounjaro, among others.[2][3] It is worth knowing what is in there before you need it. Both of those labels carry a boxed warning headed "WARNING: RISK OF THYROID C-CELL TUMORS," and both have a Warnings and Precautions section with named subsections including Acute Pancreatitis, Acute Gallbladder Disease, Acute Kidney Injury Due to Volume Depletion, Severe Gastrointestinal Adverse Reactions, Hypersensitivity Reactions, and Pulmonary Aspiration During General Anesthesia or Deep Sedation. That last one is the reason your prescriber and any anesthesiologist need to know you are on this medication before a procedure. Read the section for your own medication, since the list differs between products, and treat it as the thing that tells you when to pick up the phone rather than open an app. For general background on how this class of medication works, StatPearls is a readable secondary review, though it is a reference article and not a substitute for the label.[6] The hard truth: logging does not manage a side effect, reduce it, or predict whether it will go away. Recording what happened is useful. Believing that recording something can substitute for talking to a clinician is the mistake to avoid. ## How the app fits into this Peptyn has no free-text field, so the three-part record itself (severity, duration, and the day offset) belongs wherever you already keep notes. What the app supplies is the other half of the problem: the injection dates those notes have to be read against. That is the half people get wrong from memory. Each logged dose carries its own calendar day and the time it was recorded, so the day offset becomes a subtraction rather than a reconstruction. You are still writing the symptom down somewhere else, but you are no longer guessing which injection it followed, which is the step people quietly stop doing around week three. The history calendar then shows those weeks laid out together, which is the view that makes a repeated pattern visible at all. You can open it in an appointment and ask "does this look like anything to you?" That is a different conversation from "I think it's been a bit better lately." To be clear about what the app is not: it does not interpret the pattern, score your symptoms, or tell you what any of it means. It keeps an accurate record so someone qualified can read it. ## References 1. [OZEMPIC (semaglutide) Prescribing Information](https://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/drugInfo.cfm?setid=adec4fd2-6858-4c99-91d4-531f5f2a2d79) - DailyMed, NIH/NLM (source of the 1 to 3 day time to maximum concentration and the approximately 1 week elimination half-life) 2. [WEGOVY (semaglutide) Prescribing Information](https://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/drugInfo.cfm?setid=ee06186f-2aa3-4990-a760-757579d8f77b) - DailyMed, NIH/NLM (source of the boxed warning, the Warnings and Precautions subsection names, and the quoted symptom descriptions from section 17, Patient Counseling Information) 3. [MOUNJARO (tirzepatide) Prescribing Information](https://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/drugInfo.cfm?setid=d2d7da5d-ad07-4228-955f-cf7e355c8cc0) - DailyMed, NIH/NLM (source of the 8 to 72 hour time to maximum plasma concentration) 4. [Semaglutide Injection](https://medlineplus.gov/druginfo/meds/a618008.html) - MedlinePlus, NIH/NLM (source of the common side effect list and the "severe or do not go away" instruction) 5. [Semaglutide](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK603723/) - StatPearls, NIH (secondary review; peak concentration timing and most frequently reported adverse effects) 6. [Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK551568/) - StatPearls, NIH (secondary review of the drug class, not prescribing information) 7. [Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (CTCAE) v4.03](https://evs.nci.nih.gov/ftp1/CTCAE/CTCAE_4.03/CTCAE_4.03_2010-06-14_QuickReference_8.5x11.pdf) - National Cancer Institute, NIH (source of the Grade 1 to 3 definitions and the ADL definitions) ## Keep reading - [One change at a time](https://peptyn.orlyn.ai/articles/how-to-track-a-peptide-stack) Record design for multi-compound protocols, and why a log built one way can attribute nothing at all. - [What to bring to a GLP-1 follow-up](https://peptyn.orlyn.ai/articles/glp1-follow-up-visit-packet) How to turn your own records into a one-page packet, and which questions are worth a prescriber's time. - [Did I already take my shot?](https://peptyn.orlyn.ai/articles/did-i-already-take-my-shot) Why the memory fails for everyone, what the poison-centre data actually shows, and which checks do not hold up. This article is educational. It does not recommend doses, schedules, or products, and it is not medical advice. Every factual claim above is linked to its source. Questions about your own protocol belong with the prescriber who wrote it. --- Source: