Four to six months, then it wears off completely — that is both the honest answer and the whole point of the method.
Gastric botox lasts four to six months and then wears off entirely, and that is both the honest answer and the point of the method. Botulinum toxin injected into the muscle wall of the stomach slows gastric emptying and relaxes the antrum, so food sits longer and fullness arrives sooner. The nerve endings regenerate on their own schedule. When they do, the effect stops completely rather than fading into any permanent change.
Not on the day. Appetite usually changes somewhere between day three and day ten, which surprises patients who expect a switch to flip while they are still in recovery. The procedure itself is a twenty-minute endoscopy under sedation with no incision and no hospital stay, at €900, and you eat normally the same evening. If nothing has changed by week three it is unlikely to, and we would rather review the plan than tell you to keep waiting.
A second session can be given once the first has worn off, and some patients run two or three cycles while working on habits. Do the arithmetic before committing to that path. Three sessions over eighteen months is €2,700, close to the €2,800 of a gastric balloon and not far from the €3,800 of a sleeve, with none of the durability of either. Repeat botox makes sense as a bridge, not as a plan.
Gastric botox suits someone with a BMI in the high twenties to low thirties who needs a controlled push to make a diet stick, or someone who has to lose ten kilos before an unrelated operation. It is not obesity surgery and we do not present it as a cheaper version of one. Every patient who has it here is offered a dietitian plan alongside, because the injection buys months of easier restraint and nothing else.
We quote a realistic range of eight to fifteen kilos across the active months, and that is with a diet running alongside it. Anyone promising twenty-five kilos from an injection is selling something. It is a support to a diet rather than a replacement for one.
There is no antidote, but none is needed — the effect fades by itself within four to six months. That reversibility is the main advantage it holds over surgery, and it is also the exact reason it cannot deliver a surgical result.