Orforglipron (Foundayo) Half-Life and Pharmacokinetics, From the FDA Label

This is a reference page. Its job is to reproduce, accurately and with attribution, the pharmacokinetic statements in the FDA-approved United States prescribing information for Foundayo, so somebody keeping a personal medication record can see where the numbers come from.

It is not medical advice. It has not been written or reviewed by a clinician, and it makes no recommendation about whether any medication is appropriate for anybody. It does not tell you how much to take, when to take it, or when to change anything.

This is a recently approved product, which makes accurate sourcing more important rather than less. Newly approved medications accumulate confident secondary coverage faster than that coverage can be checked, and figures that entered circulation before the label was published have a way of persisting afterwards.

All figures on this page come from one document: FOUNDAYO (orforglipron) tablets, for oral use — the United States Prescribing Information approved by the FDA, read on DailyMed accessed 1 September 2026. The pharmacokinetic statements sit in Section 12.3, Pharmacokinetics. The label records an Initial U.S. Approval of 2026.

Section 1 indicates Foundayo for weight management in adults with obesity, or overweight with at least one weight-related comorbid condition, alongside a reduced-calorie diet and increased physical activity. Section 3 lists tablet strengths of 0.8 mg, 2.5 mg, 5.5 mg, 9 mg, 14.5 mg and 17.2 mg.

Labels are revised, which is why the access date is printed beside each figure. If a number here ever conflicts with the current label, the current label wins.

The other orally administered agents in this class are peptides, and peptides are poorly suited to oral delivery: they are degraded in the gastrointestinal tract and cross the intestinal wall inefficiently. Their labels reflect this, estimating absolute bioavailability at roughly one percent or below.

Orforglipron is a non-peptide small molecule, and it is not subject to those constraints. Section 12.3 states a geometric mean absolute bioavailability of 77% after a 0.8 mg dose — a figure comparable to the injected agents in this class rather than to the oral peptides.

That single difference cascades through everything else. It is why the labeled tablet strengths are measured in single-digit and low-double-digit milligrams rather than the tens of milligrams an oral peptide requires, and it is why the label reports no clinically relevant food effect where oral peptide absorption is highly sensitive to conditions of administration.

Bioavailability is the figure on this page most worth checking in any secondary source, because orforglipron is a new small-molecule tablet and it is easy to assume it behaves like oral semaglutide, whose absolute bioavailability the Rybelsus prescribing information, Section 12.3, puts at about 0.4% to 1%.

The FDA-approved Foundayo label states a geometric mean absolute bioavailability of 77%. That is the figure published here, read from the label before any other source was consulted.

A reference table, tracking app or summary that carries a much lower value for orforglipron is worth checking against Section 12.3 of the label, which is the document every figure on this page is held to.

Section 12.3 states an elimination half-life of approximately 29 to 49 hours after an oral dose, that maximum concentration is reached 4 to 8 hours post dose, and that steady-state exposure is achieved after approximately 1 week of once-daily administration.

Note that the half-life is given as a range spanning nearly a two-fold difference. A reference table carrying a single figure for orforglipron has selected a value from inside that range, and where in the range it sits materially changes what a modelled curve would look like.

The one-week approach to steady state is the practically useful figure. A daily medication with a half-life longer than its dosing interval accumulates across the first several doses, and the label puts the timescale of that at roughly a week — much faster than the weekly injectables, which take four to five weeks, and dramatically faster than exenatide extended-release at around ten.

Section 12.3 reports that orforglipron plasma protein binding is greater than 99%, that mean systemic clearance is 7.15 L/hour, and that orforglipron is metabolised primarily via hepatic CYP3A4 to several oxidative metabolites.

Those figures are included because they are labeled values and this pillar publishes labeled values. They are background rather than anything a person keeping a personal record needs to act on, and no page should imply otherwise.

The metabolism route is the one item there with any general significance, because a medication metabolised primarily through a single hepatic enzyme pathway is the kind of medication where interactions with other drugs are a real consideration. That is emphatically a question for a prescriber or pharmacist who can see everything else you take, and this page does not attempt to address it.

Foundayo is escalated stepwise rather than started at a maintenance strength, and the prescribing information describes that escalation in its dosage and administration section.

This page does not reproduce it — not the steps, not the intervals, not the conditions for moving between strengths. The information is public, but a titration schedule is only meaningful attached to a specific person, and publishing one hands readers a plan nobody qualified has given them.

This restraint matters more for a recently approved product than for an established one. Reliable prescribing practice around a new medication develops over time, and a website that publishes a schedule during that period is substituting its own confidence for a clinician's judgement at exactly the moment when judgement is most needed.

GLP-1 Tracker records what you enter: the days you logged a dose, the strength as it was prescribed to you, weight and BMI entries over time, meals captured through the photo scan with calories, protein and fiber estimated, and notes about how a stretch of days went.

For a daily oral medication the useful pattern is adherence over time, and a continuous record is what makes that visible. For a recently approved medication there is a second reason to keep one: an accurate personal history is more valuable when the shared body of experience is still small.

What the app does not do is decide anything. It does not evaluate whether your routine is working, it does not flag anything as clinically significant, and it does not generate schedules. Any chart it draws is an illustration built from general figures, not information about your body.