My Medications are making me fat.

[Skywatcher]

Okay, to be fair, I am already fat. However, I just gained 7 lbs in the last 8 weeks after having been the same weight for many years.

I initially took trileptal. 1800. We added Effexor last summer 37.5 and I lost 7 lbs for awhile. Then it steadily came back. In November my daughter had a crisis and we upped the Effexor to 75. I barely ate during that time but stayed my normal weight. Then it started increasing slowly. I assumed it was up and down cycle stuff. Went to an ent 8 weeks ago that started me on azelastine nasal spray. I gained a definite 7 lbs that edges up and down.

Any weight gain experience with these drugs? It’s like my turn off hungry switch is gone and I crave carbs and sugars more than usual.

 

[Sideways]

Any weight gain experience with these drugs?

Hell yes. Effexor was one of the main culprits.

My pdoc has now done one of those genetic bloood tests. Cost me a bob. But it tells you in advance which meds are likely to give you side effects with your metabolism. Psychotropic meds looooove to make us gain weight.

This will sound like a sales pitch (it's not). I switched from Effexor (venlafaxine) which was kinda helpful but was gonna make me blow up like a balloon, to Pristiq (desvenlafaxine). It has the opposite effect, if any, on your weight. And for me? Has been brilliant for my mood stability.

Talk to your prescribing doctor. It may be that the side effects are still stabilising and may pass as your body adjusts.

For many of us, medications are a long term deal. So if the side effects need to be tolerable long term. Substantial weight gain, if it's a reality on a particular medication, is a side effect that I won't tolerate. The long term effect of that would create too many issues of its own, including on my mental health.

 

[reallydown]

I have gained quite a bit of weight too. I'm on sertraline though

 

[Friday]

Any weight gain experience with these drugs? It’s like my turn off hungry switch is gone and I crave carbs and sugars more than usual.

Some meds actually screw with metabolism… you could have the healthiest diet/exercise routine on the planet, or be hospitalized anorexic eating once a week, and still double your weight in 6 months. * A key note on THIS type is that sometimes that’s less a metabolism effect, and instead a hormone effect, creating a weight side effect / going on hormone replacement or countering can balance things back to normal. Whether the effect is on your metabolism itself, or is secondary to influencing hormones? Needs rather a lot of blood work, over time, in most cases. Ideally, get blood work done before trialing a new med, to best watch changes in hormones.

Others “just” influence cravings, satiation, activity levels, or impulse control; but with the same potential end result.

Most psychotropics have been trialed on anorexics (which is the single most deadly of psych disorders, even higher than people who are suicidally depressed, so it’s been & being studied to the nth degree); so there’s a short list of ‘eating disorder approved’ meds, that one can experiment with, first, as well as genetics testing.