[Health&Healing] Medications Can Add Unexpected Pounds

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Medications can add unexpected pounds

 

The Straight Skinny

Sunday, May 16, 2004

 

By Michael Woods, Post-Gazette National Bureau

 

The pills millions of people take every day for diabetes, clinical

depression, high blood pressure and other illnesses are small, weigh

almost nothing and carry few calories.

 

Stacked up against a super-sized restaurant meal, a bucket of butter-

laced popcorn or a jumbo cola, pills usually don't register with

people worried about putting on pounds.

 

So it may seem hard to swallow, but certain prescription drugs can

cause people to gain weight. Fast. Sometimes a pound a week.

 

Both doctors and patients overlook the possibility that weight gain

can originate in the medicine chest, not just fast-food restaurants

or couch-potato lifestyles, according to Dr. Lawrence J. Cheskin,

director of the Weight Management Center at Johns Hopkins University

in Baltimore.

 

" While obesity is being more widely recognized, I'm not sure the

same can be said for patients' and physicians' recognition of the

possible contributing role of prescription medicines, " he said in an

interview.

 

Cheskin and his associates first warned about the problem in 1990s,

after noticing that a lot of patients who sought help at their

weight management center were getting heavier when they started

prescription drugs.

 

One 42-year-old woman, for instance, gained 42 pounds after taking

lithium, a drug for mood swings. A 36-year-old supermarket worker

gained 240 pounds while taking prednisone, a steroid.

 

" This is a really important subject, " said Dr. Madelyn H. Fernstrom,

director of the Weight Management Center at the University of

Pittsburgh Medical Center.

 

Weight gain is among the side effects listed in official information

sheets for some of the most frequently prescribed drugs in the

United States. These include drugs taken by tens of millions of

people for diabetes, depression, high blood pressure, gastric reflux

and heartburn, and serious mental disorders.

 

Among them are top-selling medications such as the antidepressants

Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil; heartburn drugs such as Nexium and

Prevacid; treatments for mental disorders such as Clozaril and

Zypexa; diabetes drugs like Glucotrol, Diabeta, and Diabinese; and

the high blood pressure drugs Minipress, Cardura, and Inderal. Some,

like Inderal, are prescribed for several different health problems.

 

" Weight-gain drugs " is how Dr. George A. Bray, an obesity expert at

Louisiana State University, describes such medications.

 

MORE at link --

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04137/316522.stm

 

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