I know everybody knows that excess weight gain is a health problem, with impacts on heart risk through cholesterol levels and blood pressure. However, I read that medication-induced weight gain may be even more a problem. It is supposed to be, because of something called metabolic syndrome. My problem is that I have bipolar disorder and I think I gain some weight because of therapy. Could you tell me is that possible?
I know weigh gain is a difficult problem, one that almost everyone getting medication treatment has to consider in some way. This is because weight gain is clearly caused by medications used to treat bipolar disorder, some more than others. This weight gain can be so large as to have its own serious health consequences. This is why we need to take it very seriously. Physical activity and diet can help prevent this weight gain, and sometimes reverse it. However, simply telling patients to eat right and get exercise as a means of coping with the weight gain medications can induce is pretty close to an insult. I know it takes more than this simple advice, because weight gain may be associated with causing mood problems that look like bipolar disorder. If this was true, people could look bipolar disorder from weight gain. In the same time, weight gain caused by medications for bipolar disorder could make mood problems even worse. There are some ways to cope with the weight gain and medications problem, so you could talk to your doctor.
This is a difficult problem to be sure, one that almost everyone getting medication treatment has to consider in some way, because:
- Weight gain is clearly caused by medications used to treat bipolar disorder, some more than others.
- This weight gain can be so large as to have its own serious health consequences, so we need to take it very seriously.
- Physical activity and diet can help prevent this weight gain, and sometimes reverse it — but simply telling patients to eat right and get exercise as a means of coping with the weight gain medications can induce is pretty close to an insult and generally simply attempts to shift the responsibility for the problem to the patient. It takes more than this simple advice.
- Weight gain may be, just may be, associated with causing mood problems that look like bipolar disorder. If this was true people could “look” bipolar from weight gain; and weight gain caused by medications for bipolar disorder could make mood problems even worse! This obviously bears some examination.
- Finally, there are some ways to cope with the weight gain/medications problem, outlined below — although let me be the first to admit these are not entirely satisfactory.
Some medications have become famous for this: olanzapine/Zyprexa, divalproex/Depakote, lithium and others are all guilty some of the time (not always; it doesn’t happen to everybody). And now that we’re paying more attention to this problem, it’s becoming clear that other medications can do it: all of the new-generation antipsychotics (aripiprazole is not innocent as the manufacturer tried to make us think; nor does it appear that lurasidone/Latuda is going to be innocent either).
Even some antidepressants that were never really suspect in this way are now known to cause weight gain (slower than the medications listed above, though, and perhaps less often), such as Prozac and Paxil. A 2014 review found every antidepressant except bupropion/Wellbutrin caused weight gain over time when large numbers of patients’ weights were tracked.