Posted by headachequeen on October 23, 2003, at 13:59:43
In reply to Re: what dose were you at that you lost 20 lbs.?, posted by platinumbride on October 22, 2003, at 23:06:24
> wow everyone.....
>
> i think i am one of the few who can still eat!!!
> i'm now on thyroid hormone too. maybe this will help the metabolism, but i am amazed at my appetite which is one of the few things which never fails me!
>
> DianeI thought that my appetite fit into that category for a long time... and questioned my will power too... for a while I linked my weight to depression... then a breakdown meant a visit to hospital where I discovered, that the cause of the visit aside, which was severe stress for lack of a better term, playing upon events in my past, I was not depressed and didn't fit into the area where a psychiatrist could help me...
I had been taking anti-depressants which had been increased while I was in hospital, along with the Tegretol... I was sent home after about a month with the advice to continue taking the increased doses of anti-depressants, and to seek the help of a psychologist... I had a personality disorder but was not depressed... the disorder caused by childhood and teenage events... so off to the psychologist and psychotherapy. I found a really good one, to whom I can relate very well... the pills continued... Zyprexa was one of them,Immovane another and I forget the other,although I had been taking Welbutrin until I started taking Tegretol... one day something he said made me think that the pills were suppressing my emotions.. how could I get help if I could not reach out for it... and with suppressed emotions and repressed memories that meant I could not reach out... so I quit taking the anti-depressants... this happened in January of this year, about the time I started taking Topomax ...
no one told me that I should not stop 'cold turkey'... I had no problem stopping and was beginning to achieve something as far as the psycotherapy was concerned... March is always a bad time for me, so in February my doctor increased my dosage of Zyprexa and the other anti-depressant... I didn't like to tell him I had quit taking them entirely, afraid he might be angry and dump me as a patient...
when I did tell him in March - said I had been off the stuff for a month :( - he was suprised, said the idea had been to wean me off it slowly and asked if I wanted him to prescribe something to help me adjust to life without the meds... and wanted to know if I had simply gone cold turkey... well, yeah????
then said that if that was required patients were usually put in hospital for a while and other meds substituted and ... I was almost as shocked as he was...
I am wondering now if some of the weight problem was related to the use of the anti-depressants ...
I was using them for much longer than I have been on Tegretol and much much longer than I have been using Topomax...
but have to admit that the weight loss of note has been in recent weeks...
while I began to lose two or three pounds a week at the beginning of using it, the weight loss began to be really noticeable when I reached 300 mg a day...
and now, at 400 mg a day, as I said I have lost almost 45 pounds...I have read the other posts regarding side effects...
while I had been warned about the effects of alcohol I had not been aware of the risks of kidney stones for instance, but I do find that I am always thirsty... and in the early weeks of using the med, I found dry mouth a constance annoyance...while the neurologist warned me that there might be a problem with confused speech, I have not had a problem in that respect either...
so I seem to have gotten off lightly...
I am surprised to read of the broad spectrum use Topomax has... here I thought it simply dealt with seizures and migraines and considered it a miracle drug in that I had not had a migraine since starting to use it... and that is a miracle in itself...
the weight loss is the icing on the cake...
but I keep wondering when it stops????????
poster:headachequeen
thread:50878
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20031021/msgs/272349.html