Posted by James_glasgow on October 6, 2007, at 13:43:35
In reply to Re: Rimonabant - New Appetite Suppressant » James_glasgow, posted by Quintal on October 6, 2007, at 9:06:59
Hi Quintal
I have noticed that bar a very few medicines that are prescribed for mental health or neurological problem, they generally increase my BMI to just under 30 over time. This is I beleive through a combination of increase in appetite, and probably a metabolic change as even on a hypocalorific diet it can be very diffcult to lose the weight while still taking the drugs, and as you said the manner in which you act as if you are relatively restless naturally and are placed on something that stops this then you obvious stop buring up the energy.
My experience of psychiatry in the UK is one of "its not the drugs, you just are greedy", "it is the drugs but we cant do anything about it", "it is the drugs, we will change it to another (often of the same class) and see what happens" (even after many goes they dont seem to learn that doing this does not work), and a few others I cannot recall at present. Increase energy expenditure through exercise also has little effect at this point.
I would like them do to what is done at Harvard snd weight everyone before and while they are on psychotropic medication and where necessary use adjuvants to the drugs proactively, not let the probelm occur, then try and deal with it, or pretend it is not happening, "you look fine to me".
I recently read a piece of peer reveiwed literature about psychiatry, science, and body mass, and how as it is difficult to objectively measure much in psychiatry and many Psychiatrist were ignoring the fact, while claiming their profession to be evidence based science, that the one thing that can be done empirically and results in indisputable fact is to meause someones weight change, and look at a correlation between it and the drug or drugs the patient is taking. There is a great relutance from where I sit for them to do this, at I beleive anything beyond a 7% change in mass is considered clinically significant which would result in them need to act.
I beleive you are also in the UK and this where I have developed this view, I dont know if you have tried but if you ask an NHS Psychiatrist to try bupropion (at least in my experience) to help with SSRI induced fatigue, lack of sex drive and weight gain you get a blank look or worse. However, look around this board and you will see it is common practice in the US. This also goes for topiramate and just about anything you can think of that would assist side effects, modafanil, orlistat, amantadine with the exception being the use of procyclidine.
Maybe I have become rather cynical over the years as a result of my experience. I recently saw an Orthopaedic Surgeon and walked out of the Hospital asking myself if I had been in a Private Hospital only to realise I had been comparing it to psychiatry.
James
poster:James_glasgow
thread:786700
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070929/msgs/787278.html