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
A day without laughter, is a day wasted.
Denise
A day without laughter, is a day wasted.