Apparently, you’re fat because you’re depressed.
Oy. Esther Rothblum just posted this to the fat studies list, and I had to share. An article came out in the New Scientist last week that suggested that - surprise! - it’s all our prescriptions that are making us fat. No, really:
Prescriptions in the US for Zyprexa alone run into millions. In 2004, 32.6 million Americans purchased outpatient prescriptions for antidepressants, stimulants, antipsychotics and tranquillisers, up from 21 million in 1997. Overall, around 50 million Americans - that’s 1 in 6 of the population - currently take at least one psychotropic drug. From a crude look at the numbers, it seems that they could potentially be causing a significant - and growing - portion of America’s obesity problem.
Key words there being, of course, “a crude look.” And, you know, “obesity problem.” Actually, come to think of it, the whole article is kind of laughable, seeing as they can’t seem to decide if pills are causing teh fatness or teh fatness is a mental illness needing more pills.
In a curious article last May in the American Journal of Psychiatry (vol 164, p 708), two doctors even proposed that obesity be classified as a mental illness. One likely consequence of that would be another massive increase in the prescribing of psychotropic drugs, resulting, no doubt, in another upsurge in obesity statistics.
What’s amusing to me is that the article doesn’t seem to offer any “solutions” to this “problem.” Are we actually suggesting that folks with severe, sometimes lifelong mental illness just don’t take medications that were previously helpful because (eek!) they may gain ten pounds?
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The criticisms of my students would serve as a good warning to visitors of Seeworthy: she talks too fast, she's too hard on us, she assigns too much work, and you have to be a dyke to get a good grade.
In other words, I'm a big, fat, queer, feminist meanie, and I am totally out to get you. Graaagh!
This is laughable. There were studies that came out not too long ago that showed most anti-depressants to be largely ineffective, anyway, for treating depression.
Pretty soon, everyone will be on some kind of pill, thanks to Big Pharma.
Wow, if that is not a huge loaded weapon pointed at me in that article…
*sigh*
This is a topic that hits me so close to home I don’t know that I can even reply to it properly.
Wait, I thought I was depressed because I’m fat! Oh noes!
Perhaps the solution is to follow the anti-depressant cocktails with Alli so then we can be depressed that we’re soiling ourselves.
Kidding aside, I know a disturbing number of women in my college courses who are not taking medications for a variety of things because they cause weight gain.
The article said that patients on certain psych meds gained around 10 Kilos, which is more like 22lbs, with some gaining up to 30 Kilos, which is around 66 lbs. This is a pretty hard side-effect to deal with, and certain medications (Zyprexa for example) not only cause people to gain large amounts of weight very quickly, they also cause blood sugar problems that have led to diabetes and death. (ex - A 39 year old man died in 2002, after 2 years on Zyprexa. He’d gained 100 lbs during that time, and died of profound hyperglycemia after falling into a coma.)
The pharma industry has hidden these facts from consumers, and has pushed hard for off-label marketing of these drugs (the atypical antipsychotics) for everything from bipolar, to unipolar depression, to use a “chemical restraints” for alzheimer’s patients, and now they are lobbying for permission to push this class of drugs on kids.
I am a fat woman, and a psych patient, and I do believe in HAES and that the “obesity epidemic” is a load of b.s. But it’s hard to argue that a medication that causes a person who previously had a stable weight and was probably at their natural set-point to gain a lot of weight very quickly is healthy. When I was a teen, I was put on Lithium for a year, and I gained 70 pounds, which caused stress on my joints and back pain, which made it hard for me to continue participating in the sports activities that I loved. As soon as I stopped taking that medication, my weight went right back to where it was before. The worst thing about this was that the Lithium didnt even help with my mental illness.
The psych drugs that cause the most dangerous kind of weight-gain are the mood stabilizers and atypical antipsychotics. These drugs used to be reserved for patients who hadn’t responded to drugs that were safer and had less side effects - and for whom the benefit of taking the drug would make the risk worthwhile. Now that the SSRI’s are all losing their patents, the pharma companies want to prescribe these dangerous, untested, and largely ineffective drugs as first-line treatments for patients with far less severe symptoms.
Ten states are currently suing Eli Lilly over their cash-cow Zyprexa. This is about more than “gaining 10 pounds” (Which is surely a fair trade-off to be cured of depression or bipolar disorder). This is a very real problem, and not because being fat is evil or inherently unhealthy. But when a drug takes patients dangerously high-above their natural set-point weight and causes all kinds of other metabolic complications - well, someone needs to notice and maybe connect the dots.
What pennylane said.
Don’t you remember that horrible article where that psychopharmacologist said he had “ruined” that 17-year old girl’s beauty by giving her the necessary meds to lift her — I can’t remember what it was. Massive depression? Schizophrenia? Something.
I’ve also had pharma reps tell me that some doctors won’t tell their patients that a side effect of some of the antidepressants they’re about to prescribe is weight gain, because they KNOW that they won’t take them. (Mostly women patients. What a surprise.)
I’ve always thought that. If I’m depressed, not necessarily because I’m overweight, but because of the way I’m treated because I’m perceived as overweight (that’s a size 10 now in NYC, folks — not to mention that it’s the thinnest I’ve ever been in my life which is why I’ve pretty much decided to tune out the “Lose Weight! Feel Great!” never-ending cacophany of America, since it seems Big Pharma, mass media, and a lot of men pretty much just want us to disappear) — why in the name of all that is holy am I going to take a prescription that might make the very phenomenon that I’m depressed about worse?
Just seems like common sense to me that the patients won’t take it, instead of this “noncompliance” that the docs seem so indignant about.
If they’re so freaked out about it, why don’t they just work on an antidepressant formulation that WON’T make their patients gain weight? Weren’t these guys just bragging about the fact that Western medicine has the best chemists in the world?
Whatever. Again, just seems like common sense to me. If you can’t figure it out, don’t expect me to come see you every month for a refill, doc.
*shrugs*
Whoa. Sorry.
Obviously touched a nerve there.
I agree with bottle.
I admit that I am biased - I have tried several antidepressants and none of them has had any positive effect on me, plus, when I got off the last one I went through a really nasty withdrawal period.
I know these drugs help some people, however, cognitive therapy is just as effective as drug therapy when it comes to treating depression, and in contrast to antidepressants it has a far better maintanance effect after you stop treatment (basically, antidepressants don’t have any maintanance effect). Yet, many doctors treat depression only by prescribing medication.
I know that some people who don’t get better with therapy do get better on medication (and the other way round), and if you are in a major depression getting out of it can be worth all the possible side effects of medication. However, it is scary how many people take antidepressants these days considering that they can have quite serious side effects - and weight gain is by far not the worst of them.
Hi there,
I used to take zyprexa for about half a year or so; it caused me to gain 25 pounds. For some reason, a side effect is that it messes with the chemical that tells you you’re full and makes you feel like you’re starving to death; all day everyday. It’s a horrible feeling.
My doctor never told me that was a side-effect ( my Mom’s a nurse and looked it up), probably out of fear that I might not take it (I was 19 at the time; I’m 21 now) but he did chastise me for gaining weight in his office one day. “Oh, you were much smaller in the ward. What happened?” I wanted to say “You know what happened, you fuck!” but instead I think it came out a bit more civilly than that. I lost the 25 pounds after about 8 months; thus returning to my normal weight of 135 at 5″7. People ask me if I would’ve still taken my ANTIPSYCHOTICS had I known and the answer is always hell yeah! I’d rather be fat and free than crazy and in the psyche ward anyday.
I’ve been taking Zyprexa for almost 3 years now and it has caused me to gain about 70 pounds, so I now weigh 320 pounds. But it is the only antipsycotic that works for me, and I’d much rather be fat and reasonably sane than a more acceptable weight and having paranoid delusions and hallucinations. For me, the trade off is a no brainer. I also have my blood sugar checked every 6 months or so, and right now I am on metformin because I have creeped into the prediabetic range.
SSRIs quite literally saved my life (many times–every time I went off or tried to change medications led to another horrific descent.)
The medications also made me gain quite a bit of weight (about 40 lbs. in the first year, with little else in my life changing, and having never been “overweight” previously). I am now about 60 lbs. over where I started.
Weight gain isn’t the only side effect that I have grudgingly accepted. Nothing that the medications have done to me can compare to what depression and anxiety did. But others’ mileage may vary.
From my own experience, and from working at a clinic in which many clients took psychotropics, I have little doubt that many people have gained weight from medications–especially when you look at the #s of these medications prescribed.
What we do with that supposition, though, is the tricky part….
[…] at the blog SeeWorthy has a great discussion on this, as well as Cthulhu’s […]
Wow, many thanks to all who’ve commented! Some great stuff here. I just wanted to add a quick note that my post isn’t in any way vilifying individuals who decide, for whatever reason, that certain meds aren’t for them - I know pretty well that Big Pharma doesn’t always have the answer.
My issue, and I think one that many of you have touched on pretty eloquently, is that medical professionals are looking at these meds as contributing to the ZOMG obesity epidemic, and essentially seem to suggest that, even if a med is helpful to a particular person, they shouldn’t take it because they’ll gain 20 or 30 or 50 pounds… and to me, the notion that gaining weight is the worst thing that could happen to a person reeks of fatphobia and sizeism.
Great stuff, folks!
Yeah I know, it’s just another part of the rediculous fat hysteria. I remember I went to Jenny Craig, and this person at the desk said I’d need to stop taking my Zoloft to start the program. I started crying, and explaining she was dooming me to return to my depression. She completely denied what she had said, when another person working there came out. Then I found out she had me on a diet that was too little calories for me, I should’ve been on a 1500 calorie diet I think, and I was on a 1200 calorie diet. I thought, why would I want to loose weight, if it’s going to turn me into a mean insensitive person like the woman working at Jenny Craig.
The whole backlash against SSRIs going on right now is rediculous. SSRIs don’t cause problems, people who are not professional psychatrists who are prescribing them are the problem.
To Rachel, bottle and queendom:
I’ve been on antidepressants for several years, and without them I probably would have either starved or killed myself long ago. They cured my obsessive-compulsive disorder, my suicidal depression, and my *eating disorder*, which is one type of illness I think that supporters of this blog should be especially concerned about. I experienced a few mild side effects, but they went away with time, and, more importantly, they were nothing compared to the benefits.
People who claim that therapy alone works just as well might be interested to know that I’ve been seeing a therapist even longer than I’ve been on medication, and continue to see her today. Therapy has been very helpful, but there are some things that it just can’t do by itself. It can’t change the chemical imbalance in the brain that is involved in so many mental disorders. Therapy didn’t do much for my obsessive-compulsive thinking, but when the medication started working, it went away like magic. Medications are meant to be a supplement to therapy, not a substitute.
I’m not claiming that these drugs are perfect; EVERY drug has risks, even lifesaving ones. I’m not claiming that they work for everyone, or that they aren’t over-prescribed, or that pharmaceutical companies are perfect, or that they never cause severe side effects in a small number of people (although the vast majority of these can be stopped by switching to a different medication, or, if all else fails, discontinuing use.)
But whenever I hear people talk about “Big Pharma” or how psychiatric drugs don’t work or are inherently dangerous or how pharmaceutical companies invent diseases just so they can make money off them,
I wish there were a pill that could give them a chance to live the nightmare existence that I did for just a few days and *then* see what they think. I’m willing to bet that most of them would be begging for relief. (I have a vivid fantasy about doing this to Tom Cruise.)
So before you make sweeping generalizations about psychiatric drugs, please remember the thousands of people who owe their lives to them. No one is claiming that they’re perfect, but when you look at the big picture, they have done far more good than harm.
Screw the drugs!! Arrrg… (Except in certain cases of course. I suppose. It’s all a big money-making load of whahooey in my opinion…) Plenty of studies have proven that deficiencies in key minerals and trace elements cause depression, behavioral problems, suicide, violence in childrend and teenagers… We are farmers and we’re converting our farm to the organic system because it’s been proven six ways from Sunday that all of these chemical fertilizers and pesticides cause the plants to be incapable of receiving their full compliment of vitimins, minerals and trace elements. And of course the animals and humans that eat the plants end up defficient as well and so you have a dreadful domino effect that takes a very nasty toll on mental and physical health! This takes place because either the chemicals totally wipe out the microbial life in the soil that is VITAL for proper growth of plants and nutrition of the animals/humans eating said plants. The other reason these defficiencies occur is because the artifical crap gets into the plants and takes up the space that would normally be taken up by the vitamins/minerals/trace elements. We end up with pretty green and red and purple plants that are dreadfully defficient in the very things that we need for optimal health and then we wonder why we are so full of illnesses, degenerative diseases and mental health issues. The modern medical answer? A) Blame all things on “being fat” and B) stuff patient with expensive drugs created by artificial synthesis… Great. Thanks guys!!
I’m telling you… hit up “AcresUSA” and read their fantastic magazines and get some good books like, “Minerals for the Genetic Code” … Check out fantastic herbalists like Susun Weed and get her book, “Healing Wise.” your eyes will bug out of your heads when you discover how simple vitamins/minerals/trace elements provide everything we need and how being defficient in any of the necessary ones can cause nothing but health issues that plauge all people fat or skinny… Good health can be obtained right in our own gardens, backyards, and organic food boxes (for those of us living in towns and cities…) I’ve recently discovered that coffee consumption binds up my body’s ability to absorb Iodine and a defficiency in Iodine causes low thyroid activity which is what I have and which causes me to be a lethargic slug every day of my miserable life. WHAT DOCTOR EVER TOLD ME THIS!?!? I’ve also found out that processed foods and things like white sugar, white bread, white pasta etc are absolutely USELESS and so nutirtionally defficient that eating these things are basically toxic and damaging to your bodies. WHAT DOCTOR EVER TOLD ME THIS?? None. So now we eat organic whole grains and brown rices and raw honey and we are trying to find raw milk. Think you can’t afford good food? Simplify your menu and buy in bulk, try to grow your own as much as you can, (whatever happened to community gardens??) get involved in box schemes if possible ~ there are so many ways to afford healthy food that is full of actual nutrition so don’t let price put you off. We don’t need all the fancy variety in foods ~ that’s what ends up costing so much! Brown rice, lentils, brown bread, fresh organic fruit and veg ~ these things are not so expensive that poor folk can’t buy them. Check out “Nourishing Traditions” ~ a fantastic book that will teach you everything you need to know about good nutrition!! The drug companies don’t want us to know this stuff. We are supposed to be ignorant unhealthy pill-pushers so they can continue to make billions!!
Note: If you buy suppliments make sure they are created from *natrual* sources and are not filled with chemicals that hold them into pill form. In everything go natural…otherwise you’re wasting your money and time! Those artificial things can’t be digested and absorbed properly but that’s not surprising because it’s crap and if you put crap fuel in your car you get crap performance so how is the body any different!? We have beautiful wonderful nature right? Nature provides EVERYTHING we need to live long healthy lives. So why the heck have we attacked nature with chemicals and why have we created synthetic food, drugs, etc?? It blows my mind away… Gaaaah… I’m so glad my wonderful husband has taken the leap and we are converting to organic farming. We are now going to farm *with* nature rather then against nature!!!
Have a wonderful lovely day!
Michelle ~ “Fat Shepherdess”
When my original psychiatrist put me on Zyprexa I weighed 140 lbs. Within a year I went up to 217 lbs. and also developed Type 2 diabetes. My regular doctor said I should consider switching to another drug, because Zyprexa was known to affect your blood sugar adversely. I told my psychiatrist, and she just blew it off. Last year I changed doctors, and my new doctor took me off Zyprexa and put me on Lamictal. So far I have lost 37 lbs. just from switching medications. I experienced no bad effects from the drug change. I also take Effexor, Trazadone, & Xanax. Just wanted to share my experience. Also I would like to say that I don’t believe that most anti-depressants are ineffective. I have been on Zoloft, Prozac, Paxil, Lithium, Wellbutrin, and many others before I got on Effexor.
Sometimes you just have to try different ones until you find the right one that works for you. If I miss a couple of days of my Effexor, all I can do is lie in the bed and cry all day. Effexor has been a blessing for me.