Why am I gaining weight...antibiotic to blame?
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vespiquenn wrote: »WendyLeigh1119 wrote: »Medication absolutely can and does cause weight gain if it says that it "causes weight gain". When it is labeled as "increases appetite" it means it increases appetite. Saying that medication can only cause temporary/water weight is a bizarre claim that would render all Medical and Pharmaceutical evidence and conclusions false. Since I doubt they are all wrong, I'm confused as to how anyone can think that medication cannot and does not cause actual weight gain. While I feel like this claim needs no explanation....just minor examples would be medications that affect your body's hormone levels or insulin sensitivity.
When taking a medication that changes how your body metabolizes food and beverage....that means that your normal eating/drinking could suddenly become "too much" or "too little" and cause you to gain/lose weight. If medication could not cause these things, then medications for obesity/weight loss wouldn't exist. Medications for diabetics wouldn't be effective at helping them lose weight, either. If eating 2200 calories per day used to be maintenance for your body and you take a medication that affects your metabolic process....then 2200 may now be too high or too low. It literally means they "cause weight gain" or "cause weight loss".
An example that isn't a common diabetes or weight loss drug that both would be Adderall (stimulant for ADHD treatment). It both decreases appetite and increases cortisol levels. This means it could make you quite literally "lose" weight (because you're eating less calories overall due to decreased appetite)...but have increased belly fat whether you lose weight or not. That means the drug directly affected the fat on your belly regardless of your appetite or caloric intake.
I find it bizarre that no one has addressed that comment for the pile of "incredibly wrong" that it is.
Medication does not cause direct weight gain. What it can cause is an alteration to the metabolism or appetite, aka the calories in (for increased appetite), or calories out (decrease in metabolism) of the CICO equation. So one cannot solely blame the medication when there are other factors at play. One does not take a pill and gain fat. Even typing that sounds absurd.
As far as Adderall increasing belly fat.. unless it's eating muscle (which it isn't), magically gaining belly fat is not possible without a surplus. I would be interested in your sources to that.
So, your definition of "causes weight gain" does not include "lowers your metabolism, causing you to gain weight consuming the same calories you used to maintain your weight on"? You figure that a person should just magically know that their metabolism has changed (and in which direction and by how much) and change their eating habits accordingly?
You'll find that the majority of people (including scientists and doctors) *do* consider a medication that alters metabolism to "cause weight change". And it's helpful for them to know that in advance. Precisely *because* CICO is still in play.
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SusanMFindlay wrote: »vespiquenn wrote: »WendyLeigh1119 wrote: »Medication absolutely can and does cause weight gain if it says that it "causes weight gain". When it is labeled as "increases appetite" it means it increases appetite. Saying that medication can only cause temporary/water weight is a bizarre claim that would render all Medical and Pharmaceutical evidence and conclusions false. Since I doubt they are all wrong, I'm confused as to how anyone can think that medication cannot and does not cause actual weight gain. While I feel like this claim needs no explanation....just minor examples would be medications that affect your body's hormone levels or insulin sensitivity.
When taking a medication that changes how your body metabolizes food and beverage....that means that your normal eating/drinking could suddenly become "too much" or "too little" and cause you to gain/lose weight. If medication could not cause these things, then medications for obesity/weight loss wouldn't exist. Medications for diabetics wouldn't be effective at helping them lose weight, either. If eating 2200 calories per day used to be maintenance for your body and you take a medication that affects your metabolic process....then 2200 may now be too high or too low. It literally means they "cause weight gain" or "cause weight loss".
An example that isn't a common diabetes or weight loss drug that both would be Adderall (stimulant for ADHD treatment). It both decreases appetite and increases cortisol levels. This means it could make you quite literally "lose" weight (because you're eating less calories overall due to decreased appetite)...but have increased belly fat whether you lose weight or not. That means the drug directly affected the fat on your belly regardless of your appetite or caloric intake.
I find it bizarre that no one has addressed that comment for the pile of "incredibly wrong" that it is.
Medication does not cause direct weight gain. What it can cause is an alteration to the metabolism or appetite, aka the calories in (for increased appetite), or calories out (decrease in metabolism) of the CICO equation. So one cannot solely blame the medication when there are other factors at play. One does not take a pill and gain fat. Even typing that sounds absurd.
As far as Adderall increasing belly fat.. unless it's eating muscle (which it isn't), magically gaining belly fat is not possible without a surplus. I would be interested in your sources to that.
So, your definition of "causes weight gain" does not include "lowers your metabolism, causing you to gain weight consuming the same calories you used to maintain your weight on"? You figure that a person should just magically know that their metabolism has changed (and in which direction and by how much) and change their eating habits accordingly?
You'll find that the majority of people (including scientists and doctors) *do* consider a medication that alters metabolism to "cause weight change". And it's helpful for them to know that in advance. Precisely *because* CICO is still in play.
Thank you. I can't believe what I was reading.
@vespiquenn
There's a good reason diabetic people don't lose weight....and then do once on medication for diabetes. Because weight loss is all about knowing your maintenance and then adjusting up or down. A diabetic person takes a pill and then *not magically* but literally can lose weight using the same deficit they previously failed trying to use.
Again....just an example. But I feel like it's common knowledge that if a drug affects your hormones, IR, or any metabolic process...it is by all definitions causing you to gain weight at the same caloric intake as it was NOT causing prior to medication. And there are hundreds that have that side effect. It's medical and scientific fact.
And no. Adderral cannot increase belly fat. Cortisol, however CAN. Specically, visceral fat. Which is what I actually said. So medication can not only make you "gain weight"...it can make you gain fat. Just like it can make you lose weight.
I don't understand what about this is confusing. The proof is in thousands of clinical trials, medical research, and accepted science. Feel free to search and educate yourself. You have thousands of medications and clinical research studies to pour over.4 -
SusanMFindlay wrote: »cmriverside wrote: »@abbison28 Again, five pounds is a normal fluctuation for women of childbearing age that can happen at any time, but it is completely normal for you to weigh more than you did last year or two years ago (five pounds is not "weighing more.") You are 18, right? You're still growing. No need to obsess over five pounds.
I was told by a doctor before that girls stop growing around 16. I haven't grown in height for the last 3 years.
This is wrong. Most girls may stop getting taller around 16, but it is very common for hips to get broader and breasts to enlarge beyond that age. Both of those are still "growing" in the sense that they would both cause you to gain weight, and neither should be a cause for concern.
Yup. My bust and hips kept growing till I was about 20. I went from a pretty boyish figure to a classic hourglass within a few years, well after most of my friends had stopped growing.
You can also keep building bone mass up to about 30. This is *definitely* something you don't want to screw around with; building bone density in your teens and twenties and retaining it as you age is SO important for women to avoid problems with osteoporosis later on. If your weight is increasing because your bones are getting denser, that is GOOD news.
In my case, my weight did fluctuate a bit in my late-teens/early-twenties (yay, freshman fifteen!), but by age 21 things had stabilised and I had the same waist measurement as I'd had at 16 - only I was 15lb heavier.
OP: I'm betting in your case that the changes are natural, healthy changes for a woman your age, given that you say you look as slim as you did when you were 10lb lighter. The number on the scale isn't the only indicator of health
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WendyLeigh1119 wrote: »SusanMFindlay wrote: »vespiquenn wrote: »WendyLeigh1119 wrote: »Medication absolutely can and does cause weight gain if it says that it "causes weight gain". When it is labeled as "increases appetite" it means it increases appetite. Saying that medication can only cause temporary/water weight is a bizarre claim that would render all Medical and Pharmaceutical evidence and conclusions false. Since I doubt they are all wrong, I'm confused as to how anyone can think that medication cannot and does not cause actual weight gain. While I feel like this claim needs no explanation....just minor examples would be medications that affect your body's hormone levels or insulin sensitivity.
When taking a medication that changes how your body metabolizes food and beverage....that means that your normal eating/drinking could suddenly become "too much" or "too little" and cause you to gain/lose weight. If medication could not cause these things, then medications for obesity/weight loss wouldn't exist. Medications for diabetics wouldn't be effective at helping them lose weight, either. If eating 2200 calories per day used to be maintenance for your body and you take a medication that affects your metabolic process....then 2200 may now be too high or too low. It literally means they "cause weight gain" or "cause weight loss".
An example that isn't a common diabetes or weight loss drug that both would be Adderall (stimulant for ADHD treatment). It both decreases appetite and increases cortisol levels. This means it could make you quite literally "lose" weight (because you're eating less calories overall due to decreased appetite)...but have increased belly fat whether you lose weight or not. That means the drug directly affected the fat on your belly regardless of your appetite or caloric intake.
I find it bizarre that no one has addressed that comment for the pile of "incredibly wrong" that it is.
Medication does not cause direct weight gain. What it can cause is an alteration to the metabolism or appetite, aka the calories in (for increased appetite), or calories out (decrease in metabolism) of the CICO equation. So one cannot solely blame the medication when there are other factors at play. One does not take a pill and gain fat. Even typing that sounds absurd.
As far as Adderall increasing belly fat.. unless it's eating muscle (which it isn't), magically gaining belly fat is not possible without a surplus. I would be interested in your sources to that.
So, your definition of "causes weight gain" does not include "lowers your metabolism, causing you to gain weight consuming the same calories you used to maintain your weight on"? You figure that a person should just magically know that their metabolism has changed (and in which direction and by how much) and change their eating habits accordingly?
You'll find that the majority of people (including scientists and doctors) *do* consider a medication that alters metabolism to "cause weight change". And it's helpful for them to know that in advance. Precisely *because* CICO is still in play.
Thank you. I can't believe what I was reading.
@vespiquenn
There's a good reason diabetic people don't lose weight....and then do once on medication for diabetes. Because weight loss is all about knowing your maintenance and then adjusting up or down. A diabetic person takes a pill and then *not magically* but literally can lose weight using the same deficit they previously failed trying to use.
Again....just an example. But I feel like it's common knowledge that if a drug affects your hormones, IR, or any metabolic process...it is by all definitions causing you to gain weight at the same caloric intake as it was NOT causing prior to medication. And there are hundreds that have that side effect. It's medical and scientific fact.
And no. Adderral cannot increase belly fat. Cortisol, however CAN. Specically, visceral fat. Which is what I actually said. So medication can not only make you "gain weight"...it can make you gain fat. Just like it can make you lose weight.
I don't understand what about this is confusing. The proof is in thousands of clinical trials, medical research, and accepted science. Feel free to search and educate yourself. You have thousands of medications and clinical research studies to pour over.
When you make a claim, you bear the burden of proof. I will not deny that cortisol can mess with hormones and alter the CO factor, but it's a cop out to essentially tell me to google it myself when asked. But cortisol still doesn't make you gain fat directly because it's not a caloric surplus. It's just a piece in the CICO cycle.
And yes, I do expect people to understand that medication can alter their metabolism. Does it happen? Of course not. But that's why we have forums like this for people to understand and learn. By simply understanding that a medication can alter the process in which calories can be expended, aka calories out, they save a lot of headaches and over repetitive "I can't lose weight because I'm on xyz" posts. If folks learned to accept that there are other factors at play such as a lowered maintence level, they would save themselves a lot of time by solely blaming the medication alone, despite it being the root cause in change of CO.
So nope, not confusing. Realistically, I think we agree what medication can do, but simply disagree on claiming the exact wording of the medication being solely responsible.2 -
vespiquenn wrote: »Realistically, I think we agree what medication can do, but simply disagree on claiming the exact wording of the medication being solely responsible.
I think so too. I just think that a more productive response to "medication xyz made me gain weight" is "here's how it did it and here's how to counteract that" rather than "no it didn't!". I would certainly never respond to a post saying "I can't lose weight because of medication xyz" with "you're right; you can't"; I'd start with "it's harder to lose weight when taking medication xyz because __________ but you can still do it by ____________".
I teach for a living and have learned a fair amount about the psychology of learning (through study as well as my own experiences). Basically, humans will not "unlearn" something just because they're told it's wrong; you cannot wipe previous learning from the brain even if it was wrong. You have to start with what a person "knows" and create a path from that to the correct information. If you simply start by negating their starting point, they have nowhere to start and won't learn (assuming they don't just shut you out entirely).
For the record, I don't think the medication is necessarily *solely* responsible, but I do think that it's at least partially responsible. I also think that if A causes B and B causes C that it's reasonable to say that A causes C.2 -
Oh my goodness...you wanted proof that cortisol increases belly fat? I thought you wanted proof that medication causes weight gain. Which would require thousands of links (which is why I told you a simple Google of medical basics wouild suffice). I thought the abdominal fat thing was pretty common knowledge.
OK, no prob. Here you go:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/163534260 -
WendyLeigh1119 wrote: »Oh my goodness...you wanted proof that cortisol increases belly fat? I thought you wanted proof that medication causes weight gain. Which would require thousands of links (which is why I told you a simple Google of medical basics wouild suffice). I thought the abdominal fat thing was pretty common knowledge.
OK, no prob. Here you go:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16353426
According to the abstract cortisol affects the distribution of fat, not the creation of fat or gaining weight.
And the full text agreesSeveral epidemiological studies’have shown that abdominal fat distribution, as opposed to gluteo-femoral fat distribution, is an importlnt risk factor for mortality and for a number of prevalent conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease (for review see 4). The regulation of adipose tissue distribution is a complex process resulting, at least, from genetic, hormonal and environmental factors (543).1 -
SusanMFindlay wrote: »vespiquenn wrote: »Realistically, I think we agree what medication can do, but simply disagree on claiming the exact wording of the medication being solely responsible.
I think so too. I just think that a more productive response to "medication xyz made me gain weight" is "here's how it did it and here's how to counteract that" rather than "no it didn't!". I would certainly never respond to a post saying "I can't lose weight because of medication xyz" with "you're right; you can't"; I'd start with "it's harder to lose weight when taking medication xyz because __________ but you can still do it by ____________".
I teach for a living and have learned a fair amount about the psychology of learning (through study as well as my own experiences). Basically, humans will not "unlearn" something just because they're told it's wrong; you cannot wipe previous learning from the brain even if it was wrong. You have to start with what a person "knows" and create a path from that to the correct information. If you simply start by negating their starting point, they have nowhere to start and won't learn (assuming they don't just shut you out entirely).
For the record, I don't think the medication is necessarily *solely* responsible, but I do think that it's at least partially responsible. I also think that if A causes B and B causes C that it's reasonable to say that A causes C.
I'm not even going to further this with any more of a response beyond this last post because at no point did I say a medication halts weight loss or gain, but it solely cannot be blamed with no explanation beyond "these meds make me gain weight." I explained how it affects the body, which I originally alluded to increased appetite because OP does not accurately know her intake, which is typically the most common side-affect of medications when weight gain is involved. So at this point, I'm not sure what you are talking about.WendyLeigh1119 wrote: »Oh my goodness...you wanted proof that cortisol increases belly fat? I thought you wanted proof that medication causes weight gain. Which would require thousands of links (which is why I told you a simple Google of medical basics wouild suffice). I thought the abdominal fat thing was pretty common knowledge.
OK, no prob. Here you go:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16353426
Actually I was more interested in studies that Adderall increases cortisol. I'm legitimately curious of this. I understand how cortisol can affect the metabolism, but I have never heard of increased levels due to Adderall. I did do a quick google search and had a few sources confirm it, but just curious if you knew of any studies done. Google didn't bring up any peer reviewed studies. Not arguing the fact, just genuinely interested to read up on it, especially when I may be going on it next month.0 -
vespiquenn wrote: »When you make a claim, you bear the burden of proof. I will not deny that cortisol can mess with hormones and alter the CO factor, but it's a cop out to essentially tell me to google it myself when asked. But cortisol still doesn't make you gain fat directly because it's not a caloric surplus. It's just a piece in the CICO cycle.
I'm a little late getting around to replying to this, for which I apologize. And it's late so I'm just going to throw a series of citations for peer-reviewed literature which supports the claim that cortisol and cortisol dysregulation have a significant effect on metabolism of lipids and carbohydrates as well as promoting fat storage. Please understand none of these is a definitive "proof" but they build a fairly solid case when taken together, and within the context of the greater literature on cortisol and metabolism (which has a LOT more evidence.. I could build a solid review paper on this topic, or a major research proposal).
Scaroni, Carla, et al. "Glucose Metabolism Abnormalities in Cushing Syndrome: From Molecular Basis to Clinical Management." Endocrine Reviews 38.3 (2017): 189-219.
Ferrau, Francesco, and Marta Korbonits. "Metabolic comorbidities in Cushing's syndrome." European Journal of Endocrinology 173.4 (2015): M133-M157.
Strain, Gladys W., et al. "Cortisol production in obesity." Metabolism 29.10 (1980): 980-985.
Rebuffe-Scrive, M., et al. "Effect of chronic stress and exogenous glucocorticoids on regional fat distribution and metabolism." Physiology & Behavior 52.3 (1992): 583-590.
Rask, Eva, et al. "Tissue-specific dysregulation of cortisol metabolism in human obesity." The Journal of clinical endocrinology & metabolism 86.3 (2001): 1418-1421.
Di Dalmazi, Guido, et al. "Cortisol-related metabolic alterations assessed by mass spectrometry assay in patients with Cushing's syndrome." European Journal of Endocrinology (2017): EJE-17.
Geer, Eliza B., Julie Islam, and Christoph Buettner. "Mechanisms of glucocorticoid-induced insulin resistance: focus on adipose tissue function and lipid metabolism." Endocrinology and metabolism clinics of North America 43.1 (2014): 75-102.
In short, it is accurate to say that cortisol causes weight gain. To be more technically precise, excess cortisol caused either by dysregulation or by chemotherapy widely disrupts proper metabolism of carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins, alters the function of several tissues, and is obesogenic on its own. The mechanisms of this are being teased out by many studies focusing on different areas, as the effects appear to be widespread.
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