Gaining weight on Doxycycline/Prescribed drugs?

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Replies

  • elphie754
    elphie754 Posts: 7,574 Member
    I was prescribed doxy for a bad viral infection. So many side affects! I'm pretty tanned, but burned within a day. Massive headaches especially the first 6 days! Nausea in the mornings. Yesterday was my last day. I took it for 10 days, twice a day. I've been done one day. I'm so bloated. It's all in my stomach. Anyone know how long it takes to go away? I'm not constipated, just bloated in lower abdomen area.

    Antibiotics will not help VIRAL infections and if your doctor prescribed it for a virus I would find a new doctor ASAP.
  • kellyfilbeckyoung
    kellyfilbeckyoung Posts: 1 Member
    I started researching today to see if there was a link between taking Doryx for the past month and gaining almost 5 lbs. I workout everyday doing high cardio mostly Insanity workouts mixed in with Bikram. I have never had a problem maintaining my weight. My daughter grabbed my stomach the other day a stomach that was never there to grab a month ago and I just thought well I'm 30 now maybe it is going to be more difficult then it has been in the past. So happy to see this forum because as others have mentioned it is not listed as a side effect. Obviously after reading all these responses it needs to be. I will not be taking another Doryx pill after this confirmation and fingers crossed the stomach goes back to normal. Thanks to all that have posted about their experience!
  • tasnuvashamarukhproma
    tasnuvashamarukhproma Posts: 1 Member
    oh I am feeling so insecured after reading all the comments as I have just started taking doxacyclin for my acne as it is troubling me a lot for the last 3 months.
  • singingflutelady
    singingflutelady Posts: 8,736 Member
    I gained on Prednisone but that is to be expected. I lost all of the weight once I got below 50 mg a day. I have also gained on Remicade but I was underweight and not absorbing food until the Remicade started working. I hate that weight gain but at least it means I am healthier.
  • mcnulty_aine
    mcnulty_aine Posts: 1 Member
    I have had a similar experience, I have been on Doxycycline for about 9 months and though I am an athlete I have gained about 15lbs. Even during season when I heavily exercised daily and had to watch my diet, i was adding on the pounds. Definitely more rapidly once my season ended, 8 of those pounds in the last 3 months! One doctor said that as an antibiotic it could be the cause of the weight gain but i just cant seem to kick it! Has anyone had experience with stopping the medication and losing the weight?
  • wayneyeager
    wayneyeager Posts: 4 Member
    Prescribed doxycycline for prostatitis. No changes in diet or exercise. Gained 7 lbs in 1 week. Water? Fat? Not sure but that's a shocking gain! Something is going on. They do feed antibiotics to livestock to fatten them up, after all.
  • yesimpson
    yesimpson Posts: 1,372 Member
    I took doxycycline for two months and lost weight as it made me feel a wee bit nauseous all the time.
  • Mouse_Potato
    Mouse_Potato Posts: 1,513 Member
    edited August 2016
    There's an awful lot of first time posters in this thread, all saying the same thing...

    ETA: Crud. Zombie thread got me.
  • dodge_girl_2
    dodge_girl_2 Posts: 2 Member
    I just had a lightbulb moment myself. I have gained fat. I have lowered my caloric intake but feel bloated all the time. Has anyone stopped taking this and dropped the weight?
  • FreyasRebirth
    FreyasRebirth Posts: 514 Member
    I was on it for ~5 months. I was pregnant for most of it so I was gaining weight but I didn't gain in excess and it didn't prevent me from losing it postpartum.
  • theclementinedarling
    theclementinedarling Posts: 1 Member
    I've been on doxy hyclate 100mg for over 5 years. I take it for adult acne issues. I'm overweight and know it is because of food intake/not enough exercise. For the last 60 days I have eaten Whole30 (it's a no dairy, no sugar, no gluten, no corn, no legume, no soy, no processed food lifestyle) and worked out. I haven't lost any weight. I've gotten some info. from others that it may be hormonal based. Is Doxy making it hard for me to lose weight? Any thoughts?
  • jennybearlv
    jennybearlv Posts: 1,519 Member
    theclementinedarling wrote: »
    I've been on doxy hyclate 100mg for over 5 years. I take it for adult acne issues. I'm overweight and know it is because of food intake/not enough exercise. For the last 60 days I have eaten Whole30 (it's a no dairy, no sugar, no gluten, no corn, no legume, no soy, no processed food lifestyle) and worked out. I haven't lost any weight. I've gotten some info. from others that it may be hormonal based. Is Doxy making it hard for me to lose weight? Any thoughts?

    This is an old thread. You might want to start your own. I've not taken the medication you mentioned, but am on three meds that are known to cause weight gain. I find if I'm not counting calories and eat according to my appetite I gain rapidly. If I count calories I lose. It's easy to blame medication for weight gain, but when it comes down to it we gain from eating too much and not moving enough. You mention what you are eating, but weight loss comes down to how many calories you are eating.
  • stanmann571
    stanmann571 Posts: 5,727 Member
    edited July 2017
    elphie754 wrote: »
    I was prescribed doxy for a bad viral infection. So many side affects! I'm pretty tanned, but burned within a day. Massive headaches especially the first 6 days! Nausea in the mornings. Yesterday was my last day. I took it for 10 days, twice a day. I've been done one day. I'm so bloated. It's all in my stomach. Anyone know how long it takes to go away? I'm not constipated, just bloated in lower abdomen area.

    Antibiotics will not help VIRAL infections and if your doctor prescribed it for a virus I would find a new doctor ASAP.

    Doxy isn't just an antibiotic. So there's that.

    Generally yes antibiotics shouldn't be prescribed for viral infections... but Doxy kills all sorts of stuff in amazing ways, thus isn't strictly speaking "just an antibiotic"
  • cockrell703
    cockrell703 Posts: 1 Member
    I experienced weight gain and distended belly around the time I was on doxy. Didn't put the evidence together until I stopped it, stomach flattened out, started it again and got bloated again. A quick Google search revealed this telling research article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4068504/
    I personally have gained 5 lbs on it. When I stop taking it, the bloating and distended belly went completely away in 2 weeks, after that it seemed to take some work with calorie cutting and increasing work outs and I've so far only lost a couple of those pounds I gained. I probably will stop taking doxy long term and only take it for a few days when I get a really bad breakout.
    Bottom line: medicine research is just now starting to understand the significance of gut bacteria effects on digestive health and metabolism. This has not yet reached mainstream guidelines for pharmacist and doctor knowledge. It is known that doxy kills good bacteria along with the bad kind, and a loss of good bacteria can cause weight gain. The NIH study found that 25% of the participants gained weight while on doxycycline.
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  • amiewolf
    amiewolf Posts: 1 Member
    To those who say you don't gain weight from Doxycycline, this from Journal Watch:


    June 5, 2014

    Weight Gain from Antibiotic Treatment: Not Just in Animals!

    Thomas Glück, MD reviewing Angelakis E et al. Antimicrob Agents Chemother 2014 Jun .

    One quarter of patients receiving long-term doxycycline and hydroxychloroquine treatment for Q-fever endocarditis showed abnormal weight gain associated with significant alterations of the intestinal flora.

    Use of antibiotics such as chlortetracycline — even in subtherapeutic doses — promotes growth in livestock through increased food intake and weight gain. This effect is explained by alterations of the animals' gut microbiome and contributes to the abundant use of antibiotics in factory farming. Previous uncontrolled studies have suggested that weight gain secondary to antibiotic treatment also occurs in humans; now, researchers in France have investigated the issue more systematically.

    The researchers followed 48 patients who received long-term therapy with doxycycline (100 mg twice daily) and hydroxychloroquine (600 mg daily) for treatment of Q fever endocarditis between 2008 and 2011. Thirty-four individuals consulting in an outpatient unit who had not received antibiotics during the preceding 12 months served as controls.

    Eleven (23%) of the patients receiving antibiotics showed abnormal weight gain (4% to 18% increase in body-mass index [BMI]) — an effect not observed in any of the controls. In the antibiotic recipients, total fecal bacterial counts declined significantly and in proportion to duration of therapy; the effect was primarily attributable to doxycycline and not to hydroxychloroquine. Concentrations of firmicutes, bacteroidetes, and lactobacilli were all significantly lower in antibiotic recipients than in controls.

    COMMENT
    It appears that in humans, too, weight gain has to be acknowledged as a side effect of antibiotic therapy. Like researchers before them, the authors demonstrated an altered intestinal microbiome in patients receiving antibiotics; however, they did not correlate these findings with weight gain in individual patients. Further investigations are needed to clarify this point, to explain why an increase in BMI occurs in only some patients on long-term antibiotic treatment, and to determine whether the effect is reversible.
  • geneticsteacher
    geneticsteacher Posts: 623 Member
    Loss of appetite and weight loss are some of the documented side effects. https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/doxycycline-oral-route/side-effects/drg-20068229
  • aWildFlowere
    aWildFlowere Posts: 76 Member
    I gained 20lbs in 2wks and I workout hard 6dpw. I have weighed myself on 3 diff medical office and gym scales. How depressing!!! Medical journals and studies are now finding this is true but you will find conflicting info if you Google it and Dr.’s aren’t necessarily up to speed about it.

    I am so pissed as I am not normally prescribed this but had to avoid pneumonia after 13 days of the plague going around. It also caused increased hunger and desire for sugar as well. I was down to my lowest weight in 4 years and this has ruined all that progress. Much of it showed up as belly fat too. I never gained weight like this from other 10 day prescribed antibiotics. I don’t take them unless absolutely necessary.

    Apparently I have to take probiotics for 3 months to get my gut bacteria back to normal. I wonder what my sports nutritionist/dietician will say. She has a ton of degrees but not unlike the medical field they all have differing opinions.

    I am proof of weight gain! I may keep you posted how long it takes to get rid of it and what measures I take. Feel free to friend me as well. I work fiercely in the gym and have a trainer. Bikini season is creeping fast and I was trying to lose 4-8lbs a week. I should take pix in my updates—yuck but will be visual proof and a reminder to refuse Doxy if ever prescribed again.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,292 Member
    aWildFlowere wrote: »
    I I work fiercely in the gym and have a trainer. Bikini season is creeping fast and I was trying to lose 4-8lbs a week.

    That may be an appropriate rate of weight loss for a person who currently weights 400 to 800lbs.

    Actually because of probable mobility restrictions it may not be an appropriate rate for them either.

    Try 0.6% of your body weight per week as a target. Your lean mass will thank you.
  • rilhorn55
    rilhorn55 Posts: 1 Member
    I just turned 18 and I’ve had problems with skin infections for like 4 years and my dermatologist put my on this medication and I used to weigh 130 and over 5 months I was at 160 because of it my infection was gone but I had gained all that weight but after I was off of it for about 2 months all the weight came off.Sad part is I have the same infection again so I am back on it and have been back on it for about 2 months and I have gained 10 pounds back already.Just know the weight comes off eventually.And I have always been very active and I counted calories while gaining weight and I burned way more and still gained and was only on that medication and I still gained weight so it has to be that.Please get back to me id like to hear more about other people on it.

  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 9,300 Member
    Who are you wanting to get back to you?

    Most of the posters taking the med who claimed this weight gain effect were one time ( or few times) posters who were only here years ago.
  • rebeccaisbell3586
    rebeccaisbell3586 Posts: 1 Member
    I’m so grateful I found this thread. I’ve lost 33lbs in the last year. 20 in the last 6 months, I know how to manage my calories. I started Doxy 1.5 weeks ago and immediately saw the scale go up a flew lbs. I am now 5lbs heavier while eating 1550 calories a day and working out. I’ve stopped doxy (just for acne) and I’m hoping I can drop the weight quickly.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,557 Member
    rebeccaisbell3586 wrote: »
    I’m so grateful I found this thread. I’ve lost 33lbs in the last year. 20 in the last 6 months, I know how to manage my calories. I started Doxy 1.5 weeks ago and immediately saw the scale go up a flew lbs. I am now 5lbs heavier while eating 1550 calories a day and working out. I’ve stopped doxy (just for acne) and I’m hoping I can drop the weight quickly.

    If nothing in your eating or activity has changed, and you don't feel fatigued at all, odds are very high that the 5 pounds are increased water retention, not fat. Doxycycline can also cause constipation, which increases scale weight, but it's also not fat.

    Quick multi-pound gains are almost always water and waste, not fat.

    If you need the drug, don't over-react to a scale increase that isn't fat gain.

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