You take something long term for your mood, or your sleep, or a seizure disorder, and the scale has moved a good deal since you started it. The prescriber who wrote that prescription has never raised your weight with you. The clinician you would ask about your weight has never seen that prescription. Two people are looking after you, and neither one is looking at both things.
You can find out whether one of your medicines is part of your weight change without altering a single thing you take.
Yes. Medicines used for several common conditions are named as contributing to weight gain, and the way they do it is by changing how hungry you are or by changing how many calories your body burns. Whether yours is one of them is the part you can actually check. Finding out is three things: the date you started the medicine set beside the point your weight started climbing, a check of whether you are already due regular weight and blood monitoring, and one question put to the prescriber who wrote it. None of the three involves stopping or altering anything you take. A reaction that has already been raised and has not settled has somewhere else to go.
Whether a medicine for another condition can move your weight
A medicine taken for another condition can move your weight, and the kinds of medicine named as contributing to weight gain include some of those used for epilepsy, depression or psychotic disorders; steroids; some diabetes medicines; some of the medicines used for high blood pressure; and some antihistamines used for allergy symptoms. Being on that list makes a medicine worth asking about. It does not make it the reason your own weight moved.
The mechanism is ordinary. A medicine can affect your energy balance by making you hungry or making your body burn fewer calories. One of those two is something you could feel; the other happens without any sensation attached, so the timing is often the only thing that shows.
The timing is what you can check yourself. Get the date you started the medicine from the pharmacy record or from the prescribing note, and set it beside the point your own weight started climbing. Dates that overlap are not proof, and a gap of years between them is an answer too. Either one is more use at an appointment than a rough sense of when it started.
The monitoring you may already be due
Regular monitoring of weight, glucose levels and lipid levels is something health care providers may ask people taking atypical antipsychotics to take part in. If that is the kind of medicine you take, your provider may have asked you to take part in that monitoring — and if anyone has, the last time it happened has a date on it that somebody can look up.
Lipid levels come from a blood test measuring cholesterol and triglycerides, drawn from a vein in your arm, and you may need to fast for 9 to 12 hours beforehand — which is what decides where in the day the appointment goes rather than whether you attend it.
If nobody has raised monitoring with you at all, that is the next question, and it is one sentence: ask whether your medicine is in the group that gets that monitoring, and when your weight, glucose and lipids were last recorded. An answer of never is as useful to you as a date.
What to ask the prescriber who wrote it
Ask the prescriber who wrote it whether weight gain is a known effect of this particular medicine, and ask at the appointment already booked rather than waiting for a new one. While you are there, ask what side effects to expect and whether to report them, and whether any lab test is due.
Take the whole list with you. Every provider you see gets a copy of your medicine list, and it matters here because the person treating your mood may not know about anything you already take for weight, and the person treating your weight may not know about this.
The one thing not to do on your own is stop. People should not stop taking a prescribed medication, even if they are feeling better, without the help of a health care provider, and the same instruction covers medicines generally: talk to your provider before stopping any medicine. Between now and that appointment, nothing about how you take it changes.
Calls that cannot wait for the next appointment
Some calls cannot wait for the next appointment. In some cases, people under 25 may have an increase in suicidal thoughts or behavior in the first few weeks after an antidepressant starts, and people of every age are watched closely over those same weeks. Thoughts of suicide or of harming yourself, at any age and at any point, mean calling or texting the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988. Call 911 in a life-threatening situation. Symptoms that get worse rather than better after a medicine starts are a reason to contact the prescriber rather than wait for the next appointment.
Write the two dates down, then send one message
- Get the date you started the medicine from the pharmacy, and write it next to the point your weight started moving.
- Write out everything you take, including anything for weight, and carry a copy to every appointment.
- Message the prescriber who wrote it that you want weight on the agenda at the next appointment, so it is not squeezed into the end of it.
- Ask there whether weight gain is a known effect of this particular medicine.
- Ask whether your medicine is in the group that gets regular weight, glucose and lipid monitoring, and when yours were last recorded.
- Ask what side effects to report and where to send them, so you have somewhere to go that is not the next appointment.
- Keep taking it exactly as prescribed until the person who prescribed it tells you otherwise.
Two dates lining up is a reason to ask the question, not the answer to it. Weight moves over a year for reasons that have nothing to do with any prescription, and yours gets looked at properly only once the prescriber has heard you ask.
