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Anxiety and SSRI weight gain » Unh

Posted by Racer on October 27, 2005, at 12:27:08

In reply to Re: Lexapro, Anxiety and Weigh Gain » Glydin, posted by Unh on October 27, 2005, at 8:52:49

Beta blockers will not help the cognitive portion of your anxiety. I have a friend who told me about taking propranalol for anxiety once before flying, and how weird it was for him to have all the thoughts about it going on - but no physical symptoms. If you want to work on the cognitive part through CBT or something similar, a beta blocker might help with that, by keeping your body from overwhelming your thoughts, but it won't do anything to reduce the thoughts involved.

As for SSRIs and weight gain, no one really knows the mechanism, but there are a fair number of studies being done now to try to figure it out. Basically, though, 95% of the serotonin in your body is in your digestive tract, and there are two major 5HT receptors involved in feeding behavior. Since SSRIs increase the available 5HT in the synapse, I'd guess that the weight gain is related to down regulation of these receptors after a period of being over stimulated. That's not only just a guess, but it's just a wild @$$ guess by someone who didn't even major in a science. ;-P

Speaking as an anorexic who has gained about a ton and a half on these meds over the years, I will tell you that I started gaining weight on Paxil before anything changed in my ED symptoms. I was still restricting and over-exercising, even tried to cut back as much as I could on eating -- which was hard, since I wasn't eating much at all -- but still kept gaining weight. I was also constipated, which may have had something to do with it. {shrug} Yes, you have to watch for overeating on these drugs, but that's not enough to stop the weight gain. There are other medications that seem to help mitigate weight gain, though, so you should talk to your doctor about that.

I hope that helps.

OH! And I have no idea if Walgreens ships outside NA. Where are you located? Someone here will be local enough to steer you towards a source for nearly anything.

(And you don't have to hit the return key at the end of the little box. Just keep typing until you reach the end of your paragraph. It'll wrap around in the box, and be easier to read.)


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