Building muscle after years on sedatives

January 19, 2020 2 Comments

How many of us are ever at our ideal weight. Today, I am at about 60kg = 132pounds = 9 stone and 2 pounds. From the graph you’ll see that sedating prescription drugs caused me to gain weight. The drugs also made it difficult for me to exercise, so gradually coming off the drugs 2010/2011 left me short of muscle. Better diet and more exercise has allowed me to get back to about my optimum weight. Yet, still I am wanting to put on that extra 1kg. I’d like to be 61kg, yet am I prepared to lift-weights everyday to add that extra bit of muscle?Roger's Weight in Kg over about 44 years

(After moving house I’d like to find my diaries for 2016 and 2017 to fill in the missing data.)

 

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“How long did you take to come off lithium?” #BipolarFAQ

March 26, 2015 6 Comments

I know at least 2 people have asked for a lot more detail on this, so please forgive me as I go into detail…

I was told I had to take 800 mg/night lithium on approx.. 1st Feb 1998.

I have very detailed records of the amount of lithium I took every night and below you will see I put some of these in table form, such that I could graph the reduction against reducing body weight.

It was late 2002 that I got around to asking about reducing the dose and went straight down to 650 mg, which is what I have recorded for 5th Feb 2003 to 1st Feb 2005.

I was thinking that I was off lithium by the end of 2010, but really it was not until the end of 2011, so in many ways it is still early days in my med-free life with 13 years and 11 months on lithium and now only 3 years and 3 months off lithium. It was about a year ago that I met with a private GP in Nottingham and his view was that it takes a lot more than 3 years for the body to re-adjust. He seemed to be saying that one could easily continue to lose weight for several years after coming off lithium. Having said that I am hoping my weight has at least stabilized even if I seem unable to put any weight back on at this time.

mg

01/02/1998 800
08/01/2003 800
05/02/2003 650
01/02/2005 650
01/04/2005 600
15/12/2008 600
15/01/2009 500
15/08/2009 500
15/09/2009 450
15/10/2009 425
15/11/2009 400
15/07/2010 400
15/08/2010 381
15/09/2010 350
15/10/2010 347
15/11/2010 285
15/12/2010 240
15/01/2011 210
15/02/2011 207
15/03/2011 193
15/04/2011 174
15/05/2011 159
15/06/2011 132
15/07/2011 100
15/08/2011 100
15/09/2011 80
15/10/2011 60
15/11/2011 40
15/12/2011 20
01/01/2012 0

low-lithium

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Bipolar weight gain, bipolar weight loss

November 7, 2013 Leave a comment

I just read this article: Accepting Weight Gain in Bipolar Disorder

All the drugs used for bipolar are sedatives. In general: Sedatives are far more likely to cause weight gain than most other drugs. Some sedative drugs such as Olanzapine/Zyprexa are exceptionally good for putting on weight and can be used to help people who are anorexic.

I found that small decreases in dose allowed me to lose weight, with the weight coming off about 2 months after reducing the dose. However….

When I had to give up all the psychiatric drugs to protect my physical health, about 2 months later my weight started to go down rapidly. I was eating as much as I possibly could but I just got thinner and thinner.

Being bipolar and thin is at least as much of a problem as being bipolar and fat. Family tends to associate thinness with mania. I was happiest (most often in the moods I wanted and needed to be in) when I was on a very low dose of sedative.

If you feel you are too heavy then find ways of needing a little less of the sedative drugs (sedative ‘antidepressants’, sedative ‘anti-psychotics, sedative ‘mood stabilizers’) – it is well worth doing this even if you have no plans at all for ever getting off the drugs. Less is better… none at all is a difficult path.

Filed under Drugs Tagged with ,

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