Medications are designed to help our bodies deal with a certain health conditions, but as we’ve said on this blog many times in the past, there is no such thing as a magic pill. Many painkillers and medications list some potential side effects that comes with their usage, and many of these side effects can cause additional health problems if you’re not careful. One such side effect is weight gain.
Medications that can lead to weight gain are classified as obesogenics, and it’s clear that gaining weight can cause a number of different issues with your health. Moreover, some studies have shown that even if you try to make some lifestyle adjustments to account for potential weight gain when taking obesogenics, you still may find it difficult to control your weight.
Obesogenic Medication Study
A recent study presented at The Obesity Society’s virtual ObesityWeek found that obesogenics kept some adults from losing weight even with lifestyle interventions. The research found that middle-age adults who were overweight, obese or those with type 2 diabetes that were taking one or more obesogenics had a 32 percent lower chance of achieving a five percent or greater amount of weight loss within the first year of lifestyle intervention. Additionally, taking one or more obesogenics reduced the probability of achieving 10 percent of greater weight loss by 19 percent. Within the first year, people on two or more obesogenics were 42 percent less likely to achieve large weight loss.
When looking at medication type, antidiabetic medications and antidepressants were some of the biggest culprits of inhibiting potential weight loss even with lifestyle interventions.
Dr. Silverman Weighs In
In orthopedic care, we encourage weight loss or at least healthy lifestyle interventions in most of our patients, especially if their treatment will prevent them from being active and burning a healthy amount of calories in the short term. One of the issues patients can sometimes face is that gabapentin is a common drug used during orthopedic care. It is a medication that helps to treat nerve symptoms and can help to dull hyper nerve reactivity, and can be a great solution to patients dealing with nerve pain after trauma or surgery to the foot and ankle.
Unfortunately, gabapentin is an obesogenic. And while it’s not a drug of abuse, it can lead to withdrawal symptoms in patients who need to be on it for an extended period of time. That’s why it’s so important that a patient and provider are on the same page about medication and lifestyle management. If doctors aren’t clear about how medication could affect the patient and really help encourage lifestyle changes, the medication prescribed in an effort to help a patient could actually end up doing more harm than good.