>What is happening? Why does this happen? From the thousands of e-mails received over the years we do know: Diet and exercise alone will not make a difference. If anything, many of the diets promoted today create adverse reactions with your medication.<

This is just plain wrong and scaremongering. Low-carb WILL blunt the sugar cravings. I've lost a bunch of weight simply using low-carb, counting calories, and exercising.

coming off antidepressants
 

Just wanted to update all of you who were kind enough to respond to my initial questions regarding weight loss and the use of antidepressants. I am currently coming off of the Effexor and will take my last dose on Friday. My Doctor simply had me take a half dose for 5 days and then 3 half doses every other day. From the things I have read I thought the process would take weeks and weeks so was surprised when he gave me the instructions. So I have another question for you guys...has anyone ever done it this way? And what were your results/side effects etc.

Now for the good news!!!! I started SERIOUSLY low carbing as of Monday...again...(I got a little discouraged last week and had a major binge) And I can't believe it but I have already lost a pound in just the two days!! I had only lost 2 pounds the whole two months prior to weening off the meds...oh and I almost forgot I started taking Hoodia too!! I believe the two things together are going to help me acheive success. I KNOW this has only been 2 days but I am so encouraged...I got the Desert Burn Hoodia which was the highest rated product and it really does make me feel full after meals...I am not eating as much at the meal and I am not hungry after dinner....so there you go... I will keep you posted as the week goes by but I just thought I would pass along some good news...thanks for listening! :D

I will sing the praises of Lexapro until the day I die. I don't suffer from depression; I suffer from anxiety. My life was made far, far more difficult by this condition. Lexapro has managed the condition and allowed me to return to being me, the me I was before my disorder began to turn even small daily challenges into insurmountable mountains.

You seem to feel that you're superior to those of us on medication because you hold the opinion that we can root down to the "cause" of our problems and be cured, as you claim to have done. Perhaps your issues with depression were situational or something that could be resolved, but that does not hold true for many of us. We are simply wired differently.

Talk about dogmatic.

I just had my annual physical and expressed my frustration with weight loss- Dr told me its the Celxa I have been on 4 yrs, in which I have gained 28 lbs (and lost 11 so far since 9/14, thanks to Atkins)
I was very very angry because for 4 years his nurse practictioners had all told me that Celexa was not known to cause weight gain- BULL$~!t

Spiritof72--I agree completely with you and your use of Lexapro. Over the past 3 years I have tried "them all" and they made a huge difference in my life. One of two things can happen; you can try to come off of the drug and hope that the inbalance is now "balanced" and many have had success with this, the other option is to try to ween off the drug (after a two year period ) however you may feel you need the drug after all and will most likely need it the rest of your life.(I am NOT a doctor, I have just read everything I could get my hands on) I am waiting to see which catagory I fall into. The main objective for my coming off was the weight loss issue...I just CANNOT lose while on antidepressants,that's just me everyone is different. I am happy that the Lexapro works well for you along with weight loss ..keep up the good work..

Heh it's definitely had an adverse effect on my weight loss. When I really got onto the Lexapro was when I gained back everything that I'd lost doing Atkins the first time. However, I am really not inclined to blame that on the drug.

To me, this is a chicken-or-the-egg scenario. Many of us are emotional eaters. Therefore when things occur in our lives - depression, anxiety, etc - we tend to eat more. That ALSO happens to be the point where we get prescribed medication. For me personally (this may not be the case for everyone) it's hardly surprising that when my life went haywire, I started to binge eat again, which is also when I got on Lexapro, and I started to gain weight. Just because A, B, C, and D happened around the same time, does not mean that C caused D. I gained weight because I stuffed my face. Plain and simple.

Losing HAS been harder this time around, and harder to stick to. I discussed it with my psychiatrist at my last appointment, and he said yes, some people do have weight difficulties WHILE on Lexapro. He didn't say CAUSED by Lexapro, which is a different thing. My options were to stick with it or come off of it.

My decision was to stick with it, and add things in my life that would make me both more likely to lose weight, AND help me manage my stress. I've taken up Jazzercise and not only is the weight coming off, but the exercise itself is acting as an anti-stress and anti-depression tool.

Everyone's situation is different, so each person has to decide for themselves what combination of medication, diet and exercise works for them and their life. But it doesn't have to be "thin and stressed" or "fat and happy."

Informed decisions..
 

Seems to be some confusion on here, so as a SAD sufferer and tryer of many antid's I thought'd I offer some info:

Lexapro: should be taken at night
Welbutrin: some people (such as my daughter) have a deficiency of both dopamine and serotonin, for them welbutrin helps with the wanting to sleep all the time etc., for others it will make them a b*****. Chances are, if you're a smoker, then you're missing dopamine.
Effexor/Cymbalta: same thing...different drug companies, helps serotonin, dopamine and norepenephrine (I had a terrible time coming off of effexor)

All the SSRI's will cause tiredness...

Serotonin is the chemical that makes us feel relaxed and happy and content. (All is right with the world and everybody is wonderful!)

Dopamine is the chemical that makes us feel energized, ready to help people, get the job done, stay focused. (Yes, I'll be glad to take the cat to the vet.)

Chances are close to 100% that if there is any alcholism or drug dependency in your family, you will have a chemical deficiency (because they do/did and that's why they drink). In my case, my father was...I have SAD, so does both my daughters...my son seems to have escaped it. My DH's father whole family was alcholics and he also suffers from SAD very severely. (Possibly even bi-polar...won't get properly diagnosed)

It's not made up...it's real. You can't beat it. You can try to learn to live with it or see if you can find something to help with it. But you can't make it go away. We've been trying the Vit D...helps some...and he's is taking St John's Wort...much better this year with the two helpers. (thank you Zuleikaa)

Since both my DH and I suffer, I've seen antid's do two diff things:

For me, since I don't eat when I'm happy, it made me lose weight.
For him, since he doesn't eat when he's anxious, they relax him and he eats more and gains weight.

Hope some of this helps.

Spiritof72- Jazzersize! What a great idea..I did that years ago and plan on looking for a class near me..thanks for the idea!

Quietone-Sorry to hear about all the family issues..I haven't met anyone yet in my life who hasn't had to deal with an alchoholic..such a sad sad disease..

I am just curious..what were your issues with coming off of the Effexor and what did you do to combat the effects?

You're so wrong it's untrue. If you had read what I had written here and on other topics you will see that I was a sufferer from severe depressive symptoms. These were as a result of candidiasis, not some serotonin-related nonsense. Antidepressants actually worked for me! But they also had some unexpected side effects including mania, and the ones that worked also pooped out after a few weeks.

It's obvious in my mind that there's a connection between depression and candida (for some people, I stress), in the sense that substances intended to act upon neurotransmitters inadvertently took away the symptoms of my candida die-off. With this in mind, it holds that this area needs a lot more exploring before we really know what's going on in depressed patients.

The pharmaceutical companies are very much in the business of disavowing anything that is a 'cure' for lucrative disorders, so as not to undermine the sale of 'treatments'. This is not a conspiracy theory but an economic reality. The pharms companies have a bigger stranglehold on the world economy than the oil companies. So, information must be filtered in the public eye to keep us blind and compliant.

I'm just trying to redress that balance with some counter-arguments. No vested interest here, other than open debate.

And I resent your implications that because I disagree with you, I am somehow blind or compliant, underinformed or misinformed. The fact that many here disagree with you does not indicate that we're sheep biting onto whatever pill is offered to us, and simply haven't done enough research or looking into things. Did it ever occur to you that the other posters here that you're condescending to, may have done every bit as much research into their own disorders and treatments as you have - possibly more, even - and simply came to conclusions that differ from yours?

The idea that drug companies have a vested interest in sales is neither insightful nor earth shattering. I think most of us figured that one out for ourselves.

I am so in love with it! I hope you find you like it again too!!! Go here: Jazzercise

They have a "find a class" function. It's all over the place in my area, I hope it is in yours.

It's also an unbeatable deal financially. I'm paying $35 per month for my EFT which gives me unlimited classes per month. I go every single day and love it more and more!

This is silly. You're getting your back up for no reason. There is no implication that the people on here are sheep. I entered into this topic because I don't like people being overly dogmatic about illnesses and treatments that we still know very little about, and I don't want anyone else, like myself, to ruin their life because they had a manic episode on some antidepressant they read miracle stories about on a forum. These blunderbust approaches to treatment may work for some, but we can't have people making ridiculously specific claims about their methods of actions.

It's irresponsible, is all I'm saying. To be honest, the picture of Katie Price the poster in question uses is bound to incite strong feelings in anyone, and were it not for this I probably wouldn't have gotten into this discussion.

What I say about pharms may be old hat, but I don't want people's attention to stray from the fact that there are alternatives, and that these alternatives will always be discredited until we, the consumers, vote with our feet, having found that most of the psychopharmacological armoury is crude and outdated as a method of combatting mental illness.

TMAJIC

The biggest side effect was the weird brain effect...like my head and brains were moving in slow motion.

But, I found out that eating high carb made this worse...it was almost like serotonin syndrome.

So I jsut stopped eating so much carbs and waited it out

people who express this opinion never fail to amaze (and irritate) me. i agree that antidepressants are overprescribed, but for others whose lives have been saved by them, they are worth having to take. and i say "having to take" because they can be extremely unpleasant to use. you have a range of side effects such as weight gain, feeling spacey, dizziness, dry mouth and eyes (i can't wear contacts anymore), partial to complete loss of libido, inability to have orgasms, etc etc. so, the people to take them usually do need them and are not merely buying into some "obvious money-making agenda of the medical profession."

to understand depression is NOT a matter of being well-informed about facts, but rather is something that one must experience to understand fully. i wonder if you have felt as though you would rather die than live, for so long you can't even remember not feeling that way. and i wouldn't imagine that you have been so depressed that you called in sick to work for nearly a week because you couldn't get out of bed and you hadn't washed your hair for 4 days. there is no doubt in my mind that i would have killed myself years ago if it weren't for antidepressants. and no, they don't make it all go away, but they do make it so i can live and function.

you apply the specific events of your own illness and how you "cured" it to other people, which is shortsighted. everyone is different. you seem to be implying that anyone who hasn't solved their depression like you did is weak for taking medication. it's insulting to people who suffer from depression because you make them feel as though their illness is not real and that they are being duped into taking medication.

Ah, the drug wars....
 

"for your own good?"

Don't see that language too much anymore. "I'll decide how everyone else on the forum is reading your posts, just in case you can't see it for yourself." Must not be aware the forum has moderators who serve that function...

There's another one argument simmering away in hormone replacement, btw. Feel free to join in.

Wonder if anyone's ever convinced of the other's point of view? "Oh my God, I never knew the drug companies were in it for the money!! I will stop taking my evil pills right away and change my life instead!! It never occurred to me that exercise would help. Back to the track for me!"

It's all a crapshoot. One day, we'll have the testing to (maybe) be able to put some objectivity under our own experience. Partly DNA, partly more advanced blood chemistry than we have today, or are willing to pay for today. Will be interesting to see. I'm willing to trade future days for present ability to get out of bed, for sure. Touch my meds and I'll chew your arm off.

YMMV.