Being overweight myself I have spent a great deal of time examining why I succeed and fail to lose weight at different times in my life. Two things immediately come to mind that help and they are having a strong motivator and having people who genuinely seem to have a vested interest in my success. The first one is easy but usually temporary, the second one is much much more difficult to achieve, mostly because of my own perception of the world and the other people I encounter in it.
Archive for the ‘Food Addiction’ Category
Why you fail to lose weight
Friday, September 4th, 2009Contrave – an old new way to lose weight.
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009Recently, the media has been all aflutter (here, here, and in many other places) about Contrave, the next great hope in weight loss drugs. Currently in FDA testing, Contrave is not a new drug at all, rather it is the combination of two drugs (Welbutrin and Naltrexone) which have been on the market for years. According to Orexigen Therapeutics Inc (the producer of Contrave) Contrave takes the metabolism boosting power of Welbutrin and combines it with the craving killing power of Naltrexone to help you lose weight.
Welbutrin has been used for years as an anti-depressant and Naltrexone is used to treat various addictions. With an almost combined 20 years of every day use by patients, I began to wonder if Contrave was anything to get excited about, at all. It occurred to me that if someone was so inclined that they could go to their doctor and get a prescription for both Welbutrin and Naltrexone bypassing that whole messy FDA phase three study thing we’ve all been hearing about.
So then why bother re-branding two drugs that have been available for a combined two decades? First, the FDA approves drugs for a specific purpose, and anything else is considered off label. Even if Topamax does help a lot of people lose weight, it is still a migraine/anti-seizure medication according to the FDA. If doctors prescribe you a drug for an off-label use, and it kills you your doctor could be in serious trouble. Second, a new weight-loss drug (especially one that won’t make your heart beat so fast that it kills you, or cause ‘leakage’) is sure to be a “blockbuster drug” just like Viagra or Cialis is which means an incredible amount of money for the Orexigen (and their investors).
It seems odd to me that research money was spent trying different combinations of drugs rather than trying to come up with a new and more effective way to treat obesity. Weight loss is a potential side effect of many drugs, but there are very few drugs (according to the FDA) which actually help people lose weight, and keep it off. If Contrave is approved for the treatment of obesity, then shouldn’t the treatment of obesity then be applied as label usages of both Welbutrin and Naltrexone? Make no doubt about it, Orexigen will be going to great lengths to make sure this doesn’t happen, and that is the problem with this entire situation.
I am all for anything that will make people lead healthier lives, at the same time Contrave seems like taking half of a Ford Mustang, and Half of a Dodge Challenger, combining them and calling it a Chalstang. You’re still taking two things that have exited for a really long time and blending them together. Could Contrave help a great number of people, lose weight? YES! Will it do a better job than just taking the sum of its parts (and at much much cheaper prices)?
I don’t see how it could.
Andrew
Toprimate (Topamax) and Addiction
Friday, January 2nd, 2009Recently a study performed by the University of Virginia found that the drug Toprimate (Topamax) could be successful in treating alcohol addiction. In the past, other studies have shown that Topamax has had somewhat mixed results when used to battle obesity. Why would a drug which helps alcoholics stay sober only help some people lose weight?
It is well known that doctors have been prescribing drugs for off-label uses for years, but the number of off-label uses for Topamax is staggering. Although its FDA approved purpose is to treat migrane headaches and seizure disorders; Topamax has been used in the treatment of obsessive compulsive disorder, bulimia, smoking cessation, and other neurological disorders for years.
If Toprimate helps people stop drinking, quit smoking, and in some cases lose weight it seems to me that there would be a link between the action of addiction and Toprimate. Perhaps the reason the drug makes some people lose weight, while others do not notice an effect is because it only helps compulsive/binge eaters or people with food addictions.
Not that anyone didn’t already know this, but a study was recently published by Princeton that indicated that sugar had the same effect on the brain as a drug similar to heroin or cocaine. If this is the case the next logical step would be to classify “Sugar Addiction [Fructism, anyone?]” as a disease the same as Alcoholism and then work on treatments for folks effected by this.
I would imagine that a great percentage of obese people are addicted to food and aren’t really aware of it. Personally, I am aware of my own addiction and struggle with it constantly but I was 25 before I even knew binge eating disorder/food addiction was something that existed.
Anecdotally, I had a great deal of success with a combination of Toprimate/Topamax and Xenical (prescription Alli) lost a great deal of weight on it. Please keep in mind that I am not a doctor and that this article is not intended to be used as a replacement for advice from a trained medical professional.
-Drew