Aripiprazole - Abilify

Marky said:
Do we know why people get weight gain by anti psychotics by the way? If im gonna get fat by an treatment i need to be sure it cures me tbh :laugh:
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Based on own experiences (not on Abilify):
I think some medications often create a kind of uncontrolled craving for food in a transitional phase.
A sort of "abstinence" that makes you eat more. Perhaps unconsciously.
We react differently to meds, so it is very individual if you get it and how strong the craving is. And maybe it is more controllable in low doses.
Should the medicine not work for you, then you will probably fall back to match weight again soon. I did.

But I would rather be healthy and overweight than sick and slim :)
 
Marky said:
Do we know why people get weight gain by anti psychotics by the way? If im gonna get fat by an treatment i need to be sure it cures me tbh :laugh:
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Unfortunately many have sort of just accepted that you gain weigth on these drugs, and don't bother to help patients to even try to prevent it from happening :( I got so mad reading a recent forskning.no article where the author more or less concluded weight-loss interventions (this case diet and lifestyle) shouldn't be provided to patients with psychiatric disease as "when they fail, they will get even more depressed" (mark the when, not if). And then goes on about patients having unrealistic goals etc., a good dietician/pt should help patients have realistic goals and a healthy diet and being active is good not just for weight loss. Gah!

Yeah, sorry, rant over :whistle: Patients with psychiatric disease that gets these drugs may already be at risk for easy weight-gain, many are overweight/obese even without drugs. And these patients' physical health are often put on the sideline by their doc's to treat the psychiatric problem. There's a reason they have a lifespan 10-20 year shorter than the healthy population... If weight-gain can be combatted in some way I don't think there's been much research on it, I can't think of any at least. If you're one of the unlucky ones that get food cravings and loss of the feeling of satiety I don't think its possible to not gain weight at some point.

Nutrition is gaining ground in psychiatry, so hopefully we'll know more about this in the future.
adambeyoncelowe said:
Maybe it just makes you eat more?
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Eat more, move less, change in hunger signals, potential change in sleep habits that can affect hormones that affect hunger and fat storage (though, sometimes for the better I guess, at least in theory at as I haven't seen any research).
Caesar said:
Based on own experiences (not on Abilify):
I think some medications often create a kind of uncontrolled craving for food in a transitional phase.
A sort of "abstinence" that makes you eat more. Perhaps unconsciously.
We react differently to meds, so it is very individual if you get it and how strong the craving is. And maybe it is more controllable in low doses.
Should the medicine not work for you, then you will probably fall back to match weight again soon. I did.

But I would rather be healthy and overweight than sick and slim :)
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It's not necessarily only in a transitional phase, like you say there are individual differences. I know of many who have not returned to match weigth :(
 
With Mirtazapin (Remergil) I had insatiable cravings, real munchies like with smoking weed. I'd kept on eating even when my stomach hurt.

Only in the beginning though, it lasted couple of weeks.

I had stopped and started taking it again several times thoroughout the yrs and I can control the beginning-munchies with rigouros meal prep now (requires energy, of course).
 
Jaybee00 said:
I have progressive non-HLA-C*07:04, non-HLA-DQB1*03:03 ME/CFS.
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I'm afraid I have absolutely no idea what that means :( However, my caree has been on aripiprazole - to "augment" mirtazapine, whatever that may mean - for several years. I won't go into too much detail, given that this is a public forum, but her dose is 2.5 mg. She's come off it several times before, each time with notable after-effects on her mental health. So, you're on it for 45 days? What happens after that - do you just come off it, fairly gradually? If so, it would be interesting to see what happens to the presumed benefits. My experience is that it seems to give you a bit of a "boot up the backside" mentally speaking, but is it actually real, and what does the booting do to your underlying energy levels, e.g. once you've come off it? Will you suddenly realise that, for example, you've been overdoing things for the past month and a half and that you're now going to pay for it?
 
Marky said:
Maybe, but a lot of people say they gain weight regardless of calorie intake being lower than calorie expenditure, obv. you cant take what people say regarding this for facts, but it does seem to be a real thing e.g. with cortison treatment (although a lot of the weight gain there is fluid)
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Amongst antipsychotics abilify has the lowest or one of the lowest weight gain profiles. Google or google scholar should show you some results. This may be due to it's unique mechanism of action. For example, it doesn't impact histamine receptors and increase AMPK which was one factor associated with antipsychotic hunger. It does seem to impact metabolic factors negatively, although I haven't looked into that as much.

I'm an extremely skinny, and have been my whole life. To the point where I look skeletal. I have very little fat and accumulate almost none unless calorie intake is so high, frankly my me/cfs couldn't accomodate it. And even then it's very little. I gained some weight on steriods, but that was mostly water weight. I have often though I must have a genetic problem with fat absorption or the development of fat in the body. I have even seen a genticist who wasn't interested. I even got a private WGA and used promethease but no major "bad" gene turned up. I can't even find a genetic condition that would make sense tbh. I'd bee very interested in a drug that increased fat storage or retention, in a healthy way of course.

Back to abilify, I was very interested to hear that Whitney thought it improved gastropareisis (but I can't find the exact quote). There is a case report of it doing it as well, in a genetic disease though. Normal dopamine agonists work the opposite, but as I said abilify is a little complicated and the gastropareisis in me/cfs and it may respond differently.
 
Hi,

No not planning to come of it now, but agree with your point about potential withdrawal issues.

HLA risk alleles for ME/CFS discussed in threads below. I got tested to see if I had the risk alleles, and I don’t. Patients with risk alleles, especially the DQB1 allele had very high response rates to cyclophosphamide treatment.

https://www.s4me.info/threads/human...syndrome-me-cfs-fluge-mella-et-al-2020.14329/


https://www.s4me.info/threads/intra...-study-2020-rekeland-mella-fluge-et-al.14925/
 
dreampop said:
I'm an extremely skinny, and have been my whole life.
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Just in case it has any relevance to you, I remember reading an article about a woman (Jill Viles) who couldn't put on fat - she researched and found a gene -- the same gene as one of Canada's best sprinters (Olympian).

Just found This American Life interview with Jill:

Do These Genes Make Me Look Fatless?

Journalist David Epstein tells the story of Jill Viles, who has muscular dystrophy and can’t walk. But she believes that she somehow has same condition as one of the best hurdlers in the world, Priscilla Lopes-Schliep.

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/577/something-only-i-can-see/act-one-7
 
(Abilify increases dopamine, decreases serotonin, and is an anti-inflammatory. It’s categorized as an anti-psychotic, but so many drugs end up being used for purposes so different from their original purpose that categorizing a drug can seem like an exercise in futility. Abilify, for instance, improved cognitive functioning in people with ADHD who were not depressed. Given how little we know about how drugs operate in the body there’s no telling what it’s actually doing with Whitney and other ME/CFS patients.)
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When I asked my GP and pharmacist why I was given a very low dose antidepressant (trazodone) for sleep, they explained that they didn't know how it worked and said "it's a big pot of stew, we throw something into it and it works". Using drugs in lower doses to treat unrelated issues is interesting.

We have existing drugs that could address PEM. We just have to figure it out.
 
Mij said:
When I asked my GP and pharmacist why I was given a very low dose antidepressant (trazodone) for sleep, they explained that they didn't know how it worked and said "it's a big pot of stew, we throw something into it and it works". Using drugs in lower doses to treat unrelated issues is interesting.

We have existing drugs that could address PEM. We just have to figure it out.
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It`s so frustrating being Norwegian without insurance, as its almost impossible to try anything at all here cause every GP or specialist that tries something gets investigated by the norwegian board of health supervision. Legally it is allowed with some extent of "experimental treatment", but in reality it is not a possibility as the state clams down on everyone trying to help ME-patients, and so GPs and specialists dont wanna touch us.

When I see people with insurance being able to try so much I get jealous I admit. Getting ill in the middle of studies, and before getting an insurance has put me and many others in such a shit powerless situation

Id gladly try IVIG, anti-virals, abilify, LDN etc if I had the chance. I actually tried getting IVIG for one whole year even with low immunoglobulin levels, but they`re so strict I had to leave the hospital crying in frustration. The doctor wanted to let me try it, but he had been ordered from above to stop.
 
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