Posted by Greg on January 21, 2003, at 19:53:51
In reply to topamax, posted by evergreen on January 20, 2003, at 16:05:22
Hi evergreen,
I've been taking Topamax as a mood stabilizer for a little over a year now at a dose of 200mgs, 100 am, 100 pm. I gained about 45 lbs on Zyprexa. I was originally rx'd Neurontin as mood stabilizer, but it didn't do a thing for me except make me extremely fatigued. After talking it over with my psych, we decided to give the Topamax a go. It has worked great and has carried the added benefit of helping me to lose weight. But...always one of those aren't there? The Topamax alone isn't going to do the trick unless you have one of those amazing metabolisms. You'll need a good solid, healthy diet and an exercise program to go along with it if you want to make it work. If you like chicken, that's a real good food to work into a diet, but stay away from carbohydrates. The Topamax by itself will help take off some of the weight, but I doubt seriously that it will take off the amount you're talking about.
Here's the drawback to Topamax. It should be titrated up or down at very low doses, usually 25 to 50mgs at a time. This is because in most people it causes Cognitive Dulling, or what I call "A case of the stupids". Everytime my dose was increased I would have trouble spelling words, keeping my thoughts straight, 2+2 equalled 5, stuff like that. It only lasted for a few days, but it's still a pain in the butt. When you reach your target dose and you're on it for a bit, this does all go away, at least it did for me. The upside is that I have found it to be an excellent mood stabilizer, and out of the 45 lbs I gained, I've lost 41. There's usually some kind of a trade-off with any med that you take, and Topamax is no exception in my experience.
Well, that's my story and I'm stickin' to it. I wish you all the best of luck with this and I hope you'll let us know how it works out for you.
I hope this info helps.
Greg
poster:Greg
thread:136769
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030119/msgs/136946.html