Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Zyprexa in children: Is the weight gain avoidable.
Most children do get increased appetites when put on Olanzapine. In all the years in practice I have seen only one child not do so. Try using Zydis, it may not cause as much weight gain. Maybe the route of absorption will do the trick. But in the end a very strict diet and exercise program is needed to prevent excessive weight gain. But how does one cut the "hunger reigns" is still a mystery.
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Typically efforts to curb weight gain involve avoiding supposedly "fattening foods". Typically they fail. Why olanzapine and other psychoactive drugs cause weight gain is unclear. Perhaps rather than stimulating "hunger" they interfere with satiety signals. Would it make sense to try adjusting diet to strategically INCLUDE satiety-promoting foodstuffs, particularly something fatty?
ReplyDeleteWe would hope that fatty foods would work. However whatever the mechanism, whether it is interference of satiety or some other mechanism modulating hunger, the overt outcome is the need to be constantly eating. It sometimes never seems enough and it does not matter what type of food is given. There fore volume to volume fatty foods pack more calories than lets say low glycemic foods like broccoli. I have seen children looking in the garbage to find anything they can eat. For some reason there is the rare child that will not have such an increased appetite on olanzapine.
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