BayouSwitch
Active Member
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2017
- Messages
- 32
Contrave, is supposed to help decrease cravings etc. Does anybody here have experience taking this Rx and if so, what are your thought?
Thanks.
Thanks.
Thank you for your feedback.So when my sleeve was no longer helping me loose weight, I took it in a desperate move. In a month and a half i lost over 20 pounds which was success. But! Going into the 2nd month was hell!the entire time i was on it, i batttled nausea but then the second month started with extremely high bp and a dangerously fast heartrate. I had to stop it asap!! I have several friends that took it, and know of many more through an online support group. The results are basically only half the people i know could actually tolerate it. Those that can do extremely well! It does dramatically cut ur cravings and binges. I was very hopeful, and didnt think i would experience side effects bc i was already taking Wellbutrin. But i guess the combo drug was too powerful for my system. Ill say that i also took Belviq and the other new one (cant remember the name) and of the 3, contrave was the only one that worked, but it was also the only one i had side effects with,and the only one that sent me to the hospital.
So just be very careful if u do decide to use it. And monitor ur bp closely. Iit rises...stop the med immediately
Thanks for your input.I once calculated the cost per pound lost of these drugs at the end of 12 months. They are so expensive, and not always covered, and they aren't going to give you a maintained 50 pound weight loss once you stop taking them. If you don't have insurance, they are more than $1,000 per year, and they might help you lose 5% of body weight (the FDA definition of success). So, if you are 200 pounds, 5% is 10 pounds, or $100 per pound. Then, those lost pounds were rapidly regained when you stopped taking the drug. Further, you have risks to your heart. If they were miracle cures, no one would chose surgery. They aren't. Not that I don't want drug companies to keep looking, but the ones on the market aren't worth taking.
Thank you.Contrave is an opiate blocker combined with Wellbutrin, which is an anti-depressant that is atypical and acts like a stimulant even though it's not a stimulant. It can help, I guess? The doctors can also prescribe them separately as generics for far cheaper, but that's not frequently done. They are super cheap as generics and far more expensive because Contrave is a brand.
I think that therapy is more effective than Contrave. Vyvanse works well for binge eating disorder weight loss because BED is a compulsive and impulsive disorder, and stimulants stop this behavior by regulating dopamine. This is why they work for ADHD (interestingly, bulimia is correlated with comorbid diagnoses of ADHD, but BED is still not as often studied). It's not actually because it suppresses appetite.
I guess what I'm saying is... It Depends? I think therapy works best of all, particularly CBT or DBT. Cravings can be biological or psychological, and are typically a combination of both. It's good to rule out behavior and habit before medications are used.
Everyone is different, though, and there's no way to reliably predict whether it will work or not.
Frankly, I'd just eat a ketogenic diet first, as it naturally suppresses appetite after a few weeks, even for people without WLS. High fat and protein provide natural appetite suppression. Carbs cause appetite to shoot up way high, because insulin is an appetite stimulant.
Ginger tea helped me with the nausea. I'm glad to hear ur doing good on it so far. Just watch ur bp!Well, it's been 9 days and I'm now on the 2x a day dose. I feel pretty good and have only had very minor nausea about an hour after taking each dose. So far, I'm down 2 maybe 3 pounds. I really do feel like I'm craving sweets less. I feel like I don't obsess about something sweet and how I can get it.