‘Simple’ Solution to Antipsychotic-Related Weight Gain

That is the title of this article that I am going to write about with an extra link that belongs to the same article, although it tells how to use program.  “A simple, easy-to-use, free program appears to stop antipsychotic-related weight gain and delivers durable weight loss in patients with schizophrenia, new research shows. ‘One out of 4 people lost over 5%, or roughly 10 lbs of weight, and they kept in off for 6 months without any intervention, which was amazing,’ principal investigator Cenk Tek, MD, director of the psychosis program at the Connecticut Mental Health Center, Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, told Medscape News.” I believe everyone is waiting for this news.  Although I believe it is what I did to lose twenty pounds.  Which was cut my portions in half and I have continued to eat that way.

There way is to: “To help patients with schizophrenia lose weight, the investigators developed the SIMPLE program, which is tailored to the unique needs and challenges of this patient population, including cognitive, educational, and social problems observed in schizophrenia.”  That is the population that needs it the most.  I go up and down about five pounds usually.  “The problem of overweight and obesity in these patients has always been there, but it was accentuated after the introduction of new generation of antipsychotic medications, which caused an incredible amount of weight gain.”  My weight started when I quit smoking and I was on and older medication.  I gained weight so fast I could not stop it.  Then I was sick at the same time so I really could not lose the weight back then. How do they lose weight?   “We took basic weight loss and standardized concepts and simplified them as much as possible-we simplified the wording as much as possible, and we introduced a lot of repetition – so essentially, you repeat, repeat, repeat to reinforce the concepts.”  That seems a good way with repetition.  That is the best way to get something in your mind or whatever with repetition. What else they do is: “The supermarket environment is very cluttered, so what we do is teach people how to navigate the supermarket, how to calculate the calories and read labels, he added.”  That is what they teach that helps.  If we do you how to read labels for all the bad stuff and just eat the good we should lose weight.
As we all know people do not like to take their medication because of the weight gain.  If this works then I am all for it, because everyone would like to be in their right mind and not gain weight just to be that way.  The second link simple program tells how anyone can do it.  I know I have to lose more. “In addition, said Dr, Tek , SIMPLE participants successfully maintained their weight loss with no additional intervention for 6 months.” That is good news. If you can keep it off for that long you can keep it off for longer. This could help people with mental illness live longer if they can lose the weight and keep it off. “There is no other disease where you have a doubling of cardiovascular risk in the first year.  This is a critical period in the disease that requires intervention, so physicians really need to know what they are prescribing and, if at all possible, start with lower weight gain liability agents, said Dr. Tek” I for one know how hard it is to get the weight off and keep it off so if this works great. It does not talk about exercises so if you exercise also would you lose more weight it would be good to find out.