It was weigh in tonight, had a very eventful and telling couple of days ...made a few discoveries quite by accident and they have answered a lot of questions for me ...going to have a word with my Doctor when I see her about my Psoriasis, in June.
Long story short, I started seeing her in September of 2011...I started SW in October 2010, from October 2010 until November of 2011 I lost close on 6st in weight ....as I said I started to see my specialist in September, I was having PUVA treatment at first, but after about 6 weeks instead of my Psoriasis improving it was gradually getting worse, so doctor took me off that treatment and put me on Acitretin 75mg a day in December of 2011, I have since that day lost and gained the same 8lbs ...as I said I made a discovery yesterday that made me think about the medication and I then went and looked more closely at the side effects, I know about the sore mouth, nose, lips, tongue, nose bleeds, hair loss, abnormal lab results, glucose intolerance and high cholestrol that the tablets have as a side effect,I have all of those and some more, but after what I discovered yesterday it made me think even more and I then looked back on my records of when I have had to increase my dose from the average 35mg a day that I take and the 75mg a day that I take when it gets out of control and the side effects I found today were for just 10mg, I noticed that every time I have gained weight when this happened, I have also been keeping a note of when I was increasing my tablets and all of these coincide with 2 of the side effects that I get when I increase my tablets....the first is thrush, every time I increase my tablets I get a bad case of thrush and it then disappears when I go back to my normal dose, the other thing I noticed was that I have severe oedema and that is all over my body not just my ankles, toes hands etc, I was sitting yesterday and leaned on my knees for a few minutes, when I got up there were massive indentations in my knees that stayed there until this morning, so I tried a few other places and the same thing happened. Now when I checked the dates I had to increase my tablets, I gained every single week and then when I checked the dates I took my tablets back to the normal dose, I had substantial losses, on checking the side effects for the tablets 1 in 100 people suffer from oedema and also thrush.
I really feel this is hampering my weight loss, I will not talk to my GP about this as acitretin are only prescribed at and can be picked up from the hospital so I doubt my GP would have much knowledge of them, plus they react badly with a lot of medications, so when I see my specialist in June I am going to ask her about maybe water tablets or something to deal with the oedema as I am certain it's not helping.
Having said all that, I am bloated and was expecting a gain tonight and actually lost half a lb, I am happy with that as I had to increase my tablets last Thursday when my hands and feet really flared up, I am hoping to drop them again by Friday so fingers crossed it will mean a goodish loss next week.
It may all be a coincidence but it just seems to funny that it all ties in from when I started these tablets, I had lost over 6 st before joining SW and continued to do so until they came along, but I am not going to let them beat me I will keep trying and looking for the answers whatever happens xxx
Side effects of acitretin - Psoriasis - NHS Choices this is the page with the side effects of acitretin and I have 24 of the 39 possible side effects ...great eh? lol
I'll be back later with my food diary, hope you're all well ttfn xxx
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