Most people that i know seem to have gained weight on certain antidepressants, even when they’ve been eating the same and hitting the gym and claim to not be able to get rid of this weight no matter what they do.
What causes this? How do antidepressants change your metabolism?
In: Biology
We don’t have a definitive answer, but there are a few different possibilities.
First line anti depressants nowadays are called SSRIs, and they affect your serotonin levels. Brain serotonin does have an impact on your appetite, and an increase or decrease can affect your appetite, sometimes more, sometimes less. Serotonin, in addition to being a “happy” chemical for your brain, is also used in your intestinal tract as a transmitter. So while the medication mostly works on your brain serotonin, they also might have an effect on your gut serotonin, and this adjustment can have an impact on your weight.
Also, people typically tend not to eat when they’re depressed (or anxious, which SSRIs also treat). People typically lose weight when dealing with their mental health. As a rebound effect, when they get better because of their medication, their appetite returns and they gain weight from starting to eat regularly again.
There’s also been discussions about how SSRIs can affect your gut biome. I believe some small studies have shown that they might decrease the levels of bacteria in your gut. The bacteria in your gut is increasingly being looked at as to how it relates to our overall health, so that might play a role as well.
Other anti depressants might have differing reasons for why they cause weight gain, but this is a brief overview of how it *can* happen. It’s also most likely that it’s some combination of these factors, plus others we might not be aware of (or that I’m forgetting to mention). It’s likely that there isn’t one singular answer, but a combination of multiple.
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