A prescription for obesity?

There’s growing evidence that medications taken by millions of Americans are fueling the nation’s obesity epidemic by robbing it of its natural ability to burn calories on a constant basis.

You already know that keeping the delicate microbiome in your gut balanced is essential to maintaining your overall health. You also know that antibiotics, prescribed by your doctor, can wreak havoc by destroying that balance—leaving you wide open for life-threatening infection and various ailments.

But what you probably don’t know is that there’s another prescription medication danger threatening your gut—in a very different way…

And it can throw your gut balance off so badly that your metabolism can plummet… and cause unexplained weight gain to the tune of an additional 30 pounds a year!

Researchers at the University of Iowa recently discovered that Risperidone, a popular antipsychotic drug prescribed to millions of patients suffering from autism, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia, can have a profoundly negative impact on gut health.

In a study involving mice, researchers concluded that the medication could cause a disruption in the gut’s bacterial composition, contributing to potential weight gain in excess of 10 percent of original body mass.

“The control mice gain a little weight as they age and their microbiome undergoes a ‘healthy shift’ due to aging. With the risperidone, the mice become obese and exhibit an alternative, less healthy shift in their microbiome,” researcher John Kirby, PhD, a professor of microbiology and urology, said. “With this study, we now have a mechanism for how a shift in the microbiome contributes to weight gain, and it’s to do with changes to the resting metabolic rate.”

In other words, the medication was shown to slow down the activity of healthy bacteria responsible for breaking down nutrients in the gut. Those newly-lazy gut bacteria start slacking on their job. Instead of breaking down nutrients, they begin storing them as fat cells.

These gut changes can result in a nearly 16 percent drop in resting metabolic rate and account for unexplained weight gain of about 30 pounds each year!

“That is the equivalent of eating one additional cheeseburger every single day,” Kirby explained.

While the researchers focused on Risperidone specifically, the drug belongs to a class that includes popular medications like antidepressants. That means this medication-induced cause of obesity likely affects somewhere around 30 million Americans. And if you’re a senior, the likelihood that you take a medication that would cause similar problems is very high.

Consider talking to your doctor about medications you’re taking that could be destroying your gut health. If removing them from your daily regimen is not an option, avoid medication-induced disruptions and weight gain by protecting your gut microbiome. Add probiotics to your diet by eating unprocessed fermented foods, found in the refrigerated section of your grocery store, like sauerkraut, kim chi, kombucha , pickled vegetables and yogurt.

Another option is to take a high quality probiotic supplement that contains lactobacillus acidophilus bacteria in combination with other ingredients like psyllium husks, flax seed powder and other fibers that promote optimal colon health.