Be careful with medication doses!

[Jaelzion 1,123]

Just a heads up for those of you who, like me, have lost a large amount of weight. I'm now less than half my previous weight and sometimes I run into downstream effects I wasn't prepared for.

Recently I had to take a medication that I haven't needed for some time (certainly not since I've been this small). My doctor and I were not thinking about my weight loss and how that would affect the appropriate dose for this med. Because I am so much smaller, the dose I regularly took before was way too much and I had crazy side-effects and toxicity. At first my doctor was stumped as to what is going on (even though she has seen me and is aware of my weight loss). It was my cousin, who is also a doctor (a hospitalist), who figured it out. As soon as I desceribed my symptoms, she said "That's an overdose, you're taking too much." and she reminded me that my weight affects the necessary dose.

When I went back to my doctor, she agreed that was it and reduced my dose to match my weight. And the problems went away. So don't forget that weight-based dosages will need to be adjusted as you get smaller! Even doctors may not remember to make the necessary adjustments.

[RickM 1,747]

This is a good heads up, thanks.

This can sometimes even apply to our supplements. A few years ago, our surgeons practice was seeing a few patients with B6 toxicity. It urns out that the costco branded calcium citrate has B6 in it along with a few other things beyond the normal D3 and sometimes mag. Taken as a normal person once a day, that's no big deal, but along with B6 in a Multivitamin (often at multiples of RDA) and taken in bariatric quantities of 2 or 3 doses per day, it was going over the toxic levels.

Some may also occasionally run into acetaminophen toxicity, with the inability to use NSAIDs with some procedures they can overdose the Tylenol since it is OTC and therefore "safe".

Funny things can happen!