Are Your Asthma Medicines Causing Weight Gain?

Have you put on weight recently? Was it around the time you started a steroid based asthma inhaler? Your medicine may be the culprit.

I developed adult-onset asthma at nineteen, and was put on Vanceril (which is now off the market), an asthma inhaler designed to prevent asthma attacks from happening in the first place. Like most of these "maintenance" inhalers, the active ingredient in Vanceril was a steroid, like cortisone. At the time I put on about five pounds - a surprising amount for my "I can eat anything and not gain weight" 19 year old body. And it didn't really look like I had gained weight - my face, stomach, and hips just looked kind of "puffy". This was swelling due to the inhaler. But it was a fair sacrifice in order for my lungs to be protected.

After the manufacturer stopped making Vanceril, my doctor put me on Flovent 44 - the lowest dose of Flovent. Flovent has more steroids than the dose of Vanceril that I was on, so again, I put on a few pounds, but it was still tolerable. As time went by, I started having a few asthma flare-ups, and my doctor increased my dose to Flovent 110, the middle strength dose.

Last year I had a severe flu and still was having really bad attacks a few months later, so my doctor put me on Flovent 220. Within a period of weeks I packed on 20 pounds. I was ravenously hungry, especially at night. This is a side-effect of high-dose steroids. I tried controlling the weight with diet and exercise, to no avail. When I tried to go back to the lower dose of the inhaler, my asthma flared up again, even months later. I started experiencing other health problems - my joints hurt because of the extra weight, my blood pressure went up, my adrenal gland was straining, and my blood tests were abnormal on various readings - all due to either the weight or the Flovent itself.