Hi, I’m Dr. Craig Primack, and I’m bringing you this week’s Medical Minute.

Contrave

To continue the conversation about weight loss, drugs, what we also call anti-obesity medications, that us physicians abbreviate as AOMs. This week we’re going to talk about Contrave. Contrave has been on the market since 2015 and is that a unique combination of two different drugs.

Inside of it is Bupropion, Some of us also know it as Wellbutrin. It is a antidepressant that does help in of course anti-depression, but it also helps a little bit in weight. It’s was combined with a medicine called naltrexone, which is an anti-opioid. An anti-opioid drug blocks the areas of the brain that are the receptors for certain pain medicines that are like Vicodin and Percocet and Tylenol Number Three.

Synergy

When you put this drug or these two drugs together, we get what I love to refer to as synergy. One drug plus one drug doesn’t give you just two drugs, but it gives you the effect of potentially three drugs, working on both the appetite side and the craving side. People ask me all the time or say all the time,

I’m not exceptionally hungry, but I do have a craving for this…

Usually this happens towards bedtime, maybe 8:00 at night, maybe 8:30, 9:00 in our living rooms sitting in front of the TV, watching our favorite streaming show.

It isn’t just that I’m hungry.   Because if I’m hungry, I can eat just about anything, but I’m hungry for something that’s not as healthy. Usually in high end carbohydrates and or fat, probably has some salt in it. If I ate nothing, I’d probably be okay, but I really, really, really want it. This drug works on the appetite side, where we’re hungry, but also on the craving side, making it unique among most of the weight loss drugs.

That being said, remember finding the right weight loss drug is important. It’s not easy for everybody and several times, do you have to try many of the different drugs that I’ve talked about over the last several weeks.

Obesity is a disease.

It takes four components to treat. It takes dietary change. It takes activity. It takes behavior changes, learning what to eat, learning how to eat, working on situations that may get you into trouble and then fourth, it often needs medication use. That’s medications like I’ve talked about that help weight loss, but also ones that prevent weight gain and medicines that we use for many other reasons that can cause weight gain maybe going on others.

Thank you for being here this week, on the sides of me there are links to other videos that I’ve done as well as a way to subscribe to my channel.

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Thanks and I’ll see you next week.