(redirected from Meds.TopamaxExpandedProsCons)

Doctors don’t have the time to tell you everything about a drug. Patient information leaflets leave out a lot. Even if the PI sheet covers everything the language is so dense and obtuse that the good stuff is often lost in information overload. Most meds have something interesting about them.

Anyone who uses this page as the only source of information in deciding which med to take for their condition is a complete idiot and/or crazier than they or anyone else suspects. Although it would make them less stupid than those who choose meds based on side effects alone.

1.  Topamax Pros

  • Currently the only modern (approved after 1990) AED approved by the FDA that you can take by itself to treat both generalized, flopping around tonic-clonic seizures as well as partial seizures.
  • You’re more likely to lose weight than gain weight.
  • Topamax can (but doesn’t always) work for migraines at 25mg a day with only a few, short-lived side effects.
  • Topamax can (but doesn’t always) work for epilepsy at 100mg a day.
  • A lot of the side effects are usually dosage-dependent, so if Topamax does work for you at a low dosage, then the side effects may not be much of an issue.
  • Topamax will work again if you stop taking it and then try it again later; although the weight loss effect is less likely to work, and even if it does it won’t work as well the second time around. So if you were taking Topamax primarily to lose weight, trying it again probably won’t do you much good.
  • Topamax doesn’t have much in the way of potentially dangerous side effects.

2.  Topamax Cons

  • The promise of losing weight is oversold and often leads to disappointment.
  • The same applies to the low side effect profile. Sometimes they hit hard at a low dosage and never go away.
  • Topamax can make you dumber than a box of rocks.
  • You may need to raise or lower your dosage by 25–50mg a day for as long as you’re taking it. It’s just picky that way.
    • As in after a year or so of being fine and dandy at whatever dosage you’re on, you suddenly experience a new side effect that is really messing with you. Lowering, or even raising your dosage by 25–50mg a day will make it go away.
    • Then you’re fine for another nine months, or however long.
    • Lather, rinse, repeat.

3.  Interesting Stuff Your Doctor Probably won’t Tell You about Topamax (topiramate)

  • If you’re taking Topamax for migraines, paresthesia (pins and needles feeling in your extremities) is a good sign. It might mean the Topamax is more likely to work than not.
  • Topamax may encourage you to stop smoking. That study is just to back up my experience and anecdotal evidence I have. A lot of smokers who start start taking Topamax find they don’t like to smoke, or can stop smoking with only mild withdrawal symptoms, or can just smoke whenever they feel like it instead of having to smoke every day. Put me in that last group, even if it’s a stupid thing to do.
  • Considering or taking Topamax to lose some weight due to taking lithium? Get ready for more frequent blood draws, because Topamax can mess with lithium levels in seemingly random ways. See the drug-drug interactions page for details.
  • Taking Topamax along with Depakote or any other valproate can cause hypothermia (excessively low body temperature), while taking Topamax by itself can cause hyperthermia (excessively high body temperature), usually due to hypohydrosis or oligohydrosis (reduced sweating or not being able to sweat). Your doctor and/or pharmacist might tell you about the not sweating and elevated body temperature as that combo is one of Topamax’s potentially dangerous side effects.
  • Most of the really annoying (e.g. tingling extremities, sodas tasting like ass) and severe (e.g. metabolic acidosis, kidney stones) side effects are due to Topamax being a carbonic anhydrase inhibitor (CAI). However, Topamax is a mild CAI, and few people get any benefit from it, as CAIs aren’t used very often as AEDs, mainly because their side effects greatly outweigh the effect they have.
  • The reason why CAIs make carbonated beverages taste so bad and food in general taste weird is because carbonation is something we have taste buds for.
  • As an enzyme-inducing AED, albeit a dosage-dependent one, at a high enough dosage Topamax will sap your body of vitamin D, folic acid, and maybe even calcium. So ask your doctor about tests for vitamin D and calcium levels and supplements, because mileage is going to vary as to if you need to take vitamin D and/or calcium and when you would. You should probably take 400–1,000mcg of folic acid in any event, but no more than that, otherwise it might interfere with how well Topamax works.

‹ How to Take and Discontinue | Topamax Index | Side Effects ›
Crazy Meds Comprehensive Topamax pages


Date created 11 Jan 2011 - 13:43 Page Creator: Jerod Last edited by: JerodPoore

Pros, Cons, and Interesting Stuff Your Doctor Probably won’t Tell You about Topamax by Jerod is copyright 2011 Jerod


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Almost all of the material on this site is by Jerod Poore and is copyright © 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 Jerod Poore. Except, of course, the PI sheets - those are the property of the drug companies who developed the drugs the sheets are about - and any documents that are written by other people which may be posted to this site will remain the property of the original authors. You cannot reproduce this page or any other material on this site outside of the boundaries of fair use copying without the express permission of the copyright holder. That’s usually me, so just ask first. That means if want to print out a few pages to take to your doctor, therapist, counselor, support group, non-understanding family members or something like that - then that’s OK to just do. Go for it! Please. As long as you include this copyright notice and the following disclaimer, I’m usually cool with it.

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All information on this site has been obtained through our personal experience and the experiences family, friends, what people have reported on various reputable sites all over teh intergoogles, the medications’ product information / summary of product characteristic (PI/SPC) sheets, and from sources that are referenced throughout the site. As such the information presented here is not intended as a substitute for real medical advice from your real doctor, just a compliment to it. You should never, ever, replace what a real doctor tells you with something from a website on the Internet. The farthest you should ever take it is getting a second opinion from another real doctor. Educate yourself - always read the PI/SPC sheet or patient information leaflet (PIL) that comes with your medications and never ever throw them away.
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Very little information about visitors to this site is collected or saved. From time to time I look at search terms used and which pages they bring up in an effort to make the information I present more relevant. And the country of origin, just because I’m geeky like that. That’s about it. Depending on how you feel about Schrodinger, our privacy policy should either assuage or exacerbate your paranoia.
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Crazy Meds is optimized for the browser you’re not using on the platform you wish you had. Between you and me, it all looks a lot cleaner using Firefox or Safari, which is what a plurality of visitors use. And I’m running Windows XP3. On a computer that sits on top of my desk. With a 23 inch monitor. Hey, at least you can make the text larger or smaller by clicking on the + or - buttons in the upper right hand corner. If you have Java enabled. Like 99% of the websites on the planet, Crazy Meds is hosted on domain running an open source operating system with a variety of open source applications, including the software used to display what you’ve been reading. As such Crazy Meds is not responsible for whatever weird shit your browser does or does not do when you read this site2.
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1 While there are plenty of books to help you with hypochondria, for some reason there’s not much in the way of websites. Then again, staying off of the Internet is a large part of curing/managing the disorder.

2 Have I mentioned how open source operating systems for commercial applications is one of the dumbest ideas in the history of dumb ideas?
[begin rant] I rent a dedicated server for Crazy Meds. It’s sitting on a rack somewhere in Southern California along with a bunch of other servers that other people have rented. The hardware is identical, but no two machines have exactly the same operating systems. I don’t even need to see what is on any of the others to know this. If somebody got their server at the exact same time, with the exact same features as I did, I’m confident that there would be noticeable differences in some aspects of the operating systems. So what does this mean? For one thing it means that no two computers in the same office of a single company have the same operating system, and the techs can spend hours figuring out what the fuck the problem could be based on that alone. It also means that application software like IP board that runs the forum here has to have so many fucking user-configurable bells and whistles that even when I read the manual I can’t find every setting, or every location that every flag needs to be set in order for a feature to run the way I want it to run. And in the real world it means you can get an MBA not only with an emphasis on resource planning, but with an emphasis on using SAP - a piece of software so complex there are now college programs on how to use it. You might think, “But don’t people learn how to use Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator in college?” Sure, in order to create stuff. And in a way you’re creating stuff with SAP. But do you get a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with an emphasis on Photoshop?
Back in the Big Iron Age the operating systems were proprietary, and every computer that took up an entire room with a raised floor and HVAC system, and had less storage and processing power than an iPhone, had the same operating system as every other one, give or take a release level. But when a company bought application software like SAP, they also got the source code, which was usually documented and written in a way to make it easy to modify the hell out of it. Why? Because accounting principles may be the same the world over, and tax laws the same across each country and state, but no two companies have the same format for their reports, invoices, purchase orders and so forth. Standards existed and were universally ignored. If something went wrong it went wrong the same way for everyone, and was easy to track down. People didn’t need to take a college course to learn how to use a piece of software.
I’m not against the open source concept entirely. Back then all the programmers read the same magazines, so we all had the same homebrew utilities. We even had the forerunner to QR Code to scan the longer source code. Software vendors and computer manufacturers sponsored conventions so we could, among other things, swap recipes for such add-ons and utilities. While those things would make our lives easier, they had nothing to do with critical functions of the operating system. Unless badly implemented they would rarely cause key application software to crash and burn. Whereas today, with open source everything, who the hell knows what could be responsible some part of a system failing. [/end rant]


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