[AlaskaAngel]

jra40,

That is one of the best summaries about post-treatment weight gain for bc patients that I've seen - thanks for posting it.

Hopeful,

Thanks for that key reminder about the use of steroids and how they affect weight gain long-term, long after they have been stopped. Some patients refuse the steroids. I wish I had known that was possible -- although I don't know if it is possible with the use of such medications as the taxanes. (I had CAF, not a taxane.) To that I will add one more explanation for weight gain -- treatment causes female testosterone levels to drop dramatically, and testosterone is what helps to build muscle tissue.

As the article said, there is wide variation among us. On a personal basis, I can't quite agree with this comment in the article:

"Losing weight becomes much harder as we grow older, but it can still be done with careful diet changes and exercise."

I know they are just trying to encourage the entire group to do the necessary nutritional restriction and to do more exercise... but it sounds to me like we have been doing that and for us it hasn't been enough to help us out. They still don't seem to truly comprehend that fully. I think using metformin even though my blood sugar is in the normal range is what keeps the glucose level from spiking, and my totally unsubstantiated guess is that it boosts the cellular metabolism in some way. The nice thing about metformin too is that there are trials in progress using metformin for those who have been treated for breast cancer because it may reduce the recurrence rate. To me the logic behind that is that the metformin is reducing weight problems as well as using the energy for cancer cell death.

http://www.jeffersonhospital.org/The...ht-cancer.aspx