Weight Gain, Water Retention, Muscle Strains, Fatigue

60 year old triathlete in perfect condition had severe stroke with hemiplegia. First 18 months steady recovery... feeling well, no weight gain. 6 months after stroke I'm back training 6-8 hour (bike ride, weight training and swimming) per week. However, 3 month ago doctor insisted I start Xarelto (this was the only change in a very structured life). Since then I've put on 20 pounds, started retaining water like crazy, all the while on the strict training schedule and diet. Now I'm having so many muscle pain and strains, especially in the legs and shoulders that I've had to stop training. Now the weight is really piling up and the BP is getting hard to control.

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REPORT

Yes, Xarelto has been known to cause these types of side effects, you are not the first person to report such and they are listed in the pharmaceutical information for this drug.

The only solution that was found, so far, is to switch to a different drug. This one is new and popular, so many doctors jump on prescribing such a medication, but it's not always to the patients benefit.

How are you feeling, now?

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I've decided to go off all anti-coagulants (AC) and back to aspirin which I tolerated well and picked up some cancer fighting benefits. If you are sedentary and out of shape, AC are better than nothing, but if ACs, through muscle damage, weight gain, and fatigue cause an active person to go inactive, the ACs actually increase your risk of mortality on balance. Inactivity has higher net risk factors than are offset by ACs benefits. I had hoped to get the best of both worlds - active and ACs but it now appears, for me at least, side effects force me to choose one or the other, and the clinical trials are clear... normal weight and activity are superior to ACs.

Interestingly, my doctor informs me there is no standard of care approved protocol for getting off Xarelto, only to switch to another AC. If ever there was a smoking gun that big pharma controls the FDA, the Medical Associations, and the doctors, it's Xarelto (and its siblings)... approved by virtue of only meeting the standard of being "non-inferior" to warfarin, hence no real testing for side effects beyond intracranial bleeding, and no proven safe way to ever get off the drug.

Pharma complains that it can take a billion dollars to bring a new drug to market, but Xarelto sales in its first full year (2013) was a billion dollars. All investment recovered in the first year with billions in profits for the next decade... not a bad deal. No wonder Pharma has stopped developing drugs that cure things, such as antibiotics, when you can develop drugs you must take for life even if the net benefit is "non-inferior". Sorry for the demi-rant, but I feel conned.

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I wanted to add my story to your post. Thank you for writing it. I knew something was wrong after taking Xarelto. I am a 56 years old 5'3" woman, I have weighed 110 lbs all my adult life. Never needed to "watch" what i ate though i have aleays prefered healthy home cooked meals. I used to be size 0 but since delivering my second son 27 years ago I went to size 2 until I suffered a DVT of the right leg and after couple of weeks on Lovenox was switched to Xarelto which I took for 6 months. By the time I stopped Xarelto I was 126 pounds and I had to get new clothes size 8. I can tell myself that I was not very active while on Xarelto but I have never really been active. My body shape has suddenly changed. The weight is mostly in my waist (belly and love handles). I have gone on a lower carbohydrate diet and have lost 5 pounds in 2 weeks with great effort but my body shape is still unusual for me and I'm still size 8.

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