Side effects
When something is wrong, you know the symptom, not the category it belongs to. This page starts from the symptom and sends you to whichever part of the site deals with it — and tells you plainly when it is not a food problem at all.
Naming the symptom first · Urgent signs at the top of the page
Say the symptom, and this page will point you somewhere.
Each group goes to the section that covers it. Symptoms sit across several sections rather than in one of their own, so a guide has one home and you have several ways to reach it.
Digestion
Nausea, vomiting, reflux, bloating
Feeling sick, bringing food back up, burning after meals, or filling up after three mouthfuls. The digestion guides name each one separately, because what helps depends entirely on which it is.
Go to digestion guidesDigestion
Constipation and diarrhea
Both are common while intake is low, and both are affected by fiber and fluid together rather than either alone. Fiber goes up slowly here, not all at once.
Go to digestion guidesHydration
Not drinking enough, dry mouth, dizziness on standing
Thirst is an unreliable prompt when appetite has changed, and fluid arrives with food — so when meals shrink, intake drops twice over.
Go to hydration guidesNutrition
Eating far less than before
A smaller intake is the expected effect of the medication, and it is also the thing that makes everything else harder. This is about what a small plate needs to carry.
Go to nutrition guidesProtein and muscle
Feeling weaker, or losing strength
Weight lost quickly is not only fat. Protein and loading your muscles are the two things with the most behind them, and both get harder when portions are small.
Go to protein guidesMicronutrients
Tiredness that food does not explain
Vitamins and minerals are the part of a smaller intake that goes unnoticed longest. This is the section that covers what a clinician might test and why.
Go to micronutrient guides
The strictest version of our review standard.
Symptom pages are the ones most likely to be read by someone who is worried, so they are held to the strictest version of our review standard. Each will carry all of this, in this order.
- What the symptom actually is, described before anything is suggested
- What commonly contributes to it during treatment
- What nutrition and hydration can reasonably do about it
- What not to do, including the things that sound sensible and are not
- When to contact a clinician rather than trying another strategy
- The signs that mean today rather than at the next appointment
- A link to the symptom journal, so a pattern reaches the appointment with you
- A link to the official medication label, never a paraphrase of it alone
None published yet · Held until a clinical reviewer has signed them off
A month of impressions is hard to describe. A record is not.
Symptoms are hard to describe from memory, and an appointment is short. Recording as you go turns a month of vague impressions into two or three specific things worth saying. If you are the one noticing this on behalf of someone else, the record is just as useful in your handwriting.
Tool
Tolerance Journal
Record what you ate, how much, when, and what happened afterwards, so the pattern is on paper instead of in your memory.
In development · not yet reviewed
See what it will doTool
Appointment Prep
Turn a month of small observations into the three or four things worth saying in a short appointment.
In development · not yet reviewed
See what it will do
Adverse reactions belong to the medication.
Adverse reactions and warnings belong to the medication, and the authoritative version is the prescribing information. The medication summaries quote the label and link to it; they do not replace your prescriber, and Appetune gives no dosing guidance.
Name the symptom, then decide what to do about it.
And when it is not a food problem, this site will say so rather than offering another strategy.