Elvis Presley, Jerry Lewis, Mo Mowlam, Dame Muriel Spark. - What is the connection?

Elvis Presley, Jerry Lewis, Mo Mowlam, Dame Muriel Spark. - What is the connection? - They all gained a great deal of weight and became bloated as a result of taking prescribed drugs, and none of them was warned that while taking those drugs they should have avoided salt/sodium and salty food as far as they could. The weight gain is called 'drug-induced obesity'.

See Jerry Lewis

Dr Mo Mowlam

Dame Muriel Spark

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

Sodium in foods

Lose weight

Examples of Steroid Victims - Example Number 4 - Jerry Lewis

Examples of Steroid Victims - Example Number 4 - Jerry Lewis

Comedian Has Stopped Taking Steroids That Added To His Weight

It's weird, isn't it? - and shocking - that even famous people like Jerry Lewis are not told that when taking prednisolone (prescribed to Jerry Lewis for pulmonary fibrosis) it is dangerous to eat salt or food containing salt. - This is because prednisolone, and many other drugs, cause sodium retention and water retention, and therefore weight gain and often morbid obesity, because of massive fluid retention.

The mechanism for this is that the muscles in the walls of the blood vessels are 'relaxed' by the drugs. - Sodium from ingested salt goes into the blood stream, along with the water it attracts to itself. - Normally any excess sodium and water then leave the bloodstream via the kidneys and the bladder and are excreted in the urine. - But when the blood vessels are relaxed they cannot withstand the incursions of any excess sodium. So the sodium and its accompanying water dilate the blood vessels, which become weakened and overstretched and the walls become thinner. - The blood becomes diluted by the added salt and water. - And the person becomes heavier - obviously. - Water is heavy...)o:

Now that I have explained this, you can see that the obesity caused cannot be addressed or lessened by eating fewer calories or taking vigorous exercise. - The problem is sodium and water, not fat. - How then to reduce the overweight?

Well, reducing the dose of the drugs can lessen the relaxation of the blood vessel walls and so they become less dilated and some of the excess fluid leaves the blood stream and is excreted. - This is obviously the main reason Jerry Lewis was able to lose 58 pounds of the weight gain. And the changes he has made to his diet may very well have included reducing his salt/sodium intake and this also would result in some of the excess water being shed from his bloodstream.

But the blood vessels almost certainly will have been permanently weakened by having been overstretched for so long. And his skin also will have been weakened and overstretched, probably permanently, by the excess water he has been carrying in his body since starting to take the steroids. ~It is unlikely that whatever he does now he will ever return to his former weight. He will always be overweight and carrying excess water in his bloodstream, and he also really needs to minimise his sodium intake for the rest of his life. He will always now be what is called 'sensitive to salt'.

All of this steroid-induced obesity and its attendant ill-health like hypertension and breathlessness could have been AVOIDED ENTIRELY if, when he was given the prescription, he had been told that the drugs cause sodium retention and consequent water retention and that therefore while taking the drugs he needed to avoid eating any salt or food containing any salt at all - because his kidneys would not excrete it as formerly they had.

I suspect that Elvis Presley probably had the same misfortune - drug prescriptions of powerful steroid-type drugs without the vital warning not to eat salt or food containing salt while taking the medication.

You can look up the side-effects in medical reference books and see for yourself that prednisolone causes sodium and water retention. - Why don't doctors bother to do this? - Why don't they get struck off for not doing it? - Why are they allowed to prescribe dangerous drugs without giving necessary information and warnings?

You can read more about obesity and the salt connection on my website. - Try my Mensa article!

Lose weight and benefit your health in countless other ways by eating less salt! - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better! -
How to Lose weight!
See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Many doctors are failing their patients when they prescribe drugs.

Many doctors are failing their patients when they prescribe drugs. - Here is a report I read the other day: Doctors 'failing patients' over prescriptions from Netdoctor.co.uk
and here are extracts from it:

"The study's authors, from the University of California, Los Angeles (Ucla), say that taking prescriptions as they are intended is "essential in ensuring their effectiveness".

If individual drug specifications are not followed then the patient in question could suffer from a worsening of the disease, a failure of treatment, a range of adverse side-effects and a potential overdose, the research team write.

...only one-third discussed potential side effects and about half explained how many doses should be taken and how often."

This, of course, is an American report. I live in England. I doubt that research such as this would be conducted in England, where the cover-up culture with regard to poor medical practice has a long and ignoble tradition. But I am confident that the medical negligence that fails to give, along with the prescription for a drug, necessary information about the drug and how it should be taken and what its possible side-effects are, is at least as prevalent in Britain as in the States. - And to the best of my knowledge - and that is informed knowledge, because I write as a steroid victim - doctors in Britain never warn their patients that when taking prescribed steroids like prednisone or HRT, or prescribed antidepressants like amitriptyline, or quite a lot of other drugs, they should not eat salt or food containing salt, because these drugs potentially cause severe sodium retention and consequent water retention, followed by massive obesity.

An example of a patient damaged in this way is Jerry Lewis, who became severely obese because of taking prednisone. - He clearly was not warned of the harm that eating salty food while taking the prednisone would cause him. I read today that he has lost a lot of the weight he gained because he has come off the prednisone. - He would not have gained the weight if he had avoided sodium while taking he drug. - If even famous, wealthy people like Jerry Lewis are not told of the dangers of combining prescribed steroids and salty food intake, then it is highly unlikely that 'ordinary' people ever get the necessary warning. - I regard this as criminal negligence on the part of medical practitioners. - If this failure to inform were to be punished with severe sanctions doctors would give the information. - Though goodness knows they should give it anyway! - What good does it do to turn patients into steroid victims, with a host of attendant morbidity and unhappiness and a shortened lifespan?

See helpful advice and information for steroid victims.