I have to see a cardiologist about Atrial Fibrillation

I've had AF (Atrial Fibrillation) for years but I've never seen anybody about it before. Maybe you've read about GPs frequently assuming women are healthy when actually they have heart disease. (See also Unconscious bias: why women don’t get the same care men do.) - I'm hoping that some of this massive excess Blood Volume can be removed and thus relieve the pain of all the swollen veins (caused by taking inappropriately prescribed drugs in the past). - Fingers crossed I'll not be expected to take drugs for the condition. I'm very anti-pharmaceuticals because they have caused me such harm.

Were your varicose veins caused by the drugs you were prescribed?

Were your varicose veins caused by the drugs you were prescribed? - Mine were. - You can read about my experience here, where you will also be able to read about how to reduce similar harm done to your veins and to other systems of your body.

If you are going to start taking prescribed steroids, e.g. prednisone, or prescribed antidepressants, e.g. amitriptyline, you would be wise to avoid food containing added salt

If you are going to start taking prescribed HRT or steroids, e.g. prednisone, or prescribed antidepressants, e.g. amitriptyline, you would be wise to avoid food containing added salt/sodium. See my webpages http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/steroids.html and http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ami.html. See also my webpage about salt/sodium in food.

Most prescription drugs deplete your body of essential nutrients

Most prescription drugs deplete your body of essential nutrients. Perhaps the most notorious of these widely-prescribed drugs are statins. Quite apart from the patients-reported adverse effects of pain, statins deplete the body of Co-enzyme Q10. Patients who take these drugs should be warned of this and advised to take Co-enzyme Q10 as a supplement. This information should always accompany the prescription. But it doesn't.

 

The many prescribed drugs that cause sodium retention/water retention/fluid retention/weight gain/obesity/water weight deplete the body of calcium, potassium, magnesium and possibly zinc. This means (among other adverse health effects) that the bones get weaker and a fall is much more likely to result in a fracture - and a more complicated fracture. These dangerous drugs include amitriptyline and other tricyclic antidepressants, Epilim and other anti-epilepsy drugs, HRT, steroids including hydrocortisone, prednisone and prednisolone, anti-psychotics and others. Patients taking these drugs should be advised to eat full fat dairy yogurt for its dairy calcium and to reduce their intake of salt and salty food. They should also eat plenty of potassium-rich foods, e.g. vegetables.

 

Diuretics like bendrofluazide/Bendroflumethiazide, which are often prescribed for raised blood pressure, deplete the body of potassium and magnesium. Patients taking these are often advised to eat bananas because of their potassium content.

 

Isoniazid, a drug used to treat tuberculosis, depletes the body of vitamin B6 (pyridoxine). This depletion in turn causes disordered sleep, mainly insomnia. Patients taking isoniazid should be prescribed vitamin B6 to remedy this problem.

 

Beta-blockers such as propranolol can deplete our bodies of melatonin, and insufficient melatonin (one of the hormones in the body) causes loss of sleep. If the physician does not prescribe melatonin to help the patient with this problem, melatonin can be bought without prescription.

 

These are by no means all of the nutritional problems caused by prescription drugs, and of course malnutrition is only one of the host of adverse side-effects of prescribed medications. It is best to consider carefully whether taking prescribed drugs is more likely to do harm than good. For example, statins do most people more harm than good, and anti-depressants work no better than dummy pills, but cause many health problems, including cognitive impairment and memory loss. - You've only got one brain and it is not infinitely elastic to cope with brain-damaging drugs. You've only got one body and you can't trade it in for a new one. In my opinion it's best to avoid all prescription drugs unless they really are necessary, and best to have the lowest effective dose and to take it for the shortest time. The safest medicine is good natural food (not processed food), and the best doctor is good nutrition.

Group claiming to speak for pain sufferers is funded by drug companies that make and profit from sale of painkillers

The American Pain Foundation, a group that claims to speak for pain sufferers, is funded by drug companies that make and profit from the sale of painkillers. They downplay the risks of these drugs and this is compounding the growing incidence of painkiller addiction. "Overdoses now kill nearly 15,000 people a year — more than heroin and cocaine combined. In some states, the painkiller death toll exceeds that of car crashes. The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has declared the overdoses from opioid drugs like OxyContin an “epidemic.” And a growing group of experts doubts that they work for long-term pain."
See this article in The Washington Post.

Antipsychotics kill five UK dementia sufferers every day

The Telegraph reports that antipsychotics kill five UK dementia sufferers every day and that at last meaningful action is being proposed to instruct doctors to review all antipsychotics prescriptions and to seek to reduce them by finding “therapeutic alternatives” to these harmful drugs.

Taking Amitriptyline for oral/mouth pain is not a good idea

Taking Amitriptyline for oral/mouth pain is not a good idea in my opinion. Amitriptyline is a tricyclic antidepressant that is sometimes prescribed as a painkiller, particularly when the pain is in the mouth. This is often because the prescribing doctor doesn't really believe that the patient actually is in pain, especially if the patient is female.

Doctors who prescribe amitriptyline for pain sometimes explain to the patient that amitriptyline is an antidepressant drug that can help with pain, but often these doctors deliberately deceive the patients into believing that amitriptyline actually is a painkiller and do not mention that it is an antidepressant, and that they are prescribing it because they have decided the patient is 'a depressive', not a person in pain. Doctors often confuse depression and pain, unfortunately.

Whatever the ins and outs of the matter, amitriptyline is not a good idea for mouth pain. - For one thing antidepressants work no better than dummy pills for depression. For another thing, they usually cause unhealthy weight gain and all its attendant health problems. And amitriptyline in particular causes 'dry mouth', which patients are told will stop when their body has got used to the drug, but which often does not stop however long they are unfortunate enough to be on the drug.

Now 'dry mouth'/lack of saliva obviously makes dental decay more likely, especially of the lower teeth, since normally many of these are bathed in saliva most of the time, and this inbuilt natural 'mouthwash', therefore, protects the teeth to some extent from food residue clinging to them. Furthermore, saliva is a buffer solution which chemically protects teeth from acid attack. So existing mouth pain is likely to be augmented by the development of dental caries, making matters worse, not better.

Anemia prescription drug that causes more harm than good

Read about Epogen, also known as Procrit, in this Bloomberg report. "A drug sold by Amgen Inc. and Johnson & Johnson for people with anemia didn’t reduce heart damage in patients who’d experienced heart attacks and may increase the chances of recurrence or death, a study found. Epogen, approved in 1989 as the first drug for Thousand Oaks, California-based Amgen, is used by patients undergoing kidney dialysis to boost their depleted red blood cells. J&J sells the drug as Procrit, mostly for cancer patients getting chemotherapy."

Doctors are prescribing more and more antidepressants

The depressing news that doctors are prescribing more and more antidepressants, e.g. Prozac, has been widely reported this week, and it has been suggested that debt and job worries have contributed to this situation. It has also been suggested by Dr Clare Gerada, head of the Royal College of GPs, in this BBC News report, that "some of the rise in prescribing was also likely to be due to increased awareness about the condition and doctors getting better at diagnosis."

Let's just have a think about this. - Yes, there will certainly be more people with money problems and worries, and worries about having lost their jobs or whether they will be losing their jobs. To feel depressed/upset/worried is normal in these circumstances. - How does it help at all to label this normal reaction a mental illness with a catchall name of Depression? And how can taking psychotropic drugs help with money problems or with holding onto a job or obtaining another job? - It can't.

Drugs cannot help with the practical problems of being short of money or being out of work. Nor do they help lift the spirits, despite their erroneously being referred to sometimes as 'happy pills'. Antidepressant drugs work no better than dummy pills , and they frequently cause great harm (adverse side-effects) to the people who take them.

I wonder whether Dr Gerada has considered getting a job as a comedian? The idea that doctors are 'getting better at diagnosis' of 'depression' has me in stitches...(o: - Every time we read a newspaper there is some spokesperson or other explaining that depression/mental illness is on the rise, and that 1 in ? of us (insert your own figures for the incidence of this putative illness) will experience it before we die. It would be a good idea if doctors were to give up 'diagnosing depression' and making their patients more ill by prescribing toxic antidepressants, and instead ordered tests for anaemia, vitamin D deficiency, etc. and concentrated on helping the patients by advocating dietary changes where necessary, and prescribing vitamin and mineral supplements to remedy nutritional problems. - This would undoubtedly make their patients feel a lot better and would make them physically and mentally much more efficient and so more likely to remain/become employed.

NHS-funded drug-pushing continues to increase

The Telegraph reports that the amount of drugs prescribed by GPs has tripled over 15 years.

It's high time to have legal curbs put on GPs' wanton over-prescribing, with severe sanctions against routine offenders. Pharmaceutical drugs are not the pathway to health; the NHS's over-reliance on drugs does far more harm than good to most of the patients who take them.

Drug-pushing: irresponsible suggestion that tamoxifen and raloxifene be prescribed to prevent breast cancer

BBC News reports "an international panel of cancer experts" recommending that women at high risk of developing breast cancer should be prescribed tamoxifen and raloxifene, despite the risk of serious adverse side-effects from such drugs. 'Cancer experts' who recommend toxic cancer drugs for people who do not have cancer would, I guess, be 'experts' who have cosy relationships with the drug manufacturers and that their foolish recommendation stems from conflict of interest. I say that because I feel that anyone truly concerned about women at high risk of breast cancer would be seeking to protect them from running any unnecessary risks from taking toxic drugs, and would be advising them to safeguard their health by eating good, natural food free of additives, high in nutrition, low in salt/sodium and low in sugar - something like a paleo diet. There is a well-founded opinion that cancers feed on sugar, so it would clearly be best to avoid sugar as far as possible. (Note : it is often the taking of prescribed drugs that predisposes some women to weight gain and breast disease in the first place, i.e. prescribed steroids and HRT, tricyclic antidepressants, anticonvulsants, and many more.)

World Alzheimer's Day today

As it's World Alzheimer's Day today, I'd like to remind everyone of the recent good news about researchers favouring Vitamin B supplementation to ward off Alzheimer's Disease, and to suggest future research along the lines of finding any other nutrients that also would reduce the risk of developing this illness. But even before this, I suggest that it might be a good idea for (elderly) people at risk of impaired memory or failing reasoning ability, to have tests of their nutritional status, and to have any deficiencies dealt with. They would feel better and happier and become stronger and less vulnerable to falls, etc. And it would all be so much better and more positive and fruitful than trying to label/(libel?) them 'depressed' or any other label that rewards greedy GPs with even more money in their practice's pocket! I suspect that improving nutrition would not only delay/prevent the onset of dementia but also of many other diseases currently thought of as the diseases of aging but actually the consequences of sub-optimal or inadequate nutrition, or damage from prescribed pharmaceuticals.

Another suggestion I've made many times before is that there should legal curbs on prescribing pharmaceutical drugs. - 1) A complete ban on antidepressants would save a lot of money and a lot of suffering since they don't work even though many doctors like to deceive themselves that they do, and they very frequently cause weight gain/obesity/fluid retention/sodium retention and its co-morbidities. 2) Allowing only designated doctors (those with more than the usual rudimentary knowledge/ignorance of the sodium retention side-effect) to prescribe certain classes of drugs like steroids, etc which frequently result in rapid, massive weight gain, because the highly relevant fact is that these drugs also have dementia as one of their many ghastly side-effects.

Read about the anti-depressant, Amitriptyline and prescribed steroids and HRT and about vulnerable groups.

Big Pharma to become Big Brother? Sinister move by Novartis.

Novartis has just purchased the technology to encapsulate a chip inside a pill that allows doctors—and government and Big Pharma and and the compliance police—to monitor how well you're following orders to take pills.
Read article at gaia-health.com

Big Pharma's donations buy political influence and influence drug-prescribing habits in Australia.

Big Pharma spends millions every year buying influence in Canberra. Adele Ferguson and Eric Johnston investigate the ruthless tactics, the money and the spindoctors behind the scenes.

Read article in the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)

Remember:

1) Pharmaceutical drugs have adverse side-effects that are frequently worse than the problem for which they are prescribed.

2) Good nutrition is the best medicine and has no adverse side-effects.

3) Cutting down on salt and salty food benefits your health in a multitude of ways.

What really causes obesity?

Fluid retention is the pre-eminent cause of obesity, and the main cause of fluid retention is salt sensitivity. In children a high salt intake causes salt sensitivity/fluid retention/obesity. In adults it is sometimes the result of eating salt and salty food during pregnancy, when altered hormone levels make the body vulnerable to salt. It is most dramatically and tragically caused by the taking of injudiciously prescription drugs such as steroids, HRT and certain tricyclic antidepressants.

The way to reduce obesity is to abandon the dieting fallacy and address the fluid retention by severely cutting down on salt/sodium intake and eating plenty of fruit and fresh vegetables as these help to remove from the body some of the excess sodium and its accompanying water.

You can lose weight by eating less salt! – Go on! – Try it!

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

Child Obesity

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

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

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain is concerned about elderly people taking so many prescribed drugs and being unsure of side-effects.

The Telegraph reports that a survey by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain "shows that nearly half of over 65s are currently taking over five medicines at any one time," and "Royal Pharmaceutical Society spokesman and pharmacist, Paul Johnson says; “It’s not unusual for older people to get confused with the medicine they are taking, particularly when they are on numerous types of medication.""

The Society is seeking to promote an annual review of the medication elderly people take and says that pharmacists are ideally placed to do such reviews.

Well clearly somebody should be reviewing prescribed meds! - A cocktail of prescription drugs is fraught with risk, especially with confused older people. - You'd think our highly-paid GPs would be doing reviews as a matter of routine and culling the drugs. - Taking more than 5 prescription drugs at the same time, which each have potential/actual adverse side-effects, and causing the side-effects to be increased in number and severity when taken with other drugs... This seems a recipe for harm for most of the patients taking them, though clearly it is of great benefit to the drug manufacturers.

What motivates multiple drug prescribing like this? I consider it irresponsible.

Before you go to the doctor to ask for anti-depressants, consider this:

BEFORE you go to the doctor to ask for anti-depressants, consider this research finding, reported in February 2008 in the Telegraph: Anti-depressants 'no better than dummy pills' by a Hull University team led by Prof Irving Kirsch. Not very often doctors seek to reduce pill-taking! - I fervently hope this will save a lot of people having their lives/health damaged by harmful, useless drugs.

MIND, the mental health charity, recommends a walk in the country as being helpful in lifting depression.

Are you on a diet? - Dieting is an often overlooked, but significant cause of depression. Good nutrition is an excellent way to improve your health. Obviously when you are not eating enough for the needs of your body and your brain you will experience both physical and mental harm. - It is not necessary (or desirable, or effective or even safe) to diet to lose weight. The safe, natural way to lose excess weight is to cut down on salt and salty food. Avoid ready meals and takeaways because these are usually highly salted and offer poor nutrition. They are likely to worsen your feelings of depression.
Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver damage and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection
And see Sodium in foods
FAT RETENTION

Read also:
amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

NHS is told to improve the care it provides for children

BBC News reports a high incidence of errors in its care of children, in particular mistakes made with medication, mainly attributable to the lack of availability of medicines in child doses.

My own feeling is that if child doses are not available, it may well be that data for that medication on children has not been approved and that it would be better not to provide that medication.

Harmful side-effects are associated with dementia drugs

Harmful side-effects are associated with several dementia drugs commonly prescribed for elderly people.
Read article at sciencedaily.com

Dr John Zeisel has a kinder, safer, drug-free alternative to offer for elderly people with dementia. See http://www.imstillhere.org/