Diabetic Drugs and Mental Health.

Diabetes is a very serious and complex illness. I got diabetes in 2006, at the age of 31, which young by any standard. I was on Olanzapine age 21 at the highest dose for several years, before getting fed up with sleeping for 16 -18 hours a day and pushing my doctor for a change. I reduced my dose over the course of a year or more, right down as low as I get it, then switched to a different drug, which caused seizures. I reluctantly went back on to Olanzapine, but decided to try and come off it. I had 5 or 6 attempts, the longest one being about 5 weeks. But it was no good. I couldn’t sleep without them and it left me with early symptoms of a relapse.

I struggle with food addiction. I am fairly certain that without Olanzapine and mental health problems I would be as big as I am. But I crave carbs as if I were a heroin addict, suffering severe withdrawal symptoms with them. I got my eating under control a couple of times, losing 33 pounds in weight and getting my blood sugar levels down to single figures. But I could not sustain this and now my doctors are adding more and more different drugs to get my sugar levels under control. I know that taking any amount of drugs and any sort of new and exotic drugs, isn’t going to make much difference. It is not medication that will solve the problem. It is bringing my eating under control that is the solution. Even if I was on ever diabetes drug going, if I am still eating the wrong food then it won’t deal with the problem at all and I will open myself up to severe side effects.

I got diabetes because of Olanzapine. I then take another drug to deal with that side effect, which then gives me a new illness and new set of drugs, the most likely being Pancreatitis. Perhaps the drugs that would be prescribed for Pancreatitis, will cause another illness and so on.

An episode of Dispatches on Channel 4 recently explained that GLP1 type drugs prescribed by my doctor for diabetes, causes cell growth in the Pancreas. This leads to enlargement, inflation and sometimes cancer. In a sample of deceased US diabetes sufferers, who took GLP1 drugs for diabetes, all of them had an enlarged Pancreas. There were only eight samples.

Needless to say I chucked out my Januvia drugs.