Dying to Take Drugs.

I just thought I'd share with you this qoute in todays Indepedent:

Dr David Shiers, co-author of the “Healthy Active Lives” statement, said: “The evidence is now clear – weight gain, cardiovascular risk and metabolic disturbance commonly appear early in the course of emerging psychosis and are potentially modifiable. As clinicians, if we dismiss these disturbances as being of secondary to controlling their psychiatric symptoms, we may be inadvertently condoning a first step on a path towards physical health inequalities for these young people. This vulnerable group needs a far more holistic and preventive approach.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/psychiatrists-call-for-action-over-premature-deaths-of-mentally-ill-8664106.html

The second part of the qoute is one of the things I complained about in a recent letter writing campaign, writing to all the players in UK Mental health care, including the regulators. 'If we dismiss these disturbances as being of secondary to controlling their psychiatric symptoms, we may be inadvertenty condoning a first step on a path towards physical health inequalities...' A bit of long winded way to say that the risk to benefit ratio, is too high, when taking psychiatric drugs. They will kill you by the age of about 55-60. If you're lucky enough to live that long. Given the laws of averages, lowering life expectancy by 15 to 20 years, means that many are dying much much earlier than that and are bringing the average downards. And by a lot.

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.