Are you overweight and apple-shaped? You could reduce this problem by reducing salt intake.

Are you overweight and apple-shaped? You could reduce the problem by cutting down on salt and salty food. Everyone who is overweight has a higher than normal blood volume because of excess water/fluid retention, and would benefit from eating less salt/sodium. 

(Steroid victims in particular are at risk of huge weight gain and the dangerous condition of being obese and apple-shaped, because they are so seldom informed that they need seriously to reduce their salt intake while taking the steroid meds.)

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, angina, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Are you aware that HRT is steroid medication that can cause massive weight gain?

Are you aware that HRT is steroid medication that can cause massive weight gain? Read more about HRT and Steroids here. Read my Mensa article about weight gain caused by HRT and Steroids here. And read about how to lose weight by eating less salt and salty food.

Pharmaceuticals plus Salt: the Deadly Duo

It is a commonplace for doctors to assume that the weight gain of people taking amitriptyline or other antidepressants is actually caused by over-eating, and they commonly assert that depressed people indulge in comfort-eating. But the doctors are wrong; the weight gain consequent on starting to take amitriptyline is caused by salt and water retention, not fat.

When people find the side-effects so unpleasant, and the drug so unhelpful for their chronic pain, for instance, that they stop taking it, they find that much of the weight gain disappears.

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

If you have gained a lot of weight and become obese because of taking prescribed steroids or HRT then I have very good news for you! - You have gained weight because of excess water stored in your body - mainly in the veins. You are suffering from what is called hypervolaemia - that is, abnormally high blood volume - and it is easy to reduce this abnormally high blood volume by losing some of the excess water. Another name for the problem is sodium retention. - This is the name that often appears in the reference books doctors have, that they use to look up correct doses of drugs they prescribe and side-effects that can result from taking the drugs.

To prevent or reduce the weight gained, you need to cut down on salt and salty food, because the sodium retention has made you sensitive to salt.

If you have been inappropriately prescribed or over-dosed with corticosteroids or HRT or any of the many other drugs that cause weight gain, then you may well have developed drug-induced Cushing's Syndrome, a very serious illness, frequently far more serious than the health problem for which the drugs were prescribed. It is, to the best of my knowledge, an entirely preventable illness if doctors conform to the protocols for prescribing these drugs and if they monitor patients' progress on the drugs, and if they warn patients about salt. It is VITALLY important that it be realised that weight gain resulting from these drugs is from sodium and water retention, so patients taking these drugs should be warned not to eat salt, or foods containing salt, while taking the medication. They should also be informed that any weight gained in this way can easily be reduced by eating less salt/sodium, and they should be warned not to try to lose weight by eating less food or restricting calories because this will not help them to lose weight and is harmful.

If you gain weight suddenly and unexpectedly when you start to take prescribed medication that I have not mentioned on this page, it is highly likely that the weight gain is caused by the drug. You may like to consider whether you really need to take that drug, or whether the dose could be lowered. At any rate if you continue with the drug, try to reduce your salt intake in order to reduce the weight gain.

So all you have to do is eat less salt. - If, at the same time, you increase your potassium by eating more fresh fruit and vegetables (unsalted vegetables), then you will lose the water and the weight even faster. - You will already have discovered that calorie counting and 'slimming' do not help you to lose weight if you are a steroid victim. - Take my advice, eat less salt, and the weight will fall off you like magic.

See also my Fat Retention page.

One of the many people I have helped with information about sodium retention was Dame Muriel Spark, who died in April 2006. Even she, as famous as she was, had not been warned to avoid salt while taking steroid medication and so had gained a lot of weight. She had also been taking some effervescent tablets which were high in sodium, but she discontinued these when she learned from me that they were contributing to the excess weight.

A Note about Pain-killers:

The class of drugs known as NSAIDs - Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs - is listed as causing Sodium Retention and in particular causing swelling in the lower legs and ankles. These include commonly used pain-killers, which are available both as prescription drugs and over the counter drugs. Examples are Ibuprofen (Brufen), Aspirin, Diclofenic and many others.

Also remember that effervescent tablets may contain a high proportion of sodium, so you may prefer to change from taking effervescent tablets to taking the non-effervescent type.

Radio 4's File on 4 tonight deals with how AstraZeneca 'suppressed' Seroquel drug test data re massive weight gain and diabetes side-effects

Radio 4's File on 4 tonight (26/01/2010) deals with how AstraZeneca 'suppressed' Seroquel drug test data about its side-effects of massive weight gain and diabetes. See article on BBC News. "The marketing team sued over a drug's alleged side effects tried to suppress key data, an ex-employee has claimed. Seroquel's former UK medical adviser told the BBC he was pressured to approve promotional material which said weight gain was not an issue."

The British Medical Journal editor, Dr Fiona Godlee, sensibly urges that the medicine licensing system be reviewed. She says the pharmaceutical industry should no longer provide the evaluations of its own drugs for the licensing body to consider.

See also File on 4 itself: "A British drug company is being sued by more than 15,000 people in the United States who claim its bestselling antipsychotic drug caused severe weight gain, diabetes and other serious medical conditions. Ann Alexander investigates concerns about the way it was marketed and asks how much the public should be told about the drugs they take."

Actually there are dozens of commonly prescribed drugs that have these side-effects and these are obviously a major cause of the continuing rise in the incidence and severity of obesity and type 2 diabetes and a host of other degenerative illnesses that are co-morbidities of obesity. The drugs include cortico-steroids, HRT and other medications containing oestrogen - like some birth control medication (contraceptives), tricyclic anti-depressants, especially amitriptyline, some SSRI anti-depressants, anti-psychotics (notoriously Zyprexa,aka olanzapine), some anti-epileptics/anticonvulsants, e.g. Epilim (sodium valproate). This is by no means an exhaustive list. See my webpage about steroids and HRT et al.

So the NHS (and all other purchasers of pharmaceutical drugs the world over), as well as paying for the drugs that its doctors prescribe, incurs the astronomical costs of the vast spectrum of disabling chronic health problems they cause. - ALL of this avoidable ill-health and suffering results from the primary adverse side-effect, which is sodium retention, and all of the innocent patients who are its victims become sensitive to salt/sodium, and should have been warned strictly to avoid salt and salty food while taking the medication, because for them, salt intake causes them weight gain. I have been researching this subject intensively for well over ten years now, and I have not heard of even one doctor who gives and stresses this vital message to his/her victims/patients. Inadequate knowledge of drug side-effects is lamentably widespread in the medical profession. Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, osteomalacia, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, boost your lung function and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it!

See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

Sodium in foods

Fat retention and fat excretion: the importance of getting enough calcium.

Psychiatric drugs are causing huge weight gain in children for whom they are prescribed

US News reports on how psychiatric drugs are causing huge weight gain in children for whom they are prescribed. The weight gain is, of course, accompanied by increased levels of LDL cholesterol and triglycerides in their blood, as is characteristic for obesity.

The medics quoted in the article are disgracefully ignorant of the facts about what causes these extremely harmful effects.

As I have been explaining on my website and in this blog and in other ways for many years now, the weight gain is because these drugs cause sodium and water retention and the weight gain can be reduced/prevented by avoiding salt and salty food. Scandalously, these ignorant prescribers of these powerful, dangerous drugs, are not warning their patients/victims that while taking this pharmaceutical junk, they should strictly avoid eating salt or salty food. For people - especially children - taking these drugs, salt/sodium becomes literally a poison, a poison that will permanently damage their health. - My personal opinion is that children should never be prescribed this junk. They should be protected from this great harm.

Prescription drugs including many steroids, many antidepressants, anti-psychotics and epilepsy drugs as well as other pharmaceuticals, are a major cause of fluid retention/obesity and especially of morbid obesity. - Taking prescription drugs should be avoided unless they are absolutely necessary.

Furthermore, the fluid retention problem often leads on to fat retention - which, surprisingly, is not caused by eating too much fat, but by mineral deficiencies, principally calcium deficiency.

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

Patients should be given facts about pharmaceutical drugs

Pharmaceutical companies spend millions each year to market drugs to doctors and potential patients. That makes it all the more outrageous that AstraZeneca is asking an Orlando court to keep information about the performance of its lucrative antipsychotic drug Seroquel secret. The company is claiming public safety, saying it shouldn't be required to release information about the drug that could cause a panic among "a vulnerable patient population" that might stop taking the drug without a doctor's oversight. But the real public safety issue is one of public health and whether the company hid findings that Seroquel causes weight gain and diabetes. The legal system must put public health — and a patient's right to know — above a company's interest in secrecy.
Read editorial in the St. Petersburg Times (Florida/USA)

Lose weight, by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

The modern obesity epidemic has its roots in the dramatic growth of the human brain and body over two million years ago, misguided scientists claim.

AAAS: Modern obesity epidemic can be traced back two million years
article in the Telegraph

Yes, folks. - It's the usual dangerously misleading claptrap about calories, this time with the emphasis on modern sedentary lifestyles compared with the more active lives of the hunter-gatherers long ago.

Extracts:

"Higher calorie, nutritionally dense diets became necessary to fuel the energy demands of the exceptionally large human brain and help switch from a foraging to "hunter-gatherer" existence.

But the transition from an extremely active subsistence to a modern, sedentary, lifestyle has created energy imbalances that have played a major role in obesity.

According to Professor William Leonard, an anthropologist at Northwestern University, activity patterns must get every bit as much attention as consumption of unhealthy foods in any attempt to reverse the modern-day obesity malaise.

Professor Leonard, who discussed his work during the 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) science meeting, said two million years ago diets had to become richer to provide the nutrition to support the rapid evolutionary increases in both the brain and body sizes of our ancestors."

"The imbalance between energy intake and energy expenditure today, Professor Leonard concludes, is the root cause of obesity in the industrialized world."

No, Professor Leonard, the roots of the modern obesity epidemic are much more recent than 2,000,000 years ago. - More like round about 1950, say, which I believe is roughly when doctors started prescribing steroids despite not knowing or understanding that they caused massive weight gain, caused in turn by fluid retention, caused in turn by sodium retention, all of which resulted from the effect of the prescribed steroids on the blood vessels. I don't know when tricyclic antidepressants were first prescribed, but I'd guess it was round about the same time - maybe about a decade later. They had the same damaging effect on the veins and were - and still are - very widely prescribed. Nor do I know exactly when the anti-psychotics started to be prescribed - the anti-psychotics that also caused morbid obesity. And likewise the oestrogen-containing hormone replacement drugs - but I guess that that too was in the second half of the twentieth century, the period in which doctors, hand in hand with the baleful pharmaceutical industry, came to destroy the health of far more patients than they have ever helped. All of these factors were compounded by an unprincipled food industry that ladled vast amounts of salt into inferior processed foods which were bought by consumers who looked for convenience food as more and more women were going out to work and so looking to save time in meal preparation. - To cap it all, the dieting industry started to drop its insidious poison of the need to eat less, exercise more, message that has harmed so many millions of innocent victims.

Obesity is not caused by eating fat or sugar or too many calories. Nor is it caused by inactivity/laziness. It is caused by weakened veins leading to fluid retention in the bloodstream, i.e. sodium retention and water/fluid retention, and thereby to excess weight/obesity.

The way to reduce/prevent obesity is to avoid salt and salty food, and to avoid prescription drugs as far as possible because these are a major cause of the the blood vessel damage that precedes the salt sensitivity/fluid retention.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver 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!

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers

Children and Obesity

Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free.

If you have gained a great deal of weight in a short time it's pretty likely the weight gain was a side-effect of medication prescribed by your doctor

See prescribed steroids and HRT

and amitriptyline

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver 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!

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods

Obese women are '50pc more likely to die of breast cancer'

Obese women '50pc more likely to die of breast cancer'

Extract from the Telegraph:

"Significantly overweight women are almost 50 per cent more likely to die of breast cancer within five years of diagnosis, experts warned yesterday.

Doctors at the 6th European Breast Cancer Conference in Berlin warned that it was more difficult to diagnose the disease in obese patients who also risked getting poorer treatment because doctors feared giving them a high enough dose of chemotherapy for their body weight.

Almost 1,500 patients a year in the UK could be diagnosed earlier if they were not obese, research at the conference suggests. Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer among women, and almost 45,000 cases are diagnosed in the UK every year, around 9,000 in clinically obese patients.

However, that percentage is predicted to increase because of lifestyle factors that have led to a quarter of women being diagnosed as obese.

Obesity has previously been shown to increase the risk of developing the disease, by raising the level of sex hormones such as oestrogen."

I wonder if that last claim is true - that obesity raises the level of oestrogen in the body? - I rather doubt it. - Because I know that the opposite is definitely true - i.e. that raised oestrogen levels cause weight gain. This is because higher oestrogen levels cause sodium and water retention (aka salt sensitivity). - Thus salt/sodium is the vector for fluid retention, which is, of course, the cause of obesity. - Obese people easily and rapidly lose weight if they avoid eating salt and salty food. - So the best thing to do to avoid breast cancer and/or reduce excess weight is to cut out salt.

The two main causes of extreme obesity in women are prescription drugs - mainly tricyclic antidepressants and steroids - and pregnancy. - If they were informed that these caused sodium retention and water retention and that therefore salt intake should be minimised, then the huge weight gains would be avoided - and the cancers and other health problems that result from the weight gain - but they are not given this vital information...)o:

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html (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

vulnerable groups

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions and

See FAT RETENTION

Children and Obesity

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations

Examples of Steroid Victims - Example Number 5 - Dr Mo Mowlam

Examples of Steroid Victims - Example Number 5 - Dr Mo Mowlam

Mo Mowlam was an extremely popular British MP and served in Tony Blair's government. She died in 2005, aged 55, and here is one of the obituaries to her - Mo Mowlam's political obituary

The article refers to her "steroids-induced weight gain" - but although the steroids she took because of a brain tumour certainly resulted in the massive weight gain that visually changed a beautiful woman into a fat caricature of her former self, this disfiguring weight gain could have been avoided/lessened by a very low salt/sodium diet, because it is not steroids per se which cause the weight gain, it is steroids PLUS SODIUM. - Steroids plus sodium/salt resulted in massive fluid retention. - If only she had been warned not to eat salt or food containing salt while taking the steroid medication she would not have become obese as she did, and would not have suffered the many problems that the obesity entailed. - I did write to her on the matter but I fear my letter and my later email may never have been read by her, government ministers being such busy people.

For further information see http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/steroids.html

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.

Examples of Steroid Victims in the UK - Example Number 2.

Examples of Steroid Victims in the UK - Example Number 2.

A young woman, 'Dee', was brought to see me in 2000 by Marion, a friend of mine, who recognised Dee’s weight gain as similar to what mine had been.

'Dee' is less than 5 feet tall and she had always weighed 7 and a half stone (105 pounds). She told me that on Feb 1st 1999 a professor in the eye dept at one of our local teaching hospitals had put her on to 22x5mg prednisolone tablets a day for an eye problem. (Prednisolone is one of the steroids that cause sodium and water retention and it should not be prescribed without a warning about this, and the advice to minimise sodium intake while taking the medication. 'Dee' had not been given this information ot advice.) Such a high initial dose beggars belief! After 3 months on this daily dose her weight had increased by 3 stone – 40% of her body weight!!! – and like me she had stretch marks because of so rapid an increase in weight. She had been reduced to eating only one meal a day in an effort - unsuccessful - to lose weight.

When she told the professor of the weight gain and of the pain she was experiencing, his response was to look away and say something like, ‘It’s funny how women are always complaining of pain.’ - It’s not funny, actually...)o: - It’s disgraceful that women patients are treated in this way... - It is a typical example of medical sexism, to which I have referred in a previous entry in this blog. - Medical sexism is extremely damaging to women patients and it is extremely common in Britain...

After that first 3 months the tablets she had been prescribed were gradually reduced in number to one a day, which she was taking when I met her. But the reduction had not brought about any loss of weight. - The damage had been done. Fortunately Marion and I were able to tell her about salt sensitivity. - We spent 2 hours telling her. We had also to overcome the idea that fat/calories have to be reduced in order to lose weight.

Some months later 'Dee' rang me to tell me delightedly that she had lost a lot of weight by following my advice about reducing salt/sodium intake. In clothes, at any rate, she looked normal again. But of course the terrible stretch marks remain, and so does the pain, though it is less.

If you too are a steroid victim, have a look at my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ and then look at some of the other pages, especially the steroids page.

You will find that the best, the safest, the fastest, the most reliable way to lose weight is to eat less salt and forget about reducing calories or struggling to do exercise when you are too fat to be comfortable doing it. - You will feel SO MUCH BETTER! - Overeating and lack of exercise are NOT what caused your obesity.

Good luck!

Examples of Steroid Victims in the UK - Example Number 1

Examples of Steroid Victims in the UK - Example Number 1

Michael had had damaged kidneys and had patiently lived on a very low salt diet for years while waiting for a new kidney. Then he was overjoyed at last to receive a new kidney. The doctors in the hospital told him it would now be OK for him to eat an ordinary diet, not salt-restricted. And so while still in the hospital he was given an ordinary diet. At the same time they put him onto steroids. The consequences have been dire. He put on a lot of weight and his new kidney now has impaired function. He said to me that he would never go to a doctor again in his life - that he would rather die than have any further contact with doctors.

I believe that there are many damaged people who would rather die than have further contact with doctors...)o:

For details of the harm done by eating salty food while taking steroids visit http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ and click on the steroids link on the left of the page.