When * come, they come not single spies but in battalions.

Yes, you recognised that, "When sorrows come, they come not single spies But in battalions," is a quotation from a speech by Claudius, in Shakespeare's Hamlet. It is something most of us have experienced: something goes wrong, something else goes wrong, and so on. Or as the saying goes, It never rains but it pours.

I am particularly aware of the way that troubles seem almost to breed, when I think of the adverse side-effects of pharmaceutical drugs. Adverse effects of drugs are often spoken of as rare or infrequent. I do not believe this to be the case. They are unfortunately common. For example, consider the many drugs, including including prednisolone (also sold as Pediapred®), prednisone (also sold as Deltasone®, Meticorten, Orasone, SK-Prednisone and Sterapred®), methylprednisolone (Brand names Depo-Medrol, Solu-Medrol), cortisone, hydrocortisone, dexamethasone (Brand name Decadron), betamethasone, beclomethasone, fludrocortisone, triamsinolone, desonide, fluprednidene, clobetasone, alclomethasone, momethasone, desoxymethasone, fluosinonide, budesonide, fluosinolone, triamcinolone (trade names Kenalog, Aristocort, Nasacort, Tri-Nasal, Triderm, Azmacort, Trilone, Volon A, Tristoject, Fougera, Tricortone, Triesence) and other corticosteroids, Advair - a combination drug that contains Fluticasone, a corticosteroid, HRT and other medications containing oestrogen - like Premarin and Prempak, and like some birth control medication (contraceptives) - amitriptyline, doxepin and some other anti-depressants, some anti-psychotic drugs, including Zyprexa (aka olanzapine) and other psychotropic drugs, and some anti-epileptic/anticonvulsant drugs, notably sodium valproate (trade name Epilim), that cause sodium retention.

In effect, sodium retention means that the blood vessels have become distended/swollen with extra sodium and water, and therefore the blood volume is greater than normal. That greater blood volume obviously means that the person's weight is increased by the weight of that extra fluid in the bloodstream. And because the walls of the blood vessels have become stretched, they must also be thinner and weaker, and so the blood volume may more easily fluctuate as the person ingests more, or less, salt/sodium and salty food. This in turn makes blood pressure more variable, and also adds to the variability of blood sugar concentration and increased variability of concentration of other components in the blood. Greater variability of blood sugar concentration is a factor in increasing the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. The weakening of the blood vessel walls increases the risk of stroke and of heart problems.

The weight gain will continue if the offending drugs continue to be taken without reducing sodium intake (and this is usually the case because physicians rarely warn their patients about the dangers and consequences of eating added salt when taking these drugs). So obesity, or even morbid obesity, is a very real possibility. The patients are then likely to be told to eat less and take more exercise in order to lose their excess weight. Taking this advice would cause them further harm because their excess weight is the result of the prescribed medication and their intake of added salt (even if it is only a modest intake of salt), and not because of over-eating or taking in too many calories and expending too few calories. If the person then tries to diet/eat less food than their body requires this will exacerbate the nutritional deficits they are already experiencing as a consequence of sodium retention depleting the body of essential minerals (principally calcium, but also magnesium and potassium). A host of health problems tend to develop because of this malnutrition. They may include nerve damage, excruciating cramps, osteoporosis or even osteomalacia, and therefore very weakened bones and much greater risk of fractures, weaker muscles and reduced mobility.

The swollen blood vessels/veins will proliferate, causing the skin to look redder because of the blood vessels close to the skin surface; the skin itself will be thinning and be becoming weakened and overstretched by the greater volume/mass of the person's swollen, heavier body with its increasing fluid retention. The kidneys become over-worked and their function impaired by the greatly increased blood volume and similarly the heart becomes enlarged. The enlarged heart takes up too much room in the thoracic cavity so that breathing becomes more laboured and the person begins to suffer from breathlessness.

And I haven't even mentioned yet the insults of the ignorant, who add to the emotional problems of the victims of drug-induced sodium/water/fluid retention and obesity, the social isolation, the constant misunderstandings, the fatigue, the pain from the over-stretched blood vessels and over-stretched skin and weakened bones. - Have I sketched out for you enough of the battalions of troubles/sorrows/degenerative health problems/adverse side-effects that can and do come from taking certain pharmaceutical drugs when they are too readily prescribed, by prescribers ill-informed about their side-effects and insufficiently informed about the many possible contributory factors involved in causing obesity? I feel sure that, following my lead, you will be able yourself to think of many more adverse consequences from taking these powerful and highly dangerous drugs, with their insidious cumulative damage. Best avoid them if you can!

See obesity and the salt connection, amitriptyline and sodium in foods.

Come on now - you can't still believe, can you, that psychoactive drugs are safe?

Come on now - you can't still believe, can you, that psychoactive drugs are safe? or intended to help patients? or that the drug companies, and the many venal medics ensconced in their capacious cash-filled pockets, have the slightest concern for anyone's health and well-being but their own?

If you do still believe that the intentions of those with vested self-serving interests are honourable, then I suggest you read these recent articles: Alliance for Human Research Protection's The Real Biederman Scandal and Gaia Health's Big Pharma Spends $95 Thousand Per Doctor on Marketing Each Year and this kxon.com whistle-blower story.

Your health is your most precious possession and your brain is not infinitely elastic. - Say NO! to psychotropic drugs. And do what you can to protect others from them - especially children. There is growing and widespread unease among decent healthcare professionals at the harm being done by these dangerous drugs and the criminal drug companies - especially to children.

Big Pharma: the lies and corruption that promote sales of their Psychotropic Junk

Big Pharma in America: the lies and corruption that promote sales of their psychotropic junk and are damaging the health and happiness of ever-increasing numbers of Americans, most tragically children, in exchange for vast profits. Watch this video that was uploaded onto YouTube earlier this month.

Remember: the idea that depression and other mental health conditions are caused by an imbalance of chemicals in the brain is a myth invented by drug manufacturers in order to sell their vile products. Say NO! to their costly, chemical crap.

Truthman speaks out against GlaxoSmithKline

Truthman speaks out here against nefarious practices by GlaxoSmithKline, the drug company. He writes about the illegal marketing of depression drug Wellbutrin as a weight-loss aid, and the tragedies caused by SSRI anti-depressants, including Prozac, Seroxat, Citalopram and Zyprexa, because of their grave side-effects. If you ever think of taking any of this pharmaceutical junk yourself, I urge you to ponder Truthman's words and the words of Dr David Healy, an expert on SSRI drugs, and think again. Improving your nutrition is far more likely to lessen depression than any pharmaceutical mind-altering drugs. Can you really trust GSK or other drug companies with the safety of your brain/mind when you read of their iniquitous behaviour? - Your brain is not infinitely elastic. Guard it from assault by psychotropic drugs.

America’s mental illness: it is the drugs that are the problem

Tens of millions of innocent, unsuspecting Americans, who are mired deeply in the mental “health” system, have actually been made crazy by the use of or the withdrawal from commonly-prescribed, brain-altering, brain-disabling, indeed brain-damaging psychiatric drugs that have been, for many decades, cavalierly handed out like candy - often in untested and therefore unapproved combinations of drugs -- to trusting and unaware patients by equally unaware but well-intentioned physicians who have been under the mesmerizing influence of slick and obscenely profitable psychopharmaceutical drug companies.
Read article by Gary G. Kohls, MD, at onlinejournal.com

Psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry: an unhealthy symbiosis

I am very impressed by the article I have just been reading online: Psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry: who pays the piper? (Psychiatric Bulletin (2005) 29: 84-85 © 2005 The Royal College of Psychiatrists. As you can see, it was written some years ago, but its message is even more urgent today.

The three writers of the article are psychiatrists, concerned about the increasing grip the pharmaceutical industry has on the training of psychiatrists, on drug trials, on the inventing of new mental illnesses to be treated with psychotropic drugs, on the influencing of prescribing physicians to prescribe certain drugs, etc. It is a short and very clearly written article. I do urge you to read it.

My personal concern focuses mainly on the terrible suffering that psychotropic drugs can and do cause. I have written many times about the side-effect of morbid obesity (plus all its attendant illnesses and disabilities) resulting from many of these drugs.

Thousands upon thousands of children, mainly in America, are subjected to drug treatment for the flimsiest of reasons, and their young lives are blighted almost before they have begun. That is not even counting the effects on their brains themselves, and all the other systems of the body. The problem is compounded in America by the fact that so many of their legislators are in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry and are lobbyists for it.

Children are not the only group who endure unnecessary illness, unhappiness and pain in order to swell the profits of Big Pharma. In my country, the UK, many elderly people in care homes are drugged with psychiatric coshes, bringing frailty, disability, indignities and hastened death, and the doctors who bring about this horrifying suffering incur neither censure nor sanction: EVEN THOUGH THE FACTS ARE WELL KNOWN BY THE GOVERNMENT.

We have had the thalidomide tragedies, the tranquilliser tragedies. We presently have the ever-increasing and reckless prescribing of anti-depressants, which complacent doctors delude themselves into believing 'save lives'. See Anti-depressants are no better than dummy pills and amitriptyline

The 'developed' world, that has nurtured the pharmaceutical industry until it has grown into a multinational malign entity 'too big to be allowed to fail', apparently, will come to rue its failure to nip corruption in the bud long ago.

Louis Theroux's BBC2 programme: America's Medicated Kids

I watched Louis Theroux's BBC2 programme about "America's Medicated Kids" on the i-Player last night. You too could watch it here: iplayer: America's Medicated Kids.

I was shocked by it. Shocked at the insouciance with which the parents in the film sought prescription drug solutions to what appeared to be mildly problematic or really pretty normal behaviour in their children. I believe children should be protected from drugs, especially psychotropic drugs. As Professor Eric Wilkes said to me years ago, "The brain is not infinitely elastic." To interfere with the workings of a young child's brain before it has even reached maturity seems to me the height of folly and full of danger.

ADHD is one of a type of illness invented by drug companies in order to sell their drugs to treat the invented illnesses. Two of the drugs mentioned in the programme were Ritalin and Concerta. Neither of these drugs is of benefit to hyperactive children. See Drugs such as Ritalin and Concerta are of no benefit.

On the other hand we constantly hear of food additives causing behaviour problems and hyperactivity in children and, happily, hear also of great improvements in behaviour and attention span when such children change to additive-free and more nutritious food. Protecting children from the physical, mental and spiritual harms that psychiatric drugs cause, and protecting them from entering the dystopian world of psychobabble and self-analysis, and wasting their precious childhood with all this nonsense instead of living the normal, carefree life of a child, is what loving parents should be doing, in my opinion.

Do you wonder why it is that some people can eat whatever they like, and as much as they like, and not become fat?

Do you wonder why it is that some people can eat whatever they like, and as much as they like, and not become fat, while other people become fat despite not eating a lot and not being lazy? - The explanation is that the people who become fat are vulnerable to salt. For them, eating salt causes them to retain extra bodily fluid and this causes rhem to become fatter and to gain weight.

The groups of people vulnerable to salt are babies and children, people who take or who have taken certain prescribed steroids, including prednisone and prednisolone, or certain other prescribed drugs, women who take or have taken HRT or other oestrogen-containing drugs such as some contraceptive medications, people who take or have taken amitriptyline or other tricyclic antidepressants or some other psychotropic/psychoactive drugs, pregnant mothers, PMT sufferers and people who ate salt as children. These groups need to minimise their salt intake.

Salt Can Cause Obesity

If you fall into one of the vulnerable groups I have listed or if you ate a high salt diet as a child you will be sensitive to salt. People without this problem can eat salty foods without doing a lot of harm to themselves, because their kidneys will excrete the sodium which is excess to their requirements. But for people sensitive to salt, some of the excess sodium, along with the water it attracts, will enter their blood stream and not be excreted. So they carry extra weight - as water - around with them all the time. They also lose more heat from their bodies because the surface area of their body has increased with the added water, and the rate at which a body loses heat is proportional to its surface area. - They therefore need extra calories to do the extra work and to provide the extra heat. - So their appetite increases in order to obtain these extra calories. - So they may very well eat more to satisfy their genuine need for calories. - If what they eat is salty, then the cycle will repeat itself and they are likely to become obese.

To break the cycle and put the process into reverse, all that is necessary for them to do is to eat less salt. And eating extra potassium by way of fresh fruit and vegetables will accelerate the excretion of the sodium and water and speed up the weight loss.

In my opinion, people who remain slim are slim not because they have strong will-power to resist extra calories, but because they have strong-walled healthy veins which can resist the incursion of extra salt water.

See also my Fat Retention page.

If you want to lose weight, eat less salt!

Forget about calories! - Cut down on salt! - You'll lose weight fast - as if by magic!

What's wrong with Psychiatric Drugs? - A LOT!

About the psychiatric drugs racket and the corrupt health professionals who collude with it: see

The psycho-pharmaceutical industry

Can Psychiatry and its Prescription Drugs be Trusted

This Radio 4 programme BBC webpage entitled "Rewriting the Psychiatrist's Bible" is available to listen to online for another week. I am sure you would find it interesting and illuminating - and sinister...

Psychiatrists invent new psychiatric illnesses/conditions; drug companies invent or rediscover pharmaceutical drugs to treat these putative conditions. The pharmaceutical industry profits from the sales of this mind-altering medication; the medics who prescribe the stuff benefit financially from their ties with Big Pharma. - All is fine and dandy - except for the fall guys: the children and adults who trustingly take the psychotropic junk and suffer the multitude of adverse side-effects, one of which is usually massive weight gain and its attendant ill-health.

Avoid this junk.

Good nutrition is the best physician and the safest medicine.

Psychiatric Drug Research is Compromised When Psychiatrists Have Financial Ties to Drug Industry.

Read article on the Alliance for Human Research Protection (AHRP) website (USA)

Some doctors are making the absurd claim that Ritalin could help with Britain's obesity crisis.

In this Telegraph article we read that doctors are making the absurd claim that Ritalin could help with Britain's obesity crisis. - Ritalin is one of the controversial psychotropic drugs that have harmed so many children unfortunate enough to have had them prescribed as treatment for ADHD, a putative illness used as a 'diagnosis' by some psychiatrists with strong connections with the drug industry and the drug industry's money. See http://aboutsalt.blogspot.com/2008/06/for-years-harvard-child-psychiatrist.html and http://aboutsalt.blogspot.com/2009/03/read-about-senator-chuck-grassley-of.html

The Telegraph article says: "Doctors behind the latest findings claim a chemical imbalance in the brain caused by undiagnosed ADHD prevents severely obese patients from having the willpower to lose weight."

This is a nonsensical, completely false claim. - Obesity is not caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain; it is caused by fluid retention, in turn caused by sodium retention, frequently itself caused as a side-effect of some other powerful prescription drug! - Obese people have more than enough health problems to cope with, without foolish doctors prescribing them pharmaceutical junk that will harm them further.

Obesity is easily, safely and swiftly reduced by giving up dieting completely, since it is harmful and does not work, and instead concentrating on cutting down on salt/sodium and salty food in order to reduce the fluid retention.

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 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 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

Read about Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa's ongoing investigation

Read The Boston Globe's article about Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa's investigation into whether Harvard child psychiatrist Dr. Joseph Biederman's association with pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson influenced his research findings about their psychotropic drugs, and therefore harmed children.

It's great that the spotlight of publicity is being beamed onto possible abuse of trust and honesty in the medical profession. The powerless need to be protected from the abuse of power. Sleaze in the medical profession is especially reprehensible, and the drug companies have a poor record for transparency in their research findings.

Up to one in 11 children in Britain may suffer from an attention deficit disorder, government advisers will claim this week.

One in 11 children may have ADHD
Article in the Sunday Telegraph

Extracts:

"The guidance by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) is expected to say that up to 9 per cent of children and 2 per cent of adults fall within broad definitions of ADHD. It will recommend that the stimulant Ritalin be prescribed to all children and adults with a severe form of the condition and to all moderate cases which do not respond to talking therapies or parenting classes.

Prof Philip Asherson, one of the experts who produced the guidance, due out on Wednesday, said they tried to avoid following the model of ADHD care in the United States, where medication is the norm and routinely used to tackle minor behavioural and educational problems.

He said: "We worked very hard to avoid the approach in the US, where one in 10 children are being treated with stimulants. The guidance makes it clear that medication is the right approach in some cases but that it should not be used for everyone and certainly not to tackle minor educational problems."

"Dr Sami Timimi, a child and adolescent psychiatrist in Lincolnshire, who does not believe ADHD is a valid diagnosis, said Nice had produced no evidence that the condition existed, or that medication worked, despite coming to conclusions supporting its use."

The psychologist Oliver James accused psychiatrists of medicalising a problem that was caused by upbringing. He said: "Psychiatrists invented this category to medicalise when in fact it is a social problem linked to low incomes and parenting difficulties." He said the best approach to children with ADHD-like symptoms was to give them more attention and affection."

"Latest figures show almost 500,000 prescriptions for stimulants for under-16s last year, more than double the 200,000 issued in 2003. The Department of Health said the figures reflected the number of prescriptions, which could include repeat orders for the same child."

I consider it irresponsible, reprehensible, unscientific and downright dangerous to be prescribing psychotropic drugs to children. If indeed it is reasonably considered that intervention is necessary to improve children's behaviour I would favour improving a child's nutrition, especially by the avoidance of fast food, ready meals, salty junk snacks and diet pretend 'food', and also Oliver James's suggestion of more attention and affection. - And I don't mean attention from medics! - Behaviour problems are categorically not caused by the brain being short of Ritalin!

Are you taking antipsychotic or other psychotropic drugs and finding that you are putting on a lot of weight?

The problem is fluid retention because the drugs are causing you to be sensitive to salt and so salt is holding excess water in your body. If you cut down on salt you will excrete some of this water and therefore lose weight.

See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/steroids.html and other pages on the website.

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 Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions

More and more children are being harmed by the reckless and ever-increasing prescribing of anti-depressants to children

How do we tackle the rise in the number of children on anti-depressants? - Independent

Personally, I'd make it illegal for doctors to prescribe antidepressants or any other psychotropic junk (like ritalin, say) to children, and impose severe sanctions on any who then issued such prescriptions to children, including having the doctor automatically and permanently barred from dealing with children in any capacity as a doctor.

I don't buy the claim that doctors are merely responding to pressure from parents. - Nonsense! - Too many doctors have become drug-pushers for BigPharma, to the great detriment of the nation's health and happiness.

Research commissioned by MIND, the mental health charity, indicates that a walk in the country is more effective at reducing depression than antidepressants are; their benefit is small if any, their adverse effects are many, and very serious, and very common. - It is a pity they are prescribed at all; and patients are rarely warned about them. - And as you will see in the extract below, the drug companies cannot be trusted to tell the truth about their damaging products, which ruin so many lives.

Extract from the article:

"When Stephen Bailey was eight years old, he was prescribed Librium by his doctor. That was the beginning of a 24-year addiction to mind-altering drugs which, Bailey says, changed the course of his life and saw him descend into a world of fits, screaming and violence whenever he tried to withdraw. A commonly-used tranquilliser, Librium is one of the benzodiazepine family, and was prescribed to calm Bailey after he suffered from migraines and flashing lights in response to a routine set of vaccinations.

"I became absolutely petrified of the world, full of terror, in particular that I would swallow my tongue," says Bailey. "It felt like my mind was controlled by something else and I retreated into my own world. They affected my thinking in every way. I felt like I was chemically lobotomised."

Because of stories such as this, Librium, Valium and other member of the benzodiazepine family, are now not routinely prescribed to children. But that doesn't mean we have stopped medicating our children – far from it. New figures released last month show that in the past decade the number of prescriptions for mind-altering drugs, including anti-depressants such as Prozac, given to children under the age of 16 has more than quadrupled. Last year, there were more than 631,000 cases of drugs such as these given for mental health problems. In the mid 1990s, this figure was 146,000.

This increase is in spite of guidelines from Nice (the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) that GPs should offer three months of " talking therapy" before reaching for the prescription pad.

The issue was highlighted by the case of Mollie Murphy, who last year was prescribed a course of anti-depressants at the age of four after she became distraught at being separated from her friends when she failed to get a place at her local school. "We are in danger of not having learnt from the benzodiazepine story," says child psychiatrist Dr Mike Shooter, chairman of the children's mental health charity Young Minds. "People saying we're going through the same cycle with anti-depressants. The prescription rate is rising fast, and it worries me."

According to Dr Shooter, the reasons for the dramatic increase in prescriptions are complex. "One factor is the pharmaceutical companies marketing these drugs as happiness in the form of a pill," he says. " In the process they have concealed the fact that they don't actually bring happiness. There is also controversy at the moment about drug companies concealing lack of effectiveness." Dr Shooter believes that young people are increasingly turning to doctors with problems of life rather than actual depression. "The demand for a diagnosis is great," he says. "The greater the pressure the GP is under, the greater the temptation to reach for the prescription pad."

According to a Unicef report published earlier this year, the UK is now one of the least happy places for a young person to be brought up in the whole of western Europe. "There are more socio-economic problems facing children these days than there have ever been," says Dr Shooter. " I've worked in areas where there's a lot of family breakdown, alcohol abuse, violence and so on. It's pretty desperate, and young people living in these situations can be miserable. Half the kids I saw would satisfy the criteria of ADHD or depression – but they were just reacting behaviourally to the mess they lived in. The answer is not a pill." "