Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 So Big Pharma lobbied the FDA for the approval of antidepressant drugs for dogs, and in February, 2007, the FDA approved prozac for dogs. Because, apparently, dogs have "chemical imbalances in their brain" requiring treatment with patented synthetic chemicals, just like children and adults, right? (See the book Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients.)
Prozac liquid drops for your pet fish are, apparently, just around the corner. And don't be surprised to see Ritalin for "hyperactive" dogs, too. |
Frederic Vagnini, M.D. and Barry Fox, Ph.D.
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 Almost as soon as it made its debut, prozac was more than just another antidepressant. It seemed to do more than lift the mood. According to many who took it, prozac increased energy and optimism and made it "feel good to be you." By the mid-1990s, prozac was a household word, the second best-selling drug in the world, featured in Newsweek magazine, and the subject of a best-selling book. |
Hyla Cass
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 Glenmullen, Joseph, M.D. prozac Backlash: Overcoming the Dangers of prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, and Other Antidepressants with Safe, Effective Alternatives. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2000.
Holford, Patrick. Optimum Nutrition for Your Mind. Laguna Beach, CA: Basic Health Publications, 2004.
Stoll, Andrew, Stoll, M.D. The Omega-3 Connection: The Groundbreaking Antidepression Diet and Brain Program. New York, NY: Free Press, 2002.
Websites
About.com—www.depression.about.com: Lots of great information on all aspects of depression and its treatment. |
Charles Barber
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 The very existence of the Serotonin Empire was quite remarkable, given that before the antidepressants arrived, depression was considered a rare disease, affecting about 1 percent of the population (as opposed to 10 to 15 percent of the population today); that after early clinical trials, prozac was nearly shelved by Eli Lilly and almost never saw the light of day; and that, early on, German regulators concluded about the drug: "Considering the benefit and the risk, we think this preparation totally unsuitable for the treatment of depression. |
Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea
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 Another critic criticized the study's design, noting that the group which received prozac with cognitive therapy, for which most benefit was claimed, was not double or even single-blinded. Patients in this group knew that they were receiving the real SSRI, as did their physicians, a condition which surely created expectations of maximum benefit—and made comparison with the other groups less meaningful. "The data do not support the TADS authors' optimistic conclusion. The balance between benefit and harm of SSRI for depression in childhood has yet to be shown to be favorable. |
| The authors concluded (perhaps a bit defensively) that: "despite calls to restrict access to medications, medical management of [major depression] with prozac, including careful monitoring for adverse events, should be made widely available, not discouraged.38 This conclusion received a cautious endorsement—"as is usually the case with good research, the study provides not only important answers, but also raises several important questions"—from a JAMA editorial in the same issue.39
Other commentators were more critical. |
Charles Barber
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| The very existence of the Serotonin Empire was quite remarkable, given that before the antidepressants arrived, depression was considered a rare disease, affecting about 1 percent of the population (as opposed to 10 to 15 percent of the population today); that after early clinical trials, prozac was nearly shelved by Eli Lilly and almost never saw the light of day; and that, early on, German regulators concluded about the drug: "Considering the benefit and the risk, we think this preparation totally unsuitable for the treatment of depression. |
| To further the ascent of prozac et al. it has helped immensely that there has been a simultaneous barrage of media messages and images in the last decade informing the public that behavior is biologically dictated. There is a daily drumbeat emanating from the TV and the newspapers informing us that behavior is genetic, hardwired, strictly biological. Newspapers, which hardly reported health news thirty years ago, report study after study showing that behavior is biologically inherited and determined. |
Dr. Steve Blake
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 These drugs include some diuretics, ibuprofen, naproxen, prozac, and Elavil.
DEFICIENCY OF SODIUM
Outside the cell
Potassium is pumped into the cell r
Sodium is 10 times higher outside the cell
A « pumped out of the cell v
Figure 8-4 Sodium and potassium concentrations inside and outside of the cell.
RECOMMENDED INTAKE OF SODIUM
Adequate Intake levels (AI) have been set by the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine for sodium. These levels are based on the amount of salt needed to replace losses with moderate sweating in average people. |
Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea
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| She then prescribed lithium, for a "kick start," followed by higher doses of prozac. His condition worsened; his diagnosis remained unclear.
The closest (and perhaps wisest) observer of Tony's condition was his wife, Carmela. In one episode, she offered him a more than skeptical diagnosis: "I can't tell if you're just old-fashioned, paranoid, or a fuckin' asshole."1
Carmela's conundrum captures this chapter's problems. How common is mental illness? |
Charles Barber
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| Words like prozac and Paxil and lithium were tossed around along with the salted peanuts and the shrimp. Upon learning the nature of my work, people would gather around, and I would be solicited for advice on various technical questions, like how long it took for Zoloft to fully enter the bloodstream and the advantages of Depakote as compared to lithium, or whether a neighbor's behavior was classically bipolar or merely hypomanic. Everyone seemed to be filled with a new and abrupt compassion for my clients, who, it was now universally agreed, were—of course! how could it be otherwise! |
Andreas Moritz
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 Prozac is among the biggest money makers of all times, with a 224,973 percent markup. Lipitor is one of the most expensive drugs to produce ($5.80), but it sells for $272.37' its markup is 4,696 percent. Some generic drugs were marked up as much as 3,000 percent or more.
CBS's famous Sixty Minutes national TV show (aired 1st April 2007), revealed the biggest ever health scandal, which so far cost the American public nearly $1.5 trillion. |
Charles Barber
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| Some of these medications had been around since the 1950s and 1960s—mood stabilizers like lithium, antipsychotics such as Haldol and Thorazine—while others, at the time, were brand-new, with strange and exotic names like prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft. Each year over the course of the 1990s, new psychiatric medications were introduced and consumed en masse by my clients. Some of these new medications arrived with great fanfare and extremely high expectations. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Julian Whitaker, and even home movie footage of young girls who later killed themselves while on prozac. You'll walk away from this film shaking your head in disgust, asking "How did it come to this?"
Or, more precisely, how did modern psychiatric medicine come to the point where it's all just a grand marketing scam designed to generate obscene profits by exploiting the minds and bodies of an entire generation of children? How did Big Pharma manage to so completely hijack medical science, taking over the medical journals, FDA regulators, science researchers and medical schools? |
Jack Challem
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 For years physicians thought that antidepressant drugs, such as prozac, work primarily by improving cellular regulation of the neurotransmitter serotonin. But research increasingly points to another mode of action: that at least some antidepressant drugs actually stimulate the synthesis of new DNA, brain cells, and connections between brain cells, a process called neurogenesis.
Prozac and other antidepressant drugs, as well as the herb St. John's wort, begin boosting serotonin levels almost immediately. By doing so, they should rapidly relieve depression. |
Michael Friedman, ND
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 In a one study of Vitex versus the antidepressant prozac, it was found that Vitex was more beneficial for the physical complaints of PMS, whereas prozac proved more beneficial for the psychological symptoms. Improvements from Vitex are usually noted within two menstrual cycles.
Milk Thisde (Silybum marianum): This herb aids liver cytochrome P450 detoxification of estrogens.
Cramp Bark (Viburnum opulus): Cramp bark alleviates menstrual cramping acutely.
Wild Yam (Dioscorea villosa): Wild yam benefits PMS by improving estrogens/progesterone ratio and acting as an antispasmodic. |
Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea
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| Same drug, same dose, but priced three and a half times higher than generic prozac."50 Of the 78 drugs approved by the FDA in 2002, only 17 contained new ingredients, and only seven were classified by the FDA as improvements over existing drugs.
All that capital, all that effort: all for seven really new drugs! Surely this is further evidence of the lack of innovation in the big drug companies.
There is a related problem. The pharmaceutical industry has compromised the scientific process that supposedly underlies their existence. |
Joseph Glenmullen, M.D.
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 I adhere to the name "major tranquilizers" because it is still used interchangeably with the name "antipsychotics" and serves as a reminder that these drugs were the prozac of their day.
Experts now acknowledge that all patients on major tranquilizerseven young, healthy patients—can eventually develop tics. Most psychiatrists consider a key factor to be total, cumulative exposure to the drugs. Being on a low dose for a long enough time can eventually cause the same cumulative damage as being on a high dose for a short period of time. |
Ann Blake Tracy, Ph.D.
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| Now with an intensified interest they closely listen to every news report of violent or bizarre behavior or violent suicides and murders and wonder if anyone knew enough to ask if prozac was involved. They worry about those left behind with all the same questions - those who have fewer or no answers about this drug than they had - answers which would help them begin to understand the tragedies with which they are left to cope.
Marc Pizzuto had deeply touched the lives of many in his short 22 years. Throughout his childhood, he was loving, energetic, confident and contented. |
| During that short testing period for prozac 15% of the patients had to end their participation in the study because of adverse side effects. After those initial five and six week periods of use the patient becomes a guinea pig. Many physicians will admit that if you are among the first to use a new drug you are actually participating in the testing process for that drug.
Dr. Irving Stone in his book released in 1975, "THE HEALING MIND," p. 17 & 18 stated, "The oath of Hippocrates requires that I administer no poisons to my patients even if I am requested to do so. |
Joseph Glenmullen, M.D.
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| That fateful spring, as the anniversary of her mother's death approached and these barely conscious feelings came to a head, prozac tipped Sunita over the edge. In her agitated, psychotic state, she felt "brutalized" by everyone. The loss of her own center and direction in life became symbolically represented in her body parts being strewn around the campus. Now the task her professor held her to was performing oral sex on him in front of the class.
An important part of Sunita's long-term therapy was my strong support of her dropping the premed track over her father's vigorous protests. |
Tori Hudson, N.D.
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 Elevating serotonin levels is how the popular antidepressant prozac works.
There is evidence that estrogen levels affect the serotonin system. More interesting, studies in animals and humans have demonstrated how social interactions in groups can affect our serotonin levels. Dominant animals in groups have higher levels of serotonin, which then fall if they are removed from their prominent position. Serotonin levels rise in the animals that replace them in dominance. |
Joseph Glenmullen, M.D.
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| Major tranquilizers suppress dopamine directly, whereas the prozac group are thought to do so indirectly, via their effect on serotonin.
In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, major tranquilizers were immensely popular as treatments for the same everyday conditions for which serotonin boosters are now so popular, including mild depression, anxiety, nervousness, and insomnia.41 By 1965, Thorazine alone had been prescribed to 50 million patients in the United States.42 Eventually, an estimated 250 million people worldwide were exposed to major tranquilizers. |
Charles Barber
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| Tuesday, and swallowing their prozac or Paxil or Zoloft, were happily oblivious of this. Caught up in the national fervor of what the anthropologist T. M. Luhrmann has politely described as "psychopharmaco-logical overenthusiasm," the residents stood in line at the Montross Pharmacy and swallowed their pills at night.12
The size and reach of the psychiatric drug industry is staggering. It is far, far greater than most psychiatric practitioners realize and certainly greater than the drug companies would want you to know. |
Connie Bennett, C.H.H.C. with Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D.
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 Potatoes, Not prozac. New York: Fireside, 1999.
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th ed. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 2000, 191-209.
Drewnowski, Adam. "Taste and Food Preferences in Human Obesity." In Taste, Experience, and Feeding, edited by Elizabeth D. Capaldi with Terry L. Powley. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1990.
Dufty, William. Sugar Blues. New York: Warner Books, 1975.
Galic, M. A., and M. A. Persinger. |
Frederic Vagnini, M.D. and Barry Fox, Ph.D.
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| Serotonin is a "feelgood" neurotransmitter, delivering an "everything-is-great" message to the brain. prozac and the other SSRIs keep serotonin from being reabsorbed after it completes its biochemical task. Instead, the serotonin hangs around longer, in effect delivering its "everything-is-great" message over and over again.
Prozac and the other SSRIs have effectively pushed the older antidepressants to the sidelines. Although not necessarily stronger than the older drugs, the SSRIs tend to have fewer toxic side effects. |
Hyla Cass, M.D.
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| A forty-eight-year-old wife and mother, she came to see me with a variety of health issues: she was taking prozac, and was experiencing several of its side effects. Her doctor added two more medications, but she was only getting worse. Soon after seeing me, however, her condition turned around and the story had a happy ending. This is discussed in more detail in Chapter 7 on depression.
How was this case different? Instead of sending her to an endocrinologist, gynecologist, and nutritionist, I did the whole job myself. |
Joseph Glenmullen, M.D.
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| Jonathan was in his late twenties and a medical student when I started him on prozac because he was severely depressed. He responded well to the drug and within a month was no longer depressed.
A short while later, however, Jonathan developed subtle but distinct memory problems. "I have trouble finding the word for something, like a person's name," he said. "I know that I know the name, but I can't retrieve it. I can't bring it up from my memory. Or someone's phone number. A close friend whose phone number I have always known, yet suddenly I can't recall it. This is definitely new. |
Hyla Cass, M.D.
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| One recent example in my own practice: Iris was depressed and fatigued; one doctor tried to treat her depression with an antidepressant (but couldn't use prozac because it fueled her anxiety); he prescribed Lexapro at 15 milligrams (mg) a day, which made her too tired, so cut the dose back to 10 mg. She was still tired, but he blamed it on her thyroid and told her to see her endocrinologist. The latter, however, told her it was likely still a side effect of the Lexapro. She felt caught in the middle of these specialists. Was it her thyroid? Her neurotransmitters? Some other hormones? |
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