side effects

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It was a particularly beloved patient who asked me if I had any advice about improving creativity. She believed, as many people do, that it is a side effect of treating (even a relatively minor form) of bipolar illness. A lot of research back in the days of lithium, one of the first really robust treatments for bipolar illness, strongly suggested it just wasn’t so. Read more on Will Bipolar Treatment Kill Creativity?…

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Should I be inclined to comment on the physical or mental health of a public figure, I would need to start with a humongous disclaimer.

I suppose it is common decency that would force me to say I had never met the patient and/or had never been their doctor and/or had never had any access to their medical or psychiatric record. Read more on Approach, Not Author…

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Primary care doctors as well as psychiatrists give out antidepressants more than other kinds of medicine.

At the time I started training in psychiatry, we memorized the antidepressant side effects for early chemical classes derived from antituberculosis drugs and became overjoyed when the SSRIs came out.  Actually something safe and effective and pretty “clean” of risks and side effects and interactions!  First Prozac, which was FDA approved a day I was getting off call and grabbing a few hours of shuteye to be awakened by the morning news proclaiming that the new “safe” antidepressant would be a “wonderful advancement for psychiatry.” Read more on …

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At least I finished reading this article without banging the screen.

Even though the amount of psychotherapy I have time to practice is abbreviated and minimal at best, I am glad I know what I do. Read more on …

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I remember, several years ago, going to a national drug development meeting; the first time I had been at such a meeting, with drug company folks from the highest national levels. I remember how excited I was.  Maybe someone could develop an antipsychotic that really could escape all those neuromuscular side effects.  Maybe they had new things that were more powerful than antibiotics, which I already knew were not working as well as they ought to. I remember, with characteristic naivete, that it felt impossible to find anyone with whom I could discuss the pharmacology that so impassioned me, for the “big” drug guys seemed to be more interested in the business and politics of the thing. Read more on Could Fish Oil Prevent Schizophrenia?…

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I enjoyed a social evening with a respected colleague who is one of my closest friends.  He and his wife are great conversationalists, and during the course of the dinner he wondered about the dangers of Benadryl (diphenhydramine) in precipitating dementia.

Read more on The Dangers of Benadryl…

Filed under Doctors, News, prescription drugs, Research by on . Comment#

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I idolized the American medical establishment. When I was a mere Blue Cross number-collecting lackey working at the front desk of the Emergency Room of Massachusetts General Hospital, I sometimes saw, slipping into the doctors’ lounge, notable people — doctors whose surname in footnotes graced the basic core medical textbooks I was using as parallel reading in France, to prepare myself for my American examinations in medicine. I never wanted to penetrate more than the lowest echelons of the American medical establishment when I returned from France.  I mean I doubted the Harvard-types would open their world to me easily, no matter how clever I was. I proved to be right.  At a Harvard-associated residency program, I was actually asked at the interview if anyone in my family was a Harvard University trained physician. I still remember the program chairman’s barely muffled laughter when I told him my father held a graduate degree from the Harvard University School of music. Read more on Drug Misuse in American Medicine Leads to Possible Catastrophe…

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If I haven’t convinced everyone yet, I don’t know how.

I have written on this before.

Vaccination keeps kids alive.  Kids who could die dead as door nails from preventable diseases.

Vaccination has very few side effects. Read more on We Can Fix This Vaccination Bit…

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My field is health – which is radically removed from bodybuilding.  Oh, the work-out gurus will tell you they are experts in nutrition and health, but their knowledge is often flawed (to put it charitably).  And they view someone like me with “Book Learning” as a real kill-joy.

There is something special about bodybuilding supplements — allegedly natural ones.  I remember a fairly brittle bipolar – a young and pumped-up muscular male model — who refused, as both I and his girlfriend pleaded with him, to give up a body building supplement. I told him the contents seemed strange and unknown to me.  This supplement had made him go angry and seemingly psychotic and she was ready to break up with him if he did not stop this strange supplement.

The girlfriend trusted me.  The young man was lost in wishful thinking (and perhaps an adverse drug reaction bordering on psychosis). Read more on Deadly Health Supplements…

Filed under News, Stimulants by on . Comment#

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Warning:  Daily use of aspirin can lead to side effects which may include total loss of impulse control, man boobs, toe hair, and third nipples.  Please consult your doctor before taking this and other over the counter medicine.

Well, not really. But your really should know the risks and benefits of anything you take, even if it’s over the counter, even if it’s aspirin. I have an early memory, and I cannot have been beyond high school or early college, for I was still going to Friday night services with my Parents-of-Blessed-Memory.  My father would not let me in the choir with the other retired senior types with weak voices; but, it seemed to amuse him to no end when I out sang them and the cantor from the congregation.  The cantor had some kind of a congenital dislocation of the hip and some kind of back pain and I don’t know what else.  My parents had discouraged my still premature medical curiosity and told me not to ask him. Read more on To Aspirin or Not To Aspirin; That Is the Question…

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