Posted on 09/26/2015 6:30:32 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Years ago, I developed a non-diabetes related neuropathy in my feet that started with the feeling of cotton balls between my toes but over the space of a few months grew to feel like someone spraying a blow torch over the bottoms of my feet. The only thing that would stop that was a powerful drug that they normally prescribe for seizures. This drug, after taking it for over ten years, unbeknownst to me, has an undocumented side effect of WEIGHT GAIN in 1/10th of 1% of its users. . . guess who was in that small minority of users? Yup me. I gained over 160 pounds. . . while eating a normal diet. I could not figure out why I was gaining weight. I could stop eating and gain five pounds.
In any case, I have an extremely bad back since I was in elementary school and was taking a two year pain management regimen when Dr. Pham asked my why I was on this particular med. I told him about the phantom pain in my feet and he said he didn't like the med I was on because of the bad side effects it had. I told him I had read the PDR on it and was experiencing none of the listed side effects. He then told me about the non-listed weight-gain. BINGO! He said he was going to change it to something not quite as effective but a lot safer with out the side effects. He put me on another drug that had to be titrated over several months and warned me that if I ever stopped it, it had to be titrated OFF of it for at least a year and a half or there could be severe psychiatric problems! Scary drug. . . but it worked. The GOOD thing was I started shedding weight like crazy when combined with a low carb diet. I lost 150 pounds in about 10 months!
In any case, when they put my on that DAMN STATIN. . . I'd take that drug and in a few hours my phantom pain would flare up. . . and I'd get manic. In later research I learned this and other drugs of its class, including the one I had taken before to control my phantom pain, means to be effective were BLOCKED by statins! These drugs were literally TURNED off by the statins in the space of FOUR HOURS! This is from notes I submitted to my doctor during the period which she confirmed in her research:
Research in the development notes of the statin drugs showed that Atovastatin and other statins have a STRONG effect on increasing metabolism of CYP3A4 Substrates such as Tegretol, Topiramate, and other nerve blocking drugs which have a severe psychiatric side effect if stopped cold turkey. The Statin effectively switched off the effectiveness of (the drug I was taking) in blocking the paraesthesia in my feet, and then, also triggered the firing of the now unblocked nerves, accelerating the firing of other previously suppressed nerves that had compensated for the suppressing drug which then causes the psychological issues.
Since someone was supposed to be weaned off the drug over a year and a half to avoid severe problems, instead was dropped COLD turkey in just FOUR HOURS, and not only that even the blood levels did not count, it was HELL! I found myself going through eBay for items I was interested in OVER and OVER again, in the space of minutes thinking the listings would change and new listings would be added. . . constantly. I became obsessed with it. . . until I took my next dosage of the pain medication then I would be OK until another dosage of the Statin. . . I spent over four grand on eBay on stuff I didn't need in four months. . . good thing it was things I could give my girlfriend!
Once I figured out what was going on, which was hard to do with my mind not working well, I stopped the statin and things went back to normal. It took about two weeks to get my blood levels of the drug evened out and my feet back to not being on a pain roller-coaster. The physical changes in my body took a lot longer to recover from . . . and I will NEVER, EVER take another Statin in my life.
Do you really think there might be some memory loss and diabetes? ? ?
What was I saying? OH, yes?
Do you really think there might be some memory loss and diabetes? ? ?
Stopped the statin. . . all the effects went away. QED, it was the statin. My skin has returned to its normal elasticity, my fingernails after a year are now normal again and I can again cut thick cardboard with my thumbnails where during this episode they'd spontaneously fracture or splinter. My arms no longer show any bruising, blooms, or liverspots. I don't suddenly start bleeding for no reason on the backs of my hands or arms. I checked the side effect of the statins and these are all listed as known side effects, just ignored by the doctors and the drug companies who push the doctors to prescribe them. OOPS.
8. Statins and the BrainWhile the brain is not the focus of this essay, I cannot resist mentioning the importance of cholesterol to the brain and the evidence of mental impairment available from our data sets. Statins would be expected to have a negative impact on the brain, because, while the brain makes up only 2% of the body's weight, it houses 25% of the body's cholesterol. Cholesterol is highly concentrated in the myelin sheath, which encloses axons which transport messages long distances (Saher et al., 2005). Cholesterol also plays a crucial role in the transmission of neurotransmitters across the synapse (Tong et al, 2009). We found highly skewed distribution of word frequencies for dementia, Parkinson's disease, and short term memory loss, with all of these occurring much more frequently in the statin reviews than in the comparison reviews.
A recent evidence-based article (Cable, 2009) found that statin drug users had a high incidence of neurological disorders, especially neuropathy, parasthesia and neuralgia, and appeared to be at higher risk to the debilitating neurological diseases, ALS and Parkinson's disease. The evidence was based on careful manual labeling of a set of self-reported accounts from 351 patients. A mechanism for such damage could involve interference with the ability of oligodendrocytes, specialized glial cells in the nervous system, to supply sufficient cholesterol to the myelin sheath surrounding nerve axons. Genetically-engineered mice with defective oligodendrocytes exhibit visible pathologies in the myelin sheath which manifest as muscle twitches and tremors (Saher et al, 2005). Cognitive impairment, memory loss, mental confusion, and depression were also significantly present in Cable’s patient population. Thus, his analysis of 351 adverse drug reports was largely consistent with our analysis of 8400 reports.
As I said in a comment above, a lot of the research is just being ignored. . .
Thanks for reply! Funny thing, my vet suggested using baking soda to clean my dog’s teeth once in awhile. She was not impressed, but chews on carrots. .her teeth and gums look great.
Well, that would help make the dogs breath sweeter. . .
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