SSRI antidepressants HARM your bones....

Thursday, 10-9-2014

There are many things that cause weak bones and osteoporosis and some things that cause your bones to become stronger and less likely to fracture.

Similarly, there ARE things that cause depression and those that do successfully turn it off.

Would you knowingly pay money to take a drug that is supposed to turn off depression but doesn’t -- but DOES cause your bones to become weaker and more likely to fracture?

Unfortunately, millions of people do just that!

Part one:  Here’s why I think no one should take SSRI drugs at all, let alone to turn off depression which they seem NOT to do.  This post is because there is an even worse reason to not take them!  I just found out about it. That’s in part two.

1.  I already knew that the Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, SSRI’s such as Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft were not significantly better than placebo in turning down depression.

Even, the people who feel they work don’t generally get any results at all for the first several weeks.   And, since the people who don’t find they work take them for several weeks in hopes that might happen for them, few people take them for a week to three weeks and toss them as ineffective.

So, it is common for people who do stop taking the SSRI’s to do so after taking them for many weeks.  For some people that’s nasty because while they are not that great at turning depression down or off, they ARE addictive and many people then feel even worse or get bad itching and the like as a withdrawal penalty.

2.  Since everyone gets a little down at times or has low energy and no one wants to be or stay depressed and these drugs clearly are NOT helpful, I’ve been keenly aware that there ARE things that turn off depression.  I watch avidly for them in fact!

From talk therapy that uses the work of people like Albert Ellis and Martin Seligman --

to things that rebuild damaged parts of your brain that can cause depression  --

to the several things that Stephen Ilardi found stopped depression when most of them were done, there are even two coming medical treatments that stop depression fast enough to empower people to do these other things!  One is a new drug that sounds like it will work in 24 hours and a special kind of magnetic stimulation that tested to work in more like ONE hour.

I posted on some of those things in my post: New and very doable way to stop depression....on Tuesday, 8-5-2014.

3.  One of the things on Stephen Ilardi’s list is to take 3,000 to 5,000 iu a day of vitamin D3.  For people who get SAD in dark, wintry weather and some other people who DID have low serotonin levels in their brains, taking that much D3 (the real optimum daily requirement for D3) along with early morning light therapy does the job.

That much D3 does help such people with depression.  But people with depression caused by personal disasters or horrible self talk or minimal brain damage are not.

But for the people it helps, taking that much vitamin D3 in part is because doing so does raise the brain level of serotonin.  Oddly, the SSRI drugs that are supposed to do this do not!

Conclusion of part one:  SSRI drugs don’t turn off depression and are nasty drugs otherwise.  There IS a way to turn up serotonin levels in the brain that works without those side effects.  And there ARE a whole set of things that are effective in turning off almost all kinds of depression.  Even better, there are two FAST ways in the pipeline to jump start turning off depression that DO test as working.

Part two:  Given the above information, I’ve long thought anyone who knows these things would never willingly take SSRI drugs.

But what if, in addition to that, taking SSRI drugs tended to harm bones enough to cause fractures and/or osteoporosis?!

The new information is that taking SSRI drugs DOES DO just that!  Worse it sounds like some people have been aware of this problem for quite some time.

The study I found about 3 weeks ago on Medical News Today reported this:

SSRI …."antidepressants, which are widely used around the world, are reported to increase the risk of bone fracture and reduce bone formation"

Here’s the link to that study:

Drugs for depression linked with failure of dental implants

http://mnt.to/l/4qG8

A team from McGill University has discovered that people who take the most

common antidepressants (such as Celexa, Paxil, Lexapro, Prozac, and Zoloft, the

Selective Serotonin Reuptake...

And here’s the key quote from it:

“A team from McGill University has discovered that people who take the most common antidepressants (such as Celexa, Paxil, Lexapro, Prozac, and Zoloft, the Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors or SSRIs) are twice as likely to have dental implants fail as those who are not taking SSRIs.

"Because antidepressants, which are widely used around the world, are reported to increase the risk of bone fracture and reduce bone formation, we were curious to see how they might affect dental implants," says Prof. Faleh Tamimi, the lead author on the study and a professor in McGill's School of Dentistry.

"Even so, we were surprised to discover that the negative effect of SSRIs on dental implants was so strong, almost equal to that of smoking, a well-established hazard for oral health."”

THIS is front page news information! 

Now you know it too.

I already knew to avoid osteoporosis or turn it off has its own set of things that work and I knew it can make those afflicted by it suffer truly horrible broken bones and pain and cause the kind of broken hip injuries that have a death rate of something like 50% within a year.

So, I hope this post has helped make it far less likely people will have that happen from taking SSRI drugs!

(Here’s a quick overview of things that prevent or turn off osteoporosis otherwise.

NOT ever drinking any kind of soft drink, particularly colas, since they cause your bones to decalcify from their excessive phosphoric acid.

Definitely do whole body strength training superslow style twice a week, particularly for the legs.  Do as much walking as you have time for.

Take 3,000 to 5,000 iu of vitamin D3.

Get adequate calcium but through foods instead of supplements and if you take calcium supplement only take them AFTER eating.

Take magnesium supplements and eat foods high in magnesium.

Take 3 mg a day of boron.

And, if you are a menopausal woman, consider taking bioidentical estrogen replacement and follow the low inflammation lifestyle to help ensure it’s safe to do so.

(Medical News Today just reported on a new drug that may cause your bones to regrow that may prove to be worth taking.  The current drugs have very high side effects and seem to make harder but more easily broken bones.  My suggestion is if you possibly can do all the other things.  Do NOT take or continue SSRI drugs.  And wait to see if the new drug tests successfully. And take a pass on the existing osteoporosis drugs! 

Why pay to make your already weak bones more likely to fracture and suffer such side effects?