Women More Likely To Die After Heart Attack
March 17, 2010
WebMD
By: Charlene Laino
Better heart treatment of women could help close the gender gap in heart deaths. Women would be more likely to survive a heart attack if they were treated more like men, French researchers say.
In a study of more than 3,500 people admitted to the hospital for a heart attack, women were far less likely than men to get angiography to visualize heart artery blockages or angioplasty to open up blocked arteries.
Women were about twice as likely to die within a month of having the heart attack, according to the study, presented at the American College of Cardiology’s annual meeting.
The higher death rate in women “is related to the fact that they don’t get the same treatments as men,” says Maria Rosa Costanzo, MD, an American Heart Association spokeswoman who was not involved with the study.
“If women had the same access to procedures and medication as men, they would derive the same benefit,” says Costanzo, of Midwest Heart Specialists in Naperville, Ill.
Study researcher Francois Schiele, MD, chief cardiologist at the University Hospital of Besancon in France, says that when possible, “women should be treated with all recommended strategies, including invasive ones.”
Closing the Gender Gap
Costanzo tells WebMD that it’s been known for some time that women fare worse after a heart attack than men, but it’s been unclear why. Some studies point to biological differences such as women’s smaller blood vessels that raise the risk of complications during angioplasty, she says.
Also, women tend to be older and have poorer overall health when they have heart attacks, and wait longer to seek medical care than men, research suggests.
But other studies suggest that women are undertreated, Costanzo says.
The new study attempted to level the playing ground by using statistical techniques that took into account women’s and men’s different characteristics and treatments when they had heart attacks.
The researchers analyzed data from a regional registry that included more than 3,500 patients, about a third of whom were women, treated for a heart attack between January 2006 and December 2007.
Women were, on average, nine years older than men, had more health problems, and received fewer effective treatments for heart attack. They were nearly twice as likely to die, both during the initial hospital stay and over the following month.
When the analysis was adjusted to take into account the differences in the women’s ages, blood pressure, kidney function, and other characteristics as well as the treatments they received, there was no difference in death rates, either in the hospital or at 30 days.
“Once they compared apples to apples, it shows women get the same benefit from [procedures to open blocked arteries] and medication as men,” Costanzo says.
Drugmakers GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, and Sanofi-Aventis helped fund the registry.
Click here for the full report.
Glenmark Gets A Slap on The Hand By The FDA for Selling Unapproved Drug
March 17, 2010
Reuters
* FDA says company sold unapproved nitroglycerin
* Glenmark says evaluating situation
* Company says 2010-11 financial numbers not affected
Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Ltd <GLEN.BO> sold nitroglycerin tablets without approval from U.S. regulators, the Food and Drug Administration said in a letter released on Tuesday.
“Based upon our information, there are no FDA-approved applications on file” for nitroglycerin tablets in doses of 0.3 milligrams, 0.4 milligrams and 0.6 milligrams, the FDA said in the letter.
Glenmark said in a statement that nitroglycerin was an old drug that was previously “grandfathered” in with a category of medicines sold in the United States prior to 1938 without approved applications.
The FDA has made an effort since 2006 to remove older unapproved drugs from the market.
Glenmark said it is “evaluating the situation and will take appropriate measures.”
“We believe that the sales from nitroglycerin tablets will not have a significant bearing on our FY 2010-11 financial numbers,” the company said.
Click here for the full report.
Sony Chairman Pushes For Healthy Alternatives at Cinemas
March 17, 2010
TimesOnline
By: Jacqui Goddard
For many, a night out at the movies would not be complete without the sound of popcorn and chocolate wrappers from the stalls. One of the most powerful studio bosses in Hollywood, however, would like to see cinemas selling healthier snacks.
Michael Lynton, chairman and chief executive of Sony Pictures, says that audiences would be better off nibbling on granola bars, fruit salad, yogurt and vegetable crudités with dips. “I can almost imagine the Romans eating popcorn and drinking Coke at the Colosseum 2,000 years ago,” he told a convention of cinema owners in Las Vegas. “But by bringing healthier snacks into your concession stands you would be helping our country meet an urgent public health need.”
The average cinema bucket of buttered popcorn has 76 grams (2.6oz) of fat — the equivalent of six McDonald’s cheeseburgers — and 1,100 calories.
Behind Mr Lynton’s call is an awareness of obesity on both sides of the Atlantic. Last month Tim Smith, the chief executive of the Food Standards Agency in Britain, called for filmgoers to be told how many calories there are in the popcorn, ice cream and fizzy drinks that they buy in cinemas and for them to be available in smaller portions.
However, Mr Lynton admitted that old habits might die hard. “I don’t think giant tubs of spinach or broccoli is a good idea. And nobody wants to eat cauliflower while watching Spider-Man, or drink a 40oz cup of prune juice,” he said.
He did not, he said, intend to “close the window for popcorn, soda and candy” but items such as baked crisps and unbuttered, air-popped popcorn, would enhance the choice. “I’m just talking about adding some healthier items to what you already sell.”
Deirdre Flynn, spokesman for the Popcorn Board, a non-profit organisation funded by US popcorn processors, said: “If you ask most consumers what they consider the number one movie snack, they will tell you it’s popcorn. Popcorn and movies have gone hand in hand since the early 1900s.”
The Alliance for a Healthier Generation, started by the former President Clinton, and the American Heart Association to fight childhood obesity offered to advise on nutritious menus.
Click here for the full report.
Dentist Used Paper Clips in Root Canals
March 17, 2010
San Francisco Chronicle
Associated Press
A former Massachusetts dentist is accused of placing paper clips instead of stainless steel posts inside the teeth of root canal patients while billing Medicaid for the more expensive parts.
The state attorney general announced Tuesday that a grand jury indicted former Fall River dentist Michael Clair last week. The charges include assault and battery, larceny, submitting false claims to Medicaid and illegally prescribing drugs.
Prosecutors say Clair was suspended by Medicaid in 2002. He allegedly hired other dentists for his clinic and filed claims under their numbers between August 2003 and June 2005. He’s also accused of illegally prescribing drugs to staffers who returned medications to him.
Clair is to be arraigned April 8. He now lives in Maryland. A telephone listing could not be found for him, and it was unclear if he has an attorney.
Click here for the full report.
The Prozac Heist
March 17, 2010
Reuters
As much as $75 million in popular Eli Lilly & Co <LLY.N> prescription medicines such as Prozac were stolen during a raging storm from a Connecticut warehouse over the weekend, police said on Tuesday.
Burglars broke into the Lilly warehouse either late Saturday or early Sunday in the town of Enfield, Connecticut, as violent rain and winds lashed the Eastern seaboard, Enfield Lt. Steven Kaselouskas said.
“You certainly don’t see a $50 million to $75 million burglary many times in your career,” he said. “This was a well-planned event.”
The thieves disabled a burglar alarm in the building and carted away dozens of pallets loaded with Lilly antidepressants Prozac and Cymbalta, anti-psychotic Zyprexa and other company medicines, according to published reports.
A warehouse employee saw the hole in the roof on Sunday afternoon and notified police. Police did not receive notice of an alarm going off, said Kaselouskas.
Kaselouskas speculated the drugs could be headed for the black market and possibly overseas, where there is demand for medicines made in the United States because of their deemed safety.
Lilly officials could not immediately be reached for comment and did not issue a release about the theft.
But a Lilly spokesman said in a published report the loss may not have a material financial impact for the company and has not disrupted supply of medicines to the east coast.
Click here for the full report.
Common Weed-Killer Chemically Castrates Frogs!
March 16, 2010
Associated Press
By Karin Zeitvogel
One of the most common weed-killers in the world, atrazine, causes chemical castration in frogs and could be killing off amphibian populations worldwide, a study published showed.
Researchers compared 40 male control frogs with 40 male frogs reared from the moment they hatched from eggs until full sexual maturity in atrazine concentrations in the range that animals experience year-round in areas where the chemical herbicide is found.
Ninety percent of the male frogs exposed to atrazine had low testosterone levels, decreased breeding gland size, feminized laryngeal development, suppressed mating behavior, reduced sperm production and decreased fertility, while the control group showed features typically found in male frogs.
And what happened to the remaining 10 percent of atrazine-exposed frogs was deemed “the most dramatic finding” of the study by the researchers, led by Tyrone Hayes of the University of California at Berkeley: they developed into females that copulated with males and produced eggs.
The larvae from those eggs were all male, the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found.
“Many studies have focused on death from disease and its role in global amphibian declines and sudden disappearances of populations, but virtually no attention has been paid to the slow, gradual loss of amphibian populations due to failed recruitment,” the study said.
“The production of sex-reversed all male-producing animals could drive populations to extinction,” the authors of the study warned.
Earlier studies have found that atrazine also caused feminization in zebra fish and leopard frogs and caused a significant decline in sperm production in male salmon and caiman lizards.
Atrazine is widely used by farmers in 60 countries around the world as a weed- and grass-killer, particularly in fields of corn, grain sorghum and sugar cane. It is also used on golf courses.
Apart from the United States, Australia and China are among the biggest markets for atrazine, according to Tim Pastoor, principal scientist for Syngenta, the US company that makes the herbicide.
Atrazine is banned in the European Union, but farmers there use an almost identical chemical called terbuthylazine, Pastoor said.
Environmental activist organizations in the United States have called for atrazine to be taken off the market in the United States, but the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) four years ago refused to ban the chemical.
“The EPA have already considered the question of whether or not atrazine will affect frogs’ sexual development, and the answer to that is clearly no,” Pastoor told AFP.
“But the main reason Syngenta stands behind atrazine is because farmers have come to us and said, ‘Please keep this product on the market.’
“The reason they ask us is because it’s a product that works, it increases crop yields, and it’s inexpensive, and something that’s inexpensive and works is magic to a farmer,” said Pastoor.
Around 80 million pounds of atrazine are applied annually to crop fields in the United States alone, and half a million pounds of the herbicide fall to earth in rainfall in the United States, some of it hundreds of miles from the farmland where it was originally applied, the study says.
“Atrazine can be transported more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the point of application via rainfall and, as a result, contaminates otherwise pristine habitats,” the study says.
Atrazine has also been associated with low sperm count, poor semen quality and prostate problems in humans.
A small study led in 2003 by University of Rochester professor in environmental medicine Shanna Swan found that men who lived in the Midwest — the biggest corn-growing region in the United States — who had high levels of atrazine in their urine also had low sperm counts.
“We haven’t been able to follow up and confirm that study, but it did find an association,” Swan told AFP.
“But the important message here is: this is a very prevalent exposure. Human beings are definitely exposed, and a lot of them, because it’s the most commonly used pesticide,” Swan said.
Click here for the full report.
Dean Foods Pulls Bait-n-Switch!
March 16, 2010
NaturalNews.com
By Mike Adams
Until early 2009, Silk brand soy milk was made using organic soybeans. But earlier this year, Dean Foods (owner of the Silk brand) quietly switched to conventional soybeans, which are often grown with pesticides. But they kept the same UPC barcodes on their products, and they kept the product label virtually the same, only replacing the word “organic” with “natural” in a way that was barely noticeable. They also kept the price the same, charging consumers “organic” prices for a product that was now suddenly made with conventionally-grown soybeans.
Many retailers and consumers never noticed the bait-and-switch tactic, so they kept buying Silk, thinking it was still organic. The shift on the product label from “organic” to “natural” wasn’t well understood by consumers, either. Many consumers continue to think that the term “natural” is basically the same as “organic,” when in fact they are almost opposites. The term “natural” is entirely unregulated, and almost anything can be claimed to be “natural” even when it’s sprayed with pesticides or treated with other chemicals.
This bait-and-switch ploy continued throughout 2009 until a few watchdog organizations started to catch on to the covert switch. In late October, the Cornucopia Institute (www.Cornucopia.org) accused Target stores of misleading consumers by advertising Silk products using the old “organic” labeling even though the product being sold in stores was not organic. Cornucopia’s Mark Kastel accused Target and Dean Foods for “blurring the line between organic and natural,” thereby confusing consumers while boosting profits from the more lucrative sales of non-organic products sold at organic prices. (http://www.cornucopia.org/2009/10/o…)
Meanwhile, a Sunflower health food store in Texas also found itself caught up in the bait-and-switch tactic. It had been reordering Silk for months, thinking the product was still organic. But now, after discovering the scam, the store posts a hand-written sign in front of the Silk products, warning consumers with this message: “Silk is no longer organic.”
“We don’t want to be part of customer deception,” said the store owner in a Star-Telegram interview.
According to that same story, food retailers in California, Delaware and Texas were also duped by Silk’s bait-and-switch scheme, only discovering the switch to conventional soybeans months after the switch was covertly made. Dean Foods, you see, never bothered to tell retailers they had switched from organic to conventionally-grown soybeans. They just quietly made the switch but kept the same box design and UPC codes, perhaps hoping no one would notice. And the ploy worked!
“Dean has only added to the marketplace confusion between ‘natural’ and ‘organic,’ as they definitely do not mean the same thing, and ‘natural’ requires no verification whatsoever,” said Consumer Reports senior scientist Urvashi Rangan (see Star-Telegram article link below).
Labeling deception
Dean Foods is one of the big food giants that serves processed, factory-made foods and beverages to the American people. It’s the parent company of Horizon Organic, the so-called “organic” milk maker that’s been caught up in a web of deception exposed by the Organic Consumers Association (http://www.naturalnews.com/021763_o…).
The company has pushed hard to lower organic standards so that it could market products as “organic” even though they might contain questionable ingredients. When Dean Foods bought out WhiteWave, the creator of Silk soy milk, WhiteWave founder Steve Demos soon left the company in disgust, saying that “green” values had been abandoned for the sake of profit.
Dean Foods even refused to participate on a “soy scorecard” investigation undertaken by the Cornucopia Institute (http://www.naturalnews.com/026294_s…). The last thing this company wants is scrutiny of its business practices, it seems. For example, in 2002, Dean Foods cut off U.S. soybean farmers and switched to soybeans grown in China (http://www.cornucopia.org/silk-whit…). And for years, the company has waged attacks on the Cornucopia Institute itself.
In my opinion, Dean Foods is the Enron of the food industry. It has no ethics, no moral code and no hesitation about deceiving consumers or hurting American farmers in order to maximize profits.
In America today, the big food companies are all about disinforming consumers. Rather than telling the truth on product labeling, they seek to confuse consumers with misleading information. That’s why they want to weaken the definition of “organic” — so that they can essentially grow conventional foods with pesticides, then misleadingly position them as “near-organic” products that are sold at organic prices.
Consumers end up buying products they think are organic but really aren’t. And because the products are misleadingly positioned as “organic” products, they command a higher price. This, in turn, generates more profits for the food companies.
Lying about being organic pays well in the food industry today. Perhaps that’s why so many companies continue to do it.
Click here for the full report.
Vitamin D Better at Fighting Flu than Vaccine
March 16, 2010
Times Online
By Oliver Gillie
The risk of children suffering from flu can be halved if they take vitamin D, doctors in Japan have found. The finding has implications for flu epidemics since vitamin D, which is naturally produced by the human body when exposed to direct sunlight, has no significant side effects, costs little and can be several times more effective than anti-viral drugs or vaccine.
Only one in ten children, aged six to 15 years, taking the sunshine vitamin in a clinical trial came down with flu compared with one in five given a dummy tablet. Mitsuyoshi Urashima, the Japanese doctor who led the trial, told The Times that vitamin D was more effective than vaccines in preventing flu.
Vitamin D was found to be even more effective when the comparison left out children who were already given extra vitamin D by their parents, outside the trial. Taking the sunshine vitamin was then shown to reduce the risk of flu to a third of what it would otherwise be.
Altogether 354 children took part in the trial, which took place during the winter of 2008-09, before the swine flu epidemic. Vitamin D was found to protect against influenza A, which caused last year’s epidemic, but not against the less common influenza B.
The trial, which was double blind, randomised, and fully controlled scientifically, was conducted by doctors and scientists from Jikei University School of Medicine in Tokyo, Japan.
The children were given a daily dose of 1200 IUs (international units) of vitamin D over a period of three months. In the first month children in the group taking the vitamin became ill just as often as those taking the dummy tablet. But by the second month, when the vitamin level in the children’s blood was higher, the advantage of the vitamin was clear.
The Japanese scientists, writing in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, say that the anti-viral drugs zanamivir and oseltamivir reduce risk of flu infection by 8 per cent in children who have been exposed to infection, compared with a 50 per cent or greater reduction with vitamin D.
Anti-virals are also too expensive, and possibly too toxic, to be given to the population as a whole whereas vitamin D has additional benefits. The sunshine vitamin not only prevents bone fractures but is also believed to reduce risks of cancer, heart disease, diabetes and other illness, including various bacterial as well as viral infections.
The Japanese finding supports a theory that low blood levels of the sunshine vitamin occurring in winter explain why flu epidemics generally peak between December and March.
Vitamin D activates the innate immune system, enabling the body to produce several proteins such as defensin and cathelicidin which trigger cell activity and disable viruses.
Dr Urashima said: “Vitamin D and vaccine work by quite different mechanisms. Vitamin D enhances innate immunity while vaccine enhances acquired immunity. So we do not have to select only one way of prevention, rather we should do both ways, I think.”
Dr John Oxford, professor of virology at Queen Mary School of Medicine, London, said: “This is a timely study. It will be noticed by scientists. It fits in with the seasonal pattern of flu. There is an increasing background of solid science that makes the vitamin D story credible. But this study needs to be replicated. If it is confirmed we might think of giving vitamin D at the same time as we vaccinate.”
Click here for the full report.
Heart Treatments for Diabetes Causing Harm
March 16, 2010
The New York Times
By Gina Kolata
Three aggressive treatment strategies doctors had expected would prevent heart attacks among people with Type 2 diabetes and some who are the verge of developing it have proved to be ineffective or even harmful, new studies show.
The results are surprising and disappointing, heart and diabetes experts say. An estimated 21 million Americans have Type 2 diabetes, the kind once known as adult-onset, and they are at enormous risk for heart disease. The only measures proved to reduce their chances — avoiding cigarettes and taking medication to lower bad cholesterol and blood pressure — still leave diabetics with a heart attack risk equivalent to that of a nondiabetic who has already had a heart attack.
So doctors began trying other strategies they hoped would help: getting blood pressure to a normal range; raising levels of good cholesterol and lowering levels of dangerous triglycerides; or modulating sharp upswings in blood sugar after a meal.
It is not known how many doctors have been encouraging patients to take these measures, but medical specialists say it seemed reasonable and tempting to do so.
“Doctors always want to improve the lives of their patients, and that often leads to pressure to treat more and more,” said Dr. Henry N. Ginsberg, director of the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research at Columbia University. The new studies, he says, could save a lot of people from taking drugs that will not help them.
The papers were presented at an American College of Cardiology meeting on Sunday and are being published online by The New England Journal of Medicine.
In Type 2 diabetes, the body is resistant to the hormone insulin, leading to abnormally high blood sugar levels that can cause eye, kidney and nerve disease. But heart disease is what kills most patients. A quarter to a third of heart attack patients have diabetes, even though diabetics constitute just 9 percent of the population. And 25 percent of heart attack patients are on the verge of diabetes, with abnormally high blood sugar levels.
High blood sugar levels themselves increase the risk of heart disease, but researchers found two years ago that rigorously controlling blood sugar did not prevent heart disease or deaths in people with Type 2 diabetes. Researchers said the failure was probably because most of those patients also had other problems that made their odds of heart disease soar, like high levels of LDL cholesterol, low levels of HDL cholesterol, high levels of triglycerides and high blood pressure. And most were older and overweight.
Type 2 diabetes “captures all these risk factors in one patient,” said Dr. David Nathan, director of the diabetes center at Massachusetts General Hospital.
It seemed logical to look at the other risk factors. One large federal study asked if getting high blood pressure down to a level considered normal, a systolic pressure of no more than 120, would help protect diabetics from heart disease and save lives.
This hypothesis was promising because studies that observed populations found that heart disease and stroke risk increase continuously as systolic blood pressure rises from 115 on up, said Dr. William C. Cushman, a study investigator and chief of the preventive medicine section at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Memphis.
To put the idea of a normal blood pressure to the test, half of the study’s 4,773 participants took drugs to get their systolic blood pressure to 120 or below. The rest had a blood pressure goal of less than 140.
But lower blood pressure did not prevent heart attacks or cardiovascular deaths, and those with lower blood pressure were more likely to suffer severe side effects from the drugs, like high potassium levels or dangerously low blood pressures. They also took an average of 3.4 drugs to lower blood pressure, compared with an average of 2 drugs for those with the higher pressure.
A second, less rigorous study, involving 6,400 patients with Type 2 diabetes and heart disease, asked whether getting systolic blood pressure lower than 130 was any better than getting it to 130 to 140. It found that patients actually were worse off: those with the lower blood pressure ended up with a 50 percent greater risk of strokes, heart attacks or deaths.
National blood pressure treatment guidelines call for a systolic pressure of 130 or lower. That was based on expert opinion and observational studies, Dr. Cushman said. Now, he said, it is likely to be reconsidered when the group that sets the guidelines prepares a report this year.
People with diabetes also tend to have low levels of HDL cholesterol and high levels of triglycerides, a combination known to increase the risk of heart disease. And in some studies, treating that combination with a type of drug called a fibrate reduced risk in diabetics and nondiabetics who were not taking statins. So it made sense to see if fibrates also helped Type 2 diabetics who were taking statins.
It did not, concluded another arm of the federal study involving 5,518 people with Type 2 diabetes.
“It’s a disappointment,” said Dr. Ginsberg, a lead study investigator. “But it’s very, very important,” because it says most people will not be helped by taking the additional drug.
It means, said Dr. Denise Simons-Morton of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the project officer for the federal study, that “doctors and patients now know that the inclination to do intensive treatment that people seemed to think would be better for cardiovascular risk reduction wasn’t better.”
A final studyinvestigated the popular hypothesis that rapid rises in blood glucose after a meal were dangerous and could lead to heart disease. Many doctors were giving drugs assuming the hypothesis was correct, Dr. Nathan said.
“Every meeting you go to, some academic is talking about how postprandial hyperglycemia is really bad and that you should aim specifically to get it lower,” Dr. Nathan said. The study, he said, “is a direct test of that.”
The study, which involved 9,300 patients at high risk for diabetes because their blood sugar was high, tested the drug nateglinide, which enhances insulin secretion. It also tested a blood pressure drug. Neither decreased heart disease risk.
“Neither drug should be used in people with impaired glucose tolerance but not diabetes in order to prevent cardiovascular events unless there is another indication, like significant hypertension,” said Dr. Robert M. Califf, vice chancellor for clinical research at Duke University School of Medicine and chairman of the study.
Dr. Nathan, who wrote an accompanying editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine, agreed. “It is a negative study,” he said.
Some, like Dr. Daniel Einhorn, president-elect of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, say the results of that study and the others would not necessarily dissuade him from taking such intensive measures with individual patients.
“It’s hard to make a case for a public health recommendation,” Dr. Einhorn said. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a benefit in an individual case.”
But no benefit has been shown, Dr. Nathan noted. The lesson, he said, is that while making logical leaps to aggressively treat patients with Type 2 diabetes was “totally understandable,” it was also dangerous.
“Lower is not necessarily better,” Dr. Nathan said.
Click here for the full report.
Over a Million Patients in the U.K. Addicted to Pain Killers
March 16, 2010
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
Approximately 1.5 million people in the United Kingdom are addicted to prescription or over-the-counter drugs, many of which were legally acquired.
In July, the Department of Health launched a review of the problem, after the House of Commons All-Party Group on Drug Misuse called for greater awareness, better doctor training and more treatment options.
Although medical guidelines discourage doctors from prescribing benzodiazepine tranquilizers such as Valium for more than four weeks at a time, many patients still become addicted.
“There are still lots and lots of patients being put on these drugs and kept on them for a long time,” said Pam Armstrong of the Council for Information on Tranquillizers and Antidepressants. “I have some sympathy with [doctors] — they get a lot of pressure from patients who want these drugs. But the problem has been ignored.”
Other highly addictive drugs include sleeping pills and narcotic painkillers. A recent study found that painkillers containing codeine can be addictive within as little as three days.
The increasing prevalence of Internet pharmacies has made prescription and over-the-counter drug abuse an increasingly popular alternative to the abuse of wholly banned drugs.
Yet not all addicts intended to abuse drugs. The Telegraph cites the case of one man who was placed on an antidepressant and a benzodiazepine in 2001, and remained on them for the next seven years. When increasing fatigue led him to attempt to quit “cold turkey” under hospital supervision, the results were devastating.
“In two days I was a train wreck. I felt I had woken up in a horror film, I couldn’t walk or think and I had lost my memory. It was indescribable torture,” he said.
Nine months later, he is still unable to work.
“I am still terrified of going outside, I can’t think straight or concentrate and I have very bad depression,” he said. “I have seen several doctors since and they cannot believe my doctor kept me on these drugs for seven years.”
Click here for the full report.
