Antipsychotics Change the Architecture of the Colon

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Researchers in Singapore find that antipsychotic medications are associated with changes to colonic architecture, which could result in difficult colonoscopy and increased colonoscopy-related risks. Antidepressants, laxatives, benzodiazepines, and antihypertensive medications were not found to have significant effect on changes to colonic architecture. Results are available online in Surgical Endoscopy.

Abstract → Tan, E., Soh, K., Ngiam, K; Colonic architectural change on colonoscopy in patients taking psychotropic medications. Surgical Endoscopy. Online October 18, 2012

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Kermit Cole
Kermit Cole, MFT, founding editor of Mad in America, works in Santa Fe, New Mexico as a couples and family therapist. Inspired by Open Dialogue, he works as part of a team and consults with couples and families that have members identified as patients. His work in residential treatment — largely with severely traumatized and/or "psychotic" clients — led to an appreciation of the power and beauty of systemic philosophy and practice, as the alternative to the prevailing focus on individual pathology. A former film-maker, he has undergraduate and master's degrees in psychology from Harvard University, as well as an MFT degree from the Council for Relationships in Philadelphia. He is a doctoral candidate with the Taos Institute and the Free University of Brussels. You can reach him at [email protected].

17 COMMENTS

  1. The colon.

    Another organ joins an ever-growing list of bodily parts that are damaged by psychiatric drugs.

    I’ve got an idea…

    Let’s make a list of organs, tissues, bodily parts that are *not* adversely effected.

    Wait a minute…
    That may be impossible!

    Duane
    discoverandrecover.wordpress.com

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    • You hit the nail on the head and I was going to suggest the same thing, a list of organs or body parts not affected, but as you say, probably not possible!!!

      Yet they still call these safe and effective drugs and claim that the disease is worse than the medications!!??!! Still trying to work out how something that is not even a disease can be worse than medications that shut down every organ in the body.

      What also amazes me is that other branches of medicine don’t consider any of this. The amount of people I know with supposedly unexplained physical problems, having every test imaginable, as well as treatments, and they just cannot work out why it is happening. They are ALL on psychotropic medications, but no one considers the links!! I guess though when every single person you see is on these medications, along with about half the population, then it would be pretty hard to consider such a thing!! And I guess half of them are probably on them too!!

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    • Common sense says they are toxic to every single cell in the body!! Any drug that is designed to shut down the whole brain, cannot be expected to not shut down the rest of the body, and the fact is they are designed to shut down the whole brain, that is exactly what they wanted to achieve, turning people into puppets!!

      How doctors are not able to work that out is beyond me!!! They are supposed to be the most highly educted on the workings on the body, yet here I am having failed 10th grade science and I can work it out!!! Mind you I think the only reason I failed was because I was so doped up on medication that I was not able to read the books or to do the experiments, as I kept dropping things!!!

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  2. My 23 year old daughter was on Zyprexa and other psych drugs for several years. Now she has a rectal prolapse, as well as internal prolapses, for which the medical community can only suggest the removal of part or all, of what appears to be a descended colon. No taking responsibility. Only she has to suffer.

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    • Brutal! There’s no responsibility or accountability whatsoever, and where there is neither of these, there is a growing sense of entitlement.

      I’m getting blamed for the crap I’m going through since I reduced my dose of venlafaxine from 225 to 75 mg. You tell them about the spasms, the terrifying perceptual and physical shocks, the sensitivity to aural and visual stimuli, and the temporal relation of all this to the dose reduction of this drug, and they blame it on my supposed anxiety disorder, just like everyone else is doing, and all this was said in front of some student rogue medical professional, who I’m sure will learn from all this and do the same when she has patients.

      Yet from all this, all the countless millions of instances of organ damage, of often irreversible iatrogenic suffering, the modern psychiatric historiographer and ideologue has extracted a narrative of progress! Unbelievable.

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  3. Oh yes, and she’s facing both endoscopy and colonoscopy before her surgery. Also, now trying to taper off of Effexor XR, stalled at 60 mg., I’m reading about possible adverse interactions with anesthesia. Then there are the potential problems with nutrient absorption after surgery and the likelihood that the surgery “will not solve all of her digestive problems” per the surgeon, plus other potentially disabling possibilities.

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    • Oh yes, and she might also possibly face excess bleeding problems following surgery if she still is on Effexor XR. One plastic surgery website warns patients to not take “serotonin drugs” for at least 14 days pre and post surgery to prevent bleeding problems.

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  4. While ALL psych drugs are hard to wean off and all SSRI’s are hard to wean off, Effexor is one of the worst. You may want to try moving her to another one, Prozac or Zoloft, come to mind. They have longer half lives and so seem to be slightly easier to come off. Not easy in any sense of the word, but in most cases the best of the bad bunch.

    Anything that comes in a tablet form is going to be easier to get off, as you can half, and I have even cut into quarters the minimum dose tablet.

    Another thing to try is to lower the dosage every second day and then the day in between take the same dose as you are currently on. It lowers it slower than it happening all at once. One day they get a lower dose, but then before anything major can happen in the body, they get the same dose the next day.

    Any lowering of the dosage is a good step and is good for ones health. Any dosage reduction will be better for surgery. Of course it would be a great if one was not on any at all, but the lower they are, the better they will be.

    Some have also found using some benzo’s for a few days to cope with withdrawl symptoms helpful. Benzo’s are addictive, and they at least admit to that, but in low doses for 2-3 days not going to cause any major addiction.

    There are of course many other things you can do to improve the success of surgery. Increasing exercise levels to ensure one is as fit as they can be will help – but don’t overdo it and damage yourself in the process. And of course doing all you can to improve diet and to eat as healthy as possible is also important.

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  5. They day they begin to acknowledge this stuff will be a day I could only hope to experience. What amazes me is the the prescribing information they are required to give to doctors does actually list 99% of this stuff, as side effects, but they still ignore it all.

    And of course even if they have the courage to admit it, they do say, “but the underlying disease was so so so much worse”. At least I was alive when I had the problems that bought me to them. I can’t say I was fully alive when I left them!!!

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  6. kThe PBS station in my state was getting ready to show a documentary about the “plight” of the so-called mentally ill in our state. The guy who is the head honcho over the State Hospital wrote a letter in support of the documentary. It’s interesting because he stated that people with mental illness are dying 25 years earlier. Okay, we all know that to be a fact. And we’re pretty sure that it’s the toxic drugs that are responsible. So here’s the clincher. This guy stated that people are dying earlier BECAUSE THEY AREN’T ON THE “MEDS” AND GETTING TREATMENT! I sometimes feel like I’m in an alternate universe when I hear things like this! We are very far behind in my state, to say the least.

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      • Agreed totally. If it was not for MIA, I would totally feel that way. Yet to find anyone in Australia who actually questions any of this stuff at all.

        Here they say that medications are only responsible for about 5% of the health problems that these people face. Diabetes is caused by the person, heart disease is caused by the person, etc, etc. The fact that the average dosage of drugs here is 2 times the maximum recommended limit that the drug companies themselves advocate, has nothing to do with anything. Side effects do not really exist and are ALWAYS incredibly mild in comparison to the underlying “disease”. And of course we have the forced treatment of those at risk of psychosis, which is anything at all!!! There are many people who are opposed to treating those at risk with antipsychotics, which is a massive start in the right direction.

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