Archive for March, 2009

Headaches From Anti-Depressant Medications

Friday, March 20th, 2009

It isn’t uncommon to suffer from Zoloft or Prozac headache. These powerful medications cause chemical changes in the brain. These chemical changes are supposed to relieve your depression or anxiety. Unfortunately, like with any medication you can experience side effects. You should tell your doctor immediately if you are suffering from a Zoloft or Prozac headache.
Give It Some Time
The Zoloft or Prozac headache you are suffering from could just be temporary. It takes a while for the body to get used to the medication and for it to begin to successfully treat your anxiety or depression. However, if you are not noticing any improvements in your mental health in 4 to 6 weeks, but you are still get a Zoloft or Prozac headache from time to time, then your doctor needs to know. Even if there is a marked improvement in your mental health, it may be worth trying another medication rather than suffer from the headaches.
I suffer from anxiety and I have tried Zoloft, Prozac, Celexa, you name it. While I never suffered from a Zoloft or Prozac headache, the different medications were not all equal in their ability to treat my anxiety. In fact, with the exception of Lexapro, no anti-anxiety has been able to satisfactorily treat my condition. Usually these medications take a few weeks to kick in. Lexapro started relieving my anxiety within a half hour of first taking it. So, if you have a Zoloft or Prozac headache, ask your doctor to try another medication that can successfully relieve your depression or anxiety symptoms without giving you a headache.
Other Factors Contributing To Your Headaches
Now, your Zoloft or Prozac headache may not be caused by the medication alone. Other things do cause headaches. Tension headaches are caused by the muscles in your neck and head becoming cramped from months of tightening these muscles when under stress. If tension is partly the cause of your headaches, then you can’t just rely on the medication alone. You need to learn how to properly manage your stress. You may find that by doing so, your Zoloft or Prozac headache will go away.
One of the best ways to deal with stress and keep it from getter the better of you is to take deep breathing breaks. Whenever you feel stressed out, find a place to be alone, lie down on your back or sit in a chair and do deep breathing from your diaphragm for two minutes. This will restore your breathing which becomes shallow when you are anxious and also fill the brain with calming oxygen. Whether or not you have a Zoloft or Prozac headache, you should be doing deep breathing exercises on a daily basis to relieve your anxiety and depression.

Tags:

Eating Disorders and the Most Common Antidepressant

Monday, March 9th, 2009

Prozac is the most common prescribed medication for eating disorders. There are many opinions about the treatment of eating disorders with Prozac. Some people say that Prozac was useful for them to fight their eating disorders. But many people report it didn’t make any difference in how they felt and even created more health problems than they had before taking it.
Why is it that some people get benefits from this medication and some do not? And should Prozac really be a first line medication for eating disorders?
First, let’s look at the reasons why Prozac as an eating disorder treatment could be effective.
Prozac is an antidepressant. And since up to half of eating disorders sufferers have an additional psychological disorder such as depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder, Prozac can help a sufferer by treating these disorders. Also, Prozac is designed to restore and maintain healthy levels of a brain chemical called serotonin, which controls mood, feelings and appetite. So, by controlling mood, feelings and appetite Prozac makes a sufferer feel better and more in control.
So what is the other side to the use of this drug? Not all people who have an eating disorder suffer from depression or have other emotional problems. So, if people take Prozac just to restore and maintain their serotonin level in their brain they develop resistance to the drug and need a higher and higher dose of Prozac as time goes by. Then if they stop the medication or decrease the dose they simply slip back to their old eating habits straight away and can also suffer debilitating withdrawal symptoms.

The question arises: how can we make the use of this medication more effective for more people?

Most conventional health care professionals believe that the most effective approach is an integrated treatment strategy: one that uses a combination of Prozac treatment with active counseling to treat an eating disorder. But any counseling treatment should include active self-help, self-education and family therapy.
The problem is many people although on Prozac, fail to control their eating disorder while on their own after returning from the therapist or the clinic, so slip backwards.
People should not think that they can simply walk into a doctor’s office and be given a pill and that is the end of it; where suddenly the eating disorder disappears overnight.
This is a sure fire remedy for failure.
If you have been prescribed a pill (like Prozac); you should immediately seek out more education and psychological help regarding your disorder. You have to develop good strategies of self-control, self-evaluation and self-presentation. Without mastering all of these strategies you will always slip back to old eating habits despite the help of Prozac.
Self-help and self-education are important as they teach the sufferer to act while on their own at home, as the eating disorder lives with you at home and not in the doctor’s office.
I suggest you start your self-education and self-help by reading books. One of the best books about eating disorder management and treatment is at www.orderdiscountprozac.com/News
To conclude, it is fair to say that Prozac can be very helpful for some eating disorder sufferers, especially for those who combine it with an active behavioral treatment. But there are many others who will not benefit from it at all: due to individual specifics, wrong consumption or other reasons. So learning more about the disorder and seeking other ways to improve yourself could be the right way to win against your eating disorder.

Tags: