Advertising cymbalta for arthritis

[[La...]]

Adverstised tonight on TV was taking cymbalta for arthritis!! So, they are trying to find a new use for the A/D since the study came out that they are just as effective as a placebo for depression, thats big pharma, now pushing antidepressants on people with arthritis, any one see this advert, what do you think, WHY? Ladygrace

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This seems to be common practice by pharmaceutical companies.  Their only goal, it seems no matter what, is to sell their product.

 

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The meta analysis of antidepressants that disputed their efficiency specifically looked at SSRIs, and not at other classes of drugs. Even in the case of that study, they were shown to be more effective than true placebo; what I got out of that study (and the related book The Emperor's New Drugs) is that the pharmaceutical industry diliberately and willfully overstated the efficiency of SSRIs. That doesn't mean that they don't work at all, it just means that they don't work as well as the marketing shtick claims and that as always, we need to be vigilant in the way we assess efficiency and danger studies being done by the very entities that have a financial stake in making the drugs.

 

This is a complex issue, but trying to see it in a black-and-white "Big Pharma is evil!" sense does a disservice to everyone involved. There are a lot of things I would change about the current way drugs are developed and marketed if I could, but I certainly wouldn't want to unwind the clock 400 years and live in a world without any of the drugs we have developed. Look at Cipro: it's extremely dangerous, and often prescribed inappropriately, subjecting people to needless risks. That said, it's also effective against potentially lethal bacterial infections which do not respond to other treatments.

 

Advertising drugs is a whole seperate issue, and I personally think that if we simply eliminated direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs, it would go a long way towards alleviating some problems.

 

That said, Cymbalta does appear to have demonstrable efficiency for arthritis:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22133624

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20921842

 

I don't think the idea of using medications with known antidepressant properties for treating pain is especially surprising; a growing number of studies are showing that modulating the psychological response to pain literally modulates the pain signaling itself, so it's natural to be exploring how psychiatric drugs affect pain conditions. As long as true informed consent is given and a patient is made aware of all of the potential dangers and risks associated with a substance, I think people should have easy access to trying out whatever medications may be helpful to them.

[[La...]]

Spengler, that is a very informative and well researched answer to my post and I appreciate your input , that being said , I still find it questionable that now that they have brought out a  study on the effectiveness of SSRIs on treating depression, they are advertising to the masses on their effectiveness for arthritis pain, how many people suffer with arthritis? how many on this forum alone are having a long period of withdrawal from antidipressants? I do undertand also that many pharaceuticals are used off brand and I also realize that millions of lives have been saved with medication, I am not anti medication at all, I have had family members whose lives have been saved by medication but also have seen so many other prescribed needlessly, but this direct  consumer marketing is not right, we know that many Drs will not explain the risks and possible side effects of this drug and start writing out rxs without any warnings, I just hope that we the  consumer, who definately has easy access to all and every medication nowadays will do their own research as many Drs  do not take the time when writing out scripts for medication, to explain the risks. Ladygrace

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Yup, agree with all that. If I could reform the way things work, it would be in the following ways:

#1) Make it illegal to market Rx drugs directly to consumers in any way, shape or form

#2) Set up an independent research authority responsible for performing or directly overseeing all drug efficiency trials. IMO this should be funded by tax money, but operate in universities and hospitals as an entity separate from the government with no direct ties to any administration.

#3) Get rid of free-sample packs of Rx drugs

 

then, because I'm a bit of an anti-drug-war nut (and, while I'm dreaming) I would

#4) Completely throw out the Controlled Substances Act; replace it with something like a Dangerous Substances Committee that would be responsible for manufacturing and making available to the public any and all drugs that people want to buy, for reasonable prices. Use the profits to fund drug treatment centers. If someone wants to buy something like heroin, they would need to be an adult, and they would need to sign a full-consent waiver indicating that the understood that the drug was dangerous and harmful, but want it anyway. Tax drugs sold through this channel enough to support a broad and wide-reaching community outreach program for addiction treatment, harm reduction, etc.

 

Basically, people want to sell drugs, other people want to take drugs, and that's not going to change. So, in my humble opinion, the only rational thing to do is to retool the system so that we're not filling psychwards with poly-drug-stack catastrophes, nor filling prisons with nonviolent offenders.

 

Also, I want a unicorn 

[[RM...]]

I was actually on this before , now they are "pushin" it like crazy, sayin it basically can do everthing, yes Western Medication can do one or 2 things to help you, but did you ever notice on the commercials, how many "bads" side effects they say?? they fit like 30 in under 2 mintunes in a NICE clam voice, usually with the background of nature or a smiling person talkin with friends(compared to the begg. when the person is alone and sad)

 

The t.v is a form of control and the Drug companies use it as a tool(as well as alcohol companies) To make you think something is wrong with you, when really there nothin is, we are human, and its just the stress of the world we are living in today makes us this way.---T.V-- Tela-VISION-PROMGAMIN--.....Think about it.......       The medication causes more problems, and they(the pharmaceutical companies) really just test the pills on rats, then humans with out the TRUE LONG term effects.

 

Truth is they want to "dumb" down society, so WE wont question what they (govt) dose. to US, and the POOR other country's in the world.

[Guest [Da...]]

But this has been going on for some time.

 

It's the same thing with Wellbutrin (an old AD) years ago.  They found that some depressed patients on Wellbutrin (Bupropion) tended to quit smoking while on them and they remarketed it as Zyban in 1996 as a smoking cessation drug to non-depressed people.  Horrible side effects or screwing people up - they don't care. What a wonderful world we live in - corporations are so caring.

 

Danni

 

RMack1986 - like your "f.e.a.r = False Evidence Appearing Real"

 

P.S. I'm on Wellbutrin for depression, but it didn't help me to quit smoking - I must be an anomaly.

[[rs...]]

amen spengler !! I'll say what I think about all the fluoride based compounds. The pharmaceutical companies have created a disease by rx benzos, fluoroquinolones and a/d . benzodiazepines and fluorqunilones cause joint, muscle and connective tissue damage. now they are trying to capitalize on something that was created from xr poisons.

 

I'm not anti drug either but it's really gotten out of hand. I saw four commercials on lawsuits for bad drugs in one hour. Prozac (90% fluoride) is now called seraphem. The FDA is  the government, it is owned by the corporations . If it be big pharma co's or Monsanto,etc. they can get poisons pushed through with altered or short studies for big bucks. GMO are in our food supply and in 70% of items in local grocery chains. Beef,chicken and pork are given antibiotics,steroids and other growth hormones to grow bigger and faster. Most all milk products contain Posilac or bovine growth hormone. OM GAWWWWD!!! I'm losing it again!!!! I better turn of the computer and go feed the chickens. rstud

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The fluoride in Prozac is bound to other things at a molecular level, and it is not metabolized.

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Yup, agree with all that. If I could reform the way things work, it would be in the following ways:

#1) Make it illegal to market Rx drugs directly to consumers in any way, shape or form

#2) Set up an independent research authority responsible for performing or directly overseeing all drug efficiency trials. IMO this should be funded by tax money, but operate in universities and hospitals as an entity separate from the government with no direct ties to any administration.

#3) Get rid of free-sample packs of Rx drugs

 

Well Spengler, I agree with you on some of this, but on the other hand: what about the poor and elderly? True, they are often taken advantage of, but sometimes, those drug packs can come in pretty handy, esp. when insurance co's aren't cooperating! (Or if someone lacks medical insurance?) I speak from personal experience on this (I have insurance, but I mean it in another way; don't want to go into details, online).

 

That being said, how about if the drug reps gave the samples, but stopped the bs and free gifts to the doctors? Not possible, I suppose. 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

 

then, because I'm a bit of an anti-drug-war nut (and, while I'm dreaming) I would

#4) Completely throw out the Controlled Substances Act; replace it with something like a Dangerous Substances Committee that would be responsible for manufacturing and making available to the public any and all drugs that people want to buy, for reasonable prices.

 

(Again, what about the poor and elderly?)

Use the profits to fund drug treatment centers. If someone wants to buy something like heroin, they would need to be an adult, and they would need to sign a full-consent waiver indicating that the understood that the drug was dangerous and harmful, but want it anyway. Tax drugs sold through this channel enough to support a broad and wide-reaching community outreach program for addiction treatment, harm reduction, etc.

 

Basically, people want to sell drugs, other people want to take drugs, and that's not going to change. So, in my humble opinion, the only rational thing to do is to retool the system so that we're not filling psychwards with poly-drug-stack catastrophes, nor filling prisons with nonviolent offenders.

 

Well, I can sure agree on that one!!! 

 

Also, I want a unicorn 

 

I'd like a dolphin, myself...

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The poor and elderly are getting screwed by the healthcare system in this country any way you slice it. I literally had not thought about how that applies to free drug pcks, because my privleged ass has literally never lived without insurance.

 

I will have to think on that one.

[[rs...]]

The fluoride in Prozac is bound to other things at a molecular level, and it is not metabolized.

 

spang, I read somewhere in my "research" that the reason fluoride compounds are used is because it binds to brain receptors. I don't know if it's metabolized through the liver or what but it is a neurotoxin. neurotoxins cause about 30 sx. chronic fatigue, joint, muscle and connective tissue damage, etc. etc. maybe because it is not metabolized by the liver it goes straight to the brain(cns) don't know how it works. I do know sodium fluoride was used by the Germans and Russians to keep prisoners calm and compliant. I've never taken Prozac but others seem to say it has a calming effect since it is an a/d. I'd really like to know what is in benzodiazepines that causes such terrible suffering after prolonged use.

 

it would only make sense that fluoride compounds would aleve joint and muscle pain but they also cause it. All I really know for sure is I feel like a sprayed roach after taking xanax.  http://www.earthclinic.com/CURES/fibromyalgia.html  this is an interesting read on what I believe is in all these drugs. rstud

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there's a lot of paranoia about fluoride, going back at least to the McCarthy era when people thought fluorinated water was a communist plot to drug the population. Sodium fluoride has nothing in common with prozac, and sites that use statements like 'fluoride compounds' are generally misleading pseudoscience in my opinion. Elements are just building blocks. Take a look at this:

http://i.imgur.com/2kKnv.png

 

On the right, we have serotonin which is a necessary neurotransmitter. It's also not orally active, in that you can eat grams of it and nothing at all will happen because it can't cross the blood brain barrier. On the left, we have 5-MeO-AMT, a synthetic hallucinogen. They differ by only six atoms, but 5-MeO-AMT is absolutely orally active; 4 milligrams will cause a protracted state of severe hallucinations and dramatic cognitive shifts, and eating a gram would probably cause death via hypertensive crisis/seizure.

 

By the same note:

http://i.imgur.com/l4DP3.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/xjTWr.png

 

Here on the left is prozac. It contains 3 fluoride atoms. It is metabolized in the liver by CP450 into norfluoxotine (shown on the right), and several other metabolites which are not thought to be active (norfluoxitine is itself active as an SSRI which contributes to Prozac's extremely long half-life). I can find no evidence whatsoever to indicate that any metabolic pathway that prozac goes through ever results in free fluoride entering the body; it is covalently bonded to larger molecules at every step of the way.

 

Sodium Fluoride, on the other hand, is an ionic compound containing only sodium and fluoride ions, and its metabolism absolutely involves unbonded fluoride being metabolized directly, which is why it is active in a way that prozac simply isn't.

 

There are only ~103 elements known to man, and of those a much smaller number exist in a stable form outside of brief moments in a lab. If you start making a list of everything that has fluoride atoms in it, you end up with a very big list indeed. Most of the fluoride scaremongering I see is from people who do not have a basic grasp on organic chemistry.

[[rs...]]

there's a lot of paranoia about fluoride, going back at least to the McCarthy era when people thought fluorinated water was a communist plot to drug the population. Sodium fluoride has nothing in common with prozac, and sites that use statements like 'fluoride compounds' are generally misleading pseudoscience in my opinion. Elements are just building blocks. Take a look at this:

http://i.imgur.com/2kKnv.png

 

On the right, we have serotonin which is a necessary neurotransmitter. It's also not orally active, in that you can eat grams of it and nothing at all will happen because it can't cross the blood brain barrier. On the left, we have 5-MeO-AMT, a synthetic hallucinogen. They differ by only six atoms, but 5-MeO-AMT is absolutely orally active; 4 milligrams will cause a protracted state of severe hallucinations and dramatic cognitive shifts, and eating a gram would probably cause death via hypertensive crisis/seizure.

 

By the same note:

http://i.imgur.com/l4DP3.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/xjTWr.png

 

Here on the left is prozac. It contains 3 fluoride atoms. It is metabolized in the liver by CP450 into norfluoxotine (shown on the right), and several other metabolites which are not thought to be active (norfluoxitine is itself active as an SSRI which contributes to Prozac's extremely long half-life). I can find no evidence whatsoever to indicate that any metabolic pathway that prozac goes through ever results in free fluoride entering the body; it is covalently bonded to larger molecules at every step of the way.

 

Sodium Fluoride, on the other hand, is an ionic compound containing only sodium and fluoride ions, and its metabolism absolutely involves unbonded fluoride being metabolized directly, which is why it is active in a way that prozac simply isn't.

 

There are only ~103 elements known to man, and of those a much smaller number exist in a stable form outside of brief moments in a lab. If you start making a list of everything that has fluoride atoms in it, you end up with a very big list indeed. Most of the fluoride scaremongering I see is from people who do not have a basic grasp on organic chemistry.

 

spengler, you are the man!! I don't know much about chemistry but thanx for the explanation. I do know that organic fluoride is harmless and sodium fluoride is a neurotoxin. I'm not trying to scare anyone just would like to know what is in a benzo that cause identical symptoms to fibromyalgia,nerve gas and fluoroquinolones. It's obvious to me that the "elements in these drugs are not harmless organic fluoride. If they were they would not cause such crippling side effects as benzos do. If you get a chance read the link i posted and see what you think. I don't think Uttley is a scaremonger he has just been poisoned. thanx rstud

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I don't pretend to be an expert on the subject, but that article sets off all kinds of alarm bells for me. It quotes one statement apparently made by a union in 2008as being representational of "EPA scientists", and also overlooks some basic truths; Fluoride was added to water after it was noted that people from places with excessive amounts of fluoride in naturally occurring groundwater had discolored teeth and were also much less likely to have cavities, and extensive testing demonstrated that a smaller amount of fluoride prevents cavities without excessive discoloration. I got too much fluoride as a kid and have some spots on my teeth to show for it, but I also haven't had a cavity in any of my adult teeth (a good tradeoff, IMO, compared to my sister who did not get fluorine and has been plagued with dental problems for years.

 

Fluoridation is extremely common; fibromyalgia is an uncommon disease. Water has been fluridated since the 50s; fibromyalgia does not go back nearly that far. I personally think there probably is a link between misunderstood health conditions like fibro and various environmental toxins, but I'd look at scarier and newer things like pesticides, etc. That post says to avoid drugs with "fl" in them as they contain fluoride, which, again, does not line up with my basic layman's understanding of organic chemistry.

 

I'm not saying it's impossible that fluoride is more dangerous than is commonly thought; I'm not an expert and anything is possible. I just know that anything I've read which tries hard to make this case ends up setting off all kinds of pseudoscience alarm bells for me.

 

edit: this wouldn't be hard to test; if you have fibro, get a reverse osmosis water filter, and avoid all canned/bottled beverages etc for a while and see if you feel better. If this really worked, everyone would be doing it.

 

 

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Spengler, I am so impressed by your logic! BTW, I myself suffer from fibromyalgia; I believe it has been around for awhile as a disease, but was noted under other names ("myofascial pain syndrome", and before that, something else). Unfortunately, I can't cite the research on that right now;  I'm too tired (because of Fibro?). Maybe some other time.

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The poor and elderly are getting screwed by the healthcare system in this country any way you slice it. I literally had not thought about how that applies to free drug pcks, because my privleged ass has literally never lived without insurance.

 

I will have to think on that one.

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Fair enough... Thanks. And I agree that the poor-- and whatever is left of the middle- class-- are screwed with health care.

[[rs...]]

I don't pretend to be an expert on the subject, but that article sets off all kinds of alarm bells for me. It quotes one statement apparently made by a union in 2008as being representational of "EPA scientists", and also overlooks some basic truths; Fluoride was added to water after it was noted that people from places with excessive amounts of fluoride in naturally occurring groundwater had discolored teeth and were also much less likely to have cavities, and extensive testing demonstrated that a smaller amount of fluoride prevents cavities without excessive discoloration. I got too much fluoride as a kid and have some spots on my teeth to show for it, but I also haven't had a cavity in any of my adult teeth (a good tradeoff, IMO, compared to my sister who did not get fluorine and has been plagued with dental problems for years.

 

Fluoridation is extremely common; fibromyalgia is an uncommon disease. Water has been fluridated since the 50s; fibromyalgia does not go back nearly that far. I personally think there probably is a link between misunderstood health conditions like fibro and various environmental toxins, but I'd look at scarier and newer things like pesticides, etc. That post says to avoid drugs with "fl" in them as they contain fluoride, which, again, does not line up with my basic layman's understanding of organic chemistry.

 

I'm not saying it's impossible that fluoride is more dangerous than is commonly thought; I'm not an expert and anything is possible. I just know that anything I've read which tries hard to make this case ends up setting off all kinds of pseudoscience alarm bells for me.

 

edit: this wouldn't be hard to test; if you have fibro, get a reverse osmosis water filter, and avoid all canned/bottled beverages etc for a while and see if you feel better. If this really worked, everyone would be doing it.

 

spengler, I have read hours of research on fluoride toxins. The latest was a doc in China that studied fluoride in ground water. All the children had pitted teeth and most of the elderly had severe calcification of bones and were crippled. The doctor that did the study over several years is also a dentist. It is a myth that fluoride in drinking water helps teeth, in fact it does just the opposite. As an acid it destroys teeth and causes bone calcification. After several villages got better water they started seeing improvment. As a topical fluoride treatments work well. Thats why it's in toothpaste. There is a black box waning on toothpaste that says " if swallowed call a poison control center". 

 

I don't know if there is a connection between fluoride poisoning and psychotic drugs or not. It is almost impossible to actually know what is in these life destroying drugs. The fact remains that all the symptoms remain identical to toxic fluoride poisoning. Fibromyalgia seemed to begin showng up in the 80's about the same time valium was introduced to a wide population.  The 1 ppm ratio in water is not enough to cause fibro or a toxic reaction but in fact does no good either imho.

 

Not to get off the subject of Cymbalta being rx for arthritis. Arthritis is another s/x of chronic fluoride poisoning. It causes joint ,muscle and connective tissue damage and calcification of bones. Benzodiazepines cause joint,muscle and connective tissue damage and calcification of bones. I'm not an expert on anything nor do i have a background in "organic chemistry" but i have enough sense to know when i have been poisoned. rstud

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I've read all the same studies. Whether or not there are health risks to fluoride in water which are greater than commonly thought, it's absolutely untrue that fluorine "doesn't prevent cavities". The study from China is interesting, but it's a relatively small sample group and it's also from China which has by far worse pollution problems than the US and so it's entirely reasonable to hypothesize that there is some other environmental hazard at work which was not controlled for, evaluated or even known to the people doing the study.

 

Common claims made by fluoride sites include the statement that Europe has seen the same decline in tooth decay without fluoridating their water. This is nothing more than deceptive presentation; it is true that they don't fluoridate their water over there, because they fluoridate their salt instead. Same chemical, same mechanism, different delivery, same results. So, even throwing that out there without pointing out the obvious (that despite a lack of fluoride in water they are getting their fluoride through other means) is outright deceptive. Yes, Denmark and a handful of other countries don't fluoridate their salt, either, but they still get fluoridated toothpastes, etc.

 

Again, I am not saying that I think fluoride is harmless; clearly in high enough concentrations it's quite toxic. However, with all things, the dose makes the poison (IE, anything is lethal in sufficient quantity). It's possible that fluoride levels should be reduced from what they are, it's also possible that fluoridating the water is not a good idea to start with, but the idea that it's a vast conspiracy or responsible for systemic health problems among tiny fractions of a population who have all been systemically exposed to it, just doesn't make sense for me.

 

There are a crapton of environmental toxins that I'm a lot more alarmed about, from benzene to cadmium to lithium. All of those are demonstrably carcinogenic and/or neurotoxic according to well established and reasonable research, but we continue to dump them into the environment in huge quantities constantly as a result of our gasoline and gadget obsessed society. I think that's really all I have to say on this; people are obviously free to disagree with me, but having looked at every scrap of information I can on this subject, I remain highly skeptical that it is a health epidemic. Fluoride is an environmental element that you're going to consume some amount of no matter, and the amount that gets added to drinking water is insignificant compared to the amount found in naturally occurring groundwater many, many places. The amounts of fluoride in water in the "high fluoride" areas in that study from China are still only ~25% the amount of fluoride that occurs naturally in drinking water in other parts of the world, and that doesn't even account for the higher concentrations you'd expect to find in places where there is industrial contamination/etc.

 

Sorry to have continued this derail! Calling psychiatric drugs "psychotic drugs" is also a little irritating to me; while my own experiences with them have been mostly negative, and while overprescription is a real, massive cultural problem, I know a lot of people who have been helped by them, and it is not impossible to know what is in them because for any given widely prescribed drug it is possible to easily find tons of information on pharmacokinetics, metabolism, toxicity studies, LD50s, side effects, etc.

 

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I will say that now that you have me thinking about this again, you've got me considering signing up for Deer Park home water delivery, which among other things has a hell of a lot less fluoride in it than the tap water around here :-p Probably my withdrawal paranoia talking, but, there you go.

 

You've obviously spent a lot of time worrying about this; what source do you get your drinking water from?

[[rs...]]

spengler, there is a big difference between organic fluoride and industrial waste fluoride. the studies in China were done by a world renowned scientist that tested the ground water for every pollutant known . There were high concentrations 30 ppm in the water supply which caused crippling, calcification of  bones and rotting (pitting) of teeth.  In the USA the aluminum industry and nuclear waste industry have pumped tons of air pollutant fluoride into the atmosphere for decades. It has leached into aquifers and oceans. The scientist have warned this could be one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century.

 

As far as knowing what chemicals are in "psychiatric" drugs that cause IDENTICAL s/x of fibromyalgia,fluorquinolones, serin nerve gas and industrial fluoride poisoning. Show me the proof that it is not fluoride poisoning and I'll shut up. rstudhttp://www.manataka.org/page1521.html

 

http://www.antidepressantsfacts.com/2003-08-Prozac-Paxil-Fluorophenyl.htm  http://www.mdjunction.com/forums/anxiety-disorders-discussions/general-support/1150319-the-deadly-toxic-fluoride-in-your-antidepressent

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spang,I use distilled bottled water and unfluorinated tooth paste because my cns is whacked out. it's not the water supply i have been most worried about. It's the idea that pharma co/s are using sodium fluoride as a binder in "psychiatric drugs" Fluoride has a cumulative effect that builds in the bones so using benzos and a/d short term is never usually a problem for most people. It is a fact that they have been dumping sodium fluoride in cities drinking water for decades. Many cities are stopping water fluoridation because they have realized it is a myth that fluorinating water prevents tooth decay. I'm not into conspiracy theories only scientific facts. as topical fluoride whitens teeth because it is an acid. If you swallow enough of it it can kill you.

 

as far as the chemicals that caused all of us here to nearly die. what is it then?? benzo w/d and a/d w/d have identical s/x to fluoride poisoning. I'm not a scientist or chemist but even I can see the similarities. help me figure it out,rstud  http://www.antidepressantsfacts.com/2003-08-Prozac-Paxil-Fluorophenyl.htm    http://www.fibrocenter.com/fibromyalgia-symptoms.aspx  http://www.nofluoride.com/ten.cfm

[[Al...]]

I am upset that they are advertising these drugs as "non-narcotic". I imagine that this makes the general population believe that this drug is 'o.k.' to take because they won't get addicted to it. Sad part is that they will become addicted to it...just in a different way. They will become physically addicted and have to wean off of it. Hopefully they will be told to NEVER stop this drug abruptly.

[[sp...]]

that's asking me to prove a negative. I think there are a lot of good reasons not to take prozac et al if you don't need to, but theorhetical fluoride metabolites are not on that list for me. The symptom lists for benzo w/d and fibro are extremely long, of course they have a lot in common with other conditions; practically any symptom of any kind of CNS disturbance ever has come up for people in benzo w/d. Saying "prozac is 94% fluoride" as one of those sites does just doesn't make sense, any more than saying "water is 66% hydrogen". Prozac is a 4-fluorophenyl, so are various pesticides, this does not mean that their mechanism of action is remotely similar or that the one is metabolized into the other in the human body. That's just how organic chemistry works. You take one molecule, hey, it's a normal neurotransmitter. You tack a couple carbon atoms on it, hey, it's totally inert. You stick something else on it, poof, it's a psychoactive drug. You do a reduction of some kind and then add something else, whoosh it's a pesticide. Sodium fluoride is not being used as a "binder" in psychoactive drugs; 'binder' is a specific thing which refers to the inert ingredients put into drugs to bind them into pill form, and I can't find any evidence that fluoride compounds have ever been used in this way (they are not inert). Fluorine atoms are present in the molecule, yes. They are chemically bonded to other atoms, undergo a complex metabolism, and are excreted in urine (in a different form, but still bonded to other atoms). In fact it is this very bond that makes them desirable; the carbon - fluorine bond is one of the strongest molecular bonds and contributes to the ability of a drug to withstand breakdown in the liver. Prozac works because it is structurally similar to serotonin and fits into the receptor's lock-and-key mechanism, disrupting normal serotonin function. This only happens because it is able to pass through the liver in an unchanged form. the strong C-F bond helps keep the molecule intact through the liver, so that it can get into the brain through the bloodstream. If you made a similar molecule which lacked this C-F bond, it would probably be metabolized into inert molecules before it could have any action at all.

 

The lethargy, sexual side effects, etc witnessed with SSRI use is related directly to the action which they exert on the CNS by binding at serotonin sites. In sufficient doses, diphenhydramine (benadryl) will cause exactly the same side effects, because it also acts as a (nonselective) serotonin reuptake inhibitor. These effects have everything to do with suppression of the serotonin system, and nothing at all to do with fluorine (which is not even present in diphenhydramine and a lot of other drugs that cause the same side effects as prozac). Cipro is dangerously toxic (and probably overprescribed), but, again, it's toxicity comes from the direct chemical action it exerts and not from fluorine (which again, is present in its atomic form, but is chemically bonded).

 

This is one of those topics where it is easy to run off the deep end, because there probably are good reasons to re-evaluate the fluorination of drinking water, but there is also a lot of paranoia written around this by people that just don't have the chemistry background to do so.

 

I don't know what distinction you're drawing with "organic" vs "inorganic"; this has nothing to do with the source of the compound, it's just a distinction as to whether or not the compound is metabolically active.  All fluoride poisoning comes from organic fluoride compounds, because by definition inorganic fluoride compounds pass right through you without being metabolized at all. You can eat teflon (an inorganic fluoride) all day, which will probably not do good things to your digestion because you can't process it at all, but it's not going to give you fluoride poisoning. Likewise, the vast majority of cases of fluoride poisoning that happen in the modern world come from naturally occurring sources (granite) coming into contact with water supplies. From wikipedia:

In India an estimated 60 million people have been poisoned by well water contaminated by excessive fluoride, which is dissolved from the granite rocks.

 

That has nothing to do with industrial runoff, and everything to do with organic fluorine compounds being a naturally occurring part of granite.

 

 

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I am upset that they are advertising these drugs as "non-narcotic". I imagine that this makes the general population believe that this drug is 'o.k.' to take because they won't get addicted to it. Sad part is that they will become addicted to it...just in a different way. They will become physically addicted and have to wean off of it. Hopefully they will be told to NEVER stop this drug abruptly.

 

"Narcotic" just means "sleep-inducing", and is commonly used to refer to illicit drugs (usually opioids, occaisionally this included cocaine and amphetamines as well, and, depending on what you read, marijuana. It is more a legal distinction than anything else. Codeine is definitely a narcotic, but it's relatively benign. Phenobarbitol is definitely not a narcotic, but is extremely dangerous. So, yes, 'non-narcotic' is a buzzword that doesn't actually mean very much besides "not an illicit drug or an opiate". People need to do some basic research on drugs before eating them, period.

 

rstud: this conversation has convinced me that whatever else I believe, I probably am not doing myself any favors by drinking city water, so now I have to convince my wife to let me put a Deer Park dispenser in the apartment. She will probably roll her eyes at me and said "wait, now you're afraid of the water?!"