Lisa Bloomquist, fluoroquinolone toxicity patient advocate, is interviewed on the Anxiety Summit by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.
Antibiotic Induced Anxiety – How Fluoroquinolone Antibiotics Induce Psychiatric Illness Symptoms
- Fluoroquinolone antibiotics and what they are prescribed for
- Why fluoroquinolones are more dangerous than other antibiotics
- How they can cause serious psychiatric problems, including anxiety.
- Ways fluoroquinolones cause psychiatric problems: GABA inhibition, gut destruction, piperazine molecule, mitochondrial destruction, oxidative stress and magnesium depletion.
- Fluoroquinolone toxicity and fibromyalgia, ME/CFS, autoimmity and thyroid disease
- Recovery from fluoroquinolone damage
Lisa describes how she was floxed after taking the Cipro antibiotic:
I felt like a bomb had gone off in my body. My hands and feet swelled up and became incredibly painful. I went from doing CrossFit to barely being able to walk. I had big floater going across my eye. My mouth was extremely dry. I stopped sweating. Massive amount of anxiety, just huge amounts of anxiety. I had other central nervous system problems as well. Things like I lost my memory and my reading comprehension. I felt a very profound sense of weakness and fatigue. And it was just very bizarre. Like I had gone from being incredibly healthy. I was very, very healthy prior to taking the Cipro. And after I took it I felt like I could barely move, I could barely move and I could barely think. And it was horrible. It was a really horrible. It was a very, very hard time in my life.
This is the 2016 paper we discussed: Fluoroquinolone-related neuropsychiatric and mitochondrial toxicity: a collaborative investigation by scientists and members of a social network.
The 3 fluoroquinolone (FQ) antibiotics – ciprofoxacin, levofoxacin, and moxifoxacin – are commonly administered to oncology patients. Although these oral antibiotics are approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for treatment of urinary tract infections, acute bacterial sinusitis, or bacterial infection in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, they are commonly prescribed off-label to neutropenic cancer patients for the prevention and treatment of infections associated with febrile neutropenia. New serious FQ-associated safety concerns have been identified through novel collaborations between FQ-treated persons who have developed long-term neuropsychiatric (NP) toxicity, pharmacovigilance experts, and basic scientists.
For the survey, 93 of 94 respondents reported FQ-associated events including anxiety, depression, insomnia, panic attacks, clouded thinking, depersonalization, suicidal thoughts, psychosis, nightmares, and impaired memory beginning within days of FQ initiation or days to months of FQ discontinuation
The authors of the paper recommend: revised product labels describing a new serious adverse drug reaction, levofoxacin-associated long-term disability.
Here is the new FDA Drug Safety Communication: FDA advises restricting fluoroquinolone antibiotic use for certain uncomplicated infections; warns about disabling side effects that can occur together
Here are some of the studies we discussed in the interview:
- Benzodiazepine tolerance, dependency, and withdrawal syndromes and interactions with fluoroquinolone antimicrobials
- Ciprofloxacin-induced neurotoxicity: evaluation of possible underlying mechanisms
Here are some additional links that Lisa mentioned:
- the Fluoroquinolone Effects Study
- the Fluoroquinolone Vigilance Foundation
- the Fluoroquinolone Wall of Pain
- Floxiehope Lisa’s site (with stories of recovery)
- Fluoroquinolonethyroid
Here is the link to Hacking Fluoroquinolones – an ebook
And the book Lisa mentioned, written by Kerri Knox: The Fluoroquinolone Toxicity Solution
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