Antidepressant Celexa Linked to Fatal Heart Problems
High doses of the popular antidepressant drug Celexa have been linked to increased risk of potentially fatal heart attacks. The antidepressant drug is often prescribed as an alternative to other antidepressants when patients aren’t responding, and was a hopeful as a good change to help lift people back into better spirits.
However, as with many other prescription antidepressants (well, unfortunately most of them), it has proven to have a side effect that can be much worse than the symptoms it is supposed to help ease. Many drugs have actually been linked to heart failure and heart disease, but usually they are pain medications. This is the first I’ve heard of an antidepressant.
The particular concern with the Celexa antidepressant is when doctors prescribe large doses of the medication, because the higher dose is what has been linked to heart issues. Some patients have been deemed to need the higher doses, so it looks like they really don’t have options for these patients other than to put them on another drug entirely.
This is exactly why I think antidepressants are a bad idea in most cases. I think that there are only few people they truly help. There are plenty of herbal remedies for mild depression out there than can help you maintain a positive mood and not have the dire health consequences and dependency that so many drugs have.
The dose that is not recommended to exceed is 40 milligrams currently. It is said that doses higher than that apparently may intrefere with the electrical impulses that the heart relies on to beat regularly and pump the blood out and throughout the body, filtering it along the way.
Obviously, this is quite a large concern. The previous recommended dosage for this drug was actually 60 milligrams, and that has been backtracked, citing the fact that this dosage did not show any more improvement in depression symptoms than the lower 40 mg dosage.