What Doctors Don't Tell YouWe all know that smoking is bad for our health. So doctors have been trying to encourage smokers to stop with the help of the antidepressant nortiptyline hydrochloride which, as most people know, can be bad for our health.
Reactions from the drug have included hypertension, heart attacks, stroke, hallucinations, anorexia, jaundice, altered liver function and if too much is taken death.
Not that the experiment worked too well. Just 14 per cent of smokers given the drug were able to stop smoking for six months and, said the doctors, they reported “annoying side effects” which, presumably, included (repeat after me) hypertension, heart attacks. . . (Archives of Internal Medicine, 1998; 158: 2035-9).
Daniel Redwood DC
Tom Ferguson MD
