“I believe we could reduce our current usage of psychotropic drugs by 98% and at the same time improve people’s mental health and survival (see Chapter 14),” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 1 Introduction of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

“The most important reason for the current drug disaster it is that leading psychiatrists have allowed the drug industry to corrupt their academic discipline and themselves.”

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“We have repeated the same mistakes with the SSRIs that we made with benzodiazepines, and before them with barbiturates,” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 1 Introduction of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

“We have created a huge epidemic of drug overuse with just as many drug addicts on SSRIs as on benzodiazepines (see Chapter 12).”

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“[Double-blind studies] have rather consistently shown that it is the psychiatrists that think their drugs are effective, not the patients (see Chapter 3),” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 1 Introduction of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

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“Cochrane reviews have shown that it is doubtful whether antidepressants are effective for depression (see Chapter 3) and whether antipsychotics are effective for schizophrenia (see Chapter 6),” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 1 Introduction of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

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“The facts are that SSRI’s kill one of 28 people above 65 years of age treated for one year; that half of the patients get sexual side effects; and that half of the patients have difficulty stopping antidepressants because they become dependent on them (see Chapter 3),” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 1 Introduction of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

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“Furthermore, members of the Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry explained in Lancet Psychiatry that British withdrawal-support charities report alarming numbers of people suffering disabling symptoms for multiple years following withdrawal from antidepressants,” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 1 Introduction of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

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“A 1993 study in the United States by the Rand Corporation showed that: Over half the physicians wrote prescriptions after discussing depression with patients for three minutes or less,” writes Prof. Peter C. Gotzsche, MD in Chapter 2 What does it mean to be mentally ill? of his excellent book Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial.

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Smokers who quit smoking gain an average of 6.3 lbs after 3 months according to a recent analysis of 62 studies by researchers from France.

Weight gain was similar for people using various drugs to help them quit.

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Smokers who quit smoking gain an average of 9.3 lbs after 6 months according to a recent analysis of 62 studies by researchers from France.

Weight gain was similar for people using various drugs to help them quit.

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Smokers who quit smoking gain an average of 10.3 lbs after one year according to a recent analysis of 62 studies by researchers from France.

Weight gain was similar for people using various drugs to help the quit.

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One in six (16%) smokers who quit smoking have lost weight after one year according to a recent analysis of 62 studies by researchers from France.

Weight gain or loss was similar for people using various drugs to help them quit.

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Roughly one-third of smokers (37%) who quit smoking gained less than 11 lbs after one year according to a recent analysis of 62 studies by researchers from France.

Weight gain or loss was similar for people using various drugs to help them quit.

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Roughly one-third of smokers (34%) who quit smoking gained 11-22 lbs after one year according to a recent analysis of 62 studies by researchers from France.

Weight gain or loss was similar for people using various drugs to help them quit.

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Roughly one-eighth of smokers (13%) who quit smoking gained more than 22 lbs after one year according to a recent analysis of 62 studies by researchers from France.

Weight gain or loss was similar for people using various drugs to help them quit.

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Quitting smoking was associated with a weight gain of 5.2 pounds over 4 years according to a study by Harvard researchers.

(Being a former smoker was associated with a weight gain of only 0.1 pounds.) Read the entire article | Email this article

High-nicotine cigarettes increase metabolism more than low nicotine cigarettes according to one study. Resting metabolism increased 6.8 percent after one cigarette of either the high (1.74 mg nicotine) or low nicotine (0.8 mg). However, after several cigarettes metabolism increased more with the high-nicotine cigarettes than the low ones -- an increase in metabolism of of 9.8% versus 5.9 percent. Read the entire article | Email this article

Six weeks after stopping smoking, calorie intake had increased by an average of 412 calories per day compared to when they were smoking according to a recent study. Read the entire article | Email this article

The average weight gain when a person stops smoking is roughly 11 pounds for a woman of average height (5-feet-4), and 13 pounds for a man of average height (5-feet-9) according to a new study from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA.

This is more than previously reported. The reason for this is that this study looked at weight gain over a longer period of time. Read the entire article | Email this article

The risk of obesity is 1.5 to 2-fold greater in children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy notes a new paper on endocrine disrupters as causes of obesity by Bruce Blumberg from the University of California Irvine. Read the entire article | Email this article

Smoking cessation is responsible for an estimated one-fourth of the increase in the prevalence of overweight among women, and one-sixth of the increase in men according to a 1995 study.

The average weight gain after 10 years following smoking cessation was 9.7 pound for men, and 11 pounds for women.

Smokers who had quit smoking in the previous 10 years were twice as likely to become overweight as those who had never smoked -- 2.4 times as likely for men who had stopped smoking, and 2 times as likely for women who had stopped smoking. Read the entire article | Email this article

"[T]he prevalence of smoking in the United States fell from 24.7% in 1995 to 20.8% in 2005, whereas obesity rates have increased from 23.3% in the 1988–1994 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to 32.1% in the 2001–2004 survey," Read the entire article | Email this article

"Adult obesity rates in the United States have increased by more than 50%, whereas tobacco use among adults decreased by about 44% since 1970," noted Dr. C. A. Robb from the University of Alabama in a recent paper regarding weight gain following smoking cessation. Read the entire article | Email this article

Obesity shortens the lifespan of men by an average of 5 years and of women by 10 years according to a study from the National Institute of Public Health in Denmark. Read the entire article | Email this article

People who smoke are 37 percent less likely to be obese than people who do not smoke according to a new paper. Read the entire article | Email this article

Ex-heavy smokers are 42 percent more likely to be obese than those who have never smoked, and current light smokers are 54 percent less likely to be obese according to a study from Finland. Read the entire article | Email this article

"In 2002, 23.5% of [U.S.] adults were obese, 22.7% smoked, and 4.7% smoked and were obese," concluded a study published in the British Medical Journal. The total number of people affected are 9 million. "Although the proportion of adults who smoke and are obese is relatively low, this subgroup is concentrated among lower socioeconomic groups." Read the entire article | Email this article

The prevalence of obesity in Portugal from 1995-96 to 1998-99 increased in men from 10.3 percent to 11.5 percent, and in women from 12.7 percent to 14.2 percent according to a new paper. Read the entire article | Email this article

Men who used to smoke 31 or more cigarettes per day were 5 times more likely to become obese than men who had never smoked according to a new study from the University of Greifswald in Greifswald, Germany. This was not true for women. Read the entire article | Email this article

Men who used to smoke cigarettes are an average of 8 pounds heavier than men who never smoked or men who currently smoke according to a study from Germany. Women who used to smoke were found to be no heavier on average than women who had never smoked. Read the entire article | Email this article

People with severe mental illness are 1.7 times more likely to be overweight, and 2.6 times more likely to be obese than the general population according to a study from Kentucky. Read the entire article | Email this article

"Tobacco use is strongly associated with a lifetime history of recurrent intentional major weight-loss episodes in early adulthood," according to a study from the University of Helsinki in Finland. Read the entire article | Email this article

MIDDLE-AGED WOMEN who stop smoking gain an average of 5.3 lbs. According to a study from Harvard, moderate exercise can reduce this gain to 4 lbs and more intense exercise further reduces it to a weight gain of 2.9 lbs. Read the entire article | Email this article

THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN smoking and relative body weight differs by level of education according to a recent study. Read the entire article | Email this article

Blacks gain more weight after they stop smoking according to the results of the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults study. Read the entire article | Email this article