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Dangers Of Omeprazole (PPI's / Proton Pump Inibitors)

John_Moody

From January to July 2019 I became very ill, [removed by moderator]

Doctors at several hospitals in Leicester did not know what was wrong, they assumed it was gall stones and kept sending me home time after time, eventually one clever lady Doctor figured out that the problem was Omeprazole.

Because I had been taking prescription Omeprazole for a long time my stomach was not producing enough acid to break down and absorb minerals from food, without these minerals (calcium, magnesium, potassium and phosphate) my body was starting to shut down, the lack of acid to deal with bacteria in food meant that food was actually poisoning me, my white cell count was extremely high.

A blood test in July 2019 showed my serum magnesium was 0.20, I came pretty close to dying.

Doctors started me on ranitidine which is much less harsh than omeprazole but I still have to take Vitamin D3 and calcium carbonate every day and I never did fully recover.

I urge anyone taking who is taking omeprazole and has any of the symptoms I did to get a blood test for calcium, magnesium, potassium, phosphate and white cell count because it is likely Doctors won't know what the problem is.

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Comments

SueHeath

Hi John i find this very interesting.
I have been on omeprazole for a number of years, i find this read a bit scary to be honest, during my life with my on going joint problems, i have been given several drugs "quality of life at the time" and they have caused other health issues, i do how ever now receive a blood test every year to check vits/mins and liver/kidney function.

John_Moody

SueHeath said:

Hi John i find this very interesting.
I have been on omeprazole for a number of years, i find this read a bit scary to be honest, during my life with my on going joint problems, i have been given several drugs "quality of life at the time" and they have caused other health issues, i do how ever now receive a blood test every year to check vits/mins and liver/kidney function.

A Doctor at the walk in centre mistakenly increased omeprazole from 20mg to 40mg during all this which accelerated the problem considerably, it baffled a lot of doctors at the time because it's quite rare for this to happen with long term ppi use.

Currently I take Famotidine (40mg/day) because Ranitidine stopped production because it was contaminated with carcinogens.

I also have to take 1000ui Vitamin D3 and 15ml of gaviscon advance which contains nearly 500mg of calcium carbonate, taking 500mg of calcium carbonate pills directly is very sickly for me, gaviscon advance absorbs nice and slowly because the alginate raft that floats on top of stomach acid take hours to dissolve.

During the two year recovery I lost considerable mass yet my weight stayed the same, this happened because my bone mass density increased to replace the loss of bone density from the long term omeprazole use.

It aint something I would want anyone to go though.

AndrewHall

@John_Moody
Thanks for this enlightenment. In April 2020, my stomach was producing so much acid I was blurping all the time. I was so sick for two weeks and I thought I had covid.
I was prescribed omeprazole and took if for a month which reduces the acidic influx. It was when I had endoscopy that the problems finally gone.

John_Moody

AndrewHall said:

@John_Moody
Thanks for this enlightenment. In April 2020, my stomach was producing so much acid I was blurping all the time. I was so sick for two weeks and I thought I had covid.
I was prescribed omeprazole and took if for a month which reduces the acidic influx. It was when I had endoscopy that the problems finally gone.

Omeprazole is a very good medicine when used and monitored correctly, it took 12 years to get to stage it did with me, most people never have a problem with it.

IMO everyone on this type of drug should have mineral levels tested twice a year so than any problem can be fixed long before there is any damage.

_witchcore

... I have been on omeprazole for 6 years due to having GERD caused by a genetic illness. I have recently posted on here about my swallowing problems, and I also have problems with my stomach emptying so I'm taking metoclopramide to make it empty a bit faster and stop me being sick. When I am sick it is undigested food, not vomit, so we assume it's getting stuck in my esophagus but now I'm thinking it could have reached my stomach... this is very interesting, thanks for the info. I will ask about it when I go for my barium meal.

John_Moody

_witchcore said:

... I have been on omeprazole for 6 years due to having GERD caused by a genetic illness. I have recently posted on here about my swallowing problems, and I also have problems with my stomach emptying so I'm taking metoclopramide to make it empty a bit faster and stop me being sick. When I am sick it is undigested food, not vomit, so we assume it's getting stuck in my esophagus but now I'm thinking it could have reached my stomach... this is very interesting, thanks for the info. I will ask about it when I go for my barium meal.

Even with the less effective Famotidine or Ranitidine (h2 blockers) my stomach gets backed up from time to time when I eat too much, it can really hurt and sometimes my gall bladder will try to excrete more bile to help with the digestion process, which hurts even more.

My theory is that acid reducing drugs are somewhat responsible or exasperate gall bladder problems such as gallstones, this I can not confirm.

But what I do know is from Doctors is that omeprazole becomes more effective over time and if you can take the lowest possible dose you can live with.

Getting medications into balance is very tricky, even for specialists.

chiarieds

To put this into perspective, Omeprazole causes serious side effects in less than 1 in a thousand people. Please see: https://www.nhs.uk/medicines/omeprazole/side-effects-of-omeprazole/ as @John_Moody says, & as with many medications, which often have side effects, if it's monitored by your GP/specialist, then there should be no problem, but always good to be aware of them, 'just in case.'

John_Moody

chiarieds said:

To put this into perspective, Omeprazole causes serious side effects in less than 1 in a thousand people. Please see: https://www.nhs.uk/medicines/omeprazole/side-effects-of-omeprazole/ as @John_Moody says, & as with many medications, which often have side effects, if it's monitored by your GP/specialist, then there should be no problem, but always good to be aware of them, 'just in case.'

It took 7 months to get diagnosed in 2019 by which point I had seen 4 Doctors at my GP who all got it wrong, 3 major hospitals in Leicester (Royal, Glenfield, General) another 5 Doctors who got it wrong, 5 ambulance rides of only 3 I remember, a Doctor at the walk in centre got it wrong and increased omeprazole from 20mg to 40mg which in all honesty was almost deadly.

The purpose of this is to avoid all of that, its easy when you know how, the hard bit the know how.

cat_hug

Hi @John_Moody,
I was very interested to read your post as I was put on Lazopresole about 8 years ago, to counteract adverse effects of heart meds and all the other meds I have to take. Since having a couple of stokes after an aneurysm, I used to get intermittent episodes of choking due to swallowing reflex paralysing sporadically.
A few months ago, the choking episodes were getting worse so my GP doubled the dose and also prescribed gaviscon advance and sent me to Speach and language dept to rule out cancer.
I had the camera thing put up my nose and down my throat and the doctor couldnt see any cause for the swakkowing difficulty so said it was something called gastric/oesophogal reflux and recommended doubling the lannzoprezole and doing exercises. (posture stuff, head and neck etc) These excercises arent great as my aneursym was a carotid dissection and moving and twisting my head/neck just doesnt feel 'safe'.

Ive not noticed any improvement re the choking episodes and if anything, theyve got a little worse, but I figured its just something Ill have to live with. I dont know if Lanzopresole is the same as Omeprazole but I think theyre similar? I've been taking 30mg a day for around 8/9 years but its upped to 60mg since last year.
Ive never had routine checks due to this, just the usual prescription reviews periodically for the repeats I take every month.

I mean at 1 in 1000 having adverse problems, its unlikely my 'reflux' problems are caused by this, (the theory was that the stroke caused some kind of signal damage to the autonomous swallow reflex therefore theres not much can be done. (I was initially given this nasty gunky substance to thicken up drinks but it was so vile it made me gag, so that was never going to work).

Im not even sure the GP's or even speech and language unit are aware of this, so thank you for your insight and sharing.

Hope you are recovering ok now and feeling better? Best wishes

Cat