Sertaline for anxiety, dep., and osteoporosis, cataracts, sleep issues

Posted by soggybones @soggybones, Aug 13 10:49am

So I've dealt with anxiety and depression my entire life and about 30 years ago I went on sertaline and it seemed to help until I went through menopause 8 years ago. I then weaned off of it because I din't think it was doing anything anyway. about 2 years later my anxiety worsened when my optometrist told me I was developing cataracts. I knew someone who went blind in one eye after cataract surgery so this sent me spiraling downwards and back to the shrink who put me back on the sertaline along with trazadone and Ativan. The sertaline alone and Ativan did little to help me. The trazadone taken nightly helped me sleep and brought me back to "manageable" anxiety levels. Last November I had a DEXA because I lost height and wanted to assure myself the loss of height was not due to osteoporosis....well, I found out I do have osteoporosis-ugh! When I looked at all the side effects of the osteoporosis treatments (ostenecrosis of the jaw, spontaneous femur breaks, cancer, heart attack etc) I went spiraling down into the depths of anxiety again. When I began to read about what may have caused my osteoporosis I read that SSRI's have been linked to bone loss. Now I want to get off the Sertaline....I read that another medication used to treat anxiety called Buspar has not been linked to bone loss. I would like to approach my doctor about weaning me off the sertaline and onto buspar to see if it'll work for me. Am I being unreasonable? Anyone else in a similar situation? Sometimes I'm not sure if my reaction to all this is over the top or if it's normal. Glad I can at least discuss it here since I feel all alone right now.

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Are you on or have you considered HRT (hormone replacement therapy)? I am 64, have been on Sertraline for over 10 years and weaned myself off it because of osteoporosis also. I had similar emotional reactions to yours for the severe osteo diagnosis (March 2026.) I don't want to take prescription osteo drugs yet, so I just started 4 months ago on HRT (13 years post menopause). It has mood benefits, among many other benefits and I feel like it's about the same as the sertraline used to be. In your case you are only 8 years from menopause and it would be easy to get a prescription. After 10 years it's much harder and some of the benefits are less. Just as an aside, I am also a breast cancer survivor - some people automatically say you can't take HRT if you are breast cancer survivor, but not always true.

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