Omeprazole has ruined my life

Hello,

just found thus sight .

I only took this medicine for 7 days and can't believe how bad it has messed me up.

Looking for some hope it will get better.

hi, i know this is an old post but did you ever get passed the muscle twitching after stopping omeprazole? i stopped about a week ago and these are hanging on.

did you recover?

Hi olivia can you please response i need to speak to you thanx

hi olivia please response i need to speak to you .

have you recovered since stopping the Prilosec? i see that this was posted 4yrs ago. I just recently started taking Prilosec 6 days ago. Since the start of the medication i have had extreme insomia, brain zaps, and muscle twitching/tingling to the point of going days in a row without sleep. Im starting to wonder if the Prilosec is the cause as before this issue i use to be able to sleep no problem. Magneisum powder and melatonin is not helping me sleep. im going crazy at this point.

i took omeprazole for only 10 days with over the counter pepcid at night before bed. my heartburn was gone by the 10th day but my joints started to click and pop. The poping started to get worse with joint pain and burning rashes on my body. This continued to get worse and has been happening to me for a month. im convinced i have rhematoid arthritis from this stupid drug. i was a healthy 21 year old before all this and now my life is ruined. ive lost a significant amount of muscle in one month and had to drop out of school the gym and my job. My bowl movements have been different ever since i used this drug im alwats constipated now. i just want my old life back the dumbest mistake i ever made in my life was take this stupid drug. If anyone has any solutions please help me. i feel like im doomed and now have an auto immune disease. F**k ppis if you have heartburn get rid of it the natural way i dont care if it means starving yourself.

i knew that i was not just crazy!! A year ago I came down with covi. and had horrible stomach pain with it. Had an upper GI and colonoscopy and an ulcer was found. I explained to my doc when he handed me a script of 40 mg omeprazole that this type med (took prilosec a few years ago) made me depressed. He said he had not heard of this before. Reluctantly I took it for four days and became really depressed so i stopped. I called him and he prescribed another that caused same issue. I stopped all for months and just didnt let my stomach get empty to keep it from hurting.

A week ago I started worrying about the ulcer so I purchased Prilosec 20 mg. My thoughts were that with the reduced milligram and taking it every other day that maybe I could handle it. WRONG!

I have had four pills and I am depressed.

I am super worried now.

I read in a couple of comments that digestive enzymes and probiotics has helped. Can anyone suggest what kind? And any suggestions to heal the ulcer?

Thanks in advance.

Hi all, I am aware this is quite an old thread so I hope some of you will pick up my reply!

I was prescribed Omeprazole around 6-8 months ago for suspected acid reflux. I was taking 20mg for a few months, but noticed no change to my symptoms so the doctor increased my dosage to 40mg.

Up until now I have thought these worked amazingly, but I am starting to think it is more of a psychological thing - I know I feel better without them, but if I don't take them I start to think I feel worse.

It has been interesting reading though some of the replies on this thread and how this medication has affected people. I myself have noticed a HUGE increase in my anxiety and reduction in my mood over the past 6-8 months, so much so that I had counselling last year.

I never even considered that it could be from this.

I'm not sure if anyone else experiences this but I would be interested to know. I find once I have taken my tablet, I am short of breath and I have to take very deep breaths for a while.

I've been contemplating stopping taking them, but can I just stop? or does it need to be done gradually? any advice is appreciated.

Thank you x

Having read several of these posts it sounds like most of you are suffering from Histamine overload, some people have issues with under methylation which results in the histamine in food and what your body makes being stored instead of being gotten rid of. (once the jugs full it overflows)

I got rid of mine by stopping medication for indigestion (as it didn't work anyway) and taking supplements:-

MSM 1000mg twice a day

Vitamin C 1000mg twice a day

Omega fish oils

Vitamin B6 50mg once a day

Zinc 15mg once a day

Calcium1000mg once a day

DAO Enzyme

Probiota Bifido Probiotic

It took a while and does make things a bit worse for a few months while your body is releasing the histamine then you kinda feel it going and start to feel better, you have to carry on taking them or it will come back.

Hope this helps someone.

i took this because my Dr. said i might have reflux I didn't know about. Well 2 days later i had nausea daily after taking it and lost all my appetite. I took it for a week before stopping and now 2 months later am still not normal. Blood tests, endoscopy, ultrasound, colonoscopy. All pretty much because i now have anxiety thinking something is wrong. I'm going to a therapist tomorrow because they think its anxiety and want me to take a SSRI. I had pretty much nothing going on until this pill.

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share my terrible experience with Omeprazole and hope that it will help anyone going through similar symptoms. If it wasn’t for the various online forums I found on the topic, I probably would have never known about the consequences of taking this drug, and most likely would have remained ill for much longer (or dead).

Background: 39 (now 40) year old male with no medical history. In fact, I was very optimistic and felt good about soon turning 40 because I was in the best shape of my life. I exercised regularly and eat healthy. All my routine lab work was/is normal, in fact, my cardiologist says everything is “optimal”. I went to preface my story by saying that myself and my wife both have extensive healthcare experience. Aside from working as a clinician for many years as a respiratory therapist, I also taught cardiac anatomy and physiology for 2 years at a university, so we have some knowledge and a better understanding of the symptoms than the average person. This actually caused more frustration for me because nobody was able to figure out or explain my symptoms, so many people resorted to the default diagnosis of “anxiety”, which I knew it was not (more to come on that).

In January, 2023 I went to see a GI physician. For many years I have experienced an occasional pain under my left rib. It is very infrequent and does not interfere with my life, but I figured I am getting older and trying to be proactive with my health, so I wanted to see if it was a potential stomach ulcer.

Rather than do a GI scope, the physician wanted to first put me on a trial of Omeprazole to see if it eliminated the symptoms. I started taking 20mg once a day. After a few weeks, I went for a follow up and let the doctor know it was hard to tell if it actually helped or not because my symptoms are so infrequent to begin with. He decided that I should stay on it for a couple more months and then stop it completely in July to see if the symptoms acted up more frequently. Stopping in July would have had me on the drug for approximately 6 months, but I never made it that far because of what happened next.

One night in mid-April, I went to bed as usual around 1030pm. Shortly after falling asleep, I was woken up by a strange feeling in my heart, which sort of felt like palpitations but different (I’ve had palpitations in the past). Suddenly, I began to feel dizzy and could not even feel my heart beating, so I went to take my radial pulse and was not able to feel one. I then became very pale, more dizzy, sweaty, and weak. It felt like my heart was stopping. I woke my wife who took my BP and it was 90/44, which is very low for me (I am usually on the high end of normal). We went to the ER and I basically spent all night there because it was busy. While in the waiting room, I again had an episode of dizziness/weakness, so most likely another drop in BP. They eventually did various labs, an ECG, and had me on telemetry for monitoring. Everything came back normal and they discharged me home in the morning with the plan to follow up with cardiology. “probably anxiety” was their explanation (which was wrong).

A few days later, I was able to get an appointment with cardiology and the doctor ordered an echocardiogram and a holter monitor because the symptoms I was feeling then felt like an arrhythmia. Before I could even get these tests done, I ended up in ER again. A few days after seeing cardiology, I began to have chest pain and shortness of breath for no apparent reason, along with the other symptoms I had already been feeling. I also developed a new symptom while trying to sleep, which was that my abdomen area was twitching. When I say twitching, I don’t mean a subtle annoyance. I mean it felt like something was trying to explode out of my abdomen. Simultaneously, I was having what felt like irregular heart rhythms. While in this ER this time, they again did an ECG, some labs, and a CT to rule out pulmonary embolism. Again, all normal…”anxiety” they say. Soon after the second ER visit, I had my echocardiogram and holter monitor, which was all normal.

At this point, my primary care physician, cardiologist, as well as the ER physicians I had seen were very dismissive of my symptoms. It felt like they thought I was crazy and it got to the point where I decided I was on my own trying to figure things out.

Back to the “anxiety” thing…

I have never had anxiety or a related condition. Like anyone, of course I can get anxious or stressed when life gets crazy, but I didn’t just wake up one day with severe anxiety that was causing all these symptoms. The symptoms I had were definitely causing anxiety, but it was not anxiety causing the symptoms. But my primary care doctor thought I should try Zoloft while we worked out what was going on…I was so desperate at the time that I agreed. At this time, all the physicians I had seen knew that I was on Omeprazole, but none of them said to stop taking it.

To help shorten this very long story, here is a list of the symptoms I had. They happened at different points during this months long experience.

Feeling of irregular heart rhythm

A burning or buzzing sensation in my heart at random points during the night

Very strong/pounding heartbeat when laying flat (trying to sleep), along with the pounding abdomen

Leg weakness

“Buzzing” feeling in my ankles

Twitching in random places at different times. Sometimes it was my calves and ankles, sometimes it was my back, etc.

I had to sleep upright from April to mid-June because laying flat would cause many of the symptoms above to be worse. Even laying upright, I still would only get a couple hours of sleep each night because my heart beat/rhythm would constantly wake me.

Anxiety! As I mentioned, I never had anxiety before, but I soon realized I was having severe anxiety along with panic attacks, which I never had before

I know I am missing some symptoms above and I’m lacking detail on the extent of these, but I am just trying to give a summary.

Again, because I know a little bit about the heart, I knew that I was feeling very abnormal, but no one had answers. So one day it hit me that the only thing that has changed in my life was that I started taking Omeprazole. I Googled something like “Omeprazole cardiac effects” and found several Reddit threads as well as some other forums with people experiencing similar symptoms, seemingly out of nowhere, but consistent with starting Omeprazole (or other PPI drug). Also, many complaints of anxiety and panic attacks from people who never had these symptoms before. I was mad at myself for not researching this earlier, as I generally investigate this sort of thing thoroughly. But I guess I assumed it is an OTC drug and just an acid reducer, so how could it cause any harm? After reading all the negative experiences with it, I immediately stopped taking it on May 11th. Within 4 days of stopping it, the general anxiety symptoms were gone. I was still very worried at this point, even weeks after stopping it, because I wasn’t sure if I had some kind of permanent damage. As weeks have gone by, symptoms have changed and eased up. I was finally able to sleep laying flat in June, but continued to have a somewhat different feeling in my chest that felt like vibrations. I also had increased twitching in my calves for many weeks over the summer. It wasn’t until about 2 weeks ago that the calf twitching has stopped, and the vibrations I feel in my chest/heart are gradually less noticeable.

I am almost 5 months off of Omeprazole. In my experience, the improvement and path to getting back to normal is very, very slow. Sometimes it felt like I was close to being back to normal, only to be hit with some other weird symptom or variation of an existing symptom. The improvement is so slow and subtle it is almost unnoticeable.I hope that if you’re reading this and have a similar story, you will also get better in time.

I have somewhat lost faith in the healthcare system. Again, I knew I was on my own at one point because no one had answers. I guess I can’t blame them…all tests and labs were normal, but it was very sad to think that the only diagnosis my physicians had in mind was anxiety. I knew I wasn’t losing my mind, but to them, they probably thought I needed psych treatment.

Although I have a lot of experience in the cardiopulmonary area, I will not pretend I know anything about the GI system and how PPI drugs work at the cellular level. Once I stopped Omeprazole, I focused on a few things. I am not a doctor and don’t claim to know if any of these things actually helped in getting better, so do not look at this as a recommendation…it is just what I did.

Focused highly on nutrition. Lots of homemade soup with bone broth and many vegetables

Hydration. Water and coconut water

Supplements - I don’t usually take supplements, but I started small doses of vitamin b12, vitamin C, vitamin d3, and magnesium.

Exercise - I lost a lot of muscle mass because I essentially stopped weight lifting during this time. I did try to lift after my first cardiology visit because she said I should go back to my normal routine, but when I tried, I was extremely weak, my body was shaking, and HR was high. The exercise I continued with was evening walks with my wife. In June, I started my usual routine without issue, but dropped the weight/intensity quite a bit (partly because I wanted to ease into it, and partly because I am just not as strong as I was before all this happened).

This is already very long, but it’s really an abbreviated version of all the stuff that happened. There were many days when I thought I would never recover. Not to sound dramatic, but the whole experience changed my life and how I look at things. I am working on getting my fitness back in order and hopefully better than it ever was. I don’t ever want to be a “patient” or deal with life in the healthcare system again. I’ve always been a family-first guy and my wife and kids mean the world to me, but having gone through this, I have a new appreciation for simply being together with my family and focusing on the now, instead of planning for the future that may never come (still planning for the future of course, but just enjoying the current moment more than ever).

This drug messed up my body too, giving me a syrinx of the spine. The main problem is that it blocks your absorption of B12 so it is important for you to supplement with sublingual B12 or B12 injections. Nerve problems, tingling, neuropathy are common side effects.

have you gotten better? Olivia or Anyone who took this awful drug?