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Do the meds accumulate in our fat?


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Does anyone know if benzos accumulate in our fat? I was thinking that every time we exercise some meds get released and that's why so many feel like crap afterwards. I'm still tapering after 5 years. I'm 30 years on Ativan. Right now complete exhaustion is my biggest issue with loss of strength and muscle pain being next in line. If I try to exercise depression and anxiety come back in full force the next day. If I don't exercise they stay away. I am now well over 200lbs. I was 125 lbs when I started. This is getting so discouraging. I think all the people on here who started the same time I did have jumped and left. I was wondering if tje possible release of meds from someones fat may.contribute to alot of this stuff especially after jumping. Thoughts on this?
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As these medications are lipid (fat) soluble then yes they do get stored in fatty tissues. Remember that our brains are made up almost entirely of fat.. Now, the question is are these medications stored in such a way that they're active? I'm not sure... The active metabolites of these drugs is a few hundred hours so I would think they would be stored long term as an inactive metabolite.. Although, I'm not entirely sure..

 

Also , 5 years is a long long time to taper.. Are you sure that you're not going too slow?

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Found this in the Ashton Manual.

 

How long do benzodiazepines stay in the body after withdrawal? This question is often asked by people with long-term symptoms. Is it possible that one cause of protracted symptoms is that benzodiazepines remain in the body even after months, lurking perhaps deep in such tissues as brain and bones? Could slow elimination from these sites keep the withdrawal symptoms going?

 

Like many other issues concerning benzodiazepines, the answers to these questions are still unclear. Benzodiazepine concentrations in the blood have been measured and shown to reach undetectable levels in 3-4 weeks after cessation of use in people withdrawn from clinical doses. Information on benzodiazepine concentrations in the brain and other tissues is difficult to obtain, especially in humans. Benzodiazepines certainly enter the brain and also dissolve in all fatty (lipid-containing) tissues including fat deposits all over the body. It is possible that they linger in such tissues for some time after blood levels have become undetectable. However, most body tissues are in equilibrium with the blood that constantly perfuses them, and there is no known mechanism whereby benzodiazepines could be "locked up" in tissues such as the brain. There is no data on how long benzodiazepines remain in bones, which have a lower fat content but also a slower rate of cell turnover.

 

Nevertheless, the concentration of benzodiazepines remaining in body tissues after withdrawal must be very low, otherwise the drugs would leak back into the blood in discernible amounts. It is difficult to imagine that such concentrations would be sufficient to produce clinical effects or that any direct effects could last for months or years. However, it is not inconceivable that even low concentrations might be enough to prevent the return of GABA/benzodiazepine receptors in the brain to their pre-benzodiazepine state. If so, the receptors would continue to be resistant to the natural calming actions of GABA (See Chapter I), and the effect could be to prolong the state of nervous system hyperexcitability. Possible factors contributing to protracted symptoms are outlined in Table 4.

 

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