I found out on the web that these figures are in thousands. Apparently, most of us have anywhere between 150,000 to 400,000 platelets per microliter (mcL). Anything under that and you’re officially labelled as suffering from “thrombocytopenia” — which simply means you don’t have enough blood platelets.

The only symptom was a few bruises here and there that were slow to heal. But apart from that, she felt fine. All other levels were normal — blood pressure, white blood cells, red blood cells… it was JUST the blood platelet count that was a problem. And apparently anything under a count of 20 is potentially very dangerous — spontaneous internal bleeding can occur.

By the time she had a blood test in the hospital that evening, her blood platelets were down to 2 — thankfully an infusion of platelets followed shortly and the immediate danger had passed.

2 Possible Causes… Zispin or Her Immune System

The obvious place for me to start was to ask if she’d been doing anything different recently. She said she’d been taking an anti-depressant called Zispin for the last two and a half months. She also mentioned that her last blood test had come back with no problems — this was apparently three or four months ago…

So of course,  I scoured the Zispin leaflet for known blood-related side effects. There’s a section called “Take special care with Zispin SolTab…” and this is one of the bullet points under that heading…

• If you develop fever, sore throat, mouth ulcers, severe gastro-intestinal disturbances or other signs of infection. You should immediately consult your doctor for an evaluation. In rare cases these symptoms can be signs of disturbances in blood cell production in the bone marrow. This could lead to a shortage of white blood cells which could result in lowered resistance to infection. While rare, these symptoms most commonly appear after 4-6 weeks of treatment.

So no mention of blood platelets specifically, but more web research told me that blood platelets are manufactued in the bone marrow. Then, from this document from chemistdirect.co.uk, I gleaned the following information…

In rare cases Zispin SolTab can cause disturbances in the production of blood cells (bone marrow depression). Some people become less resistant to infection because Zispin SolTab can cause a temporary shortage of white blood cells (granulocytopenia). In rare cases Zispin SolTab can also cause a shortage of red and white blood cells, as well as blood platelets (aplastic anemia), a shortage of blood platelets (thrombocytopenia) or an increase in the number of white blood cells (eosinophilia).

Bingo — a shortage of blood platelets, or thrombocytopenia as they like to call it…

The doctors’ response to this was “Well, maybe if the platelet count had dropped to 90 or 100, it could be the Zispin… but not this far.” But of course our response was “But if you continue to take it, why WOULDN’T your blood platelet count continue to fall?”

Naturally, they were reluctant to give a direct answer and admitted that they couldn’t say for sure what the cause was. However, they proceeded on the basis that her immune system was the problem. It had geared up in whatever way to fight an infection or virus, but was now attacking blood platelets. The answer? To suppress that immune response with some heavy duty steroids — 16 tablets a day, 80mg of Prednisolone.

Oddly, she had stopped taking Zispin the day before this latest blood test anyway, as she was concerned about a weight gain side-effect (I later discovered that Zispin is sometimes prescribed as an appetite stimulant!)

Thankfully, during the following five or so days, her blood platelet count began to rise again, and when it hit 47 they allowed her to go home. Within five or so days after that, she had another blood test as an outpatient and her blood platelets were back up to 147 — so nearly back to within normal range.

So… did the steroids kick in, suppress her immune response and cause the platelets to recover? Or did the Zispin simply begin leaving her body, allowing her platelet count to rise quite naturally?

If you, or someone you know is taking Zispin I would get a blood test done as a matter of urgency, asking the doctor to pay particular attention to the blood platelet count.

I hope this article has helped you…

If you have any experience with Zispin at all — good or bad — please leave me a comment below, I’d love to hear from you.

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James Riddett
Habit Guide: How to be Happy & Healthy

“hi  i just visited ur site, i am troubled with irrational thoughts. and was diagnosed by doctor as OCD. i want to know if the diagnosis is correct and what is the treatment. pls help.”

First of all it’s important to know that OCD is just a label for your thought habits. “OCD” is a way of describing irrational thoughts — you are not having irrational thoughts BECAUSE you have OCD. So all we need to tackle here is how to get to rid of unwanted, irrational thoughts…

Thought habits are very subtle and the problem can get reinforced by more and more attention being placed on these thoughts. The key thing to remember is that attention is the volume control for thoughts.

So the key to getting back to a normal state of mind is to completely REMOVE all attention away from these unwanted thoughts, as soon as they pop up. Immediate distraction is what’s needed. This reprograms your mind that these thoughts are not useful to you, and so they stop popping up and dominating your attention.

There are 2 key sections of Habit Guide that you need to read. The first is the “Break bad habits” section. This shows you the ONE key technique you need to break all unwanted habits, and this includes unwanted thought habits — the process is exactly the same.

You also need to read the “Live in the moment” section which will show you the ONE technique you need for gaining complete peace of mind and freedom from unwanted thoughts.

Enter your details below to receive Habit Guide for free, in the form of weekly emails, or download the eBook to see the whole system at once.

Mike’s methods have cured many people of “OCD”…

I have known Mike since our children were about five. I had suffered with O.C.D. for a long time since my mid-twenties.

I confided in Mike about my anxieties and thoughts on food. He advised me how to deal with this. I couldn’t believe that it could be so simple, so I continued for years more trying to solve the problem, to rationalize it, only making things worse and worse.

Even with a psychologist and Mike advising me how to get better I continued to give the problem more and more attention.

Many aniti-depressants later, even anti-psychotic drugs I was in a worse situation than ever, on the verge of losing my job, home, sanity and daughter. I had to try something else.

Mike spent hour after hour on the phone convincing me of what needed to be done and how his method could achieve this.

I finally committed to his method. It wasn’t easy because the responsibility rested on me, but the method couldn’t be more simple, luckily for me or I wouldn’t have made it.

Two months of committment and determination and I’m living a normal life with a normal relationship with food and getting better every day. Two months… after twenty years of misery.

A miracle. Seems like one to me.

John Woods also overcame OCD naturally, using the techniques in Habit Guide…

“I just wanted to say that since I read this board and purchased the guide that to date I have had no issues at all. What you wrote cured me and I am totally amazed by it. I am so impressed with the results, I feel totally different and peaceful.

I would love to know where you got all your information from, as I have seen so many health professionals over my problems, but none has ever come close to the advice that you give. Thanks Mike you have honestly changed my life.”

Please also bear in mind that everything affects everything else. Happiness comes from having two things: health and peace of mind.

So use Habit Guide to put all six lifestyle elements in place and you will be very happy for many years to come…

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James Riddett
Habit Guide: How to be Happy & Healthy

Dana wrote…

Hello, about 2 years ago I pierced my finger with a staple while opening a package and fainted at home. Ever since then I have had a chronic fear of fainting again.

It’s whenever I go out in public the consistent thoughts of “I hope I dont pass out” just play through my head like a tape recorder and eventually I just panic and have to go sit down to calm down, and get a grip on reality that it’s not real and that I physically have no reason whatsoever that I would pass out.

I truly believe that I won’t pass out and the thoughts are irrational and also its not really ME thinking this stuff but my mind running wild and its almost like a habit to think this way. I try to live in the present moment but I just feel sometimes that its so hard to break from these irrational thoughts and control my mind.

What would you suggest I do to finally take control of this thought and eliminate it for good?

Thank you so much!!!

…

Hi Dana,

This is a great case of our minds being dysfunctional – not serving our best interests. I can relate to your problem, I remember I was very “mental” back in school. I used to run through difficult/embarrassing scenarios in my
mind, and of course that attention made the problem worse… Naturally, I assumed I needed to THINK about the poblem in order to get rid of it and solve it (BIG mistake!)

For example, I remember going through a spell where I kept thinking “I hope I don’t blush. It’ll be terrible if I blush, everyone will look at me and that will be really embarrasing”. And then of course I would imagine how embarrassed and awkard I would feel if I blushed, and guess what… I would blush… How’s that for a self-fulfilling prophecy? :-)

And of course, but for the thought, and then the attention to the thought, it would never have happened…

Of course, what I should have done is NOT given that thought my attention. Equally, to overcome your fear of fainting, you want to calmly NOT give your attention to the thought “I hope I don’t pass out”. What you want is calm distraction. However stressing about NOT thinking the thought won’t do… that’s just another form of attention to it.

In the same vein, the frustration you feel when the thought pops up is counter-productive. That trains your brain that this is important, that this is something that needs your attention, a problem that needs resolving. This is TOTALLY understandable of course, we’re trained to put attention on perceived problems.

But what you want is the opposite – you want a calm decision to simply not engage with the thought, to calmly distract onto something else right away…

And that Dana, is how you overcome fear of fainting.

update: more details in the comments below…

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James Riddett
Habit Guide: How to be Happy & Healthy