Herbal Therapies for Weight Gain and Metabolic Abnormalities Induced by Atypical Antipsychotics: A Review Article.

Psychosis is a state of mind that makes it difficult to determine what is real and what is not. Psychosis can have serious negative effects. Like many psychiatric phenomena, psychosis has a variety of causes, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and psychotic depression. Antipsychotic medications, psychotherapy, and social support are the most common treatments. Antipsychotic drugs reduce the symptoms of psychosis by changing brain chemistry. Based on the mechanism of action, antipsychotics have two groups, typical and atypical. Most people who take antipsychotics experience side effects. People taking typical antipsychotics tend to have higher rates of extrapyramidal side effects, but some atypical drugs, especially olanzapine, are associated with the risk of significant weight gain, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome, which, in turn, increases the risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and premature death. Physical exercise, diet regimen, psychoeducation, monotherapy, or switching to an alternative antipsychotic are strategies to correct metabolic aberrates in atypical antipsychotic users. In light of several successful studies on the use of medicinal plants to control metabolic syndrome, this article briefly reviews the studies on some herbal medications for the management of metabolic disorders associated with atypical antipsychotics and discusses probable mechanisms. Therefore, we searched the Cochrane, Scopus, PubMed, and Google Scholar databases for works published before July, 2022, on the effect of herbal medications on antipsychotic-related metabolic abnormalities in animals or humans. We recommend that some herbal medicines may be efficient for regulating the metabolic changes related to atypical antipsychotics due to their multipotential action, and more efforts should be made to make herbal drug treatments more effective. We hope this review will be a reference for research on developing herbal therapeutics for metabolic alterations in antipsychotic customers.

Female sexual dysfunction in Iran: study of prevalence and risk factors.

PURPOSE: To assess the prevalence of and risk factors for female sexual dysfunction (FSD) among women in Birjand city, Iran. METHODS: This cross-sectional population-based survey was conducted in nine areas of Birjand, the provincial center of South Khorasan province and married women aged between 15 and 72 years were included. Data were collected by face-to-face interview and completing a self-administered questionnaire. FSD and related risk factors were assessed. RESULTS: A total of 821 women with mean age of 31.5 ± 9.1 were studied. Of them, 694 (84.6 %) had active sexual relationship with their husband, 239 (29.1 %) had less than one intercourse per week, 320 (39 %) did not feel pleasure with their sexual activity and intercourse, 86 (10.5 %) had never attained an orgasm, 604 (73.6 %) had a highly satisfactory relationship with their husband. CONCLUSIONS: Dissatisfaction and not feeling pleasure with sexual activity was the most common FSD in our study. Further epidemiologic investigation is clearly warranted.