Prescription Medications Cause Nutrient Depletion

Some prescription and over-the-counter drugs have the potential to change physiology in a way that results in nutrient deficiencies over time.

 

Absorption

Drugs that change the environment in which nutrients are absorbed have the potential to cause nutrient depletion over time. For example, nutrients that require an acidic environment in the gut for optimal absorption can be depleted if the gut pH is changed by drug therapy.

Calcium requires an acidic environment for optimal absorption. People who take an acid suppressor like esomeprazole (Nexium) can have reduced calcium absorption. 

Excretion

Some drugs have the potential to affect kidney function or otherwise change how the body might handle elimination of a particular nutrient. For example, nutrients that are water soluble might be depleted due to increased elimination in patients taking drugs that increase fluid losses.

Loop diuretics cause increased fluid and electrolyte loss by changing kidney function. Therefore, they can cause depletion of potassium and other nutrients. 

Metabolism

In some cases, drugs change physiology in a way that might change how the body utilizes certain nutrients or change biochemical pathways involved in nutrient synthesis or activation. For example, a drug that inhibits a nutrient precursor may result in nutrient depletion over the long run.

Statin drugs affect the metabolic pathway of cholesterol. Similarly they inhibit the pathway for coenzyme Q10.

 

Antimicrobials

Most antibiotics have the potential to affect nutrients. This is mainly because antibiotics disrupt the gastrointestinal flora.

Since normal flora are involved in production of B vitamins...pantothenic acid (B5),pyridoxine (B6), riboflavin (B2), thiamine(B1), vitamin B12...there is concern that antibiotics might cause B vitamin depletion.

The normal GI flora is also involved in the production of vitamin K. In some people, destruction of vitamin K-producing bacteria by antibiotics can lead to vitamin K deficiency, prolonged clotting times, and bleeding.

It is thought that some antibiotics might also be more of a problem than others. Some cephalosporins have a methylthiotetrazole side chain that can also interfere with vitamin K activity, directly inhibiting clotting factor production in the liver. 

Gastric Acid Reducers

Drugs that increase the gastric pH have the potential to affect absorption of a variety of nutrients. These drugs include proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), H2 receptor blockers, and antacids.

·          Esomeprazole (Nexium)

·          Lansoprazole (Prevacid)

·          Omeprazole (Prilosec)

·          Pantoprazole (Protonix)

·          Rabeprazole (Aciphex)

·          Cimetidine (Tagamet)

·          Famotidine (Pepcid)

·          Nizatidine (Axid)

·          Ranitidine (Zantac)

All drugs that increase gastric pH can reduce absorption of calcium, vitamin B12, vitamin C, beta-carotene, chromium, iron, folic acid, and zinc. The jury is still out on beta-carotene, chromium, and vitamin C. More evidence is needed to rate these.

Calcium absorption is decreased with increased gastric pH. 

Dietary vitamin B12 is protein bound. Gastric acid is needed to release vitamin B12 from protein so it can be absorbed. Taking PPIs or H2-receptor blockers can decrease vitamin B12 absorption from foods.

 
Several reports of low magnesium have been linked to long-term PPI use, especially use lasting over a year. PPIs are thought to inhibit active transport of magnesium in the intestine. Hypomagnesemia (low magnesium) has been reported with all PPIs.

Severe hypomagnesemia can cause potentially serious outcomes including muscle spasm, tetany, arrhythmia, hypokalemia, hypoparathyroidism, hypocalcemia, and seizures. A magnesium supplement may be necessary to treat or prevent magnesium deficiency for some patients. But in some cases, magnesium supplementation alone may not be adequate. Case reports suggest that up to 25% of patients who developed hypomagnesemia had to discontinue the PPI in order for magnesium levels to return to normal. In many cases, hypomagnesemia recurred when the PPI was re-initiated.

Cholesterol Drugs

HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors, "statins," work by blocking synthesis of mevalonic acid which is a precursor to both cholesterol and to coenzyme Q10.

higher doses can reduce blood levels of coenzyme Q10 by 32% to 52%.


Some speculate that depleted coenzyme Q10 is responsible for statin-related myopathy. They often give coenzyme Q10 supplements to patients who experience these statin-related side effects.

 

In a preliminary clinical trial, patients with statin-induced myopathy who took coenzyme Q10 100 mg daily had significantly reduced pain intensity compared to baseline and compared to a vitamin E control after 30 days of treatment.

 

Bile acid sequestrants...cholestyramine, colestipol...can also affect levels of several nutrients. The drugs work to reduce absorption of fat from the gut. As a result they can also reduce the absorption of fat soluble vitamins...vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, and vitamin K. Deficiencies have been reported.

Diabetes Drugs

Metformin is the diabetes drug we usually think of when we think of nutrient depletion. Metformin is thought to decrease absorption of vitamin B12 by lowering intrinsic factor secretion, or possibly through other mechanisms.

Reduced serum levels of vitamin B12 occur in up to 30% of people who take metformin chronically. Deficiency can be corrected with oral vitamin B12 supplementation. Recommend 1000-2000 mcg daily to correct deficiency.

 

It is commonly believed that only intramuscular vitamin B12 is effective for treating vitamin B12 deficiency. But oral therapy is usually as effective as intramuscular administration, even in patients with malabsorption disorders, if a high enough dose is given. Some evidence suggests that the most effective oral dose is between about 650-1032 mcg/day.

 

Hypertension Drugs

Most drugs used for hypertension are not known to cause nutrient depletions issues, with one big exception...diuretics.

Diuretics change kidney physiology and can result in abnormal excretion of a variety of nutrients.

Loop Diuretics

·          Bumetanide

·          Ethacrynic acid

·          Furosemide

·          Torsemide

Thiazide Diuretics

·          Chlorothiazide

·          Chlorthalidone

·          Hydrochlorothiazide

·          Indapamide

·          Metolazone


Both loop and thiazide diuretics can increase excretion of potassium,magnesium, and thiamine. Loop diuretics can also reduce calcium levels. Loops and thiazides can also affect pyridoxine, folic acid, and vitamin C.

Potassium, Many patients will need a potassium supplement...usually 20-40 mEq daily to prevent depletion.

 

Magnesium is also an important concern because significant depletion can cause severe outcomes.

 

Diuretics can also increase calcium loss and sometimes this results in decreased calcium serum levels, especially when high-dose loop diuretics are used. 

Thiamine deficiency has been reported to occur in people taking diuretics.


The potential for diuretic-induced thiamine deficiency is a concern, because many patients receiving a diuretic have heart failure, which can be exacerbated with thiamine deficiency.


Keith Abell, RPh CIP MI
Save Money, Get Healthy, Earn Cash!
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Why Do Diets Fail?

Why do diets fail?

 

I want to discuss with you why diets fail and what happens when we "yo-yo" diet but before we discuss that let's get a background in nutrition in general.

 

To begin with there are 90 essential nutrients that our bodies need for optimal health. There are 60 minerals, 16 vitamins, 12 amino acids, and 3 fatty acids. A deficiency in any one of these will eventually lead to one or more of many different nutritional deficiency diseases. If you would like to learn more about the different nutritional deficiency diseases in detail please visit my websitehttp://TheRx4Health.com and click on the link to Dr. Wallach's "Dead Doctors Don't Lie" audio.

 

Mineral deficiencies cause many different diseases as Dr Wallach discusses on the aforementioned audio so lets take a more specific look at their role in weight management.

 

Mineral Deficiencies Cause Cravings

 

Let's consider a horse on a farm. When a horse starts chewing on the door to his stall, the fence post, a wooden wagon, etc. what the horse is going after is the minerals deposited on those items from the hands of the farmer. Every time the farmer touches the door of the stall, fence post, etc his sweaty palm leaves a mineral deposit. Since the farmer repeats this process many times a day, day after day, week after week, there tends to be an accumulation of these minerals. The mineral deficient animal then tastes the salty deposit and begins to chew on that spot in order to relieve his mineral cravings. That is why a good farmer puts a salt block in the field. Through years of veterinary research these salt blocks contain a variety of minerals such as potassium, sodium, selenium. Magnesium, calcium, etc. The farm animal licks these mineral "salts" getting the essential minerals they need thus quenching their craving.

 

Here in Kentucky we have the great salt licks. The buffalo used to stop at these outcroppings of mineral salts to "lick" them getting the essential nutrients they needed. In fact animals have been visiting these sites for eons as evidenced by some of the pre-historic fossils that have been found at these locations.

 

Why do we have mineral deficiencies?

 

We have extreme mineral deficiencies. US Senate Document 264 stated that "Our physical well-being is more directly dependent upon the minerals we take into our system than upon calories or vitamins, or upon precise proportions of starch, protein, or carbohydrates we consume." The document continues to state "…most of us today are suffering from certain dangerous diet deficiencies which cannot be remedied until depleted soils from which our food comes are brought into proper mineral balance."

 

How does mineral depleted soils affect our food?

 

Let's start by looking at the plants. Plants cannot make minerals. Plants use the minerals in the soils from which they are grown to produce vitamins and the many phytonutrients that they contain. They absorb the elemental mineral from the soils and convert them into plant derived colloidal minerals. An animal (like us) then comes along and eats these plants thereby consuming the minerals the plants have absorbed along with the many compounds the plants produced using those minerals.

 

In the early days the most prosperous farmers owned the farm land near rivers. The reason why these were so prosperous is every spring the mountain snows would melt bringing with it the mineral deposits found in the mountains and deposit those minerals on the farmland along with the spring floods. These soils were rich in minerals and the produce and grains grown there were therefore rich in these minerals and thrived.

 

Now the farmers that could not afford this valuable land would build their farms on the prairies. When they first started plowing the fields their crops flourished but after a few years the yields would begin to fall. That is because it takes on average 7 years to deplete the soils of their mineral deposits and if the soils are not amended with silt from the spring floods or wood ashes which are mineral rich then the crops begin to fail. These farmers would then pack up and move to another location and start the process all over again.

 

Eventually the botanist, plant scientist discovered that plants in general only need 3 nutrients to survive. Two are the minerals potassium and phosphate and the third is nitrogen. Once this was discovered and NPK fertilizers were developed the farms flourished and we became the bread basket of the world.

 

There is a problem with this scenario. Plants only need the two minerals; animals and humans require many more. Humans in particular need sixty different minerals to thrive and this is to what the Senate document was referring.

 

The document continues by saying "The alarming fact is that foods (fruits, vegetables and grains) now being raised on millions of acres of land that no longer contain enough of certain minerals are starving us – no matter how much of them we eat. No man of today can eat enough fruits and vegetables to supply his system with the minerals he requires for perfect health because his stomach isn't big enough to hold them."

 

As a result of this mineral deficiency we do just like the horse does, we eat anything we can to satisfy our "thirst" for these minerals. The snack and convenience food industry understand this craving and that is why they design their foods to "feed" these cravings with useless calories so we continue to consume more and more leading to the obesity epidemic we are facing.

 

This Senate document came from the 74thCongress 2nd Session which was 1936 and to this day the farm soils in this country are still only being supplemented with the three basic nutrients the plants need without any regard to the nutrients we need.

 

This has led to the US in becoming the most obese country while its citizens are literally starving to death due to the lack of the 90 essential nutrients we need to thrive. This "starvation" has lead to a huge increase in diseases with diabetes leading the way.

 

"Yo-Yo" dieting makes this situation even worse

 

Back around the turn of the century some researchers where looking at diets of laboratory rats. On average the typical lab rat lived about six months. The purpose of the experiments was to find a way to get the rats to live longer which increases the research value of the rats. One researcher decided to try cutting the carbohydrates that the rat consumed but the researcher kept the nutrients, the vitamins, minerals, amino acids the same. By cutting the carbs in half the researcher in reality double the amount of nutrition in each pellet. This concentrated pellet actually doubled the life expectancy of the subject rats. This lead them to cut the carbs in half again and the life expectancy of the rats doubled again. What they also discovered was as long as the essential nutrients stayed the same cutting the carbohydrates had a very positive effect on the animal.

 

When we diet in the already mineral deficient states that we are in we actually make the problem worse and this has given us the billion dollar weight loss industry. When we diet we don't supplement to keep the nutrient value the same, we cut the calories and cut the nutrients at the same time. With this lack of nutrients our bodies think we are in state of famine. When we go off the diet our bodies are designed to store as much fat as possible to make it through the next famine. Repeat this process over and over and the body trains it self to store more and more fat to make it through the next famine.

 

Supplementation is the key to successful dieting.

 

Lack of supplementation during dieting is the reason that diets fail. Coupling this with the bodies tendency to "prepare for the next famine" by rebuilding the fat stores it is easy to see why most people never succeed. Before dieting can succeed we must address the mineral deficiencies that were reported in the Senate document all the way back in 1936. Since the cost to add these minerals to the farmland would be too great the only way we can address the issue is by consuming plant derived minerals. Despite what modern medicine says every man, woman and child must increase their consumption of these essential nutrients. If we continue to eat as we do today with the mindset that we can get all the nutrients we need form the basic food groups we will either die of starvation or one of the many mineral deficiency diseases; or we will gorge ourselves on so much food in an attempt to get the proper nutrients that we eventually die from the complications of obesity.

 

Dr Atkins with the Atkins diet tried to address this issue by encouraging supplementation with his line of vitamins. By following his protocols there was limited success but even this diet plan did not address the lack of the 60 essential minerals. Because of the lack of these essential minerals many people on high protein low carbohydrate diets like his suffer from higher incidents of mineral deficiency maladies such as kidney stones.

 

Einstein once said that insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The key then is to supplement with these essential nutrients. Specifically the diet must include all 60 essential minerals in addition to the other nutrients. Once the goal weight is achieved, to insure maintenance of that weight one must continue to maintain supplementation of all 90 essential nutrients including the minerals. If supplementation one or both of two results will occur. Either weight gain will occur, or mineral deficiency diseases will result.


Keith Abell, RPh CIP MI
Get As Slim As Possible
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Sleep Meds Kill Half a Million People Per Year.

News reports are keeping patients up at night worrying about whether insomnia medications increase mortality.  They're hearing sleep meds kill half a million people per year.
 
This new research suggests a 4 to 5 times higher mortality in people prescribed meds for sleep...including benzodiazepines (temazepam, etc), non-benzos (zolpidem, etc), antihistamines, or barbiturates. 

Even people taking as few as 18 doses a year seem at risk.

One theory: Sleep meds lessen respiratory drive and worsen sleep apnea in some patients...leading to hypertension, heart disease, etc.

Sleeping pills can also impair motor and cognitive skills...leading to falls, accidents, and depression.

I encourage everyone with sleep issues to explore natural alternatives.
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Calcium and Kidney Stones

Just read an article published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH.Gov). In the article they discussed Calcium supplementation and the increased risk of kidney stones.

 

Kidney stones in the urinary tract are most commonly composed of calcium oxalate. Some, but not all, studies suggest a positive association between supplemental calcium intake and the risk of kidney stones, and these findings were used as the basis for setting the calcium UL in adults. In the Women's Health Initiative, postmenopausal women who consumed 1,000 mg of supplemental calcium and 400 IU of vitamin D per day for 7 years had a 17% higher risk of kidney stones than subjects taking a placebo. The Nurses' Health Study also showed a positive association between supplemental calcium intake and kidney stone formation. High intakes of dietary calcium, on the other hand, do not appear to cause kidney stones and may actually protect against developing them. For most individuals, other risk factors for kidney stones, such as high intakes of oxalates from food and low intakes of fluid, probably play a bigger role than calcium intake

 

I just wanted to make a couple comments on this statement. When discussing the outcomes from the Women's Health Initiative they did not mention what dosage form of the “supplemental” calcium was used. I suspect it was primarily in the form of calcium carbonate, calcium acetate, or some other form derived from organic mineral sources. These organic sources have a positive “+” electromagnetic charge (Ca++). This is important to understand absorption of calcium into our cells. The cell wall of very cell in the body has an electromagnetic gradient i.e. they are positive on the outside and negative on the inside. Since 2 positive charges repel each other it is difficult for the Ca++ to absorb. To overcome this obstacle the amount of Calcium outside the cell has to be at much higher levels than the calcium inside the cell. This excess calcium then forms oxalates (kidney stones) by binding with the free negatively charged oxalates in the body. These calcium oxalates then combine together to form a kidney stone.

 

Plant derived colloidal calcium on the other hand has a negative charge. As such they are much more bio-available absorbing more easily into the cells and avoiding the problem of forming oxalates. That would also explain why dietary sources of calcium do not seem to cause kidney stones. Just a little more proof that we were meant to get our minerals from organic, plant derived sources and not inorganic, soil and clay sources.

 

Once again the Women's Health Initiative proves another of Doctor Wallach’s claims.

 

For more information on plant derived colloidal minerals and the “90 For Life” program contact

 

Keith Abell, RPh MI

http://TheRxForWealth.com

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Here We Go Again!

Once again we are being misled. As you watch this video keep in mind that the common thread in all these studies is inflammation causes these conditions. With that in mind ask yourself what can be done to reduce inflammation. For that answer contact me, I will show you how that within just 90 days you will notice a difference in the way you feel. Now check out this video:



Keith Abell, RPh CIP MI
Save Money, Get Healthy, Earn Cash!
http://TheRx4Health.com
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