LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

NSAIDs dangerous

Natural Treatments for Arthritis Go Head to Head with Dangerous Drugs

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Natural Treatments for arthritis
Natural Treatments for arthritis

There are lots of claims about natural treatments for arthritis, but which ones work?

Without any good answers, all too many of us drop back on drugs for arthritis pain.  The list can include drugs like steroids and NSAIDs.  These drugs come with a list of side effects that you would not want to experience (if you’re really up to learning all about why NSAIDs are so bad for your health, feel free to check out my eBook on the topic by clicking here).

A few years back, the drug companies were able to come up with a new version of the most common class of anti-inflammatories, the cyclo-oxygenase inhibitors.  This NSAID class includes drugs like ibuprofen, and indomethacin.  The problem with this class of drugs is that one of the enzymes they block just so happens to protect the lining of the stomach.  This is why the big risk with these drugs is bleeding ulcers and why some 20,000 people per year die as a result of taking these drugs.

Because of this tiny little side effect, researchers developed a class of drugs that do not block the one version of the enzyme that protects the stomach lining.  Thus was born the selective cyclo-oxygenase inhibitors that rose to the top of the drug food chain to become one of the most financially successful blockbuster drugs of its time.

At least, until it was determined that, while this drug was a wee bit safer on the stomach,  unfortunately this drug DID block one enzyme that protected the heart, leading to some 100,000+ heart attacks and who knows how many deaths from Vioxx alone.  To make matters worse, Merck hid this data for years until it blew up in their face, resulting in hundreds of lawsuits from families that lost their loved ones.

Luckily (for the drug companies) the public has a short memory and Celebrex is still available on the market and prescriptions are still being written today for patients with arthritis pain who probably forgot about the entire Vioxx debacle.

So, if you happen to be one of those patients whose primary care doctor also has a short memory and wrote you a prescription for Celebrex, there may be an answer.

This particular article pits the natural combination of glucosamine and chondroitin up against Celebrex in 606 patients with knee arthritis and severe pain (Kellgren and Lawrence grades 2–3 knee osteoarthritis and moderate-to-severe pain based on the Western Ontario and McMaster osteoarthritis index-WOMAC-score ≥301 an a 0–500 scale).

Patients received either 400 mg chondroitin sulfate, 500 mg glucosamine combination three times a day or 200 mg celecoxib (Celebrex) every day for 6 months.  Here’s what they found:

  • The natural arthritis treatment group dropped 50.1% (WOMAC score).
  • The drug-known-to-kill group had a matched 50.2% decrease.
  • At 6 months, 79.7% of patients in the natural arthritis treatment group and 79.2% in the toxic arthritis drug (Celebrex, in case you’re not following along) group fulfilled OMERACT-OARSI criteria.
  • Both groups had more than a 50% reduction in joint swelling and effusion.

Sounds like a pretty even match, right?  Yeah–except that neither glucosamine nor chondroitin, in the history of its use, has been associated with even a single death (that I’m aware of–I’m sure there’s a patient or two who choked to death taking the supplements…), while Celebrex is in a class of drugs that is so bad for the heart that cardiology recommendations now state that NO heart disease patients should be on NSAIDs.

Oh..and it’s WAY cheaper.  So which one are YOU taking?

NSAIDs, Prediabetes and Your Liver; Dangerous, but Not Like You Think

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elevated liver enzymes
creative soul/Dollar Photo Club

There is pretty much no chronic disease that prediabetes does not contribute to.  Fatty liver is on the list.

It goes by many names: non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), fatty liver, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).  It can start with just a mild elevation of liver enzymes on a routine blood work panel.  This may prompt your doctor to order a viral hepatitis panel just to make sure that hepatitis is not at work.

When the virus panel comes back normal you just get kind of a mention of it not being anything significant and that we’ll just keep an eye on it.

This is how it starts (I’ve covered this concept in a previous blog article that can be read by clicking here), but it can progress to something far more severe with time, leading to scarring of the liver (fibrosis, cirrhosis) and liver transplants.

Currently, there is a rather large amount of research being published on this topic because this elevation of liver enzymes is on the rise.

As always, the answer comes down to that condition that about half of the Westernized world has prediabetes.  There are some very, very strong links between the diabetic progression and NASH.  It boils down to the accepted fact that the diabetic process pretty much pisses off the liver cells, ultimately killing them off slowly (leading to the elevation in liver enzymes in the blood).  Inflammation that is generated by the diabetic lifestyle likely plays a pivotal role as well.

This means that living an anti-diabetic lifestyle is the ONLY real answer (despite the rush to try to develop a drug for this condition).

(While it is beyond the scope of this article, feel free to check out my Diabetes eBook for a complete outline of the necessary lifestyle changes to combat diabetes by clicking here.)

Or at least, an anti-diabetic lifestyle was the only thing that USED to be on the list.  This particular article adds another aspect to this condition.  In it, researchers looked at the relationship between the activation of the enzyme cyclo-oxygenase 2 (COX2) and the development of fatty liver.

You may recognize the name of the enzyme because COX1 and COX2 are the enzymes that are blocked by the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen and naproxen.  And we can’t forget the Vioxx debacle, a drug that was designed to block only COX2, along with Celebrex and Bextra.

Vioxx was pulled off the market because it greatly increased the risk of heart attacks, causing at least tens of thousands of heart attacks in the time it was being prescribed.

Why?  Because, while we know that COX1 and COX2 produce inflammatory chemicals in our body, they also do things like thin the blood via the enzyme prostacyclin.  The problem is that we don’t find out about these other enzymes functions until we block it in large numbers in a brand-new-to-the-market blockbuster drug.

Here’s some interesting things that the researchers found:

  • Adult liver cells do NOT turn on the COX-2 enzyme when the rest of the body is in an inflammatory state.
  • This lack of expression of COX2 may leave liver cells vulnerable to the development of insulin resistance / prediabetes.
  • If the baseline production (constitutive) COX-2 in liver cells is forced (in the lab in mice), they found that this protects these cells against adiposity, inflammation, and, hence, insulin resistance.
  • This increased production of COX2 leads to decreased fatty liver, adiposity, triglycerides and free fatty acids, increased adiponectin-to-leptin ratio (an anti-diabetic marker), and decreased levels of chemical involved with inflammation.
  • As an added benefit, these mice who produced more COX2 enzyme activity burned more fat.

So, just like most everything else that has to do with human physiology, we really don’t have any idea how things work.  We THINK we know what enzymes do.  COX2 produces inflammation.  We block that with a drug and we’ll stop pain.

Until you cause a heart attack.

And here we see yet another aspect of what this enzyme does.  This leads to the very reasonable possibility that drugs like the NSAIDs and the selective COX2 inhbitors (Celebrex is still available although Vioxx was pulled off the market) may contribute to fatty liver.

Although it has always been known that these drugs damage the liver, it was thought to occur by a different mechanism; one that had not been previously thought of.  At least until now.

(Just in case you’re a little rusty on your ibuprofen side effects, feel free to check out my eBook on the topic by clicking here)

This is not, however, the direction the researchers were looking.  Rather, the conclusions stated that drugs that INCREASE the expression of COX2 in the liver may be a new route of research into drugs used to treat NAFLD.

Yep.  I’m sure it’ll be a blockbuster.  At least until it starts killing patients left and right.

 

Ibuprofen Class of Drugs Kills 21,000 Per Year

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ARE YOU AWARE THAT THIS COMMON CLASS OF DRUGS KILLS 21,000 PEOPLE PER YEAR?

Almost everyone is surprised about the annual number of deaths that occur due to the Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (like ibuprofen).  This number, in light of the increased risk of NSAIDs on the heart that came to light because of the Vioxx trials, is likely much, much higher.  Most deaths from this class of drugs are from bleeding ulcers.  I’m not even sure we’re counting the cardiovascular deaths.

This particular study illuminates why these numbers may be so high.  Researchers looked at patients who were given prescriptions for an NSAID.  Of these, 86.6% were at increased GI risk and 72.7% for heart disease.  The patients’ individual risk had no bearing on getting the prescription.

Wow.  I always find this in stark contrast to the opinion that chiropractic care is “unsafe” or someone doesn’t “believe” in chiropractic care (didn’t know it was a religion…).  Instead of a referral to a chiropractor, many PCPs will give a prescription for NSAIDs, unaware of the high risks associated with this class of drugs.  Think of this next time you crack open that bottle of ibuprofen for your headache…

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NSAIDS–Just Two Weeks to Ulcers

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CAN JUST TWO WEEKS OF NSAIDS DESTROY THE STOMACH AND INTESTINES?  It amazes me how frequently patients take this class of drugs without any thought to the fact that some 16,000-21,000 people DIE each year from this class of drugs, most often due to bleeding ulcers.  This is truly a scary study, following 55 healthy volunteers given diclofenac (i.e. Voltaren) for just 2 wks along with a drug that supposedly protects the stomach from these drugs.  60% had lesions after, with a whopping 636 lesions to share among them.  636.  Two weeks.  ON a “protective” drug.  This devastated the lining of the gut in a very, very short period of time.  Funny, though, that many physicians will put their patients on this class of drugs before recommending chiropractic care (which, to my knowledge, does NOT cause lesions in the stomach….).  One would think this should be malpractice….

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Ibuprofen Side Effects: Add a New Life-Threatening One to the List

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Unfortunately, when most of us think about the side effects of NSAIDs like ibuprofen, we think ulcers.

That’s not to say some 20,000 bleeding ulcers annually leading to death is something to be taken lightly, but it’s merely the tip of the iceberg.  The cardiovascular risks of NSAIDs began to appear in the medical literature some 5+ years ago, with the cardiovascular societies ultimately putting out the recommendation that anyone with a pre-existing cardiovascular condition should NOT take a NSAID.

That’s a pretty strong statement.  And one that has largely gone unnoticed by both the rest of the medical community and the general public.

Overall, the number of patients who die prematurely every year as a result of taking something as “benign” as an ibuprofen or diclofenac, is likely uncountable because the use of this class of drugs is so massively high.

Closer to home, pretty much every single week I hear something about a patient who was told by his or her doctor NOT to see a chiropractor, or has a friend or coworker who would NEVER see a chiropractor or heard a news report that chiropractors are killing people on a daily basis with cervical manipulation (I personally just throw our practices’ dead bodies in the dumpster at the end of my parking lot).

And yet, these same doctors, these same friends and coworkers will prescribe and pop anti-inflammatories like they are candy with no knowledge of the numbers of deaths they cause annually.

This disparity in the perceived danger and the actual dangers is about to get a little wider.

In this particular study, we can add yet another side effect of NSAIDs to the already long list.

Atrial fibrillation (irregular heartbeat).

Researchers looked across 5 studies to see whether NSAID use was associated with an irregular heartbeat.  Here’s what they found:

  • NSAID use was associated with a 12% increased risk for AFib.
  • The risk was worse among new users, rising up to 53%.

The authors concluded that the risk of new onset AFib should be included in the list of known side effects of ibuprofen as well as other drugs in the NSAID class.

I can’t help but point out that, at the time of the writing of this article, no such additional life-threatening warnings have been applied to chiropractic care…

 

NSAIDs as a Trigger of Clinical Heart Failure – (03-31-03)

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NSAIDs as a Trigger of Clinical Heart Failure.

NSAIDs double the risk of heart failure in patients with a history of heart problems. Considering their widespread use, the number of patients affected by this association is probably close to staggering. All by themselves, NSAIDs are believed to cause some 16-19,000 deaths per year via GI bleeding (kind of beats 20 over a lifetime, huh?).

Click here for more information.

H. pylori eradication and NSAIDs: effects on ulcers – (08-10-00)

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H. pylori eradication and NSAIDs: effects on ulcers

First, I think that there are too many questions about H. pylori’s effect on ulcers. Some researchers say it is supposed to be there, some say H. pylori is an infection and needs to be medicated, yet others suggests that H. pylori protects against reflux disease. Next, (and here comes my chiropractic viewpoint) what is the reason the patient is taking the NSAIDs and can the problem be fixed so the drug is not needed??

Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics 14 (7), 879-885 Eradication of H. pylori prior to NSAID therapy significantly reduces the level of apoptosis in the gastric mucosa, which may contribute to maintaining mucosa integrity and preventing ulcer development.