The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona
by James Bogash
Doctors’ strike in Israel may be good for health
This article really has some incredible implications. This is not the first time that a strike by physicians has led to a decrease in the death rate. Hopefully, one day we can realize that many, many pharmaceutical drugs have side effects that can be more dangerous than the disease originally intended to treat.
bmj.com Siegel-Itzkovich 320 (7249): 1561
by James Bogash
Drugs can contaminate the environment
Doing your best to avoid taking drugs? Well, recent studies suggest that you need to be drinking filtered water then. Pharmaceutical drugs are leaking out in the water supply, and may approach therapeutic levels in some cases. Imagine having a drug-drug interaction just from drinking water…
by James Bogash
St. John’s Wort Lowers Plasma Levels of Many Drugs
This issue has gained a surprising amount of press since it came out. A few things to consider here. First, St. John’s Wort has been found to induce (speed up) the cytochrome P450 enzyme system which is required for detoxification. Many times in natural medicine this is a good thing…it’s just that with concommittent use of pharmaceutical drugs (almost all of which the body views as a toxin and tries to get rid off) will clear the drug out of the body quicker. Second, in none of the articles highlighting this facet of Hypericin have I seen a note to the effect that many (if not all..) pharmaceutical drugs used for psychological issues ALSO effect cytochrome P450-some induced and some repressed.
(article) St. John’s wort, through its induction of the enzyme cytochrome P450-3A4, can lead to markedly lower plasma levels of prescribed medications, reported Dr. George K. Dresser at the annual meeting here of the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics. Dr. Dresser, of the University of Western Ontario, in London, and associates administered midazolam, a cytochrome P450-3A4-specific substrate, to 10 healthy volunteers before and after a 12-day treatment with St. John’s wort 900 mg/day. They found that the herbal product decreased blood levels of orally administered midazolam by 60%. Dr. Dresser pointed out that midazolam is only one of many drugs metabolized by the cytochrome P450-3A4 enzyme. “You can expect that for as many as half of the drugs in common use, lower levels would result when they’re taken with St. John’s wort,” Dr. Dresser told Reuters Health. Dr. Dresser recommends that physicians include in their patient histories the use of herbal products, particularly St. John’s wort. “If you have a patient taking St. John’s wort in whom you have titrated up the dose of a drug, and then that patient stops taking the St. John’s wort, that can be dangerous,” he said. In such an instance, blood levels of the drug could increase substantially. “Also,” he added, “if you have a patient taking a drug like cyclosporin, where it’s absolutely critical that they get the drug into their system, and this patient starts taking St. John’s wort, that can be equally or more dangerous as the level of the drug falls.” Dr. Dresser emphasized that “changes in St. John’s wort use in patients needs to be carefully documented.”
by James Bogash
Potential Adverse Effects of Alternative Rx ‘Growing Exponentially’
There are several ways to look at this article. First, the list of adverse effects (potential, actually…) could keep growing exponentially for many years and still not touch the numbers associated with pharmaceutical drugs. On the other hand, we really do need to come to terms with the power of natural medicine and stop taking it so lightly. There are many, and I would venture to say most, patients using a specific natural medicine based on something their neighbor told them or they read in Reader’s Digest. It’s not that easy, and almost always, involves some aspect of lifestyle changes to augment the therapy, such as consistent exercise.
(article) The number of known nutrient-to-nutrient and nutrient-to-drug interactions is growing exponentially, panelists said here Monday at a complementary and alternative medicine symposium at the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral nutrition’s 25th Clinical Congress. Though herbs and plants have been used to treat medical conditions for thousands of years, “we don’t know what effect our culture has on these herbs,” warned Georgia M. Decker, a nurse practitioner at Integrative Care in Albany, New York. The speakers emphasized that even benign-sounding herbs can be dangerous in combination with other therapies or if taken by patients with certain diseases. For example, garlic can worsen a hypoglycemic patient’s symptoms, and ginger should not be taken by patients with gall bladder disease. Another drawback is that alternative therapies sometimes mask patients’ symptoms and thus their underlying diseases. That means patients need to be asked not only what they are taking, but how much, panelists said. “Licorice wafers do help settle the stomach when there’s a lot of acidity,” Decker explained. “But if somebody is saying to you, ‘Oh, I take five, six licorice wafers a day,’ then what’s the gastrointestinal symptom that would require five or six wafers a day?” The presenters encouraged healthcare professionals to continue to learn what they can from the literature that is available. “We simply cannot say, ‘No, you can’t take that,’ because there aren’t several big prospective randomized trials that have come to the same conclusion,” said Kathryn K. Hamilton, a registered dietitian and instructor at Columbia University in New York. “In all likelihood, these trials are not going to happen.”
by James Bogash
Nutritional genomics
Gosh…what can I add to this article? This topic has the potential to be the future of medicine if we would drop the dogma and take the money out of pharmaceutical drugs. There are currently urine tests to analyze certain genetic variations that alter a patient’s need for certain nutrients. While clinically available now, I would guess that I’ll be long retired before this actually makes it into standard practice. It will take half that long for the researchers to spend the money to determine that nutrition really does play a role is disease prevention/management and half again for the clinicians to read their own medical journals.
bmj.com Elliott and Ong 324 (7351): 1438
by James Bogash
FDA Officials, Warner-Lambert Knew of Rezulin Risks
Once again, I don’t mean to sound like I’m constantly bashing the use of pharmaceutical drugs. I want to stress the idea that, now more than ever, the situation is “buyer beware.” Unfortunately, this is very difficult to do without a full background in physiology, pharmacology and access to all the research. My thoughts on this are, since very few people are actually in a position to make such an informed decision, the best route is to avoid being the guinea pig for new meds and using most meds only after safer, more natural methods have failed.
(article) Warner-Lambert downplayed the potentially fatal risks associated with Rezulin during the approval process and received help from federal drug regulators in pushing the drug toward marketing approval, according to an article published in Sunday’s edition of the Los Angeles Times. The Times obtained company and government documents, as well as e-mail communications, which showed that Warner-Lambert officials had collaborated closely with certain senior officials within the US Food and Drug Administration during the approval process and later, when the company was being pressured to take the drug off the market. Rezulin (troglitazone) was initially approved by the FDA in January 1997 for treatment of type 2 diabetes. The drug was pulled from the market in March 2000 due to the number of reports of liver failure associated with use of the drug. At an FDA advisory committee meeting last year, regulators reported that there were 90 cases of liver failure among patients taking the drug since its launch.
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