|
|
|
ADHD - Politics, Money, or Science?
As a medicinal chemist I've had the opportunity to see a shockingly different side of Ritalin (methylphenidate) and ADHD than the media exposes. The Experimental Pharmacology Department of the American Cyanamid Company and the Merck Index report...
Help Your Immune System Fight Diseases With Natural Health Medicine
The benefits of taking care of yourself are some of the rewards
you get from knowing that you are doing the best for your body.
This includes the most important part of your body--the part
which is in fact a mechanism that protects your body:...
Here's Hope for Parkinson's Disease
Frank's 85 year-old father was in advanced stages of Parkinson's.
Confined to a wheelchair...his speech jumbled...his face frozen in a Parkinson Mask...he was hardly more than a vegetable.
Day after day, he sat, unmoving, unable to communicate. It...
The Real Truth about your Sweet Tooth
Question: My mom always said my sweet-tooth was to blame for my weight problem (I can't seem to lose weight!), but my best friend says I should listen to my body and eat whatever I want because it knows what I need. I'm not sure what to do! Does...
Why Do We Age? | 7 Theories of Aging
Why do we age? Currently, there are seven theories on the aging
process. Actually, we do not have a good scientific explanation
for aging. We just know that our bodies were designed to grow
old. There are seven major theories about why we age....
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dietary Supplements and Prescription Drugs - What You Should Know
So much news is made of the occurrence and prevalence of
diseases such as cancer and AIDS; and of viruses such as Bird
Flu and SARS that one could be easily be mistaken in thinking
that humans are a species at risk. Although some of these
possible pandemics are a sobering thought, you may take solace
in the fact that we have a smaller chance of getting, and a
better chance of beating, a damning diagnosis than ever before.
In part, this has been achieved through the dual advance of the
pharmaceutical and nutritional sciences: we have an arsenal of
both nutraceuticals and drugs for prevention, treatment and cure.
At the last big count, 7.5% of Americans aged 18 to 44 take 3 or
more prescribed drugs, this rises to a huge 47.6% in those aged
65 or over. At the same time over a third of the US population
uses dietary supplements daily and over 20% have used some form
of natural product in the past 12 months. When these statistics
are put together it would be safe to assume that many people are
on at least one drug and nutraceuticals at the same time. What
is even more worrying is that an estimated 70% of patients fail
to tell their doctor they are undergoing alternative treatment
for their problems. Problems like depression, asthma, diabetes,
arthritis, allergies, flu and high blood pressure are now so
well characterized and supported by drugs that physicians may
feel less inclined to investigate the condition, or the person,
further.
Side effects of drugs are well known with huge legal cases such
as Vioxx bringing the industry and the regulation process into
the spotlight. Drug-drug interactions are also well documented
and millions of dollars are spent on research and testing to
find out exactly what can, and can't, be used concomitantly.
However, when it comes to nutraceuticals, few people have much,
if any, knowledge about what happens in the body when you take
these with prescription medicine. And with scant formal training
for herbal products or nutraceuticals in medical school, your
doctor may be more in the dark than you are.
Drug Supplements Interactions - Two Rights Can Make a Wrong
Many drugs are cleared from the body by certain enzymes in the
liver, especially those from a certain family called cytochrome
P450s. These enzymes may also be responsible for breaking down
other substances, such as alcohol, nutrients and herbal
products. These particular enzymes can be held up by breaking
down a nutraceutical you have ingested, while the drug will be
circulating in your bloodstream a lot longer than the physician
had planned. If you are taking multiple doses of the drug then
it can build up to dangerous levels, and if the drug has a
narrow window between good effects and harm then overdose is a
distinct possibility.
A good example is Digoxin, a cardiovascular drug. If Digoxin is
taken with licorice, the levels of the drug in the bloodstream
can be increased four fold, the effects and side effects will be
increased dramatically
to a possibly lethal endpoint.
Drugs and Nutraceuticals can also have a synergic effect when
taken together. They may produce the same reaction in your body
or interact in some way to produce unexpected and undesirable
results. This can happen with the anti-anxiety drug, Alprazolam
or Xanax. When Xanax is taken with the popular herb Kava, also
used for anxiety, they can have a drastic effect upon the
central nervous system. The reasons are not fully understood but
at least one person has been hospitalized with severe mental
problems by taking this combination.
Nutraceuticals may also have the opposite effect on these P450
enzymes and they can have what is called an "inductive effect"
whereby the nutraceutical boosts the activity of the enzyme to
higher than normal levels. The enzyme then breaks down and
clears the drug from the body much faster than was expected by
your physician. Because the dose of a drug is a very exact
calculation, a prescribed amount is designed to stay in the body
for a time long enough to be effective. If the drug is cleared
early it may have a reduced effect or no effect at all.
Further Information on Drug Dietary Supplement Interactions
You should first and foremost tell your doctor and pharmacist
what you are taking. Unfortunately, there is not a high level of
understanding in the medical or pharmaceutical world into herbs
and nutraceuticals although some research has been conducted
into the popular herbs such as St. John's Wort, Ginseng, Gingko,
Cayenne, Saw Palmetto and Valerian. A dietician may have better
knowledge than your doctor but there are also a number of
sources of information concerning prescription drug-dietary
supplement interactions on the internet below.
In addition to these resources, one online dietary supplements
company, Mitamins, offers a free drug interaction checker before
you buy. The website allows the design of a custom multivitamin
according to the prescription drugs you are taking. There is
also a good library where you can review the latest scientific
knowledge on your drug or nutraceutical.
The Merck Manual is a comprehensive resource of up to date
medical information and has some good primers on interactions as
well as in depth analysis.
http://www.merck.com/mmhe/sec02/ch019/ch019a.html
The National Institute of Health's Office of Dietary Supplements
has a number of good fact sheets on different supplements
http://ods.od.nih.gov/Health_Information/Information_About_Indivi
dual_Dietary_Supplements.aspx
Mitamins is an online retailer of custom multivitamins and has
over 1,000 formulas to support everything from Alzheimer's, ADD
and Ageing to Weight Loss and Cancer. These formulas can be
safety checked and adjusted for interaction with over 1,600
drugs. http://www.mitamins.com/
About the author:
Mark is a qualified chemist and writer. He has worked in both
the drug development and the dietary supplement industries.
|
|
|
|
|
| National Library of Medicine - National Institutes of Health |
| Part of the National Institutes of Health, the National Library of Medicine offers access to health information for consumer, patient, and physicians ... |
| www.nlm.nih.gov |
|
| Health and Medical Information produced by doctors - MedicineNet.com |
| Doctor-produced health and medical information written for you to make informed decisions about your health concerns. |
| www.medicinenet.com |
|
| Medicine in the Yahoo! Directory |
| Collection of sites for health professionals, with sections on specific disciplines, organizations, continuing education, conferences, publications, ... |
| dir.yahoo.com |
|
| MedlinePlus Health Information from the National Library of Medicine |
| Health information from the National Library of Medicine. Easy access to Medline and Health topics, medical dictionaries, directories and publications. |
| medlineplus.gov |
|
| Medicine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| Medicine is a branch of health science and the sector of public life ... The practice of medicine combines both science as the evidence base and art in the ... |
| en.wikipedia.org |
|
| Journal Home - Nature Medicine |
| Nature Medicine has a vacancy for a Locum Assistant Editor for six months. The position involves working in all aspects of the editorial process, ... |
| www.nature.com |
|
| The New England Journal of Medicine: Research & Review Articles on ... |
| The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) is a weekly general medical journal that publishes new medical research findings, review articles, and editorial ... |
| content.nejm.org |
|
| eMedicine Clinical Knowledge Base |
| eMedicine features up-to-date, searchable, peer-reviewed medical journals, online physician reference textbooks, and a full-text article database in 62 ... |
| www.emedicine.com |
|
| Open Directory - Health: Medicine |
| the entire directory, only in Health/Medicine. Top: Health: Medicine (11429). Description · Medical Specialties (4888); Surgery (2265) ... |
| dmoz.org |
|
| the www virtual library biosciences medicine |
| www.ohsu.edu/cliniweb/wwwvl/ - Similar pages |
|
|
| Medicine - home |
| Bimonthly journal covering the latest results in clinical investigation relevant to hospital and office practice. |
| www.md-journal.com |
|
| Institute of Medicine |
| The Institute of Medicine serves as adviser to the nation to improve health. |
| www.iom.edu |
|
| ScienceDaily: Health & Medicine News |
| Medical Research News. Health news on everything from cancer to nutrition. Full-text, images, updated daily. |
| www.sciencedaily.com |
|
| Google Directory - Health > Medicine |
| Search only in Medicine Search the Web. Medicine. Health > Medicine, Go to Directory Home. Categories. Alternative Medicine (6308) Basic Sciences (66) ... |
| www.google.com |
|
| the world wide web virtual library biosciences medicine |
| www.mcb.harvard.edu/biopages/medicine.html - Similar pages |
|
|
| PLoS Medicine - A Peer-Reviewed Open-Access Journal |
| PLoS Medicine is a peer-reviewed, international, open-access journal published ... Every issue of PLoS Medicine contains a selection of readers' responses. ... |
| medicine.plosjournals.org |
|
| Medicine On-Line - Medicine Online -The International Medical Journal |
| Medicine Online - independent and peer reviewed journal published by Priory Medical Journals - priory.com. |
| www.priory.com |
|
| Entrez PubMed |
| PubMed is a service of the US National Library of Medicine that includes over 16 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for ... |
| www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov |
|
| Stanford University School of Medicine |
| Home Page of the Stanford University School of Medicine. |
| med.stanford.edu |
|
| Medicine OnLine |
| Meds.com offers medical information and education on cancer (lung cancer, colon cancer, breast cancer, leukemia) and HIV / AIDS for patients, ... |
| www.meds.com |
|
|