Most prescription drugs deplete your body of essential nutrients

Most prescription drugs deplete your body of essential nutrients. Perhaps the most notorious of these widely-prescribed drugs are statins. Quite apart from the patients-reported adverse effects of pain, statins deplete the body of Co-enzyme Q10. Patients who take these drugs should be warned of this and advised to take Co-enzyme Q10 as a supplement. This information should always accompany the prescription. But it doesn't.

 

The many prescribed drugs that cause sodium retention/water retention/fluid retention/weight gain/obesity/water weight deplete the body of calcium, potassium, magnesium and possibly zinc. This means (among other adverse health effects) that the bones get weaker and a fall is much more likely to result in a fracture - and a more complicated fracture. These dangerous drugs include amitriptyline and other tricyclic antidepressants, Epilim and other anti-epilepsy drugs, HRT, steroids including hydrocortisone, prednisone and prednisolone, anti-psychotics and others. Patients taking these drugs should be advised to eat full fat dairy yogurt for its dairy calcium and to reduce their intake of salt and salty food. They should also eat plenty of potassium-rich foods, e.g. vegetables.

 

Diuretics like bendrofluazide/Bendroflumethiazide, which are often prescribed for raised blood pressure, deplete the body of potassium and magnesium. Patients taking these are often advised to eat bananas because of their potassium content.

 

Isoniazid, a drug used to treat tuberculosis, depletes the body of vitamin B6 (pyridoxine). This depletion in turn causes disordered sleep, mainly insomnia. Patients taking isoniazid should be prescribed vitamin B6 to remedy this problem.

 

Beta-blockers such as propranolol can deplete our bodies of melatonin, and insufficient melatonin (one of the hormones in the body) causes loss of sleep. If the physician does not prescribe melatonin to help the patient with this problem, melatonin can be bought without prescription.

 

These are by no means all of the nutritional problems caused by prescription drugs, and of course malnutrition is only one of the host of adverse side-effects of prescribed medications. It is best to consider carefully whether taking prescribed drugs is more likely to do harm than good. For example, statins do most people more harm than good, and anti-depressants work no better than dummy pills, but cause many health problems, including cognitive impairment and memory loss. - You've only got one brain and it is not infinitely elastic to cope with brain-damaging drugs. You've only got one body and you can't trade it in for a new one. In my opinion it's best to avoid all prescription drugs unless they really are necessary, and best to have the lowest effective dose and to take it for the shortest time. The safest medicine is good natural food (not processed food), and the best doctor is good nutrition.