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Before the advent of antibiotics, humans were at the mercy of infectious diseases such as bubonic plague, cholera and typhoid fever, which all had the potential to wipe out entire civilizations. Today, people living in developed nations are more likely to die from the so-called lifestyle diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes or cancer.
Unfortunately, even if you strictly adhere to a whole food diet and get regular exercise, there’s no guarantee that you’ll remain disease free as you grow older. Factors such as genetics, stress, environmental elements and the aging process itself can all play a role in the genesis of disease. This is when the judicious use of pharmaceutical medications can be advantageous to your longterm health and quality of life.
The obvious drawback to taking medications are the potential side effects, and depending on the drug, the dosage or the person taking it, these can range from mild to severe. One side effect that’s often overlooked, even by healthcare providers, is drug-induced nutrient depletion. This occurs when medications rob your body of essential nutrients by either inhibiting their absorption or altering how they’re stored and excreted. In fact, it’s estimated that up to 30% of side effects experienced by patients are caused by drug-induced nutrient depletion.
The good news is that nutritional deficiencies can easily be corrected by increasing your intake of the affected nutrients via supplementation. The key is to properly identify which drugs deplete which nutrients and then make targeted nutritional interventions. To give you an idea of how serious this cause and effect relationship can be, I’ll cover statin drugs such as Lipitor and Crestor, which are some of the most commonly prescribed medications in aging adults.
Statins are prescribed to help lower cholesterol levels and reduce cardiovascular disease and mortality in individuals who are at high risk. This class of drugs work by inhibiting the enzyme HMG-CoA reductase, which in turn reduces cholesterol production in the body. The main nutrient negatively impacted by statin drugs is Coenzyme Q10, which is ironic because it plays a vital role in maintaining cardiovascular health.
Coenzyme Q10 (otherwise known as ubiquinone) is a fat-soluble vitamin-like substance that helps your body produce energy in the form of ATP inside the tiny powerhouse center of each cell called the mitochondria. Organs with the highest energy demands (the heart being one of them) have the largest concentrations of Coenzyme Q10. Research has shown that statins can reduce blood levels of Coenzyme Q10 by up to 40%. A prolonged deficiency of this nutrient can cause chronic fatigue, poor mental focus, muscle pain and mood disorders. In terms of cardiovascular health, low levels of Coenzyme Q10 can cause high blood pressure, angina and even heart failure.
This connection between statins and the depletion of Coenzyme Q10 in the body has been know for over 25 years, when the pharmaceutical giant Merck took out a patent combining Coenzyme Q10 with a statin drug. Oddly enough, Merck never brought this product to market and to this day many physicians who prescribe statins to their patients fail to recommend supplemental Coenzyme Q10 at 100 – 200 mg per day to prevent the previously mentioned conditions of deficiency.
So, the moral of the story is that if you absolutely have to take a medication, be proactive and talk with your doctor or pharmacist about the potential nutrient depleting effects of the drug. If they can’t provide you with the correct information, there’s an excellent online database at the website www.integrativepro.com where you can type in any drug and it lists all of the nutrients that need to be repleted while on the medication.
So, that’s it for this video. Don’t forget to subscribe to the channel and always remember that no one is going to care more about your health than you do!
