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Get advice before using herbal products
To say prescription medications are exorbitant is an understatement. Each year millions reach for alternative treatments and herbal remedies. Herbal products have a wide appeal, often viewed as a milder treatment with fewer side effects. More than $14 billion were spent on natural products for self-care in 2009.
And several of those herbal options can have serious interactions with many prescription and other over-the-counter medications.
St. John’s wort, available from dollar stores to pharmacies and widely used as a “natural” antidepressant, is an attractive alternative especially during the holiday blues season. But St. John’s may interfere with blood thinners, birth control, seizure control meds, immunosuppressants, cancer medications and especially prescription antidepressants according to the National Institute of Health and the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
The problem? Patients taking St. John’s wort may be unknowingly counteracting the effect of their prescription medications according to the NIH. This can have serious consequences, ranging from ineffective depression, cancer and heart treatments to unplanned pregnancies.
And there are plenty of dietary supplement poppers out there. Half of all prescription medication users also use dietary supplements says the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Let’s do the math. The herbal supplement users plus the large population of prescription med users of antidepressants, birth control and immunosuppressant drugs equal a high-risk population.
St. John’s stimulates liver enzymes which “inactivate and remove drugs from the body,” says a CSPI report. The liver dumps medications at a faster pace decreasing medication in the blood level to a point that is too low for effectiveness.
CSPI has recently appealed to the Federal Drug Administration for required black warning labels with boldface lettering on all St. John’s wort products. Unfortunately herbal supplements are a largely unregulated industry by the FDA, including quality control. Levels of hypercin, one of the most active ingredients in St. John’s wort, can vary from product to product according to several studies.
Bill & Sheila’s A-Z of herbal
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