You were some of the first people in the country to know about the problems with Vioxx. I told you about the drugs problems years before anyone else knew about it.
You were also the first to know about the problems with statins. That debacle has yet to unfold in the news media. But it will. And you can tell everyone you knew about it years before it happened.
Now there is another drug that is going to take a huge hit. I told you about its potential problems several years ago. The story has yet to hit the mainstream. But trust me, it will. This one is simply too big. In fact, its a bigger story than Vioxx and statins. That is because this story is about the most widely prescribed drugs on the market — antacids.
Thanks to a new study, researchers now know that these drugs, which doctors dole out like water for heartburn, stomach acid, reflux, and indigestion, significantly increase your risk for osteoporotic hip fractures.
Dr. Yu-Xiao Yang of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, led the study. And, amazingly, it was published in the widely read Journal of the American Medical Association. His group followed a large British database to identify 13,566 patients over 50 with hip fractures. They compared these to a matched group of 135,386 healthy people.
Their research found that just one year of using these drugs increases your risk of hip fractures by 44%. But it gets worse. Long-term users who were given higher doses had as much as 260% the normal risk.
And men were not immune. In fact, they were at an even greater risk. They had about twice the risk of suffering a hip fracture as did women. That is likely because men do not think about osteoporosis as much as the gentler sex. So they are less likely to take calcium or other supplements to stop bone loss.
Why do antacids cause such a big jump in risk? The first part of the answer is simple. But for some reason (money), Big Pharma does not get it. The drug companies think God made a mistake when He created your stomach to make acid. He did not ! He put the acid there for a reason. Acid is essential to pull off and dissolve alkaline minerals, such as calcium, from your food. Without acid, you just wont absorb calcium well. That right there is enough to explain the link to osteoporosis.
However, there are lots of other minerals that are acid-dependent for absorption. If the scientists looked, I am sure that they would find deficiencies in zinc, manganese, and copper – all of which are induced by blocking mineral-digesting acids. They would probably find vitamin B12 problems as well. That critical nutrient must have a functioning stomach for absorption.
However, mineral deficiency is not the drugs only link to osteoporosis. And most people missed this when they looked at the study. One of the hottest new forms of antacid is called the proton pump inhibitors. The name comes from their action on the body — they inhibit the pumps inside cells that secrete protons into your stomachs cavity.
Not surprisingly, the proton pump inhibitors do not just selectively single out your stomach cells. They will hit all cells that have proton (acid) pumps. One key cell is the osteoclast, the cells that resorb old bone. These cells make and secrete acid to dissolve away old inflexible bone to make way for new vibrant bone. This is called bone remodeling. Its absolutely essential for a healthy skeletal system. Certain osteoporosis drugs kill off osteoclasts. Since old bone is not removed, your bones do get denser. But they also get more brittle.
Heres the moral of the story: All drugs are designed to block a function (block pain, acid, blood pressure, fever, etc.). When your doctor recommends a drug, find out what its biochemical mechanism of blocking is. Then study what that blocked function was doing to your functions — or ask your doctor to tell you.
If you do have heartburn, reread last months issue. In that issue, I told you how you can get rid of heartburn permanently. I told you how you can use the supplements melatonin (6 mg daily), l-tryptophan (200 mg daily), vitamin B6 (25 mg daily), folic acid (10 mg daily), vitamin B12 (50 mcg daily), methoinine (100 mg daily), and betaine (100 mg daily) to fight heartburn.
You can also use natural stomach strengthening remedies such as comfrey, ginger, DGL, curcumin, and aloe.
Ref: Journal of the American Medical Association, December 27, 2006.