Episode 167: Drug Muggers

Let's Talk Wellness Now

Did you know your medications can be stealing nutrients essential to your health and well-being? Dr. Deb shares some of the key medications that can steal nutrients like zin, glutathione, magnesium, and more.

Do not miss these highlights:

02:58 A medication that depletes nutrients within your body or from your body can cause you to have multiple side effects

05:28 Our soils are extremely depleted of nutrients, causing most of the food we consume to be nutrient deficient.

07:53 If people are suffering from depression, osteoporosis and other kinds of heart problems is typically a mineral deficiency, specifically magnesium.

08:40 The conditions that are very commonly seen with zinc deficiency, and the common drug muggers for zinc.

09:13 People who are suffering from leg cramps at night or muscle spasms, memory loss and fatigue can be a deficiency in CoQ10, a life-sustaining antioxidant.

10:01 The health issues that can be tied to low glutathione.

11:00 Weight gain, depression, fatigue, anemia, nerve pain, and a sensation of pins and needles, any of these could be related to one or more deficiencies of B vitamins.

12:58 Zinc deficiency is huge

14:03 Vitamin C is a water-soluble antioxidant, it helps sweep away toxins in the body. This prevents you from having cells damaged as a result.

15:11 The reason why young, happy, healthy 20 to 30-year-old women are overweight, tired, depressed and anxious

16:23 Dangerous drug-food interactions and what can happen.

20:32 Anti-acids are aluminum and magnesium hydroxide, and you want to be very careful with aluminum because it can get to the brain and cause focus concentration issues.

Resources Mentioned

Whether you are recovering from an illness or just looking to maintain your current overall health, schedule a consult with us at Serenity Health Care by calling [phone] or visit https://www.serenityhealthcarecenter.com

Transcript of Episode #167:

Debra Muth 0:02
Welcome to Let’s Talk Wellness Now. I’m your host, Dr. Deb. This is where we talk about everything wellness, and learn to defy aging, and live our lives on our own terms.

Debra Muth 0:15
Hi, and welcome back to Let’s Talk wellness. Now I’m your host, Dr. Deb and today I want to talk to you about the drug muggers. And I’m not talking about the people that mug you for your medication for your pain medication. I want to talk to you about drugs that deplete nutrients from our bodies, and how we can become nutrient deficient without even realizing that that’s actually happening.

Debra Muth 0:42
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Debra Muth 2:04
So welcome back, you’re listening to Let’s Talk Wellness Now I’m your host, Dr. Deb. And today I’m talking about the drug muggers. And what I’m talking about is a medication that depletes nutrients within your body or from your body and can cause you to have multiple side effects that we think might be side effects of the medication. But ultimately, it can be side effects because you’re nutrient deficient in something. Now, this is a really common problem that most of this time doctors don’t talk about. And it’s it’s so important to understand which nutrients are being depleted from your body when you’re taking these medications. They literally steal your nutrition and steal your nutrients. So I want to point out just a couple of pieces of medications that can cause problems for you today. And then now as a naturopath and a nurse practitioner. I’ve been prescribing pharmaceuticals for 25 years. And I can tell you, they can be extremely helpful. You know, they can help get you out of pain, they can help you breathe better, they can help alleviate allergy symptoms and seizure activity, which is all huge and it’s all very important for us. But while we’re fixing one problem with a pharmaceutical, we can oftentimes create another problem. And also ultimately the effects of nutrient depletion can leave us with nagging aches and pains and focus and concentration issues as well. You see, there’s about there’s millions of people slipping through the cracks every single day with drug cause nutrient deficiencies, and they get sicker and sicker each and every year, the system gets so out of whack that people think it’s normal to see eight or nine different medical practitioners for the same ailment. And I’ve literally seen patients see 50 to 100 doctors for the same problems and not get any answers. And sometimes it’s a single nutrient that’s deficient and sometimes it’s an infection that’s causing these problems for you. And so I think it’s really important if you’re on pharmaceutical medications to understand which nutrients might be depleted as a result of that medication that you’re taking. As we all know, people get started on one medication and then they get another medication and another medication and another medication and before you know it there could be four or five medications given simply to alleviate a side effect that’s been created by one particular.

Debra Muth 5:00
So the RDA or recommended daily allowance is set up by a regulatory agency to tell us how many nutrients we should have every single day of B, vitamin C, iron, sodium, potassium, all of those things. Now, this was set up back in the 50s. And it has never been changed. So the same levels of nutrients that they thought we needed in the 50s is what we need today. Now keep in mind, our soils are extremely depleted of nutrients. And most of the food we consume is nutrient deficient. It’s junk food, it’s not it doesn’t have a lot of nutrients in it. But yet, we’re still saying we need the same daily allowance as we needed in 1950. And I’ll tell you today, that if you were to consume a bowl of spinach from 1950, to get the same nutrient levels that you had, then you would have to consume 20 to 30 bowls of spinach today to get the same nutrition value that we had back in the 50s. So it’s very different. And we are not getting a lot of these nutrients in our foods and in our food supply. And then we’re taking a whole bunch of medications these days that deplete those nutrients on top of things. So I want to encourage you guys to get there’s a book actually called Drug Muggers. And it’s really great. It’s written by Susie Cohen. And she goes through all of the different medications and lists each and every nutrient that’s depleted from these medications. Now, the word “drug mugger” is actually a noun. And it applies to over the counter medication and prescription medications not just pharmaceuticals that are prescribed but over the counter medications as well. That can get rid of these vitamins, minerals, hormones, nutrients, things like that.

Debra Muth 7:08
For instance, if you take an acid blocker, something like proper said Pepcid, Tagamet, Zantac, those kinds of things, they actually deplete our zinc level and smoking itself. So the nicotine from smoking depletes vitamin C. And you can see that a lot of these things are going to deplete different nutrients and sometimes many of the same. So we’ll go through just a couple of them here for you to give you an example of what it’s like when you’re looking at medications and which supplements you need to be replacing.

Debra Muth 7:44
So I thought I’d start out with some common diagnoses and what some of the deficiencies are. So if people are suffering from depression, osteoporosis and irregular heartbeat, these are typically a mineral deficiency, specifically magnesium, and magnesium depletes female hormones. It’s depleted in diuretics, something called a VISTA, which is what we use for bone loss, anti inflammatories, and aspirin. All of these things deplete our mineral magnesium, and when minerals like magnesium are depleted, we don’t sleep as well. We’re more anxious, we have leg cramping. There’s all kinds of problems heart problems, specifically like heart palpitations, heart racing, this heart feels like it’s pounding through your chest that can all come from a single simple magnesium deficiency. Now, people who have bald patches in their hair, they have a loss of taste or smell. They have erectile dysfunction and chronic diarrhea. And these are all individually they’re not all together. These are conditions that are very commonly seen with zinc deficiency. And common drug muggers for zinc are anti inflammatories, antibiotics, and acids, ulcer, heartburn, medication, diuretics, and some estrogen products can do that same thing. Now for people who are suffering from leg cramps at night or muscle spasms, memory loss and fatigue. Any of these conditions can be a deficiency in CO q 10. And CO Q 10 is a life sustaining antioxidant. It gets demolished by hundreds of medications including things like statin drugs that we use for cholesterol lowering. So if anybody’s on a statin automatically, you should have been put on CO q 10. To protect you because it’s a known problem with statins that it depletes your co Q 10 which can cause more cardiovascular issues for you. Other medications that deplete co Q 10 are Metformin, antidepressants, beta blockers and diuretics as well. Now some people could have issues with cataracts or macular degeneration, liver problems and high levels of heart attack promoting substances like homocysteine, which is an inflammatory marker. These conditions can be tied to low glutathione. Glutathione is a antioxidant and amino acid it helps our bodies get rid of toxins and poisons. And when we don’t have enough glutathione present, we’re going to have these kinds of issues and we also know that having a low glutathione level is directly linked to the survival rate of COVID. Things like acetaminophen Tylenol also can deplete your glutathione levels. And did you know that taking acetaminophen every day can contribute to vision loss later in life. So for those people who are taking Tylenol every single day for aches and pains and headaches and all of those things, it can disrupt your vision down the road.

Debra Muth 10:58
Now suffering these days from weight gain, depression, fatigue, anemia, nerve pain, and a sensation of pins and needles. Well, any of these could be related to one or more deficiencies of B vitamins. Your stash gets depleted by female hormones. So birth control is common menopause hormones, alcohol and acids, ulcer medications diuretics, ie Vista, polystyrene, which we use for mold as a biotoxin binder. And it’s also used for cholesterol can also deplete your B vitamins along with diabetes, diabetic medication can also deplete that. And so you want to definitely look into these types of things for sure. The other thing that can cause your homocysteine level to be elevated is an MTHFR mutation. Now, this is a genetic mutation that’s directly linked to gene structure, but it allows your body to make methylated B vitamins and utilize methylated folate and if it’s double mutated or has a double gene snip, as some people call it, you will have a higher incidence of developing homocysteine and have lower levels of B vitamins which can significantly cause problems for you and reduce your risk of being able to detoxify your body. So that can be a huge problem.

Debra Muth 12:25
Alright, so let’s look at some hormone replacement therapy. So a lot of times you can look at nutrient deficiency from fatigue and weight loss or weight gain, and have a stroke and a heart attack for women who have lower levels of hormones during menopause. But like we’ve already said, You want to make sure that you’ve got plenty of B vitamins there that are protecting you so that you don’t have those kinds of issues. Zinc deficiency is huge. We huge, we’ve been talking a lot about it with COVID going on right now. Zinc deficiency can cause you to have weight gain, hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism as well. So too little or too much hormone, thyroid hormone can be a problem. People can also experience chronic diarrhea, and a loss of an interest in sex with a zinc deficiency. You’ll also get sick faster with a zinc deficiency because it plays a huge role in immune function. It also is necessary for us to convert our T four to T three which are active thyroid hormones. And so when zinc is deficient from that perspective, you’re going to have more struggles with that conversion in your thyroid and feeling like your thyroid is really working as full and to its its most highest potential as possible if you have a zinc and mineral deficiency there. So another thing that’s really important to look at is vitamin C deficiency and vitamin C is a water soluble antioxidant. It helps sweep away toxins in the body. And this prevents you from having cells being damaged as a result. So Vitamin C is really necessary for collagen and your bones, cartilage, skin muscles, blood vessels. Vitamin C helps your body take up and utilize iron. And when it’s too low, then you run low in iron as well which can cause anemia, fatigue, hair loss, focus and concentration issues. Just a whole host. One of the other things that we see often with vitamin C deficiency that people don’t talk about much is easily bruising, you can bruise very easily from not having enough vitamin C. So if you’re not shocked yet, continue to listen, you’re gonna get more and more shocked.

Debra Muth 15:00
You know, it’s really upsetting to me that millions of women pick up their monthly prescriptions for birth control, along with their antidepressants and their thyroid medication. And these young, happy, healthy 20 to 30 year old women don’t realize that part of the reason they’re overweight and they’re tired, depressed and anxious, is simply because they have too much hormone. Not enough minerals, not enough glutathione not enough zinc, not enough magnesium, not enough B vitamins, not enough calcium. All of these things can cause people to have the problems that we run to for birth control, like heavy periods, endometriosis, fibroids, things like that, and can create a lot of problems for you. So if you’re taking a synthetic birth control or synthetic estrogen, you want to make sure you’re using zinc, magnesium, iodine, trace minerals, B-complex. There’s a product called Five MTHFR, which supports that mutation for MTHFR. You want to use some calcium, D glucose or eight. Hemp protein is really good probiotics, and spirulina can all help with this problem, and can make you feel so much better.

Debra Muth 16:23
Alright, so let’s talk a little bit about dangerous drug food interactions and what can happen with this. So pain relievers have a catch 22. They can cause a lot of stomach upset. So taking them with food can decrease the stomach upset, but it can also then decrease the effectiveness of the medication itself. And you can actually have an exaggeration of your medications when you combine these things with food or alcohol. And it can cause you to stop breathing and have a lot of complications with it. SSRIs or antidepressants, things like Paxil, Zoloft, and Prozac. If you take these in the morning with your cup of coffee and caffeine, your coffee and caffeine can react to the medication and the two together can can wire you and cause tremors or panic attacks they can cause insomnia and anxiety. And those are just a few of the complications that we’ll see with those medications and caffeine. Now, if we look at something called amlodipine, which is another example of something like Norvasc these are lack lustre blood pressure pills and they interact with grapefruit juice. Grapefruit juice isn’t bad. In fact, this citrus fruit offers tremendous health benefits. But these compounds can interact with dozens of medications and not in a good way. These can cause a serious drop in your blood pressure or a dangerous rise in your heart rate causing something that we call tachycardia. In fact, consuming grapefruit especially the juice can spike the levels of many, many drugs and can cause some some severe side effects. Antidepressants like Nardo, which is a what we call an MAO inhibitor that interacts specifically with cheese and there’s an active ingredient in cheese called tyramine, which can cause a fatal reaction because it creates an increased risk in blood pressure. And that can cause a tremendous problem for people taking that medication. So it’s often recommended that they avoid eating cheese when they’re on those kinds of medications.

Debra Muth 18:59
Now for a minute, we’re gonna go back to talk about acetaminophen, which is Excedrin. Tylenol might all sign you tap sominex. In certain Benadryl products have acetaminophen or paracetamol in it, and it Acetaminophen is primarily sold under the name of Tylenol. And this product is actually derived from coal tar. And so many people use this to control mild arthritis or headaches, over the counter aches and pains. But I don’t think we really want to be ingesting coal tar. And this can cause a lot of problems for people and you need to be really careful with Tylenol because it’s very toxic to the liver. And so it’s recommended that you do not take more than 4000 milligrams a day total or you can have some severe complications. Now drinking Alcohol and consuming acetaminophen together can cause liver damage because they both have to be processed through the liver. And that can cause serious side effects for people.

Debra Muth 20:16
The next thing that I’m going to talk about here is acid blockers and acids because they’re a huge group of medications and many millions of people take these every single day. And I want you to know a couple of key things about them. So anti acids are aluminum and magnesium hydroxide. This is known as Gaviscon Maalox or Mylanta. And you want to be very careful with aluminum because it can get to the brain and cause focus concentration issues we know it risks increases the risk for Alzheimer’s disease and dementia as well. Proton pump inhibitors, so things like Nexium preva, said prior lisec, protonix, and as effects, these are used to prevent damage from the stomach lining by neutralizing the stomach acid for things like acid reflux, or GERD or ulcers, and these things do a pretty good job at blocking pretty much all of the stomach acid pumps. So it temporarily curbs your heartburn and coughing, difficulty swallowing and pain in the abdomen. But when you suppress the the natural acid in your body that we use to break down foods, medications and supplements, you can actually develop a lot more serious problems such as food allergies, heart arrhythmias, tingling in your fingers and toes, depression, dizziness, and headache. And therefore these drugs should be reserved for peptic or duodenal ulcers and only used for a short period of time. Typically, we use them for six to eight weeks, and then we stop. And we do that because these medications can block every single nutrient and we don’t want you to become nutrient deficient because of using this medication.

Debra Muth 22:23
Now another really good thing to look at is the combination of cranberry juice with medications. And this is actually good and has a positive interaction. The juice offsets the drug mugging effect from acid blockers and without the juice it appears that you’re more susceptible to the drugs mugging your B vitamins, particularly B 12. So bring on the cranberry juice everybody this is a good one for you. So spicy foods, garlic and onions. These tend to upset your stomach and may necessitate more medications. Just avoid them altogether if you’re having heartburn until you know that the heartburn is resolved, and then you can bring some of these foods back into your diet on a regular basis.

Debra Muth 23:11
Now I want to talk a little bit about allergy medicine is getting ready to be allergy season here. And allergy medicine comes with its own issues. So we’re talking about things like alegra, Clarinex, Benadryl, Claritin, loratadine ZXR, tac Zeis, all hydroxyzine any of these medications including nasal sprays, like assalam, and nasal annex, these all help to curb the release of histamine in the body. And it helps to alleviate your sneezing your runny nose, your itchy throat, your eyes, your cough, your post nasal drip, we kind of all know the the histamine part of things like that.

Debra Muth 23:56
But best to no be known for an allergy component. And if you’re going to use antihistamines to help with allergy season, you really want to start those about two months before allergy season hits. Otherwise you’re going to be behind the eight ball instead of in front of it. Now you want to be careful with alcohol because alcohol increases the sedated effect. So the the tiring effect that these medications do, it makes you sleepy and it can slow the heart rate in the breathing down. So be very very careful drinking alcohol and using your antihistamines especially Benadryl and hydroxyzine. Grapefruit juice is, along with antihistamines may increase or decrease the blood levels of the allergy medicine and it can result in various severe heart problems so be very careful with that. Bitter Orange which is also stand as a found as a standalone supplement has a synergistic blend with many over the counter diet pills energy drinks and supplements and This herb has the potential to speed up your heart rate. So you want to be very careful with allergy medicines, and orange. So there are a lot of different things that we could go through like this book is amazing. And I want you guys to check it out and look at any medications that you’re currently taking. And look them up in this book and see what kind of nutrients are depleted or foods that interact with the medications that you’re taking. It’s very hard for practitioners to know all of this, for every single drug and every single thing literally, we have to look it up to. So if you go to your doctor and you ask them, if there’s an interference with this, they most likely will not know, if they’ve not read this book, they will not be aware of this problem. And even if they had read this book, they’re going to have to go back and look up medications because this is not something that you can memorize very quickly and easily. And unless you’re looking at it on a regular basis, you just simply won’t remember it. So I encourage all of you to proactively look at all of your medications, look at all your supplements, and see what products are interfering with it and, and even then go and ask for a micronutrient test. Conventionally, there are very few nutrients we can look at. There’s only about maybe eight or nine that we can look at accurately. But in the alternative world, there are alternative nutrient test companies that can look at hundreds of nutrients and amino acids and things like glutathione antioxidants. To tell you what you’re deficient in. We use a couple of different companies to test for this, but it’s really great. So instead of guessing if your medications are depleting your nutrients, we can test and we can find out if that’s actually what’s going on for you. So if you have questions about this, reach out to your doc reach out to Serenity Health Care Center, and check out the book, “Drug Muggers” by Suzy Cohen, look at your medications and see if you’re depleting your nutrients today. Thanks for listening everybody.

Debra Muth 27:18
Hey, it has been really great sharing this time with you guys on the let’s talk wellness now podcast. If this episode has helped you or you feel as though this episode would help someone else we’d love for you to leave us a review. Share this podcast and if you don’t want to miss the most exciting episodes we have coming. We’d love for you to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or Google Play. Until next time, live every day to the fullest

Transcribed by https://otter.ai