Drugs Increase Nutritional Requirements cancer

Friday, March 12, 2010

Pain is often a greater stress than a drug. Although our own medicine chest is a Mother Hubbard's cupboard, drugs have saved millions of lives. Hospital patients now receive an average of seven different drugs and some are given as many as Self-medication, the refilling of prescriptions without a doctor's advice, and the demand for prescriptions against a physician's better judgment are certainly unwise.

Nutritional Needs Are Increased

Without exception, every drug is toxic to some extent; standard texts on material medica state that all are potential poisons. The toxicity of many can be "largely if not completely counteracted" by an adequate diet containing antistress factors.

Such a diet shortens the period when drugs are needed and makes them more effective without interfering with their function, even making some times more effective than when the diet is faulty. Drugs produce dietary deficiencies by destroying nutrients, using them up, preventing their absorption, increasing their excretion, or chemically taking their place. Furthermore, since drugs are usually taken only during illness, their toxicity occurs at the very time an individual is least able to cope with it.

Drugs released for human use are tested on healthy animals suffering from no deficiencies and then given to ill persons suffering from many.

The Least toxic Drugs

Some drugs are highly toxic whereas others, such as aspirin, are less so. Yet aspirin interferes with digestion, the formation of body starch, the production of tissue proteins, and the ability of the cells to absorb sugar; it slows the clotting of blood, increases the need both for oxygen and for every known nutrient, and a accelerates the urinary losses of calcium, potassium, vitamin C, and all the B vitamins.

Aspirin poisoning causes a number of accidental deaths annually, and children allergic to this drug are often harmed even by tiny amounts given for a mild cold or fever . Many cases of severe toxicity have been reported, causing ulcers, loss of hearing, and ringing, roaring, and hissing sounds in the ears, especially among persons given the "full aspirin treatment" for arthritis. It is because of its toxicity that aspirin is given for arthritis.

Many drugs similarly induce stress,24 and exhaust the pituitary and adrenals. Other so-called "safe" drugs are ferrous sulfate and various iron compounds, though as early as 1928 they were found to destroy vitamin E. Later studies show that they tremendously increase the need for oxygen, pantothenic acid, and several nutrients, that they harm the unsaturated fatty acids, and destroy carotene and vitamins A, C, and E.W hen little food can be eaten during illness and the protein intake is low, iron compounds can cause serious liver damage.

During pregnancy, taking iron salts, which increase the need for oxygen, already undersupplied the fetus, can bring about miscarriages or premature or delayed births and may cause the infant to be malformed, mentally defective, or susceptible to anemia and jaundice. Ferrous sulfate annually causes the deaths of many children, who often confuse the tablets with candy; as little as 900 milligrams can be fatal. If medical care is obtained quickly, the poisoning (or milder toxicity) can be counteracted by large amounts of protein and vitamins C, E, and the B vitamins. The least toxic of the iron salts is said to be ferrous gluconate, but iron that is never toxic can easily be obtained from unrefined foods.

Another example is the massive doses of nicotinic acid given to reduce blood cholesterol; patients taking it for more than a year have developed stomach ulcers, diabetes, severe liver damage, jaundice, and colitis; and men have reported sexual impotency. Dozens of such examples could be cited.

The harm these mildly toxic drugs can do the body is slight in comparison to that caused by thousands of the more toxic ones. Unless the diet is unusually adequate, even though a drug has accomplished the purpose for which it is given, its toxic effects can prolong convalescence or make the outcome of the illness doubtful.

Other Defense Mechanisms

Many drugs cause severe liver damage. Mildly toxic ones can inhibit the liver's many enzyme systems and prevent vital substances from being synthesized and foodstuffs from being utilized normally. The wide use of drugs has now caused the often fatal disease cirrhosis of the liver to become common even among children.

Investigators who have studied the toxicity of drugs on animals emphasize that such damage is far greater when the diet is low in vitamin E and/or protein, especially the sulfur-containing amino acid methionine; that vitamin E is some 400 times more effective in preventing such damage than the amino acid; but that injury can be prevented if both vitamin E and milk proteins are generously added to the diet.51 Eggs, the only food containing enough sulfur to tarnish silver, are the richest source of this amino acid. The time-honored practice of serving eggnogs to ill persons, therefore, should be encouraged whenever drugs are given. Jaundice caused by taking atabrine or the bromides, for instance, has been found to be prevented by a high intake of vitamin E and the sulfur-containing amino acids. Ironically, people with jaundice are usually told to avoid eggs and are rarely given vitamin E.

Adequate vitamin A is necessary for normal liver function, and its lack can contribute to drug toxicity. Drugs such as phenylbarbitol, arsenicals, aspirin, and many others destroy vitamin A, thereby increasing the need for it. Yet the amount of vitamin A necessary to prevent liver damage is unknown.

Detoxification By Vitamin C

A major function of vitamin C is its "non-specific role as a detoxifying agent"; and for nearly 30 years it has been known to prevent the toxicity, allergic reactions, and anaphylactic shock caused by drugs. This vitamin appears to react with any foreign substance reaching the blood, and, if generously supplied, it nullifies the toxicity of fluorine, saccharine and other artificial sweeteners, lead, benzene, carbon tetrachloride, and excessive vitamins A and D, as well as drugs.

Yet all of these substances "destroy" , vitamin C, causing it to be used up and excreted in the urine and, by the same token, tremendously increasing the need for it. The more toxic the drug, the larger the amount of the vitamin required. Rats given highly toxic cancer-producing drugs excrete to times more vitamin C than normally.

The amount of vitamin C in human blood falls drastically when drugs are taken, particularly that of people showing drug reactions, sometimes even when 800 milligrams of the vitamin are given daily with a single dose of a drug. Such drugs as barbiturates, adrenaline, stilbestrol, estrogen, sulfonamides, ammonium chloride, aspirin, the antihistamines, thiouracil, thyroid, and atropine cause a continuous destruction and high urinary loss of the vitamin as long as the drug is taken and sometimes for six weeks after it has been discontinued.

Generous amounts of vitamin C given to patients have both increased the effectiveness and decreased the toxicity of anesthetics, barbiturates, benzedrines, mercurial diuretics,64 procaine, arsphenamines,54, 65, 66 and dilantin.

When 300 to 800 milligrams of vitamin C were given daily with a single drug, the period of treatment was considerably shortened, and larger, more effective doses could be used when needed. The vitamin also helps to prevent the liver damage known to be caused by a number of drugs. The amount of vitamin C needed daily to detoxify drugs; is not known, but varies with the number taken, the dosage, and the toxicity of each; 100 milligrams given with a drug have been too few to protect patients from allergic reactions was recently stumped when a man taking varying doses of different drugs daily asked me how much vitamin C he required. Often I suggest that 250 milligrams and a whole orange or unstrained juice be taken with a single dose of any drug, but I told him to take as much vitamin C as he could afford and to watch for bruises and bleeding gums-the first signs of a vitamin C deficiency and to increase his intake as soon as 'either symptom appeared. During severe illness, the combined stresses of the disease and numerous medications often cause the Vitamin Crequirement to be fantastically high. When not met, large areas of Spontaneous bruising may appear, a condition physicians call purpura, which means purple; even fatal hemorrhaging can occur. Other deficiencies, particularly too little vitamin E, contribute to purpura; once it has appeared, huge amounts of both vitamins C and E are needed. http://brangkas-kerja.blogspot.com/