In this presentation Dr Christopher J Bump discusses the value of magnesium supplementation for those individuals who experience anxiety, poor quality of sleep and acute joint pain. Magnesium is critical to muscle relaxation, energy metabolism and protein synthesis and in the US over 55% of adults are deficient in magnesium.
Link to Video Presentation
Why You Should Sit on the Floor
Adapted from Philip Beach's Muscles and Meridians
We as a society need to spend more time on the floor. All humans, all cultures, throughout the ages have spent all our resting and much of our working lives on the ground in variations of a squat, kneeling or cross-legged position. Humans had found ease getting into and out of these primary floor postures until we created the comforts of modernity, which has led us to dis-ease in both form and function. Dr. Mel Siff stated in his book, Facts and Fallacies of Fitness; “Many aboriginal folk squat many times a day while carrying out their daily chores, while the Japanese sit on the floor with their knees folded fully flexed beneath them bearing all their body weight for prolonged periods daily.” We share the same functional heritage as all ancestral cultures, yet with modern amenities we have lost much of our capacity to move pain free simply because we fail to practice these archetypal postures.
All well constructed systems develop a corrective mechanism to preserve harmony between the many hierarchical levels within the system. The practice of Archetypal Postures as a form of repose should be seen as a self-tuning mechanism for the body whereby removing these modes for self-correction is asking for trouble as it is necessary to preserve our biomechanical tune, without which we are met with the prevalence of issues like plantar fasciitis, low-back pain and even neck and shoulder pain. The dense network of muscle, joints, and fascia fail to reach appropriate tune if not adequately placed in our Archetypal Postures. And it should come as no surprise as to why….
In the modern world, we rise out of an elevated bed, waddle to a toilet that is again elevated. Breakfast is eaten either standing or sitting in a chair; work is generally completed in the same fashion, either sitting or standing. On a good day we can make it into the gym but many exercises are based on machines that are constructed so that people can, AGAIN, sit and exercise. After sitting or standing all day, we return home to sit for dinner, followed by more sitting in front of the television on a couch in roughly the same position that we have existed in throughout the entirety of our day. Most people, day after day, fail to make any transition from the standing to the floor, failing to place the musculoskeletal and fascial system through a full range of movement thus compromising biomechanical tune.
Tune is not optional. It is the point and purpose of a well functioning system. The interaction of hundreds of muscles and joints in such a way that internal friction and dissonance are kept to a minimum is not a task that is congruent with spending your life in a chair. Suppose you are a musician who is about to go on stage and your assistant offers you a choice of two instruments – one is well-crafted and aesthetically pleasing but is hand-made, the other is cheap and naturally weathered by time but is in tune. As a musician you have no choice but to take the instrument that is in tune because no amount of aesthetics is going to win-over a crowd primed for harmony. Whether it is an instrument or a biomechanical system, tune appreciates; for rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent and melody imposes continuity upon the disjointed.
Achieving better tune, thus less pain and freer movement, is as easy as adopting a floor based lifestyle, just like those used by our ancestors. Instead of sitting on a chair or couch while watching television, transition to sitting on the floor. Floor sitting encourages normal movement patterns across the biggest joints and muscles of the biomechanical system. Archetypal postures are also valuable to use in a post-exercise setting, as the body finds the usual 30-second calf stretch to be an insignificant task of little benefit after running up a hill for the last 30-minutes. Returning to the floor in various archetypal postures will reestablish fundamental relationships between muscle compartments as they cool and set. After exercise go back to the floor as people have always done.
The following are the Archetypal Postures that you should try:
Full Squat (Figure 11) - the ideal squat has the feet near parallel, the heels on the ground and the knees over the second toe with no collapse of the medial arch of the feet. The tibias anterior is relaxed as body weight has moved over the ankles center of gravity. Ease in full squat tunes the relationship between the muscles of the anterior and posterior compartments of the lower leg. When dorsiflexion is limited the anterior compartment muscles have to work against the stronger posterior compartment muscles so conditions such as shin splints are more likely to manifest.
Toe Sitting/Standby Posture (Figure 102) - most people find this a difficult posture to maintain, as the muscles and fascia of the sole of the foot are too tight to allow the metatarsal heads of the feet to fully rest on the floor. The toes do not fully extend and so they take too much body weight. If the posture is held and the toes become more painful the natural movement pattern is to use the quadriceps to sit up and raise the shoulders to lift away from he pain. Ease in the toe sitting posture normalized deep relationships between the posterior compartment muscles of the calf, the plantar fascia, and the toes that are the sensitive end point of all the muscles of the leg. All the limb musculature expresses itself via the fingers and toes. In systems theory, you look for control points that are able to initiate or correct the system. Tuning the toes and feet is much more than just a local increase in flexibility.
Kneeling (Figure 103) - when the quads are too tight and the buttocks cannot rest on or between the heels it is indicative of an extensor pattern that is too primed
Long Sitting (Figure 70) - to sit with a straight back in this posture is difficult if the hamstrings are too tight. IF the low back is stressed in flexion by this posture it is better to slightly flex both knees to take the pressure off the low back. Sitting in these postures builds a functional core strength as the abdominal wall is interacting with the powerful muscles of the hip joints
Cross-Legged (Figure 80) - people who find these cross-legged postures easy often do so because they are stiff in the more linear postures
Butterfly Posture (Figure 89.5) - the sartorial muscle is often associated with this posture as it externally rotates the leg and flexes the knee
Side Saddle (Figure 106,107,108)
Cowboy (Figure 129,129,130)
Additional research…
new research reveals that adopting a wide variety of sitting postures can help to control blood sugar and development of tendinopathies. Reference: Leon Chaitow, Naturopathic Physical Medicine: Theory and Practice for Manual Therapists and Naturopaths, 1st Edition (London: Churchill Livingstone, 2008), E-ISBN: 9780702037016, https://www.elsevier.com/books/naturopathic-physical-medicine/chaitow/978-0-443-10390-2; Arkiath Veettil Raveendran, Anjali Deshpandae, and Shashank R. Joshi, “Therapeutic Role of Yoga in Type 2 Diabetes,” Endocrinology and Metabolism 33, no. 3 (September 2018): 307–317, https://doi.org/10.3803/enm.2018.33.3.307; Matthew Wallden and Mark Sisson, “Biomechanical Attractors – A Paleolithic Prescription for Tendinopathy & Glycemic Control,” Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies 23, no. 2 (April 2019): 366–371, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbmt.2019.03.004
Image Credit:
World Distribution of Postural Habits
Further Reading:
Sit and Move Better
Stay Mobile - Restore Archetypal Postures
Follow Up Article: Refining Your Tune Through Movement
Is a Calorie a Calorie?
Lazy: A Manifesto
By Tim Kreider
If you live in America in the 21st century you've probably had to listen to a lot of people tell you how busy they are. It's become the default response when you ask anyone how they're doing: "Busy!" "So busy." "Crazy Busy." It is, pretty obviously, a boast disguised as a complaint. And the stock response is a kind of congratulation: "That's a good problem to have," or "Better than the opposite."
This frantic, self-congratualtory busyness is a distinctly upscale affliction. Notice it isn't generally people pulling back-to-back shifts in the ICU, taking care of their senescent parents, or holding down three minimum-wage jobs they have to commute to by bus who need to tell you how busy they are; what those people are is not busy but tired. Exhausted. Dead on their feet. It's most often said by people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they've taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they're "encouraged" their kids to participate in. They're busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they are addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence.
Almost everyone I know is busy. They feel anxious and guilty when they aren't working or doing something to promote their work. They schedule in time with their friends the way 4.0 students make sure to sign up for some extracurricular activities because they look good on college applications. I recently wrote a friend asking if he wanted to do something this week, and he answered that he didn't have a lot of time but if something was going on to let him know and maybe he could ditch work for a few hours. My question was not a preliminary heads-up to some future invitation: This was the invitation. I was hereby asking him to do something with me. But his busyness was like some vast churning noise through which he as shouting out at me, and I gave up trying to shout back over it.
I recently learned a neologism that, like political correctness, man cave, and content-provider, I instantly recognized as heralding an ugly new turn in the culture: planshopping. That is, deferring committing to any one plan for an evening until you know what all your options are, and then picking the one that's most likely to be fun/advance your career/have the most girls at it -- in other words, treating people like menu options or products in a catalog.
Even children are busy now, scheduled down to the half hour with enrichment classes, tutorials, and extracurricular activities. At the end of the day they come home as tired as grownups, which seems not just sad but hateful. I was a member of the latchkey generation, and had three hours of totally unstructured, largely unsupervised time every afternoon, time I used to do everything from scouring The World Book Encyclopedia to making animated movies to convening with friends in the woods in order to chuck dirt clods directly into one another's eyes, all of which afforded me knowledge, skills, and insights that remain valuable to this day.
The busyness is not a necessary or inevitable condition of life; it’s something we’ve chosen, if only by our acquiescence to it. I recently Skyped with a friend who had been driven out of New York City by the rents and now has an artist’s residency in a small town in the South of France. She described herself as happy and relaxed for the first time in years. She still gets her work done, but it doesn’t consume her entire day and brain. She says it feels like college — she has a circle of friends there who all go out to the cafe or watch TV together every night. She has a boyfriend again. (She once ruefully summarized dating in New York: “Everyone is too busy and everyone thinks they can do better.”) What she had mistakenly assumed was her personality — driven, cranky, anxious, and sad — turned out to be a reformative effect of her environment, of the crushing atmospheric pressure of ambition and competitiveness. It’s not as if any of us want to live like this, any more than any one person wants to be part of a traffic jam or stadium trampling or the hierarchy of cruelty in high school; it’s something we collectively force one another to do. It may not be a problem that’s solvable through any social reform or self-help regimen; maybe it’s just how things are. Zoologist Konrade Lorenz calls “the rushed existence into which industrialized, commercialized man has precipitated himself” and all its attendant afflictions — ulcers, hypertension, neuroses, etc. — an “inexpedient development,” or evolutionary maladaptation, brought on by our ferocious intraspecies competition. He likens us to birds whose alluringly long plumage has rendered them flightless, easy prey.
I can’t help but wonder whether all this histrionic exhaustion isn’t a way of covering up the fact that most of what we do doesn’t matter. I once dated a woman that interned at a magazine where she wasn’t allowed to take lunch hours out, lest she be urgently needed. This was an entertainment magazine whose raison d’etre had been obviated when Menu buttons appeared on remotes, so it’s hard to see this pretense of indispensability as anything other than a form of institutional self-delusion. Based on the volume of my email correspondence and the amount of Internet ephemera I am forwarded on a daily basis, I suspect that most people with office jobs are doing as little as I am. More and more people in this country no longer make or do anything tangible; if your job wasn’t performed by a cat or a boa constrictor or a worm in a Tyrollean hat in a Richard Scarry book I’m not convinced it’s necessary. Yes, I know we’re all very busy, but what, exactly, is getting done? Are all those people running late for meetings and yelling on their cell phones stopping the spread of malaria or developing feasible alternatives to fossil fuels or making anything beautiful?
The busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness: Obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day. All this noise and rush and stress seem contrived to drown out or over up some fear at the center of our lives. I know that after I’ve spent a whole day working or running errands or answering emails or watching movies, keeping my brain busy and distracted, as soon as I lie down to sleep all the niggling quotidian worries and Big Picture questions I’ve successfully kept at bay come crowding into my brain like monsters swarming out of the closet the instant you turn off the nightlight. When you try to meditate, your brain suddenly comes up with a list of a thousand urgent items you should be obsessing about rather than simply sit still. One of my correspondents suggests that what we’re all so afraid of is being left alone with ourselves.
I’ll say it: I am not busy. I am the laziest ambitious person I know. Like most writers, I feel like a reprobate who does not deserve to live on any day that I do not write, but I also feel like 4 or 5 hours is enough to earn my stay on the planet for one more day. On the best ordinary days of my life, I write in the morning, go for a long bike ride and run errands in the afternoon, and see friends, read or watch a movie in the evening. The very best days of my life are given over to uninterrupted debauchery, but these are, alas, undependable and increasingly difficult to arrange. This, it seems to me, is a sane and pleasant pace for a day. And if you call me up and ask whether I won’t maybe blow off work and check out the new American Wing at the Met or ogle girls in Central Park or just drink chilled pink minty cocktails all day long, I will say, “What time?"
But just recently, I insidiously started, because of professional obligation to become busy. For the first time in my life I was able to tell people, with a straight face, that I was “too busy” to do this or that thing they wanted me to do. I could see why people enjoy this complaint: It makes you feel important, sought-after, and put-upon. It’s also an unassailable excuse for declining boring invitations, shirking unwelcome projects, and avoiding human interaction. Except that I hated actually being busy. Every morning my inbox was full of emails asking me to do things I did not want to do or presenting me with problems that I had to solve. It got more and more intolerable, until finally I fled town to the Undisclosed Location from which I’m writing this.
Here I am largely unmolested by obligations. There is no TV. To check email I have to drive to the library. I go a week at a time without seeing anyone I know. I’ve remembered about buttercups, stinkbugs, and the stars. I read a lot. And I’m finally getting some real writing done for the first time in months. It’s hard to find anything to say about life without immersing yourself in the world, but it’s also just about impossible to figure out what that might be, or how best to say it, without getting the hell out of it again. I know not everyone has an isolated cabin to flee to. But not having cable or the Internet turns out to be cheaper than having them. And nature is still technically free, even if human beings have tried to make access to it expensive. Time and quiet should not be luxury items.
Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence, or a vice: It is an indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done. “Idle dreaming is often the essence of what we do,” writes Thomas Pynchon in his essay on Sloth. Archimedes’ “Eureka” in the bath, Newton’s apple, Jekyll and Hyde, the benzine ring: history is full of stories of inspiration that came in idle moments and dreams. It almost makes you wonder whether loafers, goldbrickers, and no-accounts aren’t responsible for more of the world’s great ideas, inventions, and masterpieces than the hardworking.
"The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system.” This may sound like the pronouncement of some bong-smoking anarchist, but it was in fact Arthur C. Clarke, who found time between scuba diving and pinball games to write Childhood’s End and think up communications satellites. Ted Rall recently wrote a column proposing that we divorce income form work, giving each citizen a guaranteed paycheck, which sounds like the kind of lunatic notion that’ll be a basic human right in about a century, like abolition, universal suffrage, and 8-hour workdays. I know how heretical it sound in America, but there’s really no reason we shouldn’t regard drudgery as an evil to rid the world of if possible, like polio. It was the Puritans who perverted work into a virtue, evidently forgetting that God invented it as a punishment. Now that the old taskmaster is out of office, maybe we could all take a long smoke break.
I suppose the world would soon slide to ruin if everyone behaved like me. But I would suggest that an ideal human life lies somewhere between my own defiant indolence and the rest of the world’s endless frenetic hustle. My own life has admittedly been absurdly cushy. But my privileged position outside the hive may have given me a unique perspective on it. It’s like being the designated driver at a bar: When you’re not drinking, ou can see drunkenness more clearly than those actually experiencing it. Unfortunately the only advice I have to offer the Busy is as unwelcome as the advice you’d give to the Drunk. I’m not suggesting everyone quit their jobs — just maybe take the rest of the day off. Go play some see-ball. Fuck in the middle of the afternoon. Take your daughter to a matinee. My role in life is to be a bad influence, the kid standing outside the classroom window making faces at you at your desk, urging you to just this once to make some excuse and get out of there, come outside and play.
Even though my own resolute idleness has mostly been a luxury rather than a virtue, I did make a conscious decision, a long time ago, to choose time over money, since you can always make more money. And I’ve always understood that the best investment of my limited time on earth is to spend it with people I love. I suppose it’s possible I’ll lie on my deathbed regretting that I didn’t work harder, write more, and say everything I had to say, but I think what I’ll really wish is that I could have one more round of Delanceys with Nick, another long late-night talk with Lauren, one last hard laugh with Harold. Life is too short to be busy.
Can You Retrain Your Taste?
Sugar consumption and your tastebuds
A 2016 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition examined the effect of reduced simple sugar intake on a group of “healthy” men and women. The study broke the participants up into two groups, with one group assigned a low-sugar diet and the other group continuing to eat their usual high-sugar diet. After 3 months of this, both groups were left to eat however they pleased for yet another month. Each month during the study, participants were asked to rate the sweetness and “pleasantness” of vanilla puddings and raspberry beverages that varied in sugar concentration.
After the third month of dieting, the low-sugar group rated the pudding to be around 40 percent sweeter than the control group, regardless of how much sugar the pudding contained. The conclusion was simple: “changes in consumption of simple sugars influence perceived sweet taste intensity.” Meaning that the less sugar you eat over the long term, the more things taste sweeter and, therefore, tastier.
Researchers found that the low-sugar group took on average two months for their tastebuds to recognize any difference in sweetness and pleasantness—and yet another month for that sweetness to intensify.
The takeaway here? A little patience will yield long-term dividends.
But what about salt addiction?
If you’re a bit of a salt junkie, you might be keen on learning how to break the habit. It’s a perfectly reasonable goal to have, particularly if you’ve been diagnosed with hypertension. (You might want to find out if you’re among the “salt-sensitive” in the population—about 50% of those with hypertension by some estimates— before chalking up your high blood pressure to salt intake.)
Similar to sugar, lowering intake of sodium-rich foods has been shown to decrease your reliance on salt. An impressively long 1-year study found that “reduction in sodium intake and excretion accompanied a shift in preference toward less salt.” Researchers surmised that the mechanisms behind this reduction in salt addiction were varied, and included physiological, behavioral, and context effects. Not the ultra-conclusive reasoning you were hoping for, but it looks as if particularly overzealous salt cravings should drop significantly when you switch to a naturally salt-moderated, low processed-food diet.
Still, let’s not neglect some stubborn truths.
While the health and scientific community continues to hate on salt, very few studies have examined the importance of salt for maintaining a healthy body. While these studies may be relatively few, evidence suggests that salt may play an essential role in excreting cortisol (the “stress hormone”) from the body, thereby improving recovery time from stressful events and situations.
Salt has also been shown to decrease strain during exercise by increasing hydration. Studies indicate that knocking back a sodium-rich beverage prior to exercising increases plasma volume, which in turn reduces the strain on your body during exercise and helps you reach higher levels of performance.
And all those other clever uses…
And then there’s the point that salt just makes food taste better…. Just make a point of sticking with the good stuff—high quality sources like Himalayan pink salt, Real Salt, and Celtic sea salt. These natural, unrefined versions provide all of the taste of salt and, unlike table salt, still include all the essential minerals your body needs to rehydrate those cells and help to evenly distribute all that sodium.
The factors behind taste
If your body has been inundated with sugar-intensive processed foods for the last few years/decades, it may be a little confused as to what it actually wants to taste. Rewiring your tastebuds, then, is no small task for both your brain and your digestive system.
Luckily, all that’s required of you is to stay the course of good eating. That said, it’s helpful as always to understand the bigger picture.
Gut Health
There isn’t much it seems the gut isn’t involved in, and taste is no exception apparently. A team at the Department of Neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine discovered that the taste receptor T1R3 and the G protein gustducin are located in the gut, as well as the mouth. These taste receptors are essential to tasting sweetness in the foods we eat, and we now know that they play an important role in sensing glucose within our gastrointestinal tract.
This role goes far beyond simply “tasting” carbohydrates and other sugary or sweet foods within your gut. When you eat these foods, the sweet-sensing taste receptors in your large intestine activate the release of hormones that promote insulin secretion and regulate appetite. This means that if your gut health is lacking, its ability to sense carbs and produce insulin may be impaired.
Obesity
A 2012 study published in the British Medical Journal found that obese kids develop an insensitivity to taste. Researchers examined close to 200 children between the ages of 6 and 18, half of whom were a normal weight and half classified as obese. Each of the participants was asked to place 22 taste strips on their tongue, simulating each of the five levels of taste at varying intensities.
Obese children found it significantly more difficult to differentiate between the different taste sensations, and were particularly insensitive to salty, umami and bitter tastes. Children who were obese also gave lower intensity ratings to sweet foods, meaning they needed more sugar in foods to achieve the same sensation of sweetness.
The take-away is simple: the more weight we put on, the less likely we are to enjoy the food we eat or to recognize the mounting sugar or salt levels we likely take in for the same taste experience. There may be more of a lag time in rejuvenating full taste sensitivity if we’re reversing obesity as well as shifting our diets, but the end point is the same.
By Mark Sission
The Gut is Not Like Vegas
The intestinal epithelium is the largest mucosal surface providing an interface between the external environment and the mammalian host. Its exquisite anatomical and functional arrangements and the finely-tuned coordination of digestive, absorptive, motility, neuroendocrine and immunological functions are testimonial of the complexity of the gastrointestinal system. Also pivotal is the regulation of molecular trafficking between the intestinal lumen and the submucosa via the paracellular space. Under physiological circumstances, this trafficking is safeguarded by the competency of intercellular tight junctions (TJ), structures whose physiological modulation is mediated, among others, by the TJ modulator zonulin. The structural and functional characteristics of intercellular TJ and the protean nature of the intestinal content suggest that the gut mucosa represent the “battlefield” where friends (i.e., nutrients and enteric microflora) and foes (i.e., pathogenic microorganisms and their toxins) need to be selectively recognized to reach an ideal balance between tolerance and immune response to non- self antigens. This balance is achieved by selective antigen trafficking through TJ and their sampling by the gut associated lymphoid tissue. If the tightly regulated trafficking of macromolecules is jeopardized, the excessive flow of non-self antigens in the intestinal submucosa can cause autoimmune disorders in genetically susceptible individuals.
This new paradigm subverts traditional theories underlying the development of autoimmunity, which are based on molecular mimicry and/or the bystander effect, and suggests that the autoimmune process can be arrested if the interplay between genes and environmental triggers is prevented by re-establishing intestinal barrier competency.
What's Wrong with What We Eat
Nutrient Depletions from Prescription Drugs
Prescription drugs have side effects. That is, they have effects which are besides the intended effect. This can vary from person to person.
The intended effects of drugs are mostly to stop a process in the body, hence the “anti-” designation: anti-inflammatory, anti-biotic, anti-hypertensive. These altered processes are most likely produced as the body’s compensation for an imbalance somewhere. When you stop a natural process with a drug, like the stomach producing acid, there are consequences. The symptom – heartburn – may be gone, but the body does not function the same, and over time will result in compromised health.
One way to understand some of these side effects is that the drugs cause certain nutritional deficiencies when taken over time. Prescription drugs can deplete nutrients through many mechanisms, including impaired nutrient absorption, storage, transport, metabolism, or even excretion.
There are a large number of studies in medical literature which report the nutrient depletion of certain drugs. I’m sure your drug package insert does not list these, and most doctors who prescribe the drugs are not aware of them. I believe that everyone would serve themselves by becoming informed health consumers.
To that end, here is a list of nutrient depletions for common prescription drugs. This is meant to simply be a starting point, with common brand names of drugs listed. There are several handbooks (see resources at the end), so you can look it up in more detail. If you feel that it is in your best interest to take your prescribed drug, then you will probably have a better health outcome and reduce the risk of the drug’s side effects by supplementing with the listed nutrients.
5-Aminosalycyclic acid (for bowel inflammation)
Sulfasalazine, Colaza1, Mesalamine
Depletes: Folic acid
Anemia
Aranesp, Epogen, Procrit, Neulasta
Depletes: None reported
Antacids (H2 Blockers, Proton Pump Inhibitors)
Nexium, Prevacid, Protonix, Maalox, Mylanta,Tagamet, TUMS, Pepcid, Zantac
Depletes: Calcium, Vitamin B12, Phosphorus, Vitamin D, Folic acid, Iron, Zinc, Vitamin B1
Antibiotics
Amoxicillin, Ampicillin, Pennicillin, Tetracycline, Cephalosporin, Ciprofloxacin
Depletes: Bifidobacteria, Lactobaccillus, Biotin, Potassium, Vitamins B1, B2, B3, B6, B12, Vitamins C, E, K, Inositol, Magnesium, Zinc
Anticoagulants
Warfarin
Depletes: None reported
Anti-Depressants (SSRI)
Lexapro, Zoloft, Prozac, Paxil
Depletes: Folic acid, Vitamins B6, B12, D, Essential Fatty Acids, Sodium
Anti-Diabetics
Actos, Metformin, Glucotrol, Avandia
Depletes: CoQ10, Folic Acid, Vitamin B12
Low magnesium levels may predispose to this condition.
Anti-histamines
Singulair, Zyrtec
Depletes: Essesential Fatty Acids
Anti-Hypertensives (ACE inhibitors, Beta-Blockers)
Toprol-XL, Norvasc, Lisinopril, Furosemide, Chlorthalidone, Clonidine, Propanolol
Depletes: CoQ10, Phosphorus, Potassium, Sodium, Zinc, Calcium, Magnesium, Vitamin B1
Anti-Inflammatories
Aspirin, Acetaminophen, Ibuprofen, Naproxen
Depletes: Folic acid, Iron, Potassium, Sodium, Vitamin C, Glutathione
Bronchodilators
Advair Diskus, Singulair, Albuterol
Depletes: Potassium
Cholesterol-Lowering (STATINS)
Lipitor, Zocor, Pravachol, Cholestyramine, Colesevelam, Fenofibrate
Depletes: CoQ10, Beta-carotene, Calcium, Folic acid, Iron, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Vitamins A, B12, D, E, K
Corticosteriods
Prednisone, Hydrocortisone, Prednisole, Bethamethasone
Depletes: Calcium, Folic acid, Magnesium, Potassium, Selenium, Vitamins A, B6, C, D, K, ZInc
Diuretics
Furosemide, Hydorchlorothiazide, Triamterene
Depletes: Calcium, Magnesium, Potassium, Sodium, Vitamins B1, B6, C, Zinc, CoQ10, Folic acid
Gout
Colchicine
Depletes: Vitamins A, D, B12, Folic acid, Iron, Potassium
Hormone Replacement Therapy
Estrace, Premarin, Prempro, Alora
Depletes: Vitamins B1, B2, B6, B12, C, Magnesium, Biotin, Pantothenic acid
Laxatives
Metamucil, FiberCon, Citrucel, Colace, Glycolax, Milk of magnesia, Dulcolax
Depletes: Vitamins A, D, E, Calcium, Sodium, Potassium
Oral Contaceptives
Ortho Cyclen, Ortho Novum, Ortho TriCyclen, Triphasil, Seasonale, Yasmin, Ethinyl Estradiol plus Norgestrel
Depletes: Beta-Carotene, Vitamins B1, B2, B3, B6, B12, C, Folic acid, Biotin, Pantothenic acid, Magnesium, Zinc, Tryptophan, Tyrosine
Psychotherapeutics
Seroquel, Risperdal, Zyrexa, Haldol, Amitriptyline
Depletes: Vitamin B2, CoQ10
Rheumatoid Arthritis
Enbrel, Remicade, Methotrezate
Depletes: Folic acid
Sleep Aids
Ambien, Lunesta, Restoril, Sonata
Depletes: None reported, but those that act on the GABA-A receptor may deplete Biotin, Calcium, Folic acid, Vitamins B1, B12, D, K
Thyroid
Synthroid, Levothryoxine sodium
Depletes: Iron
All drugs have a hidden side effect that is rarely mentioned. They use up and deplete nutrients. Since they are a chemical, they use up vitamins, minerals, amino acids, essential fatty acids, and other nutrients in the works of metabolizing and detoxifying the drug. Therefore, all drugs cause nutrient depletion. And they rob us of nutrients that we could have used to heal our body.