| | Ensuring safety with use of nutritional and botanical supplements
Following these basic guidelines will help ensure that your treatment plan including nutritional supplementation and botanical medicines is both safe and effective. Supplementation with vitamins, minerals, and herbs is safe when done correctly. However, there are a few considerations that everyone should be aware of when supplementing with vitamins and minerals. Iron is potentially harmful. Iron promotes the formation of "free radicals" and is thus implicated in several diseases, such as infections, cancer, liver disease, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. You should not consume iron supplements unless you have been diagnosed with iron deficiency (by measurement of a blood test called "serum ferritin." For additional information consult your healthcare provider and see my article at http://www.vix.com/menmag/alexiron.htm
Vitamin A is one of the only vitamins with the potential for serious toxicity. When taking vitamin supplements, you have to be careful that your vitamin A intake is not dangerously high. Your treatment plan may or may not include vitamin A, but it is important that you be aware of the potential toxicity of vitamin A since low doses can be toxic over long periods of time. Women who are pregnant or might become pregnant and who are planning to carry the baby to full term delivery should not ingest more than 10,000 IU of vitamin A per day. Vitamin A toxicity is seen with chronic ingestion of therapeutic doses (for example: 25,000 IU per day for 6 years, or 100,000 IU per day for 2.5 years ). Manifestations of vitamin A toxicity include: skin problems (dry skin, flaking skin, chapped or split lips, red skin rash, hair loss), joint pain, bone pain, headaches, anorexia (loss of appetite), edema (water retention, weight gain, swollen ankles, difficulty breathing), fatigue, and/or liver damage. Do not consume more than 20,000 IU of vitamin A per day for more than 2 months without express supervision by a healthcare provider. Vitamin A is present in some multivitamins, in cod liver oil, and in other supplements - read labels to ensure that your total daily intake is not greater than 20,000 IU per day.
Preexisting kidney problems (such as renal failure) greatly increase the risks associated with nutritional supplementation. Supplementation with vitamins and minerals does not cause kidney damage. However, if a patient already has kidney problems, then vitamin/mineral/protein supplementation may become hazardous. Everyone should be tested for kidney problems before beginning supplementation-this requires a commonly performed basic blood test called a "metabolic panel" to measure kidney function by assessing three blood markers called "BUN, potassium, and creatinine." Conditions which cause kidney damage include:
--Use of medications that cause kidney failure-Tylenol, aspirin, and others.
--Hypertension, high blood pressure
--Diabetes
--Use of recreational drugs, especially cocaine.
--Certain health disorders, such as lupus (SLE) and scleroderma.
Several drugs/medications may adversely interact with vitamin/mineral supplements and with botanical medicines. Vitamins/minerals may reduce the effectiveness of some prescription medications. For example, taking certain antibiotics such as Cipro or tetracycline with calcium reduces absorption of the drugs, therefore rendering the drugs much less effective. Taking botanical medicines with medications may make the drugs dangerously less effective (such as when St. John's Wort is combined with protease inhibitor drugs ) or may make the drug dangerously more effective (such when Kava is combined with the anti-anxiety drug alprazolam ). Never combine nutritional or botanical medicines with chemical/synthetic drugs without specific advice from a knowledgeable physician.
Pre-existing medical conditions may make supplementation unsafe. There are a few rare medical conditions that may cause supplementation to be unsafe. These can be assessed with the same "metabolic panel" of tests that are used to assess kidney function.
Vitamins and minerals should generally be taken with food in order to eliminate the possibility of nausea. Do not take vitamins and minerals on an empty stomach "between meals" unless you are specifically advised to do so or unless your experience has shown you that you can do this without getting an upset stomach.
Congratulations: By using these general recommendations, cautions, and the custom-tailored information in your treatment plan, you are well on your way to getting healthier by using therapeutic nutrition and botanical medicines in a way that will be both safe and effective.
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