Dietary Supplements May Not Be a Supplement to Health

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Dietary Supplements May Not Be a Supplement to Health After All

A new survey suggests dietary supplements carry the risk of potentially dangerous interactions with heart medications. Its results reopen the debate over what consumers really know about dietary supplements and their heart health.

Know Your Herbs

Dietary or herbal supplements are recommended for anxiety, focus, memory and weight loss, but instead of boosting the body’s function, the extra pills can interrupt the medication improving heart function. The Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database lists 180 supplements that could negatively affect blood-thinning medications and 120 that could disrupt anti-platelet medications.

Supplements range from amino acids and enzymes to minerals, herbs and vitamins, and can be ingested as capsules, energy bars and drinks, powders and tablets. Commonly used supplements patients should avoid if taking medication for heart disease include:

Anise
Antioxidants
Coenzyme Q10
Dan Shen
Fish oil
Garlic
Ginkgo
Ginseng
Glucosamine
Hawthorn
Soy
St. John’s wort
Vitamins E and K

The survey, conducted by researchers in Utah, focused on 100 heart patients taking the drug warfarin, or Coumadin. Researchers asked patients about their use of supplements, as well as their communication with their doctors concerning the extra pills.

More than two-thirds of participants reported taking herbal and dietary supplements, and almost half of all participants categorized them as natural medication, which led more than 60% of patients to neglect to inform their doctors about their supplement use. For the 4 million Americans currently filling prescriptions for anti-clotting, anti-platelet or blood-thinning medications, these results hold serious implications concerning how the “natural” supplements interact with heart disease drugs and potentially create negative health concerns.

Breaking Down the Medication Break Down

Drug interactions can surface in a number of ways. When a physician prescribes medication for heart disease, he or she determines which drug is best and the correct dosage based on an evaluation of a patient’s body, particularly the kidney and liver function. These organs process the medication, and older patients whose kidney and liver health is weaker are at a greater risk for negative drug interactions.

Medications aimed at heart disease typically operate with a “narrow therapeutic window,” signifying the small dosage variation from the optimal amount to too much or too little. In a drug interaction, a dietary or herbal supplement can push the liver’s metabolism into overdrive when processing the heart medication, which in turn can diminish the medication’s effectiveness at treating the original health issue—such as preventing blood clots—or increase the likelihood of negative side effects, such as bleeding and irregular heartbeats.

Full Disclosure at the Doctor’s Office

Although dietary and herbal supplements are marketed as natural alternatives to traditional medication, the body identifies them as drugs. The Utah study’s findings, in regard to patient communication about supplement use, indicate that most Americans don’t understand what qualifies as information to share with their doctor.
Participants did reveal that they would inform their doctor if asked, but that most health care providers didn’t inquire specifically about supplements. 

The study concluded with a recommendation that patients be aware and make their physicians aware of their supplement use and that physicians adopt a more proactive approach to the contents of their patients’ medicine cabinets.

Source: MD News