Diseases may occur, but sometimes you will get diagnosed with one when you really don’t have one.
It could be due to the drug nutrient depletion effect, what I call the drug mugging effect.
When you purchase over-the-counter medications or receive a prescription, you take the pills with sincere hope that you’ll feel better. For sure, the pills may do the trick, for example, stop reflux, or relieve arthritis, but I also wonder if you know that the medications can suppress and deplete nutrients. You can fix this situation immediately if you know what nutrients are getting mugged out of your body.
Depletion of Nutrients Leads to Diseases
In the process of carrying out their intended effect, drugs can slowly deprive your body of the nutrients it needs to feel well and stay healthy. I call this nutrient depletion effect “drug mugging,” because the drug is mugging the nutrients from you.
As an example, acid blockers can suppress absorption and act as “drug muggers” by reducing your levels of many nutrients, including calcium, folate, iron, vitamin D and B12. A terrible situation results from the suppression of these nutrients that impacts your energy levels, bones, mood, teeth and immunity.
Another example is with statins, they reduce CoQ10, vitamin D and selenium. This diminishes your mood, sexual abilities, immune function and thyroid levels. It can impact heart rhythm. Check out my ARTICLE all about exactly how acid blockers can cause dangerous drug mugging effects.
The Big Steal
The medication is robbing nutrients in different ways, it differs with each drug, but regardless, it is the biggest steal in your lifetime! If you take even one medication, you need to protect yourself or in 2 years, you’ll wind up on 10 different medications and feel worse than ever.
If you’d like to learn how drug mugging can cause palpitations and leg cramps, read my ARTICLE on the subject.
As you take medications and therefore become deficient in vital nutrients, you begin to feel sick in different ways, or like something is amiss with you. You can’t put your finger on it, but you might suddenly develop more symptoms, which sadly appear to be new “diseases.”
Doctors Don’t Think of This
Doctors don’t think in terms of drug mugging, they think in terms of symptoms and diseases, so inevitably you get pinned with more diseases. For example, some drugs induce diabetes, by increasing your blood glucose, others cause depression by stealing magnesium. This situation is preventable.
Take for example, medications used for menopause, oral contraception or hormone replacement. These estrogen or progestin-based drugs appear to suppress many nutrients including the B vitamins, in particular B6, riboflavin and folate, along with the mineral magnesium.
This can cause a woman to sink into depression, or develop nerve pain or hypothyroidism within a year or two of taking the drug. Did you know that if you take certain drugs, it can cause side effects that make it look like you have hypothyroidism, but you really don’t? For example, anticonvulsants (e.g., Phenytoin, Carbamazepine)!
Anticonvulsant drugs can decrease levels of the B vitamin called biotin by increasing its metabolism/usage. And biotin deficiency has been linked to symptoms like hair loss, skin rash, and neurological issues, which can overlap with hypothyroid symptoms! Only a Thyroid Profile test would reveal your true status. Another example of this is with proton pump inhibitors for acid blocking. Those drugs deplete magnesium which causes symptoms similar to hypothyroidism.
I’m not suggesting you stop anything, but it’s common sense to try and restore what is being depleted from your body, in an effort to head off any potential new diseases that occur from the drug mugging effect. It’s such a beautiful and easy thing to do!
If you have to be on a medicine, then for pennies a day, you can ‘insure’ your health and well-being.
These labels of more and more medical conditions and more drugs on top of the original one you started with puts you on a terrible track in the sick-care system that we have. It’s not just medication, it’s also food and lifestyle habits. Take a look:
A caffeine habit.
Coffee and caffeinated black and green tea contain tannins and chlorogenic acid and these naturally occurring compounds have the ability to suppress a lot of minerals like calcium, magnesium, zinc, phosphorus and iron. This impacts your bones and teeth, as well as your energy levels.
Soda pop.
Cola is a powerful mugger of bone-building minerals because of its high content of phosphoric acid, which is so acidic that your body pulls calcium from your bones to buffer all that acid.
Staying indoors.
If you have a job that keeps you sitting at a desk indoors, you may run out of vitamin D, since sunlight stimulates production of D.
Fad dieting: Fat-blocking supplements (Orlistat) can take fat-soluble vitamins out of your body such as A, E, K, and D. This impacts your vision, immunity and antioxidant levels.
The drug-mugging effect is very real and a well-documented phenomenon that’s been known for decades. It’s not up for debate or something that researchers are still trying to figure out.
In fact, there are thousands of published articles and studies on the topic of drug nutrient depletion which I started warning people about in 1999. I wrote a book on this topic that is available on Amazon, and in the German, Korean, Greek and Hebrew languages and several other languages.
Suzy Cohen, has been a licensed pharmacist for over 30 years and believes the best approach to chronic illness is a combination of natural medicine and conventional. She founded her own dietary supplement company specializing in custom-formulas, some of which have patents. With a special focus on functional medicine, thyroid health and drug nutrient depletion, Suzy is the author of several related books including Thyroid Healthy, Drug Muggers, Diabetes Without Drugs, and a nationally syndicated column.
