Drug Alternatives

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Drug Alternatives

 

" All drug doctors are quacks. "

( Benjamin Franklin)

 

Once upon a time there was a young couple with two

children in diapers. Across the hall from their

ground-floor apartment lived a pharmaceutical

salesman. He was a nice young fellow, quiet and easy

to talk to. Since he was obviously single, the couple

asked him over for some home-cooked meals now and

again, and they all became good acquaintances.

 

The pharmaceutical salesman, also called a " detail

man " in the profession, was on the road a lot, and not

home to receive the many shipments that his employer

sent him. Most of these were cases of drug samples to

give away to physicians to promote the latest and

greatest medicine of the month. Large trailer trucks

would somehow negotiate their way through the narrow

apartment complex access roads, twist their way around

cars in the parking lot, and back up to the apartment

building. Up went the back of the truck and off came

boxes and boxes of drug samples, addressed to the man

who was rarely home. Did the truckers go away with

the cargo undelivered? Not likely, when there was a

stay-at-home mother with two toddlers next door.

Again and again they would knock on her door, explain

that the delivery was for 5-B across the hall, and ask

her to sign for the shipment. She figured, why not?

and accepted a handtruck or two of prescription

chemicals. Sometimes they left them in the unlocked

apartment hall closet outside her door. Sometimes it

was full, so they left the big cartons stacked in her

living room, as the kids waddled around.

 

If some military supplies mail-order warehouse

delivered a few crates of guns and ammunition like

this, there would be a public outcry fed by 60 Minutes

reports. The legal drug pushers get away with it.

 

So just who are the quacks?

 

" Oh, lighten up, fella! " you may be thinking, or, at

this point, hollering. " " Don't be so hard on the

pharmaceutical people. Be sure to mention all the

good they've done. "

 

Why? Did Bram Stoker tell how vampires have their

good side? Did Steven King spare you any details in

his gory stories? Where is my obligation to be

objective, in a world dominated by a

medical-industrial complex holding a trillion dollar

monopoly that makes Microsoft look like a lemonade

stand?

 

The medical emperor is stark naked; apparently nobody

else has the guts to stand up and tell you, so I will.

 

There are a couple of hundred thousand drugs on the

market, yet the World Health Organization itself

admits that two hundred would be enough to cover all

the bases. The extra tens of thousands are money

makers, pure and simple.

 

There is a nutritional alternative for most drugs.

You have to dig a bit for the details, but the work

has been done. You will find very few negative effects

from vitamins in the PDR, but you will see column

after column and page after page of side effects,

contraindications and warnings for drugs. For

example, I give you Coumadin.

 

You can often use vitamin E instead. Vitamin E

potentiates the effects of Coumadin (Warfarin sodium),

and at up to 3,200 IU or less daily, it can completely

and safely substitute for the drug. That is just

plain true. I've seen it again and again.

The case of the Big Trucker stands out in particular.

 

Bob was a big guy: tall, wide and heavy. He had a

lengthy history of thrombophlebitis and most of its

possible complications. One day he came to see me,

wondering what options he had to forever taking

Coumadin.

 

" You need to lose weight, Bob. That's the first

thing. You need to stop smoking, too. There's no way

any therapy, drug or anything else is going to really

work for you unless you do those things first. "

 

He listened thoughtfully.

 

" OK, " he said. " I'll try. What else? "

 

Pleased that we'd even gotten this far without his

wiping the floor with me, I proceeded to tell this man

of few words about vitamin E as a " blood thinner. "

Drs. Wilfrid and Evan Shute of London, Ontario, in

Canada pioneered such use of the vitamin back in the

1940's. Their medical society went berserk,

blacklisted them from meetings, and expelled any

doctor that even attended a lecture by the Shute

brothers. Sometimes it would seem that you'd be

better off with a bargain bunk on death row than to

advocate vitamin therapy in the face of the bunker

mentality of our drug-and-surgery health

establishment.

 

Vitamin E is vastly safer than warfarin, the generic

name of Coumadin. Warfarin is the active ingredient

in rat poison. Rats are pretty smart, by the way.

They must be poisoned subtly and long-term, like

patients. A cumulative moderate overdose of Coumadin

causes their blood to be too thin, and the little

bastards hemorrhage and die. A cumulative overdose of

vitamin E, even extreme megadosing, has never killed

anybody. Check the US Poison Control Centers data, or

the DAWN statistical series if you don't believe me.

So vitamin E has a Coumadin-like effect without a

Coumadin-like danger.

 

Bob's prothrombin (clotting) time was 16 seconds

without medication. His doc wanted 20 to 22 seconds,

and got it with the drug.

 

" Will I get the same results with vitamin E? " he

asked.

 

" You might, " I said. " E is certainly safer than

Coumadin. Ask you doctor to try a gradual reduction

dosage of the drug while gradually increasing the

vitamin dosage. I've seen that work well before. "

 

Weeks later I saw Big Bob again. He had stopped

smoking and lost weight. He looked noticeably trimmer

and was, in fact, nearly 20 pounds lighter.

 

" How are you doing? " I asked him leadingly.

 

" Pretty good, " Bob admitted. " Still on the Coumadin.

Not taking the vitamin E yet. "

 

" Why? " I asked.

 

The answer really surprised me.

 

" Well, " Bob said, " I really don't want to talk to the

doctor about this. He'll think I'm stupid and get

upset if I question him about the Coumadin. He says I

have got to take it. "

 

" You can't talk to your doctor about this? "

 

" Nope. I didn't even finish high school, " Bob said,

looking down and to the side past his knees. " He'll

just make me feel like a jerk for wanting to not take

my medicine. "

 

In the quack business, you see a lot of things, but

witnessing a big strong man shrink childishly away

from confronting his own doctor was a new one for me.

 

" You can talk to your doctor, Bob. You've got to be

able to discuss your own body with your doctor. What

did he say to you when he observed that you'd lost

weight? "

 

" He said just keep doing what I'm doing. "

 

" And stopping the smoking? " I added.

 

" He said that was good, too, " Bob answered. " He never

brought that up before, but he said it was good that

I'd quit. "

 

The great majority of patients who smoke have never

been told to quit by their doctor.

 

" But our credit isn't good enough for vitamin E,

huh? " I said with a half smile.

" You know, you're not offering anything foolish when

you ask for a tapering drug dosage schedule and

willingly come in for regular monitoring. The safer

alternative is always worth a therapeutic trial; any

doctor should know that. "

 

Oddly enough, I wasn't getting anywhere with this

argument.

 

Bob shook his head. He paused, then shook it again.

 

" No, " he said. " Don't want to bring it up with him. "

 

There was a pause.

 

" I'm just going to take the vitamin E anyway, " Bob

said quietly.

 

" I'd prefer the doctor was in on this, " I responded,

but if you are going to do it, do it right. Increase

the dose over a period of weeks. Most people start

with 200 IU daily, and eventually get to between 1,200

and 2,400 IU daily. Do it gradually, and here's a way

to tell how you're coming: Go in to your doctor

regularly, as you always do. Have him check your

protime, as he always does. If you get the numbers he

wants, he won't care how you got them. "

 

" Could I increase the vitamin E and still stay on the

Coumadin? " Bob wondered.

 

" More or less, but the more E you taking, the

stronger the Coumadin's effect. You'll probably get

to the point where your protime is too long, and he'll

have to cut back on the dosage of Coumadin. "

 

Bob thought about that for a bit.

 

" So I can just show him that I don't need the drug

any more, " he said.

 

" That's about it, " I said. " If your protime is on the

long side, he'll cut you back on the medicine. "

 

Well over a month later I saw Bob for a follow-up

visit.

 

" I did it, " he said. The last time I saw the doctor,

my clotting time was 23 or so. So he asked me, 'What

are you doing?' I told him I was taking vitamin E.

He said, 'Stop taking that vitamin. It is interfering

with the Coumadin.''

 

The doctor preferred to thin the blood with rat

poison

 

Copyright C 1999 and prior years Andrew W. Saul.

From the books QUACK DOCTOR and PAPERBACK CLINIC,

available from Dr. Andrew Saul, Number 8 Van Buren

Street, Holley, New York 14470.