What You Need to Know about Nutrition and Prescriptions

In this health video you will learn what you need to know about nutrition and prescriptions.

Lyle Hurd: Dr. Cass, this is a part of a series of questions I want to ask you about your book. But what I’d like to know is—you talk about something here that we’ve already covered about making prescription drugs work better for you. Tell me about what your doctor doesn’t know about nutrition and the nutritional depletions that can come from some of these drugs. Dr. Hyla Cass: Yes. There’s no free lunch and when you’re given a prescription it’s going to have side effects. And, almost all drugs will deplete you of specific nutrients just because of the way they operate in the body. For example, some of them simply can suppress your appetite, you know, the stimulant drugs—Ritalin, aderol—they’re stimulants [and] if you have a suppressed appetite you’re not going to be taking in enough [nutrients]. You know kids will lose weight on these stimulant drugs. There are other drugs that interfere with absorption of nutrients, for example, the acid blocking drugs. You take something for heartburn which cuts down on your acid— not a good idea because we need the acid to break down our food, to digest, and also to kill bugs, you know, to kill the bad bugs. It’s part of our immune system, part of our antibacterial system that we have this stomach acid. And, by interfering with it we’re actually depleting ourselves. Okay, so we become depleted of certain nutrients for that reason. There are also diuretics; you actually lose potassium and other minerals through the kidneys by taking diuretics which are water pills that we take for high blood pressure. So, there are many—another one is the statin drugs—this is a pretty classic one. A lot of people on the statin drugs will get problems like muscle pain, weakness, fatigue, and when they stop the statin they feel better. So, you want to be very cautious about taking statins, and if at all possible, take the alternatives to bring down the cholesterol. And, I also want to add something else. Cholesterol is not evil. Lyle Hurd: I understand that. Dr. Hyla Cass: First of all, we need cholesterol to make our hormones, for our skin; we need cholesterol for so many things, for our brains. You know, people become depressed and they actually can become a little loopy, lose their memory, not be able to think straight because of the low cholesterol when they’re on statins. So, it’s not such a good idea to lower the cholesterol, better to go to the root cause. Why is the cholesterol elevated? Because of inflammation, where’s the inflammation coming from? Very often, believe it or not, it’s coming from excessive bad carbs, too much sugar. If you have too much sugar, you have fat cells, the fat cells start to make inflammatory cytokines and that causes the body to make more cholesterol. So, don’t shoot the messenger. There’s just a lot that goes into—before writing a prescription, and this is what I certainly do before I write a prescription—look, get to the root cause, see what the symptoms mean, and treat them accordingly, way before you pull out the prescription pad. Lyle Hurd: Well, I definitely recommend that people look for the book. They can go to drcass.com to find out, not only about this book but a number of other things that might be very helpful for them. And, once again, thank you. Dr. Hyla Cass: A pleasure.