Commonly used OTC drugs for acid reflux found to pose cardiac danger
They may be the most dangerous OTC meds on the market today.
I’ve warned you before about the long-term health effects of stomach acid-blocking proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) like Nexium, Prilosec, Prevacid and Zegerid.
I’ve told you how they rob your bones of vital calcium and can trigger dangerous and painful fractures. And even how they destroy your good gut bacteria and leave you vulnerable to life-threatening infections.
But now Stanford researchers are warning that the dangers of PPIs are far worse than anyone ever imagined. They’ve proven that these popular meds send your risk of a potentially deadly heart attack skyrocketing — even if you’ve never had a heart problem in your life.
And the damage can start right from the first dose.
And many of those people are walking heart attacks, according to a new study from Dr. Nicholas Leeper and his fellow Stanford scientists.
Stanford researchers poured through more than 3 million health records for people taking PPIs — and they found that they were up to 21 percent more likely to suffer life-threatening heart attacks.
Worse still, they were twice as likely to die from heart disease — even if they had no previous history of heart trouble.
PPIs are bad for your heart because they damage the Teflon-like coating that lines your arteries — and that’s something these meds start doing right after the first dose.
That’s dangerous for two reasons. First, it can allow artery-clogging plaque to accumulate.
Second, the cells that line your arteries are responsible for producing nitric oxide, a vital heart protector that also keeps LDL cholesterol from oxidizing. Without enough nitric oxide your blood pressure rises and blood platelets can get stickier, leading to blood clots.
“Proton pump inhibitors may not only lower stomach acid, they may also affect the health of the blood vessel itself,” Leeper said.
Of course, none of this should come as a surprise to the FDA. The agency has been dancing around the heart risks of PPIs for years and missed an opportunity to protect millions of people from the drugs.
In fact, six years ago the agency issued an official warning about taking PPIs if you have coronary artery disease and are also on the blood thinner Plavix.
So the FDA knew there was a link between PPIs and heart problems. But that’s where the warnings stopped. And instead of insisting that further research be conducted, the FDA went ahead and allowed even more of these drugs to go OTC.
We may not see official drug guidelines or warnings change any time soon — but you don’t need to wait for the government to act to get PPIs out of your life. And there’s plenty of upside, because Leeper and his colleagues have found that once you stop taking the drugs, your nitric oxide levels should return to normal.
If you’re interested in quitting PPIs, don’t stop cold turkey. That can cause something called “rebound acid hypersecretion,” a sort of trampoline effect that will put you in more acid agony than ever before. You have to taper your dose down slowly but surely.
And once you ditch them for good, there are numerous ways to control heartburn without damaging your heart in the process — such as:
- Taking probiotics — either in supplement form or with high-quality organic cultured foods such as kefir and yogurt (but not most of the sweetened fake kinds you’ll find lining the dairy case).
- Cutting down on coffee, especially later in the afternoon.
- Drinking a glass of water each day with a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar. I know that sounds crazy, but it works!
- Not eating too close to bedtime. And if you crash on the couch after dinner, sit up, don’t do the lying down couch-sleeping position that can cause a backflow of acid.
Sources:
“Some heartburn drugs may carry heightened risk of heart attack” Kathryn Doyle, June 10, 2015, Reuters, news.yahoo.com
“Heart attack risk linked to heartburn medications, such as Nexium, Prilosec, Prevacid, The Washington Post, June 10, 2015, triblive.com
