Warning: Popular drug can disfigure and kill
It’s a drug that can blind, disfigure and kill in just weeks — and the mainstream is pushing it like never before!
If you or a loved one has high uric acid levels (or even a condition like gout or kidney stones) you probably know all about a med called allopurinol. It’s sold under brand names like Aloprin and Zyloprim, and it’s supposed to keep uric acid in check.
But researchers have found that it can trigger a terrifying condition that can eat away your skin and steal your eyesight — and maybe even your life.
And they’re warning that you could be at a greater risk than ever of ending up on a prescription for allopurinol — even if you’ve never had uric acid problems in your life.
But she ended up getting a crash course on just how dangerous the drug can be — and she was lucky to survive.
After just two weeks on allopurinol, Salima developed painful, crusting scales all over her face and she started bleeding uncontrollably from the mouth.
She was the latest allopurinol patient to come down with a life-threatening case of Stevens-Johnson Syndrome (SJS).
I’ve told you about the horrors of SJS before. Your skin can literally burn from the inside out and start to peel away from your body.
People who get SJS often end up with third-degree burns — and even if they survive, they can be left blind and scarred for life.
But what many people — and their doctors — don’t realize is that SJS is an alarming side effect that can come from just a few doses of allopurinol. In fact, the drug is being so widely prescribed that it’s now the leading cause of SJS in the world.
And, unfortunately, it’s about to get a whole lot worse.
That’s because doctors are now prescribing allopurinol off-label to treat things like prostate inflammation, infections, and the side effects of chemotherapy that the drug was never approved to treat.
In other words, you’re more at risk of leaving your doctor’s office with a prescription for allopurinol than ever before.
A study just out from Taiwan found that more than 40 percent of people on allopurinol were taking it off-label. And hundreds of people in the study ended up dead from severe reactions — like SJS — that struck after just a few months on the med.
Now the researchers found that you’re most at risk for a life-threatening complication if you have something called hyperuricemia — or high uric acid — with no other symptoms.
And that’s the real tragedy here. Because while some doctors hand out allopurinol for high uric acid — telling you it can help prevent gout or kidney stones — even the National Kidney Foundation has warned that “hyperuricemia is not a disease.”
It may never cause you any problems at all.
And even if you do suffer from gout or recurring kidney stones, allopurinol just isn’t worth the risk — especially when there are proven ways to keep uric acid levels in check without taking the chance of SJS.
For example:
- Reduce the sugar in your diet and ditch anything containing high fructose corn syrup.
- Avoid shrimp, lobster, red meat, and alcohol that can cause uric acid to accumulate and gout flare-ups.
- Drink plenty of water to help your body flush away excess uric acid.
- Eat tart cherries, which have been proven to prevent uric acid from building up and can even help control gout. You can also pick up concentrated tart cherry juice at most supermarkets.
