Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 And personally, I think that every person who purchased a cox-2 inhibitor drug over the last ten years should get their money back for ALL the drugs they ever bought. That's the standard action the FDA demands of herbal companies. Why not apply the same standard to Big Pharma as well?
Of course, you already know the answer to that: the Fraud and Drug Administration is determined to pad the profits of drug companies while bankrupting anything related to complementary and alternative medicine. It's the same old tactic used by the AMA for decades to try to shut down chiropractic care. |
J. Douglas Bremner
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 The cox-2 inhibitor Bextra was supposed to have more advantages than Vioxx in the treatment of osteoarthritis. The drug's manufacturer, Pfizer, argued that Bextra should have a lower risk of heart attacks than Vioxx. This claim has not been supported by research. In fact, Nussmeier and colleagues studied 1,671 patients randomized to parecoxib (Dynastat, a cox-2 inhibitor that is given intravenously to surgical patients) or valde-coxib (i.e., Bextra). Patients with parecoxib or valdecoxib showed a 3.7-fold increase in heart attack or stroke. |
Bill Sardi
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 American Journal Gastroenterology 100: 1694-95, 2005]
¦ cox-2 inhibitor drugs like Vioxx and Bextra are widely promoted for potential cancer prevention, but they increase the risk for heart attacks and strokes. [Journal Association Physicians India 53: 623-27, 2005] There appear to be misdirected efforts to keep cox-2 inhibitor drugs on the market by combining them with fish oil to overcome their side effects. |
Hyla Cass, M.D.
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 NSAID-INDUCED NUTRIENT DEPLETIONS: FOLATE AND VITAMIN C
Research clearly demonstrates that aspirin and other NSAIDs—including the cox-2 inhibitor Celebrex—deplete folate. Aspirin has also been found to deplete vitamin C. Supplementing with these nutrients while using any NSAID—all of which work by the same general mechanism— is advisable.
The mechanism for folate depletion with these drugs is complex. Basically, the therapeutic effect of these drugs operates through a biochemical mechanism that also depletes folate in the bloodstream. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Americans mask joint pain with deadly cox-2 inhibitor drugs, they mask nutritional deficiencies with antidepressant drugs, and they mask poor cardiovascular health with statin drugs and blood thinners (which are made from rat poison chemicals, by the way, and that's not an exaggeration). It's like taking your car to a mechanic and instead of the guy fixing your engine, he just takes a can of spray paint and sprays over the engine warning lights on your dashboard. Problem solved! No more engine warning lights! |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 General Practitioners send patients home with prescriptions for dangerous cox-2 inhibitor drugs, diabetes drugs, statin drugs and psychotropic drugs that kill, at minimum, tens of thousands of Americans every year through heart attacks, strokes, liver failure and suicides. Where is the call to protect the public from these dangerous chemicals that are causing casualty numbers resembling a world war?
Where is the effort to protect the public from all the dangerous cancer-causing food additives like sodium nitrite? Hydrogenated oils? Chemical preservatives and sweeteners? |
Joe Graedon, M.S. and Teresa Graedon, Ph.D.
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 More than 20 percent of the people taking this cox-2 inhibitor experienced kidney toxicity (fluid retention, high blood pressure, and kidney failure).81 If patients had some kidney impairment before the study started (a common situation in older people), the likelihood of kidney toxicityjumped to more than 50 percent! We assume other NSAIDs are likely to have a similar effect on kidney function.
NSAID Survival Strategy
By now it should be clear that nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, including the COX-2 inhibitors, can be trouble with a capital T! |
Hyla Cass
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| At that time, cox-2 inhibitor drugs like Vioxx and Celebrex, a newer class of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), were replacing the older NSAIDs like Naprosyn and Aleve, Motrin and Advil, and Voltaren, Athrotec, and Cataflam. The older NSAIDs were known to cause ulcers and internal bleeding, while the new "super aspirins" were supposed to reduce that risk.
One day, Anna suddenly passed out and fell to the floor. She had the presence of mind, when she awoke, to call the paramedics using her Medic Alert pendant. She had begun bleeding from a gastric ulcer. |
Bottom Line Health
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| You may still take a cox-2 inhibitor if your doctor advises and monitors you. Or you may be advised to return to ibuprofen or naproxen.
Glucosamine and chondroitin, sold without a prescription, are among the building blocks of cartilage. Some osteoarthritis sufferers say that these supplements help. With your doctor's approval, you can try them if you want.
When meds no longer quell osteoarthritis pain, a trade-in may be the answer. Hip and knee replacement surgery, performed for more than 30 years, has advanced dramatically. |
Hyla Cass, M.D.
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| At that time, cox-2 inhibitor drugs like Vioxx and Celebrex, a newer class of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), were replacing the older NSAIDs like Naprosyn and Aleve, Motrin and Advil, and Voltaren, Athrotec, and Cataflam. The older NSAIDs were known to cause ulcers and internal bleeding, while the new "super aspirins" were supposed to reduce that risk.
One day, Anna suddenly passed out and fell to the floor. She had the presence of mind, when she awoke, to call the paramedics using her Medic Alert pendant. She had begun bleeding from a gastric ulcer. |
Bill Sardi
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| Butyrate also works as a natural cox-2 inhibitor, working in a similar fashion to COX-2 inhibiting drugs, but without the cardiovascular side effects. [Biochemical Biophysical Research Communications 317: 463-71, 2004]
ž Butyrate reduces the metastatic properties of colon cancer cells so they won't easily spread to the liver, which is a highly mortal sign. [Clinical Experimental Metastasis 21: 331-38, 2004]
Published reports on the effectiveness of butyrate in inhibiting colon cancer are mixed. |
| Aspirin and colon cancer
Aspirin, like the cox-2 inhibitor drugs, is often recommended for prevention of recurring polyps. One aspirin study showed no reduction in risk for cancerous polyps after 9 years of aspirin use, but the risk was almost cut in half by 20 years of use. What this means to older patients who haven't another 20 years to live, is unknown.
Another study showed that aspirin reduced the occurrence of polyps from 27 to 17 % after 31 months of use. Another study showed little benefit, with aspirin reducing the incidence of polyps from 47 to 45 %. |
John A. McDougall
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 It is important to note, however, that cox-2 inhibitor NSAIDs pose a serious risk—they have been shown to increase the chance of heart attack by two to five times and are no more effective at relieving pain than aspirin or regular NSAIDs. Many brands of COX-2 inhibitors have been removed from the marketplace due to such serious side effects.
I assured Louise that once she began faithfully following my McDougall Diet recommendations, she would most likely be able to discontinue all of her anti-inflammatory drugs. |
Hyla Cass
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| NSAID-INDUCED NUTRIENT DEPLETIONS: FOLATE AND VITAMIN C
Research clearly demonstrates that aspirin and other NSAIDs—including the cox-2 inhibitor Celebrex—deplete folate. Aspirin has also been found to deplete vitamin C. Supplementing with these nutrients while using any NSAID—all of which work by the same general mechanism?is advisable.
The mechanism for folate depletion with these drugs is complex. Basically, the therapeutic effect of these drugs operates through a biochemical mechanism that also depletes folate in the bloodstream. |
David Steinman
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 One of the first test tube studies on the product, titled "Zyflamend, an Herbal cox-2 inhibitor with In Vitro Anti-Prostate Cancer Activity," was presented at the December 13, 2002, meeting of the Society of Urologic Oncology at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. (This meeting was cosponsored by the National Cancer Institute.) The formula suppressed the growth of prostate cancer cells and caused many more to commit apoptosis, or cellular suicide. |
Bottom Line Health
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| A second-generation NSAID, such as the prescription cox-2 inhibitor celecoxib (Celebrex), is less likely to cause bleeding, but might increase the risk of heart attack and stroke. Your doctor should weigh the risks against the benefits before recommending treatment using anti-inflammatory medication.
•Opioids. These medications are typically used to treat moderate to severe pain. Opioids include codeine, morphine, hydrocodone (Vico-din), fentanyl patches (Duragesic), oxycodone (OxyContin), and oxycodone combined with acetaminophen (Percocet). |
David Steinman
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| Having found ginger to be a cox-2 inhibitor, Schulick, a master herbalist with twenty-five years of experience, scoured all the available medical databases, including the National Library of Medicine and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, for premiere herbal candidates to combat inflammation generated by cancer. |
Bill Sardi
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| However, recent revelations show the FDA approved relatively unsafe drugs (Vioxx cox-2 inhibitor) and at least five other drugs and continues to do little to remove these drugs from the marketplace.
Public Citizen, the Ralph Nader group, indicates 1 81 FDA-approved drugs should be recalled because they are not as safe as other drugs or are ineffective. An FDA drug reviewer, Dr. David Graham, had to publish his report on the hidden dangers of Vioxx outside of the country in the British Medical Journal. |
J. Douglas Bremner
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| In 2006 a review of cox-2 inhibitor safety from studies performed up to that time found a significant risk of cardiac events across the spectrum of COX-2 drugs.14 Overall there was a statistically significant 42% increase in vascular events and an 86% increase in heart attacks. The risks of taking COX-2 drugs were double that of taking naproxen. Diclofenac was also associated with a statistically significant 63% increase in the risk of vascular events. Naproxen had no risk, and ibuprofen had a 51% increase, which was not statistically significant. |
| In fact, Nussmeier and colleagues studied 1,671 patients randomized to parecoxib (Dynastat, a cox-2 inhibitor that is given intravenously to surgical patients) or valde-coxib (i.e., Bextra). Patients with parecoxib or valdecoxib showed a 3.7-fold increase in heart attack or stroke.5 Curt Furberg, Bruce Patsy, and Garret Fitzgerald analyzed data from this study along with data made available by the FDA and also found a greater than threefold increased risk of heart attack and stroke.6 After these studies were published, Pfizer initially argued with the results. |
| Celebrex (or celecoxib, the generic name), marketed by Pfizer and Pharmacia, is a cox-2 inhibitor still on the market in the U.S. In 2000, a large review of the drug, called the Celecoxib Long-term Arthritis Safety Study (CLASS), which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, reported a 50% reduction of ulcers and stomach bleeding with celecoxib as compared to NSAIDS.7 Patients taking aspirin lost the protection afforded by Celebrex. This study looked at one year of treatment, but only the results found after six months were published. |
Bill Sardi
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| He also receives an anti-inflammatory drug, a cox-2 inhibitor, thought to be a colon cancer preventive agent. He is unaware that only 20% of cancer patients have colon/rectal tumors that are sensitive to 5-FU. For the remaining 80% of patients, 5-FU will be ineffective and the patients will endure suffering from side effects needlessly.
Furthermore, colon cancer is a solid tumor, and all forms of chemotherapy cannot penetrate solid tumors and over time drug resistance will occur, rendering the treatment useless. |
Dr. Timothy Scott
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 Those ten experts voted 10-0 in favor of keeping Pfizer's two cox-2 inhibitor drugs on the market and 9-1 in favor of allowing Vioxx to be made available again. No one can prove that the financial ties influenced the votes of these panel members, and all of those willing to discuss it claimed it had no influence on their votes. However, none of us is as objective as we think we are. Those ten experts should have simply said they had a conflict of interest and felt it improper to vote. But then Vioxx would have been rejected by a vote of 8 to 14. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 It's almost as bad as the pharmaceutical industry, except for the fact that bogus hoodia powder probably doesn't kill people like prescription drugs do (prescription drugs kill at least 100,000 Americans each year, and that study was conducted before the truth came out about cox-2 inhibitor drugs that may have killed tens of thousands more). But many of the marketing tactics are the same: distort the truth, deceive customers, and disseminate propaganda masquerading as "public educational materials" such as the hoodia comparison chart shown earlier. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 I've seen this description in popular newspapers when talking about the number of people killed by cox-2 inhibitor drugs.) Can you imagine the front-page headlines if somebody found out that an herb killed 60,000 people? But when it's a drug, the newspapers just called it an "unintended side effect."
Where are the stories about the abuse of Ritalin by our nation's schoolchildren? Where are the stories about how our food supply is promoting chronic disease? |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 These cox-2 inhibitor drugs have been prescribed simply because they were the 'in' thing. They were popular; they were being promoted. Few of the prescriptions were made based on scientific fact or medical necessity.
So when you hear people talk about so-called 'evidence-based medicine,' remember that most of the people whose mouths those words emerge from actually live in a world of outrageous scientific distortion. There's very little real evidence in the world of evidence-based medicine. It's largely distortion, hype, promotion, influence, corruption, intimidation and denial. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 The only real regulatory action the FDA is taking on Vioxx, Bextra and other cox-2 inhibitor drugs is the requirement of a black box warning on the drugs. This is supposed to be a big deal, but in fact it means little to nothing. This is just a bigger print size of the same warning that's been found in the small fine print of the drug for years. Doctors routinely ignore this information. Patients almost never see it. So a black box warning doesn't mean much anyway. |
| They're saying that if all cox-2 inhibitor drugs are equally dangerous and are equally responsible for killing tens of thousands of Americans, then none of them should carry a black box warning, because none of them are more dangerous than the other brand on the shelf next to them.
So even though the whole class of drugs is extremely dangerous compared to herbal remedies or even relatively safe painkillers, some doctors want these black box warnings removed on the basis that, within this class of drugs, each one carries the same risk as the next. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 The DEA is AWOL on most drug issues
Where is this War on Drugs when it comes to Grandma in the nursing home, who died of a stroke caused by cox-2 inhibitor drugs? Where is the War on Drugs when little Johnny schoolboy picks up a rifle and blows away his classmates because he's on antidepressants and can't tell the difference between real life and a first-person-shooter video game? Where is the War on Drugs when 16,500 people each year die, shitting digested blood until they pass out and die because that daily dose of aspirin tore a gaping hole in their stomach? |
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