Benefits Better than Risks – the WHY of Nutranize®
Why Nutranize is Needed
No one wakes up in the morning and says, “Gee, I’d really like to be sick enough that I have to take a prescription.” If you’re taking a prescription drug, you’re doing so because you have to.
Maybe you have to take it because you have a disease that could kill you.
Maybe you have so much pain that the prescription is your only relief.
Doctors prescribe these treatments with a calculation in mind:
Risks < Benefits
Risks versus Benefits
Risks are anything that can make something worse.
Benefits are what make it worth it, that which tips the balance in favor of doing something like take a medicine.
The balance must always be toward benefits or the treatment is not worth it. There must be less risks than benefits.
Benefits & Risks of Prescriptions
Benefits of prescription medicines include:
- Feeling better (Tylenol for pain)
- Curing a disease (antibiotics for infections)
- Giving back something missing (levothyroxine for thyroid)
- Decreasing your risk of complications (lisinopril and other blood pressure medications for heart attack and stroke)
- Blocking problems (Lipitor and other statin medications for high cholesterol to prevent heart attack and stroke)
- Not dying (prednisone for many conditions, such as ITP for Dr. Megan)
- …and many more.
Risks of prescription medicines include:
- Side effects
- Allergic reactions
- Drug interactions
- Nutrient depletion
Every treatment for a condition has risks.
For example, to treat dehydration, a person needs water. How could there be any risk with this?
The risk of using water to treat dehydration is that there could be an imbalance of electrolytes in the water. Or a person could actually drink too much water and have too few electrolytes (like salt). Or the quality of the water might be lacking, such as if the water comes from a contaminated source. The risks are truly very small, and the benefits of drinking water are very large, so this treatment is almost always the best one.
Dr. Megan’s Personal Example
Dr. Megan was diagnosed with a bleeding disorder called ITP, which is a condition where the blood platelets are so low that there is a risk of bleeding to death. Platelets are the part of blood that clots and stops you from bleeding. The reason the platelets are so low in ITP is still somewhat a mystery, but some part of the immune system is confused. The body is attacking its own platelets and killing them, confusing them for a foreign substance like a bacteria. Dr. Megan’s doctor prescribed prednisone to treat ITP because prednisone tells the immune system to chill out and stop attacking itself. In her case, the benefit of treatment was not bleeding to death.
What about the risks? Dr. Megan suffered from many prednisone side effects such as:
- Insomnia
- Emotional roller coasters ranging from euphoria, irritability, to “’Roid Rage”
- An insatiable appetite with cravings for salt and every food in sight causing
– high blood sugar
– weight gain
– fat redistribution to her belly
– “moon face” - Water retention
- Bone loss
- Muscle loss
- Blurry vision
- Hot flashes with sweating and red flushed cheeks
- Swelling skin
- Heart palpitations
- Bruises that don’t hurt
- Weakened immune system
- High white blood cells
- Difficulty healing wounds
Not only did she have to deal with all these side effects, but she also had to worry about nutrient depletion. In Dr. Megan’s situation, sometimes it seemed as if the benefits did not outweigh the risks. Especially at 3:00 in the morning when she could not fall back asleep and looked in the mirror and did not recognize herself because prednisone gave her such miserable insomnia and “moon face,” the risk of bleeding to death seemed minimal. Eventually the benefits no longer outweighed the risks, because her body became resistant to prednisone and killed its own platelets even on high doses, so there were no more benefits. Instead, she had to resort to chemotherapy to treat the ITP.
What about YOU?
What about your situation?
Do the benefits outweigh the risks?
How can you know? Do you know the actual benefits of your prescription medicine? Many people are unaware of the exact Risk < Benefit calculation. If you don’t know, ask your doctor or pharmacist for more information.
Watch Dr. Megan Explain This:
Goal of Nutranize
The goal of Nutranize is to tip the balance of treatment toward more benefits by lowering the risks. Specifically, by decreasing the risk of nutrient depletion.
Each drug works by adjusting something in the body. Sometimes that leads to nutrients in the body like calcium being stolen by the drug. Nutrient depletion is when important substances like calcium are lost by an action of a prescription drug.
Nutranize gives back that which was lost.
Nutranize supplements the nutrients lost when taking a prescription drug. Giving back these nutrients lowers the weight on the RISKS side of the scale, since Nutrient Depletion is taken out of the equation. This tips the scale toward benefits, so you can feel better about taking the prescription drug your doctor gave you.
Prednisone steals 9+ nutrients from your body. That’s why Dr. Megan created Nutranize Zone, which is especially designed for people taking prednisone. Zone counterbalances the effects of prednisone in depleting nutrients or interfering with the metabolism of nutrients.* Dr. Megan’s goal as the Prednisone Pharmacist is to help you navigate ways to tip the scale from Risks of Prednisone to Benefits of Prednisone.
