Benefits Better than Risks – the WHY of Nutranize®

Why You Need Nutranize Zone

When you’re taking a prescription drug, it’s because you have to, not because you want to be sick. It could be because you have a serious disease or because you’re in a lot of pain and the prescription is your only relief. Doctors prescribe these treatments because the benefits outweigh the risks.

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

Prescription medications have their benefits, such as making you feel better, curing a disease, or reducing your risk of complications. However, they also come with risks like side effects, allergic reactions, and nutrient depletion. Every treatment has risks.

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

Let me give you an example. I have a bleeding disorder called ITP, where my blood platelets are dangerously low. To treat it, my doctor prescribed prednisone, which tells my immune system to stop attacking itself. The benefit of this treatment is not bleeding to death. However, I experienced many side effects like insomnia, mood swings, weight gain, and blurred vision.

What about the risks? I 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

I also had to worry about nutrient depletion. At times, the risks seemed to outweigh the benefits. Especially at 3:00 in the morning when I could not fall back asleep and looked in the mirror and did not recognize myself because prednisone gave me such miserable insomnia and “moon face,” the risk of bleeding to death seemed minimal. Eventually the benefits no longer outweighed the risks, because my body became resistant to prednisone and killed its own platelets even on high doses, so there were no more benefits. Instead, I had to resort to chemotherapy to treat the ITP.

What about you?

Do the benefits outweigh the risks for you? It’s important to understand the actual risk versus benefit calculation for your prescription medicine. If you’re unsure, ask your doctor or pharmacist for more information.

Watch Dr. Megan explain the benefits vs. risks of prednisone:

Goal of Nutranize

That’s where Nutranize comes in. The goal of Nutranize is to lower the risks and increase the benefits of your treatment. It does this by addressing nutrient depletion caused by prescription drugs. Nutranize supplements the nutrients that are lost when taking prescription medication. This helps tip the scale towards benefits and makes you feel better about taking your prescribed medication.

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.

For example, prednisone steals many important nutrients from your body. That’s why I created Nutranize Zone, specifically designed for people taking prednisone. Zone counterbalances the effects of prednisone in depleting nutrients or interfering with the metabolism of nutrients by replenishing the lost nutrients.* My goal as the Prednisone Pharmacist is to help you navigate the risks and benefits of prednisone and find ways to tip the scale towards the benefits, and Nutranize Zone is the first step.