weak mom, 13 pills daily, 3 heart surgeries, valves artificial

The business about some green leafy vegetables is related to use of coumadin or warfarin, which is prescribed to keep her blood from just clotting up. Most cardiologists that I have read about this say it doesn't mean you can't have any - just that the coumadin/warfarin dose needs to fit the amount of such vegetables because those particular vegetables can affect how the drug works. She should work with her doctor on this; I'm presuming she sees a cardiologist. The adjustment of the drug dose to the amount of the particular vegetables is very important. They will change the dosage depending on the amounts of those greens that she will be eating, and you need to work that out with the doctor first, before she starts with them.

I'm not a doctor and we don't give medical advice here even if we happen to be doctors. I'm just telling you what might be useful for you and her to research and talk with her cardiologist about. (See our terms of service at the bottom of any page.)

In A2K Forum's Terms of Service it states the following about Posting of Medical advice:

Get a second opinion. You likely will not find a 100% match with this particular cocktail of drugs being given to your mother, but do ask about interactions. At something like 4 drugs of any sort (and I have forgotten where I read this), the chances for interactions rises dramatically. And she is taking a lot more of those.

I understand your situation, i had similar cases in my family on the past, and as a child that drag me in parto to study medicine. Since then i had treated many similar patients during my years since i ended med school. I live on a country which culture is really prone to prefer those so called "natural" or "hollistic" and "alternative" treatments. What i will tell you may not be pleaseant. I don´t think it is what you are expecting to read. And i have to advise this is going to be long.

First, don´t belive in what you find on the internet. We, doctors, prefer to rely on medical approved magazines with long time known reputation to get new treatments and advences on therapies. There are a lot on scams on the internet. Medicine is a science, and as in astrophysiscs and in biochemestry everything is about applying scientific method and open to debate. No one can claim absolute knowledge or a final answer for everything. Be very skeptic of what you read on the web.

Second, you give very few information about your mother´s background. So i can only try to guess a few things. The treatment your mother has seems to be PERFECT. I would´t try to move anything with the exception of the ranitidine for only to used when necessary, and the folate and the iron suplement only if theres an actual laboratory test proving that are necesary at the moment.

Third, I´d herad many times threw the years the same ideas in patients and their families. What about natural treatment? What i always answer is: there is nothing more natural than allopatic medicine (medical medicine).

Considering allopatic medicine as unnatural is completely stupid since all the medical knowledge we have comes from close observation of nature and the application of the scientific method. For example the warfarin was discovered from cattle that ate spoiled sweet clover that induced an haemorragic disease. Digoxin comes from an extract of the digitalis plant. Salicilates come from the bark of the oak tree. Studing the natural mechanism of blood flow, blood viscosity and resistance of the vascular system provided some heroic medical engineers the knowledge to built those prosthetic valves she uses.

Fourth. Those so called natural treatments produce the same, or even more, strain to the liver as allopatic drugs. The problem with herbal therapies, which they actually work, is that is imposible to calculate the concentration of a drug within the plant. Many factors can alter the concentration, ranging from the quality of the soil, the amount of sun the palnt recieve, its competition with other plants, etc. Allopatic drugs have the exact same amount of a substance always.

Fifth. How we treat our body on the youth ALWAYS pays a toll, atr one time or another. There are stories of incredible people that smoke and drunk alcohol for 60 years of their life and are healthy, they have a very lucky genetic code. Must humans do not have that luck. So the bad things we do and the good things we didn´t sooner or later start to cause a damage on our organs that is beyond repair. The simple passage of time causes loss of functions on our organs, and bad habits increase the velocity of the harm. The treatment your mother is not curative it is only meant to diminish the likelyhood of complications, increase the probablility of a longer lifespan, and to try to ensure the best possible quality of life. All of this on a woman that is probably overweight, with bad collateral circulation of a heart that did a few exercise on her life and had multiple open chest surgeries, that consumed a lot of fats threw many many years, and a heart that is tired since many years ago (i am almost sure she has congestive heart failure stage C, NYHA classification III). I could continue enlisting, but i don´t think i made my point.

So do not abandon allopatic medicine. i can assure you that without the current regime she would surely wouldn´t be with you right now.

I recommend strongly two things. Search for a second opinion with an integrative type speciality doctor, a internal medicine doctor if she has less than 65 years or a geriatric specialist if she has more than 65. Sometimes subspecialist like cardiologist and neumologists and surgeons commit the error of concentrate only on their organ problem and do not see the patient as a hole. And many more commit the worst error which is not taking time to explain the disease, the treatment plant, and the possible outcomes of a patient. And search for a thanatologist they not just help people cope with death but also with lifethreatening diseases.

My last recommendation could had sounded rough. Sometimes i had been considered by others as cold hearthed. But as a doctor, as a human been, and as a friend, i like to speak this things bluntly as i would have liked that someone had told me this things when i suffered my own personal an familiar tragedies.

Two more things.

About the vegetable conpsumption, it is recommended to be limited because of their content of vitamin k. Since vitamin K is a natural antidote for warfarin, it can induce a low effect of the drug and cause hipercoagulability, ending on a trombi formation on the prosthetic valves.

And about the medicine Astrobacatin or Astrotactin. I think you mean Atorvastatin. Which is a HMG reductase inhibitor. It is used primarily to lower the serum concentration of cholesterol. But also lowers the triglycerids and promotes the stability of aterom plaques within arteries (principaly coronary vessels)

Did you read my post?

Most cardiologists in the US will fit the drug to the usual amount of greens the patients eats.

Threatening patients with thrombi for eating vitamin K greens is, if their prescriptions are in tune, bad. What matters is patient doctor contact and testing.

Please pay attention to terms of service here.
http://able2know.org/about/tos/

Of course i read it.

I respect you posts a lot and i respect you and follow your example.

And actualy you are the only one that greeted my arrival to this site. So i am fond of you.

I just thought that it will be good to explain the cause effect relation between green vegetables and warfarin.

:-(

THIS SERVICE DOES NOT PROVIDE PROFESSIONAL MEDICAL ADVICE. All the content of the service, including all postings, is for informational purposes only. The service is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. You should never disregard professional medical advice because of something you've received from or read in the able2know service.

i didn´t give a direct doctor patient advice or a prescription.

i didn´t provide a diagnosis.

And i didn´t indicated a treatment.

I tried to put everything as rational and realistic as i could. I may had step a little bit on the line in some parts, but i think i did not cross it.

Gotcha.

I'm not clear that my post was somehow forward re the first person posting here.
In any case, I don't get it.

Never mind my nattering - I'm glad to see you here.

I'm not an m.d, but worked at great places, great places not by me but as a participant. Author on papers once in a while and blah blah.
I'm glad to see medical stuff here on a2k, wish people engaged more.

I am glad too. and i am glad to had met so fine persons like you in this site.

If i can be of any help, i will gladly post what i know, and investigate the obscure things i don´t before posting anything.

I have the bad habit of liking to explain things.

My only hope is that i can be of any help.

Me too, on all that.

We will challenge each other in the future, bap bap, and then back. Maybe we can get others participating. Mostly I am quiescent, unless I get really riled up.

I am very glad you are here.

I had a similar situation with my mother a few years ago. She was on quite a lot of medications from various doctors. I made a list of them and then went to www.drugs.com to research each one of them.

Once I had a list of info, side effects and questions about each one of them, I brought it to her GP and we reviewed everything. Turned out she was over medicated on several blood pressure meds and some of her other meds were contributing to the blood pressure problems and her dementia symptoms. Her doctor took her off of almost all the meds various doctor had given her over the years. She is now on one BP med, one pain med and her osteoporosis med.

you.

Good.

We had a cable outage while I was composing a second post... Will try to recreate most of it.



In relation to my previous post, there is a big difference in energy levels, physical abilities and brain functioning between a 45 year old and 65 year old woman. Expecting her to still be the mom who used to walk to your ball games might be a bit unrealistic.

She is of age that a very thorough, comprehensive physical and neurological evaluation might be in order. She may indeed need some assistance with the onset of dementia and all that follows. Her physical weaknesses might improve with some professional physical therapy.

I'll surprise you and agree with a lot of what you say, luis. I will listen re non allopathic but with your same ear. Edgarblythe here is a good spokesman for his views, and worth reading, not just because he is a good human and writer and friend, but for his testing of a lot of this.

I never did get to med school but that was a teen dream of mine back when I read a lot of med history books in the then local library in the later fifties. Skipping over the matter of women not getting into med school back then, in time I was a tech in great labs and sometimes one of the authors, but never the deviser of what for us to do next. I learned a lot in all those years. Switched fields, but have good memories of my time in med research. I turned out to be much more in sync with my next field. (Who knew, back when I was a zoned as strongly pre med at fourteen?.)

This just an introduction, so you know as much about me talking as I do by your posts.