Herbal Products and Cardiovascular Disease
The JACC looks at how herbal supplements can interact with the drugs that cardiologists prescribe regularly. If you take these supplements you might want to read the following article. It was published in The Journal of the American College of Cardiology which is the academic/scientific journal for cardiology doctors.
This is the summary. Click on the hyperlink below for the full article:
More than 15 million people in the U.S. consume herbal remedies or high-dose vitamins. The number of visits to providers of complementary and alternative medicine exceeds those to primary care physicians, for annual out-of-pocket costs of $30 billion. Use of herbal products forms the bulk of treatments, particularly by elderly people who also consume multiple prescription medications for comorbid conditions, which increases the risk of adverse herb-drug-disease interactions. Despite the paucity of scientific evidence supporting the safety or efficacy of herbal products, their widespread promotion in the popular media and the unsubstantiated health care claims about their efficacy drive consumer demand. In this review, we highlight commonly used herbs and their interactions with cardiovascular drugs. We also discuss health-related issues of herbal products and suggest ways to improve their safety to better protect the public from untoward effects.
http://zepickcardiology.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/5152.pdf
Taken from the JACC online
http://content.onlinejacc.org/