Warfarin Increases Risk of Death from Trauma
How many patients need to be involved in a study before it's taken seriously?
100? 1,000? 100,000?
How about 1.23 million? Think that's enough to finally knock down a widely used (and very dangerous) drug?
I hate to be a pessimist, but I doubt it.
After looking at data from 1.23 million patients, researchers have confirmed what the Nutrition & Healing team has been warning against for years—that warfarin (sold as Coumadin) significantly increases the risk of dying from a traumatic injury. In fact, the death rate for traumatic injuries is more than double for patients on warfarin.
The research, presented at the American College of Surgeons 2009 Clinical Congress, showed that risk was increased in both elderly and younger patients. And that warfarin therapy brings even more risk for people under 65.
Think about it—if you're younger, you have more of a chance of surviving trauma. So warfarin can have an even bigger effect on your chances of making it through alive.
None of this is really surprising for a drug that got its start as rat poison (that's right).
But gets worse. The researchers had felt they were seeing more and more patients on warfarin among their trauma patients, and they were right. In fact, warfarin use in general has been climbing since 2002.
So, more and more people are being dosed with a drug that doubles your risk of dying from a traumatic injury. And there's no end in sight. Sure, there's a lot of talk of adding this information to the "risk profile" for warfarin, but absolutely no talk of pulling it from the market.
Which is ridiculous, considering that there are safe alternatives. In fact, Dr. Wright's been using one in his practice for over 30 years with great success: fish oil. Fish oil works by making platelets so slippery that they can't stick together easily to form a clot.
It tastes pretty bad, but it does the trick (and you can mix it with rice or almond milk if you have trouble choking it down). For blood-thinning purposes, Dr. Wright recommends 2 to 3 tablespoons of cod liver oil each day along with 800-1,000 IU of vitamin E.
Christine O'Brien writes the e-letter Health eTips for Dr. Wright's Nutrition and Healing.
You can sign up for the free eTips at www.wrightnewsletter.com.
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Anonymous
Found your article about Warfarin, again - to check on my memory, re platelet stickyness.
Having been on Warfarin for 6 years, after a blocked RCA, my Cadiologist recently (June) increased my Fish Oil - Omega 3 to 2,000 units twice a day (totals 4,000 most days now).
I went to this gradually until I found a brand at Sams Club that had been 'purified' to be certain that there is no Mercury. Then went to one of my previous stock and one of the purified ones twice a day, and my INR went up from 2.3 to 2.9. Complied with suggestion to use only 1.25 once day a week instead of 2.5 each evening - still at 2.9 after three weeks.
So am going now to 1.25 mg three nights a week (without such added change in instructions to see if the added fish oil capsuls will be sufficiently compensated for in this two week period. If not, I will let you know. (I'm also on 4,000 to 5,000 D3 each day and a lab test of 59 in that 50-65 best range).
I am a nearly 85 year old male who had supposedly the third U.S. balloon angioplasty 25 1/2 years ago (August 1, 1984) for a totally blocked LAD, that had only an estimated 1% blood flow after 80 minutes of Streptokinase through a catheter to the blockage site.
I had walked into the Emergency room with minimal pain the third time it hit me that morning, (the first time when it woke me up, I downed 4 Regular Aspirin) right away - and slowly walked around for 15 minutes, before going back to bed and a brief doze before awakening with mild pain again).
After breakfast and off to work, it came again - realizing that I needed to get this checked out prior to leaving the next day for a Flight to Florida that would get me back 8 days later; I had my wife pick me up and drive me to our University Hospital.
My previous (up to 8 years before) 1200 ft TV Tower climbing, sometimes with 100+ pounds of repair stuff, hung below me from well-padded Shoulder straps, several times each year for more than a dozen years - had probably restored my previous exercise driven colateral circulation capability when riding a bicycle 14 or more miles each day in my Michigan High School days.
Add to that, I taught myself self-hypnosis when 13, and can relax selecrtively, so needed no medication for such during the whole (back then) proceedure using only weighted tip catheters. Over 5 hours strapped to that tilt table, back then.
I'm also a consulting Professional Engineer (55 years) so cause and effect relationships were rather familiar to me. No coffee since 1942 (due to bitter after-taste) no beer since 1947, very rarely even one small drink, and smoked a few weeks before giving it up while in the Navy in 1944)
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