Drug Induced Vitamin / Mineral Deficiency

Drug Induced Vitamin / Mineral Deficiency – General Information

There are a lot of medicines and drugs which can have a negative effect on a person’s general health condition and they can badly interfere with the nutritional condition. This is the cause of the appearance of Drug Induced Vitamin / Mineral Deficiency, a disorder which affects more and more people nowadays. Doctors have determined a wide range of drugs which can cause such problems. First of all, they studied the drugs which alter the normal dietary habits of a person: these drugs can change the taste of some products, they can cause nausea, dry mouth or, in some cases, even vomiting. In this way, the drugs also interfere with the way the nutriments are absorbed, distributed and activated and they can increase the quantity of nutriments excreted. 

When a person deals with Drug Induced Vitamin / Mineral Deficiency, he should firstly be aware of the exact cause which led to the appearance of the disease. He should then eliminate that drug from his diet and he should try to find another drug to replace it. In addition, the patient should be monitored by a specialized doctor while taking certain drugs in order to observe his evolution. In order to reduce the risk of suffering from Drug Induced Vitamin / Mineral Deficiency, a person should try to keep a balance between certain nutrients in his body. In addition, he should try to eat healthy food, as fast-food products are hard to digest, absorb and, in this case, it takes longer for the organism to obtain the nutritional elements it needs.

Drug Induced Vitamin / Mineral Deficiency – Symptoms

Drug Induced Vitamin / Mineral Deficiency - Treatment

If you are taking some drugs and you notice some modifications of your general health condition, you should immediately visit a doctor in order to take some test; he should then establish if you suffer or not from Drug Induced Vitamin / Mineral Deficiency. If the results are positive, you will probably be prescribed multiple mineral and vitamin supplements and the drugs you have been taken will be certainly changed. These supplements which the doctor will choose to administrate you if you suffer from Drug Induced Vitamin / Mineral Deficiency consist of an adaptable number of essential as well as non-essential nutritional substances. The first purpose of the treatment is to assure the right quantity of nutriments and, as far as possible, to do so using just a few supplements.

Multiple vitamin and mineral supplements should be administrated just in the first weeks of treatment and they should not replace a balanced diet. These supplements contain a full dose of all the vitamins which a person should absorb every day; in what concerns the minerals, they contain about 90% of the recommended dose for a day. These supplements include vitamins B, A, K, D, C, E, as well as magnesium, selenium, calcium, zinc and, in some case, iron. Those supplements which contain iron should be taken only by the patients with a past or present iron deficiency. This kind of deficiency is however quite common, especially in the case of vegetarians, marathon runners, people who suffer from parasitic infections, those who use regularly aspirin and other related drugs, pregnant women, people who suffer from gastrointestinal inflammation and bleeding and those who have lost a big quantity of blood (after a donation or a surgery).

In order to obtain a sure diagnosis and not to choose a wrong treatment, doctors should carefully determine if a patient who suffers from Drug Induced Vitamin / Mineral Deficiency also develops an iron deficiency. If iron supplements are administrated to those who do not present such a deficiency, some severe problems can appear, such as diabetes, infections, heart diseases, cancer or arthritis. Multiple vitamin and mineral supplements can also be administrated as a second way of treatment; they can provide the rest of the nutritional substances which are not obtained from the regular treatment.
In what concerns the non-essential substances which are found in the multiple vitamin and mineral supplements, the most common one is the beta-carotene. This substance, however, does not improve or accelerate the amelioration the condition of those who suffer from Drug Induced Vitamin / Mineral Deficiency; on the other hand, it can even lead to the appearance of lung cancer in the case of smokers. In these conditions, the specialists suggest that beta-carotene should be excluded from the composition of multiple vitamin and mineral supplements. The most important fact which those who suffer from Drug Induced Vitamin / Mineral Deficiency should be aware of is that this disease can not be cured completely and, in order to reduce the possibility of the reappearance of the disease, they should try to follow a strict, equilibrated and healthy diet.