It is becoming increasingly evident that medicinal drugs that have a suppressive effect on anything in the body diminish heart health. Every time you try to prevent the body from clearing out accumulated toxins and waste through a cold, a viral infection, or a disease process that includes inflammation, your heart is burdened with the difficult task of having to push the harmful waste material released from the tissues back to where it came from. With each new attempt to subdue pain, infection, cholesterol, etc., less and less of this waste finds its way out of the body. Some of it ends up congesting the lymph ducts responsible for draining the heart muscles of their metabolic waste products. Antibiotics are one of the leading culprits for this form of heart damage. 

For many years, antibiotics have been over-prescribed, often for infections (such as the common cold and flu) that they have no effect on at all. It is common knowledge that antibiotics don’t kill viruses, only bacteria. Now a new study shows that the popular antibiotic erythromycin, which has been widely used since the 1950s, may actually trigger cardiac arrest.

For many years, heart doctors have been aware of a risk of cardiac arrest when erythromycin is used intravenously, but this risk has been less well known among family practitioners who often prescribe the same antibiotic in pill form to treat a wide variety of infections. This new study, conducted by researchers from Vanderbilt University, examined the risk of cardiac arrest when oral erythromycin is used alone or with other medications. Their report, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in October 2004, covered the medical records of more than 4,400 Medicaid patients, averaging 15 years per patient. About 1,475 subjects suffered cardiac arrest during the study period. When the complete medication use of each subject was analyzed, researchers came up with these results:

• The rate of sudden death from cardiac causes was twice as high among patients using erythromycin, compared to subjects that didn't use the antibiotic.
• Two blood pressure medications that are sold generically – verapamil and diltiazem – were both associated with an additional increased risk of cardiac arrest when taken with erythromycin.
• Other drugs associated with increased cardiac attack risk when taken with erythromycin include the antibiotic clarithromycin, the vaginal yeast infection drug fluconazole, and two antifungal drugs: itraconazole and ketoconazole

According to the researchers, blood levels of these additional drugs may be boosted by erythromycin, making the blood thick and sluggish. This can result in a slower heart rate, which in turn may trigger irregular rhythms, setting in motion a cardiac arrest. In an interview with The Associated Press, the lead researcher of the study, Wayne A. Ray, Ph.D., warned that erythromycin levels may also be increased by drinking grapefruit juice or by taking protease inhibitors used to treat AIDS.

Just because your doctor prescribes you a medical drug does not mean it is safe. Very few drug interactions with other drugs or with common foods have ever been tested. Drug prescription can be a gamble of life and death that you a willing to risk when you enter your doctor’s office. The bottom line is that all pharmaceutical drugs contain poisons that have a detrimental effect on your health. Your heart is the one that pays the ultimate price for the constantly offered and highly praised shortcuts to health.

The fact is that no Disease Control Agency or Federal Drug Administration (FDA) can protect you from developing a serious illness or dying as a result of using prescribed drugs. The VIOXX scandal of September 2004 has taught us that there are no safe drugs out there. VIOXX, a leading arthritis drug, was withdrawn by its producer, Merck & Co., after evidence leaked out that its use doubled the risk of heart attack and stroke. [As per the end of 2004, Merck was faced with over 1,000 lawsuits]. According to documentation, this risk has been known to both the drug producer and the FDA since the mid-nineties. The result of this well-kept secret was that a minimum of 27,000 people suffered a heart attack or died because of it. Given the high number of unreported side-effects, this number may well exceed hundreds of thousands.

More are more drugs are coming under suspicion of being killer drugs. Bextra is next. According to a study of more than 1,500 patients who had previously undergone cardiac surgery, those who were treated for pain with Bextra were more likely to have heart and blood clotting problems than those who received no drug at all. Stroke, heart attack, blood clots in the lung, deep vein blood clots in the leg, all can result just from taking this drug. Arthritis drugs have never been safe, but they have never been properly tested for safety. Vioxx, Celebrex, Bextra, Aleeve, Aspirin are just plain poisons.  Another arthritis drug – infliximab (Remicade) – is on cancer-causing alert. Amazingly, so many people have been so blinded by clever advertising campaigns and methods of brainwashing that they have no clue they are methodically poisoned in order to support and sustain, besides oil, the most lucrative business in the world – the pharma-medical industry.

The main question is how could anyone possibly want to entrust his life to the hands of drug-producers whose only objective it is to keep the sickness-business going by making sure what they produce creates more health problems that it can resolve? In the majority of all cases, attempting to prescribe medications that claim to offer a relief to the symptoms of disease is not only a dangerous approach, but also an unscientific and unethical one.  

[This is an extract from my book 'Heart Disease No More', available on http://www.ener-chi.com/book.htm]