The following Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Mark Sisson, and is narrated by Tina Lehman.

Five common prescriptions that should require nutritional counseling.

I'm not a drug denier. For the most part, at the base level, pharmaceuticals do what they're supposed to do. Statens lower cholesterol, beta blockers lower blood pressure. Antibiotics kill

bacteria. Whether those changes save lives or reverse disease is another question entirely,

but we can all agree that pharmaceuticals deserve a place in modern medicine. And even if we don't,

they objectively have a place and we must acknowledge reality. We can also agree that many of the

most common prescription drugs affect the way we absorb,

metabolize, utilize, and excrete vitamins, minerals, and other important health cofactors.

People taking them deserve nutritional counseling. This is my quick and dirty attempt to encourage that.

Please note that none of my advice is medical. I can't speak to

anyone's personal circumstances and therefore can't call this nutritional counseling or advice for

your individual case. That said, research, as always, demonstrates patterns, and these aren't

always given their due in the course of prescription

writing or even follow-up exams. If you wish to discuss the following findings with the person

prescribing you a drug, go to today's post at marksdailyapple.com and print out or email the references

to which I link. Here we go. Number one, statins.

Statins don't just reduce cholesterol production.

Statins reduce cholesterol by inhibiting the HMG-COA reductase enzyme pathway that lies

upstream of cholesterol synthesis.

But here's the problem.

Lots of other biological compounds lie downstream of

HMG COA, not just cholesterol. When you block HMG COA reductase, you also block production

...