Americans love herbal treatments – for every kind of condition from a simple depression to a cholesterol condition. We love our herbal treatments because we consider them safe and free from incidental effects. There’s just one little detail that we tend to forget – when you have a serious condition like a heart disease that you are taking a regular prescription for, herbal medicines can undoubtedly cause interactions. If you are undergoing treatment for heart disease of any kind, there are several kinds of herbal treatments that you should avoid.
Could any kind of herbal treatment be any more innocent or simpler than garlic? You get garlic in its natural state to use in your recipes and you get them as capsules or pills. These are great as a treatment for heart disease. Garlic lowers your bad cholesterol, your blood pressure and it is also great as a blood thinner and to control artherosclerosis. The problem with garlic is that it seriously interacts with certain other drugs that people with heart disorders are prescribed – like warfarin. Warfarin is for people with an irregular heart rhythm. Since garlic is a natural blood thinner, it reacts with the action of warfarin and increases the risk that people on it will bleed internally. Saw palmetto is the fruit of the Palmetto palm tree. You get saw palmetto extract in capsule form or as a kind of tea. People use saw palmetto as a treatment for an enlarged prostate gland, to help with hair loss, with a low sex drive and other such problems. If you take warfarin as treatment for heart disease, saw palmetto is going to make you bleed internally again.
Let’s say that you are interested in echinacea. You like it in the juice form that they sell it in for the way it boosts your immune system and helps you stay clear of colds and attacks of the flu. What could possibly be wrong with this? Just a little thing: people who take statin drugs for treatment for heart diseases like high cholesterol will find that echinacea reacts with their drugs and causes liver damage.
