Americans who take prescription medicine also use supplements like vitamins, herbs, or botanicals because these products are natural, it's easy to assume they're harmless. However, health care professionals warn combining supplements with prescription medications can cause some dangerous side effects. Fox Medical Teams Beth Galvin joins us now to talk about this. Good morning. Beth, many doctors recommend us to take vitamin D, things like B12. So what are the supplements we should worry about and interacting with prescriptions? >> Well, good morning, Pam. So I think it really depends on, you know, the medications that you're taking, the prescription medications or over-the-counter medications that you're taking and what you're taking them for. And so it's really important to have that conversation with your doctor if you're going to try something new. But so, for example, if you're on a prescription, blood thinner, to lower your risk of stroke or, you know, other complications like that, or you're taking aspirin, which is also an over-the-counter blood thinner, you want to avoid supplements like very common supplements like garlic, ginkgo, ginseng, vitamin E, even glucosamine because all of those can have blood thinning effects. And that can raise your risk if you're combining two things at once, doing the same thing of having internal bleeding or even having a bleeding type stroke. Another thing is, you know, if you're on an antidepressant, you want to avoid Saint John's wart, which some people take sort of as a natural antidepressant, because combining a prescription antidepressant with Saint John's wart can cause serotonin levels to increase very quickly to dangerous levels for you. And then the same thing with Saint John's wart may affect how other medications, risk it and how effective they are. So if you're taking Saint John's wart, it can make taking birth control pills less effective. It can make organ transplant medications, heart medications, HIV Aids medications less effective. So it's just really sort of about knowing what you're taking and what might cause a problem. And that's really a conversation. I think, with your health care provider. Same thing with someone who's taking metformin for diabetes. They don't want to then be taking goldenseal a supplement because that can make the medication for diabetes less effective. So Pam, it's sort of like, you know, these combinations, you know, I could probably list all day different combinations that can be problematic. But it's really about what you're taking for what you're taking it and mixing something new in there. >> Well, over whelming. There's so many things that I hadn't even thought about and common medications like you're saying. So what is the best way to tackle this? Make sure that you list all supplements, like with your doctor, with your pharmacist. What should we do? >> Yeah. You know, I talked to a pharmacist about this and he said, I really kind of want to know everything that you're taking, so put it all out there. So even if you don't think you know, a vitamin or mineral really matters, it can matter when we talk about drug interactions, because those are drugs too, you know, even though they're natural supplements. So in the vast majority of people, that's going to be safe and no problem. But if you're taking multiple medications, you want to make sure that adding something new into your repertoire that you check with your health care provider first, make sure that that's, you know, okay, you're not at risk of having any kind of an interaction. And you should be good to go. >> Pam, if you have that conversation with your doctor, does that information get to the pharmacist or should you also discuss with the pharmacist? >> So I don't know that it will necessarily get to the pharmacist because you're not, you know you're not. The pharmacist isn't filling it. If you're buying it over the counter and you do want to be careful about over the counter medications too. We're talking about supplements. But over the counter medications can also cause problems, because sometimes you'll have two different medications that have the same active ingredient. And you'll get kind of too high a dose at the active ingredient. If you're looking at prescription and over-the-counter, for example, acetaminophen, you know, which can be problematic, if you get too much of that for your liver. So it's really, I think, about updating both the pharmacist and your doctor if you're starting to take something new. And really, if you don't want to go and take time to go see the doctor, talk to your pharmacist at your local drugstore, ask them, hey, I'm thinking about taking a, B or C, is this a good idea? If I'm already you know, if you see what? I'm already taking great advice because I know you can m
