“Conclusions: Increasing calcium intake from dietary sources or by taking calcium supplements produces small non-progressive increases in BMD, which are unlikely to lead to a clinically significant reduction in risk of fracture.”
 

For years doctors and drug companies have been pushing drugs and supplements with high doses of calcium to make our bones stronger to prevent fractures. Now they’re telling us that it really doesn’t help.

Read the study results here in The BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal).
    

Posted under Treatment

Well, I thought when I stopped taking the metoprolol tartrate that I was home free, that I would have no more unexplained dizziness. Wrong. LOL.

I have a very acid stomach, and I’ve had several ulcers over the years, so I was taking omeprazole (Prilosec) 40mg/day. Well, I got an ulcer in January from a MethylPREDNISolone Dose Pack that I was taking for a back injury, and my G.I. specialist gave me a prescription for a greater dose of Prilosec (80mg/day). Man, did I get dizzy! Of course, it says right on the bottle: “May cause dizziness“. Duh.

Tried Protonix with the same result (dizziness). Four 150mg Zantac a day couldn’t handle the acid, and I wound up taking Prilosec again, but only 20mg/day (OTC). It appears that for now I’ve hit a decent balance between dizziness and stomach pain.

The lesson from this? Examine every medicine you take to determine if it could be contributing to your dizziness or vertigo.

Posted under Causes, Symptoms, Treatment

When I found out that soy gives me vertigo, I was overjoyed because I knew why I was suffering and I knew how to avoid it.  But then occasionally I still get vertigo.  What’s up with that?

Some of these attacks I can explain because I’ve eaten a food product that probably had soy in it, even though soy was not an ingredient listed on the package.  These items say “. . . made in a factory that also produces soy products . . . ” or something similar.  OK, that makes sense.  Produced on the same assembly line so the equipment may be contaminated with soy. Or there was soy in the air.  I don’t know.  I have no idea just how much soy is necessary to set off my vertigo.  Apparently not too much.

But then there are vertigo attacks for which I can determine no soy contamination. What caused these?  Some other allergen probably, and I’m in the process of trying to determine what that is.  My candidates are my chewable allergen-free vitamin pills, dairy products, and nuts.

How do I plan to determine which of these three items is the culprit?

MY PLAN:

Step 1:  Cut out all possible foods causing vertigo until I am living on just a few items.  For me that is some gluten-free cereal, almond milk, gluten-free bread, Boar’s Head lightly-browned turkey, Coca-Cola (thank God Coke doesn’t have soy in it!), applesauce, baked potato with no butter.  No vitamin pills.  Nothing else.  I could have a lot of veges and fruits I suppose, but I’ve got some other GI problems that preclude a lot of those.  Anyway, the point is that I get down to the basics where I’m OK.

Step 2:  Stay on that minimal diet for a couple weeks, hopefully experiencing no vertigo attacks.  If I have a vertigo attack, I have to go back to square one and cut out something else.

Step 3:  For one week add just one item to the minimal diet and see if I get vertigo.  This week it was my supposedly allergen-free vitamin pills.  Well, I haven’t had any vertigo this week, so I guess they’re all right.

Step 4:  Next week try adding some other suspected item to the minimal diet and see what happens.

You get the idea.  I’ll let you know what happens . . .

Posted under Causes, Treatment