Omeprazole

marge you've posted something about minerals and vitamins but I could find your story. Would it be a problem if you shared you story with us?

Why are you/were you on omeprazole, what dosage were you on, were you on them on a daily basis or some year intervals or so, what other drugs have you been taking along PPIs and did you experience any side effects appart from mineral, vitamin def.? Tnx.

My symptoms have been just about everything everyone here has talked about over the years.  As I said below,  the vitamin and mineral supplements have helped alot, along with the whey protein.  I also get vitamin B12 shots twice a month. But, nothing solves all of the problems until you get off Omeprazole completely, but decreasing your dose helps.  Here my recommendations again:

Start weaning yourself off of prilosec (omeprazole) if you haven't already, with your doctor's permission.  Buy the over the counter pills (which are not absorbed as well as the Rx capsules) and take them with food first.  If your heartburn/GI pain is not a problem, start cutting them in half.  If you are taking it twice a day, just cut one dose in half and take a full pill the other dose.  Give that some time, a few weeks, and if your pain is not worse or not controlled by baking soda or Zantac, cut the remaining full pilil dose in half and do the same over time.  If a half is too much, try 1/3 or a 1/4.  It takes time but if you're not doing anything to get off this drug your issues are not going to get any better.  Start now and think you will find that you are getting better. 

Also, omeprazole causes nutrient deficiencies.  Check the medical literature if you want to be sure.  Iron is a huge issue as well as magnesium, calcium, and most trace minerals.  Also, protein digestion is impaired with omeprazole.  As a nutritionist (PhD) I have found that supplementing with iron (fumerate form), a liquid calcium magnesium, and a good multiple with all trace minerals help the symptoms.  But I don't take pills, I take capsules!  Pills are formulated to digest at a normal gastric pH and people on omeprazole have a much higher pH.  Capsules are the best choice.  If you decide to try this, be sure to check with your doctor and have your iron status assessed before you start any iron supplements!!  People with hemachromatosis (iron storage disease) should not take iron supplements.  However, omeprazole is beginning to be used as a treatment for iron storage disease because it impairs iron absorption so badly.  Be sure they check total iron, transferrin, and ferritin, not just hemoglobin!  A lot of the muscle cramps will ease of if you get your ferritin levels above 40.  When I was getting worked up for the leg pain, etc. at the University of California, San Francisco, the neurologist was very clear that alot of my problems would get better with iron supplementation and he was correct.  Not gone, you need to get off Omeprazole for that, but better.  

The other thing I do is use whey protein isolate.  Not the concentrate, too much sugar, an isolate with no sugar, flavor, vitamins, etc.  just whey protein.   You can put it in anything from shakes to soup to oatmeal.  This list goes on, be creative.

Last, drinking a lot of water everyday seems to really help.  I drink a minimum of 3 of my 24 oz water bottles per day, sometimes more, + what I drink at meals and that seems to be helping a lot. 

I am slowly weaning off the way i described above and i'll see how that goes.  I've tried lots of other things in place of omeprazole and that way doesn't seem to work. 

Good luck!

Thank Marge,

I take 20mg once a day. I could go to 10mg but the chest pains come back a bit. Its strange, I never get the heartburn only the horrble chest pains. I have never had a burning feeling. But the chest pains are so terrible they will keep me up for hours feeling like I'm being stabbed. I can never go back to that again. So if that means staying on the meds so be it. Thank you for all your advice.

Blood test ranges for nutrient deficiencies are based on a level that causes frank disease, not an optimum level.  With the iron, all my tests are within normal to low normal range, except for ferritin so the usual blood test done by a GP wouldn't catch the problem.  My small blood cells from iron deficiency were masked by the larger bloods from B12 deficiency.  I had verified B12 neuropathy with a blood level of 1286!  What makes that feasible is to know that B12 blood levels can get high with injection or supplementation and that there are carrier proteins for B12 that sequester the extra B12.  These proteins don't deliver B12 to tissue.  If it's not available to tissue, it doesn't do you much good.  Most MD's don't know this.  What I’m saying is, there are reasons to supplement even if you get tested and don't have below normal levels.  Increased blood concentrations can drive reactions that  levels in the lower but normal range won't drive as well.  Most docs will give you iron sulfate in huge doses - because you don't absorb much iron sulfate so you need the big dose which also gives you lots of GI distress.  Fumerate or bis-glycinate is much better absorbed in the high pH gut caused by omeprazole without the GI distress.  Most liquid calcium/mag supplements are all chelated and acidified for better absorption but your doctor won't give you these.  They rarely even recommend magnesium be taken with calcium although the magnesium awareness with omeprazole is getting better. 

The other issue here is that some people have problems and some don't.  This can be because of genotype differences or simple polymorphisms.  So some may take omeprazole and never have the same issues that others have.  Individuality with pharmaceuticals is huge and unless it is a blatant genotype issue, hard to pinpoint. 

If you were anaemic and needed iron supplements you can be sure you were also low in any and all micronutrients normally obtained from animal protein.  You may not have tested low but the increase in pH in the stomach prevents the activation of pepsin which is the 1st step enzyme digestion of animal protein which in turn, causes a decrease in the secondary digestion in the duodenum.   This drug basically creates a "functional" malabsorption and therefore, functional deficiencies.  You're eating enough food but not releasing everything from your food to be absorbed.  That's without getting into what the effects of this drug may be on the actual absorption processes.  The papers are out there.  Go to Pubmed and read them. 

If you treat living on this drug the way someone with malabsortion would live, you will do better no matter what, in my opinion, hence my using supplements.  They have to be in the most bioavailable form and in capsule to do you any good.  I use whey protein ISOLATE because it requires little digestion.

Marge, it all comes down to genetics, doesn't it?