Fonda Health Dictionary

Anticoagulants are drugs which inhibit COAGULATION of the blood. They are used to prevent and treat abnormal clotting of the blood, to treat THROMBOSIS, and sometimes to prevent or treat STROKE or TRANSIENT ISCHAEMIC ATTACKS OR EPISODES (TIA, TIE). Anticoagulant drugs are also prescribed preventively in major surgery to stop abnormal clotting from occurring; HAEMODIALYSIS is another procedure during which these drugs are used. Anticoagulants are also prescribed to prevent thrombi (clots) forming on prosthetic heart valves after heart surgery.

The drugs are much more e?ective in the treatment and prevention of venous clotting – for example, deep vein thrombosis (DVT), see under VEINS, DISEASES OF – than in preventing thrombosis formation in arteries with their fast-?owing blood in which thrombi contain little ?brin (against which the anticoagulants work) and many PLATELETS.

The main anticoagulants now in use are the natural agent HEPARIN (a quick-acting variety and a low-molecular-weight long-acting type); synthetic oral anticoagulants such as WARFARIN and the less-often-used acenocoumarol and PHENINDIONE; and antiplatelet compounds such as ASPIRIN, clopidogrel dipyridamole and ticlopidines. Fondaparinux is an extract of heparin which can be given once daily by injection; ximelagatran, an inhibitor of thrombin, is being trialled as the ?rst new oral anticoagulant since heparin.

Patients taking anticoagulants need careful medical monitoring and they should carry an Anticoagulant Card with instructions about the use of whatever drug they may be receiving – essential information should the individual require treatment for other medical conditions as well as for thrombosis.... anticoagulants

The softening of bone mass and the widening of the bone canals. This occurs with both age and diminished physical activity. Since women live longer, they are more likely to show such signs. (WARNING! Tirade Ahead!) There is little doubt that the condition is increasing among American women, and is starting to show itself at an earlier age. This is called “improved diagnostic methods” (harumph). The statistics that show the rise to be strongest in women that have used steroid hormone therapies in their earlier years seems to have escaped the notice of current Medical Conventional Wisdom. This states that ALL women need medical care against osteoporosis going into menopause, and the primary treatment is...steroid hormones (this year, at least). I know this may sound smarmy, coming from some long-in-the-tooth hippy male, but I would be far more impressed if SERIOUS attention was given to carefully defining the parameters of a woman’s risks. The road of medicine is strewn with four decades of well-intended universal hormone approaches to women’s health...embarrassedly forgotten. The idea of universal HRT for a whole generation of menopausal women seems like a frightening experiment in medical fascism and band-wagon hubris. There is no attention given as to WHY our future elders are suddenly stricken with a medical problem. Were birth-control pills, made up of synthetic digestion-proof steroid analogues, a major cause? Has our food become simply inadequate and over-pocessed? Have the decades of exposure by women to xeno-estrogens that are derived from degraded insecticides had more effect than the ones claimed by environmental watch-dog groups...the rise in breast and prostate cancer, the halving of the sperm count in Caucasian males and little-dicked alligators reported from Florida? Is the synthetic flavor in that pink bubble gum to blame? Perhaps its the fumes released from the early Barbies? FDS? There must be some reason, but the present medical answer is only HRT and (if politics allow) Jane Fonda tapes.... osteoporosis