Hi Beth, Hi Beth,
You are right that increasing absorption of a TKI does render a higher dose, and for me, yes this caused more side effects on Sprycel, but my side effects in hindsight were an auto-immune reaction. Here is the thing about lemon juice, vinegar, coke or anything that increases stomach acid, it is possible, as gleened from personal annecdotes and my personal experience, that Sprycel, and possibly other TKI's, actually cause a reduction in stomach acid over time reducing the amount of absorption of a dose that would otherwise be affective on our CML. There are still so many unknowns about these drugs. Whether that is the case or not, at a point where a dose is no longer affective, doctors have simply increased the dose, rather than trying to increase the absorption! I personally think that there is more control over how much you are absorbing and the toxicity of a drug by simply restoring your ability to absorb a medication rather than increasing the dose. If you are taking, let's say, 100mg of a drug daily, increasing the absorbtion by intentionally increasing acidity still can never give you more than 100mg, but if you increase that dose to 140mg, on any given day you could absorb more...up to the full 140mg, as the acidity level is natually affected in your stomach by what you eat. Sort of like why a particular food will give you heartburn on one day but not another...due to natural fluctuations in stomach acid. This is just my thought on this. As an interesting side note, when this vinegar topic came up here last year, I had noticed that not only was my sprycel dose not as affective but that every time I ate I got stomach pain and indigestion. On an experiment, I tried lemon juice to ease the indigestion and stomach pain and it worked. There is much anecdotal evidence of this online as an indigestion aide. So to take my experiment one step further, I started swigging lemon juice before my meals, and it completely put an end to my indigestion! As far as wound healing...yes...this was my experience also on all of the TKI drugs, wounds do not heal well or quickly! In the case of Sprycel, my skin was extremely dry and did not heal well from any type of wound, surgical or injury. I also noticed that I had an absorbtion problem from medication patches...in my case estrogen...it simply did not absorb well. I also had a more extreme reaction to chlorine when I was doing pool therapy, but found that using a heavy mosturizer prior to contact kept me from breaking out in an itchy rash. Wounds will eventually heal but must be safeguarded, with extreme vigilence, from infection due to the slower healing time. Hang in there! Hope my thoughts are able to help in some way. Peg -- -- [CMLHope] A support group of http://cmlhope.com ------------------------------------------------- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "CMLHope" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/CMLHope --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "CMLHope" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
