A little over half of all pregnant women in Canada are prescribed Diclectin or Bendectin to treat morning sickness during pregnancy even though this drug has not been shown to be safe for unborn children. Diseases and disorders like childhood cancer and pyloric stenosis are just two health issues that have been correlated with the use of Diclectin and Bendectin during pregnancy.The Doxylamine-Pyridoxine Morning Sickness Drug Controversy and What You Need to Know to Keep You and Your Baby Safe
"The Natural Women's Health Guide... to Pregnancy - BUY HERE!"
High dose vitamin B6 has been touted as a cure for morning sickness for many years. And it definitely can be helpful, but morning sickness is not a 2-dimensional, one-size-fits all kind of thing. Women experience varying levels of morning sickness depending on their reproductive hormone picture which is a function of the baby’s gender among other things. And the position of their organs in the abdomen, the health of their gallbladder, the presence of certain colonizing pathogens like Helicobacter pylori, Streptococcus, and a variety of other factors can all play an additional role in causing morning sickness. The B-complex vitamins tend to support each other and they work together so taking high-dose vitamin B6 won’t be as helpful as taking higher doses of all of the B complex vitamins as a natural treatment to prevent morning sickness. I have yet to find this simple fact in any of the data I’ve read so far about Doxylamine-Pyrodoxine HCl for morning sickness. I know that a lot of women are given this drug without any kind of context around the health issues that it can cause in their unborn child. So in this article, we’re going to talk specifically about the use of vitamin B6 supplementation vs. the use of prescription Doxylamine-Pyridoxine HCl so that readers can understand how vitamin B6 came to be associated with a synthetic antihistamine drug like Doxylamine.
Why Vitamin B6 Got Paired with Doxylamine: How to Make a Cheap, Old Drug Profitable Again
Drugs that are profitable must be patented. This is why natural substances are converted into synthetic derivatives in the first place. Once a natural medicinal agent is configured into a molecule that doesn’t exist in nature, it can be patented and then sold at whatever price the market demands. Doxylamine is a drug that’s been around for a long time which means that it’s patent has run out. And if a drug’s patent runs out, that means that the drug is no longer wildly profitable for the pharmaceutical company that held the patent because once the patent is up, other drug companies can produce that drug and competition drives prices down.In order to make a drug profitable again, drug companies can combine that drug with another substance to create something new that doesn’t exist in nature. And that’s what’s happened to Doxylamine-Pyridoxine HCl as a prescription drug for morning sickness. The drug companies combined Doxylamine, an old drug, with vitamin B6, also known as Pyridoxine to create an entirely new product that could be sold at a high price.
Unfortunately, many women hear about Doxylamine-Pyridoxine as a Unisom-Vitamin B6 morning sickness treatment and they think they’re bucking the system by taking these two substances at the same time without having to pay prescription drug prices. And, as far as saving money, it is true that Unisom and vitamin B6 for morning sickness would be cheaper than taking prescription Doxylamine-Pyridoxine HCl. But there’s more to this story that needs to be revealed…namely the fact that Doxylamine has not been proven safe for use during pregnancy. Indeed, it can be decidedly unsafe in some children who are born with serious health issues that are related to their exposure to Doxylamine in the womb. But while vitamin B6 is an essential nutrient that all women need during pregnancy, Doxylamine is something that should definitely be avoided.
The Conditions of Pregnancy Living Database, BETA Release - NOW AVAILABLE! Click here to learn more...Is Diclectin Safe During Pregnancy / Is Bendectin Safe During Pregnancy?
Doxylamine-Pyrodoxine HCl is essentially a fancy name for Unisom and vitamin B6 for nausea and vomiting during pregnancy. This is an FDA-approved morning sickness treatment that’s sold under the brand name Diclectin or Bendectin which makes this medicine seem very safe and very tempting to women who are feeling ill every single day of their lives during pregnancy. Big Pharma likes to have a good morning sickness drug to sell to desperate pregnant women who are willing to do anything to stop puking all the time. It’s an easy sell, after all, especially if patients can’t directly connect the drug to later health problems that develop in their child. The thing is, as long as Big Pharma doesn’t fund studies into Diclectin or Bendectin safety during pregnancy and its impact on an unborn child, pregnant women remain in the dark about whether they should be taking this drug or not. Some studies, for example, have linked pyloric stenosis and childhood cancer to the Unisom-vitamin B6 drug combination during pregnancy, but top Google results say nothing about these devastating health issues. Nonetheless, if your doctor has recommended Bendectin or Diclectin for morning sickness, and safety is something that concerns you, there are some things you need to know before you take this drug.Vitamin B6: Nutrient Cure for Morning Sickness
Over 60 years ago, in 1942, vitamin B6 was first studied for its ability to prevent morning sickness naturally and for its general ability to prevent vomiting and reduce nausea in non-pregnant individuals as well. Vitamin B6 is one of the water soluble vitamins along with vitamin C and the other B complex vitamins. When it dissolves in water inside the human body, several forms of vitamin B6 emerge including:- Pyridoxine
- Pyridoxal
- Pyridoxal phosphate
Scientists have tried to figure out which of these forms of vitamin B6 work to prevent nausea during pregnancy, but they haven’t been able to determine that yet. The active antiemetic form of vitamin B6 thus remains unknown for lack of research funding. Nonetheless, vitamin B6 is a natural nutrient that’s not only safe for use during pregnancy, but also essential to have a healthy child.
Nutricost Vitamin B6 (Pyridoxine HCl) 100mg, 240 Capsules
Vitamin B6 and Unisom: Is This a Safe Drug Combination for Morning Sickness?
Much of the literature online regarding vitamin B6 for morning sickness urges pregnant women to combine it with Unisom because this combo works so well to reduce nausea and vomiting. But the active ingredient in Unisom is Doxylamine and this drug has not been studied in terms of its actual safety in terms ofa growing fetus during pregnancy. It has, however, been studied to determine whether Doxylamine is secreted in breast milk and, as it turns out, this drug is indeed found in breast milk if a mother takes it during lactation. A baby who ingests the Doxylamine in breast milk will be affected by this drug and the baby might become irritable or over-stimulated or they might get unnaturally drowsy which can be dangerous in newborns. Both of these effects are, of course, undesirable and this is an acknowledged fact in the data about Bendectin and Diclectin and the Doxylamine-Pyridoxine HCl combination drug. But interestingly, the drug companies seem to think that while a fully developed baby at term can be harmed by Bendectin/ Diclectin that somehow, an unborn baby might be okay if exposed to this drug inside the womb. The logic is baffling and non-existent. The only way to make sense of these claims is to remember thalidomide, the famous morning sickness drug that caused birth defects and how the logic behind these meds is all about making profits rather than actually helping women have a comfortable, healthy pregnancy.Logically, if a substance is being secreted in breast milk, it’s likely that it also will impact the growing fetus because the breast tissues and the uterine tissues are directly connected via lymphatic vessels. There’s a relatively free exchange that happens via lymph fluid. Whether the Bendectin / Diclectin passes the placental barrier or not is still up for debate, but personally, given that Doxylamine alters histamine levels in the body—and knowing that altered histamine levels in the body, in turn, means that the cholinergic nervous system function is altered as well— would make me very hesitant to recommend using Unisom or Bendectin / Diclectin during pregnancy. Both seem categorically unsafe to me. The cholinergic nervous system innervates and affects all organs of the body, so any kind of malfunction or functional variation might have devastating effects on a child’s health. It doesn’t seem worth it unless you’re Big Pharma and you’re only concerned about an easy sell so you can count your dollars and cents.
The Unisom-vitamin B6 morning sickness combination seems unsafe to me to say the least and personally, I wouldn’t use it. Big Pharma, on the other hand, is seizing the opportunity to make a little money off hapless pregnant women who are suffering and even without studies proving that vitamin B6 and unisom are safe, it has developed Bendectin and Diclectin, which are doxylamine succinate and pyridoxine HCl (Unisom and vitamin B6) in a combination product for nausea and vomiting during pregnancy. Big Pharma, of course, doesn’t have a great track record in terms of creating safe morning sickness drugs. We just have to remember thalidomide and how Big Pharma promoted this drug prior to testing it thoroughly and the tragedy that ensued as a result.
Like Unisom, thalidomide was a tranquilizer and a sedative. And though thalidomide caused spectacular deformities in children that couldn’t be ignored, the current ADHD, autism, childhood cancer epidemic should give expectant mothers pause. We don’t know the exact cause or origin of these health issues, but synthetic pharmaceutical agents likely play a big role in them.
Some scientific studies into the use of Doxylamine-Pyridoxine for morning sickness have found evidence that this drug combo can cause childhood cancer or pyloric stenosis in children. These studies aren’t well-represented in a discussion of morning sickness treatments online, so wanted to highlight them here so that women have a better chance of finding this information. Both are serious health issues. Childhood cancer due to Diclectin or Bendectin is obviously bad, but pyloric stenosis is extremely serious as well. In pyloric stenosis, food can’t pass from the stomach into the small intestine. Interestingly, the area of the body affected by pyloric stenosis is precisely the area of the body that is the most actively involved producing morning sickness. Is it possible that Diclectin and Bendectin might alter nervous system transmission in a pregnant mother to reduce morning sickness while also altering nervous system transmission in her unborn child such that the child later cannot properly digest his or her food? It’s an interesting question that has not been properly explored.
I rarely recommend that people take any form of antihistamine even when pregnancy is not a part of the patient profile because antihistamines create a cascade of effects on the body that begin at a metabolic point that is highly sensitive and that ultimately alters the cholinergic system and eventually reproductive hormone levels among other things. So a simple antihistamine treatment isn’t that simple at all and Big Pharma knows this. Fiddling with antihistamine treatment during pregnancy seems like a dangerous affair in my book and I would avoid it at all costs based on my personal experience with antihistamines. Thus, I would also recommend the same to pregnant women who have been prescribed Diclectin or Bendectin.
As Lydian has slowly made her way through her first trimester of pregnancy with daily bouts of mild to moderate morning sickness that lasts all day, she’s been working with her gallbladder tenderly using Castor Oil Packs and daily doses of Trifolium pratense (1-2 teaspoons of dried herb daily as a tea) and Alfalfa (Medica sativa, 1-2 teaspoons per day in the same tea with Trifolium pratense) to help get rid of gallstones and sludge that cause morning sickness. It isn’t a fun experience and I’ve commiserated with her enthusiastically. When I was pregnant with her, it was no walk in the park either. I had morning sickness about 20 out of every 24 hours per day that lasted well into the second trimester.
Lydian takes 100 mg of vitamin B6 daily in her vitamin B-100 complex that contains either 100 mg or 100 mcg of each of the B vitamins, but she was taking this dose of vitamin B prior to becoming pregnant too. So we weren’t able to say whether the vitamin B6 helped reduce her morning sickness or not.
It’s noteworthy that the morning sickness drugs tend to be anti-anxiety, sedative medications because anxiety seems to be an emotional root cause underlying morning sickness in many women. Whether the anxiety is caused by a low-level digestive infection, or a lack of general support during pregnancy may or may not matter. At any rate, there seems to be a link between anxiety and morning sickness which has given me some new avenues to explore in terms of finding and writing about morning sickness cures. It’s vital that pregnant women get the care that they need during gestation and that they know the options that exist in terms of natural, safe treatments for morning sickness during all stages of pregnancy.
The gallbladder and the liver are usually the organs that are revolting in women with morning sickness, although sometimes morning sickness is caused by a Helicobacter pylori infection in the stomach. The emptying of the liver and the gallbladder through vomiting represent, in many respects, a new beginning in terms of relationships and lifestyle. The purge is cleansing, though incredibly uncomfortable especially for women with hyperemesis gravidarum. For women with severe morning sickness, a Hulda Clark Gallbladder Cleanse may be essential to make progress quickly. And after doing a cleanse like this to remove gallstones, vitamin B6 and the other supplements that we discuss here as natural morning sickness treatments would be much more likely to work as advertised.
In summary, though women who are really suffering with morning sickness may be tempted to take Unisom, Diclectin, or Bendectin it’s best to do without it, if possible. That being said, I know that a lot of women are on their own in terms of self-care and in many industrialized countries today, pregnant women are expected to keep pace with large men and super heroes in terms of work and chores as they go through the gestational process. So I always hesitate to impose a guilt trip on these women or make them feel fear if they’ve already taken Unisom, Bendectin, or Diclectin for morning sickness because a doctor or health professional recommended it. Anecdotally, women report that Unisom and vitamin B6 can be helpful to prevent morning sickness, but there are no follow up studies into this combination showing that Doxylamine-Pyridoxine HCl, in particular, is safe for the fetus and that it has no untoward effects against children born to mothers who used this drug during pregnancy. And Doxylamine-Pyridoxine HCl isn’t a natural substance, so there’s a huge forcefield of Big Pharma financial support to prevent any kind of valuable or honest research into the possibility that these drugs might be harmful to an unborn child. So I would personally avoid Doxylamine in all its forms whether over-the-counter or as a prescription drug. I recommend avoiding it for this reason and instead opt to work with some of the natural cures for morning sickness instead.
NOW Supplements, Vitamin B-100, Energy Production*, Nervous System Health*, 100 Veg Capsules
Vitamin B6 for Morning Sickness: A Stand-Alone Nutrient Treatment
Though studies have not been able to determine the exact mechanism of action through which vitamin B6 works to prevent morning sickness, the forms of this B complex vitamin that seem most relevant to nausea and vomiting during pregnancy are pyridoxal 5’phosphate (PLP). PLP seems to be derived from the other two forms of vitamin B6. PLP levels correlate with the presence of morning sickness symptoms particularly when pyridoxine and pyridoxal forms of vitamin B6 are undetectable in the pregnant woman’s blood serum. So, while the active antiemetic form of vitamin B6 seems to be PLP, low levels of the other forms of vitamin B6 seem to contribute to morning sickness symptoms because without them, PLP can’t be produced to prevent nausea and vomiting.Though Big Pharma has been able to demonstrate that Unisom and vitamin B6 (aka Diclectin) is more effective at preventing morning sickness that vitamin B6 by itself, the funding to study Diclectin and the Unisom-vitamin B6 combination treatment in terms of safety for the unborn child has somehow not been available yet. In other words, while Big Pharma has provided funding to scientists to study whether Unisom and vitamin B6 (and all the Doxylamine-Pyridoxine HCl drugs) works to treat morning sickness or not, funding has not been allocated to study whether Unisom and vitamin B6 cause serious health issues in children like autism, ADHD, developmental delays, cancer, digestive issues or other health problems. Indeed, there is very limited evidence demonstrating that the Unisom-vitamin B6 combination works better than vitamin B6 alone, and the scientific studies that are available regarding the effectiveness of Diclectin / Bendectin / Doxylamine-Pyridoxine HCl are funded by Big Pharma which means that there’s a conflict of interest.
The Origami of Autism: Transforming 2-Dimensional Thinking about ASD into 3-Dimensional Solutions - BUY HERE!Studies that were not funded by Big Pharma have shown that vitamin B6 by itself has an effect similar to the combination of vitamin B6 and Doxylamine. So women should definitely work with vitamin B6 as a vitamin B-100 product that contains all of the B vitamins at either 100 mg or at 100 mcg doses depending on the B vitamin in question.
Though Doxylamine-Pyridoxine drug safety during pregnancy seems like a gamble, what’s indisputable is the fact that vitamin B6 is not only safe during pregnancy, but also essential as a nutrient that a developing fetus requires. Women who wish to treat morning sickness naturally can use vitamin B6 by itself at 50-100 mg per day, but ideally, it should be combined with all of the other B vitamins as noted above.
Vitamin B6 Dose for Morning Sickness
Aim to take 100 mg of vitamin B6 daily as part of a vitamin B-100 complex supplement during pregnancy.
Click here to subscribe to the Living Database!
Resources:
• Matok, I. et al. (2014). Studying the antiemetic effect of vitamin B6 for morning sickness: pyridoxine and pyridoxal are prodrugs. Retrieved March 23, 2023 from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25052410/
• Drugs.com (2023). Doxylamine Pregnancy and Breastfeeding Warnings. Retrieved March 23, 2023 from https://www.drugs.com/pregnancy/doxylamine.html
• Pope, E. et al. (2015). Comparing pyridoxine and doxylamine succinate-pyridoxine HCl for nausea and vomiting of pregnancy: A matched, controlled cohort study. Retrieved March 2023 from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25663469/
• Persaud, N. et al. (2014). Should doxylamine-pyridoxine be used for nausea and vomiting of pregnancy? Retrieved March 2023 from https://www.jogc.com/article/S1701-2163(15)30611-3/fulltext
