Avoiding Corn in Canada
Avoiding Corn in CanadaMany, many medicinal products contain corn derivatives.
Similar laws apply to labelling drug ingredients as apply to foods – corn derivatives can go by names that don't include the word “corn,” including dextrin, dextroxe, glucose, maize starch, starch, and xanthan gum (see the government's “List of Acceptable Non-Medicinal Ingredients,” described more concisely in this site's food section list). If the medication is over-the-counter you can determine whether it contains corn by either reading the ingredient list or calling the 1-800 number on the package. If the medication is by prescription, however, things get more complicated.
Most pills contain corn starch. It is used to hold them together. Almost all over-the-counter antihistamines are made this way. Cough syrups, antibiotic suspensions and other liquid medications are typically sweetened with corn syrup. Some eye drops are thickened with dextrose, and some creams and lotions contain corn as well. Always read the ingredients.
Most if not all baby formulas available in Canada contain corn. The American company Nature's One makes a corn-free baby formula that is not distributed in Canada, but it is available by mail order from their website.
The easiest way to avoid problems is to let your doctor know about your corn allergy in advance. This includes letting him or her know all the names that corn derivatives can appear under (see list). When you go to the doctor you can then ask him or her to look up the medication he or she is prescribing you in the CPS before he or she writes the prescription. (The CPS is a big blue book that lists the medicinal and non-medicinal ingredients of every kind of medication legal in Canada. Every doctor and pharmacist has a copy). If the drug or brand of drug the doctor had in mind comes in a formulation with corn in it, it can then be possible for the doctor to decide right there to prescribe you a different one.
Make sure that you have your doctor write the brand of the corn-free drug and “no substitutions” on the prescription so that when you take it to the pharmacy, they don't give you another formulation of the same drug, that contains corn. Alternatively, if the doctor doesn't have time to look up the drug, make sure that he or she writes “corn-free formulation” on the prescription so that it is clear to the pharmacist that he or she has to look up its ingredients before giving it to you. In this case, you will have to list the names that corn derivatives can appear under to the pharmacist, as well. If your pharmacist finds that the drug the doctor has prescribed is not available in a corn-free formulation, he or she will have to phone the doctor and get him or her to change the prescription, and then repeat the process if that doesn't work out. (This is a very annoying situation for everyone involved! Best to avoid this by having the doctor look up the drug in the first place.)
In the event that the drug that the doctor wants to prescribe for you is not available in a corn-free formulation, it may be possible to phone the drug manufacturer and find out whether they will sell the pure drug to a compounding pharmacy. If you don't feel comfortable doing this yourself, your pharmacist can do it for you. A compounding pharmacy can then take this powder and make it into pills for you, using a filler other than corn starch.
Warning: some compounding pharmacies just crush up high dose pills and add filler to make lower-dose pills. If the original pills contain corn starch, so will the compounded pills, even if the filler is corn-free. Check to see that the compounding pharmacy you wish to use has the capability to make up pills or capsules using pure powdered medications.
Drugs compounded this way can be expensive, but they can be worth the cost if you are going to be taking that particular medication for a long time. If the prescription is for something that you only need to take once or twice, though, it may be easiest just to take the 1 or 2 pills along with an antihistamine, depending on the severity of your sensitivity to corn.
The dextrose solutions used for intravenous drips in hospitals has enough residual corn to cause a reaction in at least some corn-allergic people. An American woman allergic to corn was documented to have a serious reaction to a dextrose drip. I recently had an unpleasant dextrose drip experience (July 2009). After about 20 ml of the infusion entered my arm, it felt like a giant needle was stabbing me about 15 cm along the vein it was entering. About 50 ml of dextrose solution was infused in total. Luckily, aside from the sharp pain in my arm, the worst symptoms I experienced were an itchy throat and itchy eyes. Moral of the story: make sure that anything administered to you in hospital is prepared with saline only, not dextrose!
Enteral and parenteral nutrition solutions are used to feed people who can't swallow or who have serious stomach trouble. At this time, all or almost all of the ones available in Canada contain corn derivatives. A few corn-free formulations exist in the USA, as this article (PDF) describes. (See table 10 on page 60). Years ago, I was supposed to have been given an enteral solution when I was in the hospital. Since no corn-free enteral formulation could be found, I pulled through by eating lots of corn-free peanut butter, margarine, eggs, and apple sauce instead.
Medical devices
If you need stitches or heart surgery, you might be interested in knowing that bioresorbable sutures (stitches) and cardiac stents (little tubes to keep blocked arteries open) are made of corn-derived plastics. The stents are not yet on the market in Canada but the sutures are. I don't know if these materials have enough corn in them to cause a reaction, but I would rather opt for removable stitches or a metal stent rather than risk having a reaction in an already wounded part of my body.
