Thread: Why you should be wary about medications

Most people who take drugs do so not by choice, but as a necessity.
Most of the drugs people take are not new but are old technology that works.
Sure there have been some spectacular failures with drugs but the usual reason for that is peoples need to be totally pain free so use excess quantities of drugs.
I am cancer free due to BCG which is the old TB Vaccine. I move freely due to a combination of other drugs for my rheumatoid arthritis.
Now I do have a very good specialist and I do self manipulate my drug intake with his blessing. It is the minimum I can take without risking flare-ups and joint damage.
Major problems arise where you overdo the drugs. I see the régime of some sufferers in the USA take and it shocks me. Bucket loads of steroids and the like.
The other mistake people make is over the counter stuff asprin etc. These at high rates do damage, there are better alternatives
I am concerned to some extent by Erns post. We should all avoid taking stuff we don’t need, but avoiding drugs we do need is just as bad.
On some drug companies and their practices, I would not comment other than to say it’s a very old profession, perhaps the first..
If you have a serious problem you need a specialist. To my mind the local GP is reasonable on ingrown toenails etc, beyond that seek a specialist.
Last but not least, you are the person most likely to look after you. Use every tool you can to check and double check everything about you and/or your problems.

My experience with Western medicine is what gave rise to that post.

The primary interventions used are surgery and medication.

As Cliff's signature notes, if the only tool you have is a hammer you tend to see everyone problem as a nail.

Yes, GPs are aware of the importance of educating patients about diet, exercise, smoking and drinking and some of them pursue this energetically, others less so.

If you read my post as saying 'don't take medications' then you misread it. The basic message is to inform yourself about them and also about potential alternatives that may be less invasive or have fewer side effects, and make a decision in conjunction with your health professional.

As an aside, there are also many patients who just want the silver bullet they think a medicine should be and don't want to be any more active in their own care than to pop some pills. When this matches the medico's approach and you have big companies pushing the same idea, you have a major health care dead-end.

It's been estimated that the majority of health care costs arise from preventable diseases - many of them the lifestyle diseases of obesity, and cigarette and alchohol abuse. Reducing these involves changing people's behaviour, which is not an easy thing.

A service where a phamacist vists you and reviews all your meds and asseses their efectiveness,etc etc is available ,had a visit from one yesterday, being a diabetic have to keep close watch on things like insulin to make sure i dont have any hypos or hypers,dont know whether this service is available to all,quiz your GP if in doubt

[QUOTE=rsser;1272272]
But bear in mind that they are often busy, may not be up to date and are also subject to pharmaceutical company pressure. They will get regular visits from reps, free gifts and samples and sometimes free junkets to 'educational' events with food and wine. Studies have been done on the effects of this and show that even a minor gift like a coffee mug emblazoned with the drug or company name can influence prescribing decisions.

Ern

Congratulations on a very bold and confronting topic. I think in some ways you have covered everything I might have said and a lot more to boot, but I am bound to throw in my twopennyworth .

Almost every prescription issued is checked by the doctor in the drug company's handbook. Now while you might say this system of crosschecking is laudable (and it is) it also emphasises how tied the medical practioners are to the drug companies.

I have witnessed the junkets. The drug company will wine and dine a group of doctors and their wives and their children. At other times they provide morning tea at the practice sometimes every day of the week and indeed the reps from the drug companies have to book in for the priveledge of providing this tea.

Unfortunately there is very little open mindedness from the modern GP. Indeed there is a deal of hostility towards the natural medicines, which in reality were the traditional medicines. The drug companies from their point of view actively lobby against natural remedies, because, I suspect, they can't patent natural products and reap a fortune or two.

Some of this tunnel vision by doctors is no doubt due to the increasing incidence of mal-practice suits. If the doctor can point to the drug company's handbook and say he has followed their recommendations, it is more difficult to bring a case against him than if he went out on a limb. I think too that too many doctors are all for the easy life and are unwilling to investigate alternatives.

That of course is not true of every doctor.

This all points again to the power the drug companies have in dictating the course of modern medicine. If they get it wrong or are unconsionable, it is passed down the line with the patient being the ultimate sufferer.

I should say in defense of modern medicine that there are areas that the natural remedies just cannot compete. For example if your knee joint has disintegrated no amount of herbs and potions will fix it. Surgery is the final remedy or be confined to the wheelchair.

Enough for now. I look forward to the development of this thread.

Regards
Paul

Good points Paul and AG. Couldn't agree more.

With some orthopaedic procedures Western medicine saves a lot of folk a lot of pain and disability.

I've had minor arthroscopic hip surgery which eliminated one source of my lower back pain.

That said, another source of skewing towards drugs or surgery is the way the Medical Benefits Scheme works in Australia.

Basically it subsidises GPs and specialists. If you want to try other types of therapy then you pay for it or pay for private health insurance and make up the difference.

Happily the MBS has been extended in limited ways in the last couple of years, to midwives, nurse practitioners, and to a few complementary health care consultations if authorised by a GP and provided by physios, chiros, osteos etc.

It hasn't helped me much however. My GP wasn't willing to work out the care plan for my physio.

And what keeps me mobile and mostly pain free in the lower back is the gym 5 days a week and the physio. My private health cover doesn't run to the monthly gym membership fee and rebates only about a third of the physio fees.

By contrast, a good proportion of any PBS approved medicine would be subsidised and likewise for surgery in the MBS; but it's now clear to me after decades of dealing with the issue that those are not the best options. And the research on treatment options for lower back pain has produced general findings consistent with my experience.

Go figure.

Please understand that there is no such thing as natural medication. Someone descovered that chewing the bark of birch stopped pain and we found asprin The combinations of nature are iifnite, There is a cure for everything if you knew what to mix with what. People go off half cocked with ideas that we have to eat non modified foods, Innoulation is bad etc. Well lets look at facts, Most of us should be dead if had been born 100 years ago. Me, I was dead as an adolescent.
Man has yet to invent something unatural, where everything without exception has origins on this earth.
If modern medicine was bad the trend was for life to be shortened, As this is not so consider that on average you are better off today than yesterday. Understand also, we all grind our own organ due to our own bias or experiences. Listen to the notes, understand the reasoning..
But my final note is one of caution. In every aspect of life the gullable get gutted, avoid being a victim.

Rrobor

You are right on the money.

Many medicines are described as natural, but it is probably misleading. I am not quite sure the best way to differentiate between modern drugs manufactured in a laboratory and traditional medicines mashed up with a pestal and mortar. Perhaps that is it. Modern drug production needs a highly sophisticated laboratory. And lots of money.

My take on this is that frequently drug companies try to reinvent the wheel. They too often do this for purely mercenary reasons. Like you said, if you know where to look there is a remedy out there. Unfortunately they can't make enough money from that.

For example, you have the misfortune to walk through stinging nettles and immediately immediately reach into your back pack for "stinggoes" or "sting ease, but if you know what to look for "dock weed" crushed up will ease the irritation. One product is manufactured in the lab; The other grows wild often right next to it.

That is of course a ridiculously simple example. If you are even more unfortunate and are bitten by a brown snake or a funnel web spider you are going to need an antidote and it is probably made in a lab.

The point I would like to make is that there is no acknowledgement by the medical fraternity that other treatments may work and there is no willingless to embrace such technologies. In fact I believe that a GP is actively prevented from dispensing natural medicine, presumeably by the AMA.

A quick of example : When my daughter was about 10 years old she developed a very angry rash on her feet. The doctors after many weeks of trying what seemed to be every drug known had virtually given up and we took her to a local naturopath, who we knew to have a very good reputation.

She prescribed a nettle infusion (those wretched stingy thingos again) which my daughter could not bring herself to drink. It apparantly tasted too vile. So she made a brew in a bowl and soaked her feet in it while she watched TV.

The next morning the rash was all but gone and after three days it was gone. To this day she still uses the remedy if the rash flares again except nowadays she drinks it as an infusion.

Lastly you made another very moot point. What is in it for the various parties who are pushing their particular barrow? The medical profession is one of the oldest unions in existence and fiercely defend their territiory primarily by singing their own praises and maligning anything that looks as though it could threaten their castle.

The "natural" remedy practioners have not always helped their cause as they have had their charlatans and no hopers too. As always, the buyer must beware.

I would like to see a meeting of the minds from many diverse forms of medicine.

I had better make the ubiquitous disclamer and declare I have no connection to any naturopath or other alternative practice. Nor do I have any financial interest in their products.

I do admit to having taken some of their potions and I am lucky enough to count one or two of these people as friends and acquaintances. I do know also some doctors, some of whom I revere and others of which I despair. I have also taken presciption drugs, which I have no doubt were manufactured in a laboratory.

I feel much better now I have got all that off my chest. Except my brain is hurting. Anyone seen the panadol?

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by rrobor

If modern medicine was bad the trend was for life to be shortened, As this is not so consider that on average you are better off today than yesterday.

Mass inoculation is medicine's major contribution to longer life spans but a greater contribution has come from improved sanitation, housing and diet.

And inoculation itself was known in China and India first and was introduced to the West by Lady Mary Montagu.

...

While many drugs have their origin in natural substances increasingly new ones are entirely synthesised.

No one can give the exact answer for longer averages of life. Farming has improved, food sources are better. Transport is faster. In reality food has improved due to synthetic methods. Artificial fertilisers, weed and pest killers and genetic modification.
In all things we may wish to have natural foods, but in reality these to have come about from modification and selection at an earlier date. Whilst we may eat GM free, the parents of that food was likely GM.
We all have our choices, we all have our preferences and our biases. The reality though is all drugs are synthesised from the materials found on this earth. Whether the synthisiser be a plant, an unwitting animal, or a chemist in a lab.
To select eastern medicine as a panacea neglects the fact that a lot of it is rubbish. Rino horn, Tiger penis etc. In all things there is a broad spectrum from good to bad, This is where we all need to do our own checks and balances, our own research.

Yes, there's been some discussion in the UK about dropping the NHS support for homeopathic medicine on the grounds that few quality trials have shown it to be effective.

As for longer av. lifespans in the West, epidemiological studies support the point I made.

As for these and indeed any other random sample or population studies, all they show is probabilities - how these translate into treatment regimes or health policies targeted at individuals is always a question.

The statistics are often difficult for a lay person to understand. Like, 'did you know that half of the population are below the average IQ??' What a shock that so many of us are so dumb! (Confusing average with median, and overlooking the norm referencing commonly used in large scale studies).

Hi,
Reading all this 2 disjointed thoughts keep coming to mind.

1) How is a GP expected to do better when he is faced with a conveyor belt of 15 minute consultations.

2) The only thing new on earth is knowledge, every thing else has always been here, it's only our knowledge of what to do with it that is changing. Unfortunately there is so much around that we are losing track and I don't know if the computer is helping or making it worse.
Regards

Yes indeed; the conveyor belt is not helpful but there've been some moves to resource doctors better to develop and review care plans and to provide preventive health care.

Would you believe that only 2% of national health care expenditure so far has gone into preventive strategies? When the majority of spending in hospitals at least has been done in relation to preventable diseases.

As for keeping up with new knowledge, one positive is that GPs have to engage in continuing professional development. But given my experience and what my students say after returning from their first clinical observation, we need to be doing better here.

Another positive is that it is easier than ever for patients to inform themselves.

My GP complains tongue-in-cheek that more and more of his patients come in these days with their own diagnosis derived from web research. That prob raises the bar of expectations of his performance.

The statistics are often difficult for a lay person to understand. Like, 'did you know that half of the population are below the average IQ??' What a shock that so many of us are so dumb! (Confusing average with median, and overlooking the norm referencing commonly used in large scale studies).

Ern

In fact an average may not even exist. I sometimes think that perhaps the "mode" (I think that may be the same as median, but it is the term I grew up with) would be more representative.

Some figures from way back during the industrial revolution in the UK talked of life expectancy as 17 years for the working class and 34 years for the priveliged in the cities but extended in rural regions to 34 years for working class (read peasants) and 56 years for the priveliged.

Compare that to around 80 years today. On the face of it we have made huge advances in life expectancy. However it is not quite as good as you might think. Death in childbirth was horrendous (often mother and child) and infantile mortality was extreme. If you made it to 20 years of age you were one tough human and you stood a good chance of surviving to your 70s.

It points to great improvements in childbirth and childish illnesses in no small part due to inoculation. Polio, smallpox and TB amongst others were amongst the biggest killers disease-wise.

Regards
Paul

[QUOTE=A Duke;1273268]Hi,
Reading all this 2 disjointed thoughts keep coming to mind.

1) How is a GP expected to do better when he is faced with a conveyor belt of 15 minute consultations.

Hugh

I know that this will sound cynical, but to some extent this may be brought about themselves. Is there an element of greed attached to the consultation timing? In a group practice well meaning individuals will be pressured into "conforming" for the well being of the practiceb but others are quite happy to bill away like a mad thing.

There are not too many impoverished doctors, in western countries. The old argument that they went to uni for four or five years and deserve to have a good living does not really hold water. There are plenty of uni graduates on the bread line.

There was a time when a doctor was revered for a man of integrity in the community, but I think that moment passed as the importance of the dollar to them reared it's head.

Regards
Paul