Thread: Why you should be wary about medications

A most interesting thread. Thanks for kicking it off Ern.
I note with interest the comments about older drugs. I had tried several different drugs to control my blood pressure over a number of years. All worked well for varying lengths of time, and then I would have to change.
One specialist decided to test for aldo steronism. Trouble is the procedure was incorrect and badly administered by the nursing staff. I was told the timing of certain procedures, e.g. Blood pressure monitoring, urine sample collecting was critical. When I pointed out that the process seemed haphazard I was severely rebuked.I discharged myself from hospital and had the GP send me to the wife's cardiologist. He did the tests - properly and found no aldo steronism.

As he works in associaition with Professor Gordon he had acces to a huge amount of research on blood pressure medications.I was prescribed a combination of two older drugs that are still working to this day. In fac,t if my memory serves me correctly, the research shows that this particular combination of drugs is effective "forever".

When in Brasil I found myself short of one of these drugs and asked for a doctor to prescribe it for me. After some argument he did. He was adamant that there were better drugs because they were more "modern"I hardly see that as a scientific approach..

I saw an item on telly a week or two back where some doctor was advocating more investigation into combinations of older and cheaper drugs because there was increasing evidence of the medical and cost effective benefits of doing this. I hope people were listening.

PS.
Remember when the cure for stomach ulcers was discovered? Remember the campaign by the drug companies to discredit the research and the evidence? Just another case of protecting their profits!

Not an uncommon experience Arthur. As I prob said, to get FDA approval in the US big pharma just has to show a compound is more effective than a placebo, not than an older or competitor drug.

Meds for gastric reflux is a good case in point. A new version was developed that was more expensive than an existing one. The only diff. was a minor variation in chemistry that the body itself produced with the older one, but it was marketed successfully to many GPs.

Allan, that's good advice.

Would you believe that one or two of my students have come back from their first observations in clinics to report that the GP they observed is still not aware of the bacterial cause of peptic ulcers?

I'm not into the blame game here. There's been a huge growth in medical knowledge that's hard to keep up with. There's a system of continuous professional development and information provision but in some cases it's failing (true of any human system).

Here's an assessment from a Professor from the Uni of Otago General Practice dept:

A prescriber’s primary responsibility is to act as a
patient advocate. Every prescribing decision should
be informed by joint consideration [by prescriber
and patient] of benefits and risks. The marketing
of new medicines is typified by the presentation
of partial and unbalanced information.

The sad fact is that perhaps 80–90% of new medicines
don’t actually offer much in the way of therapeutic
gain. Information on short-term efficacy almost
always precedes information on long-term safety. We
need a cautionary approach; that sometimes means
saying ‘hang on, we don't need to explore this new
medicine quite yet, for you’.

NPS News, no. 43, 2005

[QUOTE=rsser;1281233
Meds for gastric reflux is a good case in point. A new version was developed that was more expensive than an existing one. The only diff. was a minor variation in chemistry that the body itself produced with the older one, but it was marketed successfully to many GPs.

[/QUOTE]

This is a problem I have suffered with almost daily for a couple of years. I have avoided any medication prescribed or over the counter. It was my contention that I could relieve it by taking a bare teaspoon of Apple Cider vinegar with water, but it wasn't conclusive as if left to its own devices the reflux would go away by itself.

However recently I developed a monster of a cough which I treated with hot lemon and a teaspoon of honey. It helped the cough, but guess what? The reflux disappeared and after three weeks has not come back. I now take the lemon and honey drink every day.

My take is that as we get older the non return valve in the aesophagus fails and allows stomach contents to come back up into the throat. My "remedy" doesn't stop this but the stomach contents are balanced and as a consequence there is an absence of burning.

The irony is that citric acid you think would have a compounding effect. Anyhow keeping my fingers crossed that I have resolved a problem and made a miniscule dent in some pharmaseutical's balance sheet.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

Ern

As it happens, I recently visited the doctor and presented him with a problem he openly declared he had never seen before. In a week I have to go back but after 30 minites on the net I have ascertained the problem, which is benign, (I would bet on it and I don't even have a flutter on the Melbourne cup).

And the score is

Doctor 0
Bushmiller 1



Regards
Paul

Re gastric reflux: there are some other non-drug options that folk can try here

Paul, nice work

And there's another useful website for folk who want to inform themselves: click

Ooops

Should have looked up how to spell "oesophagus." Still doesn't look right. No matter.

Regards
Paul

Throat pipe will do ;-}

...

Lack of power corrupts too in my experience.

Originally Posted by rsser

Throat pipe will do ;-}

...

Lack of power corrupts too in my experience.

Well then...Throat pipe it is and much easier to spell.

As to the power thing I need to think on that some. Certainly there are places around the world where nothing gets done unless the palm is greased and that is frequently in the lower echelons.

Regards
Paul

love the discussion..
Now here is a spanner into the works.

What about an idea, that nothing happens to our body without our consent,
that a disease and even accidents are attracted by us on some level. Multitude of cases of people curing cancers just by changing their thought patterns and their environments, professional sportsmen retiring from sport after years of playing without a single injury. That disease is nothing but a dis-ease or inability to take it easy. Drugs are just a band-aid(no pun intended) measure and all the answers and solutions are lying within self-discovery.

I am not trying to diminish point/idea brought up by anyone. Just would like to get some thoughts on that.

Alex

Yes, it's clear that the mind plays a large part in health and illness.

There used to be the term psychosomatic illness - one caused by the mind - but that's been dropped from the manuals since it's not poss. to separate mind and body.

And placebos (ie. sugar pills) can lead to up to as many as 60% of those taking them unaware in a controlled trial reporting positive effects.

There was a study done of the duration of head colds with various treatments, and sufferers who saw a doctor about it had a duration on average of one day less than the rest. Those doctors could of course do nothing other than sympathise and advise on rest, honey and lemon drinks etc.

There's work been done on blokes who've retired from high-powered jobs and are dead within a few years, where the variable is the retirement. No reason to live? Too much focus on the self and the body's signs?

The cancer question is more vexed and the odd study I've seen summarised doesn't lend much weight to the value of meditation, positive thinking and diet. When we see remissions we may think it's unusual if the average life expectancy is short; but these are population studies and there's always variation.

I've got family and friends who've 'beaten' cancer over the 10 year mark but come down with it later in another part of the body.

So in short, there's still plenty of mystery about health and illness.

The idea that we are fully in control of our own destiny is a nice one but can be proven not factual.
Breast cancer in women has a very high instance if they carry a certain gene, It then is both nature and nurture
. Smoke, as I did and multiple ailment are likely. But I was born with not the greatest of bones and had several fractures. This, I believe resulted in Rheumatoid arthritis.
So its a nice thought that positive thinking is the answer, it is not. It is just far healthier than doom and gloom.

True 'nuff.

And cancer is not one disease; it's many.

The fact is that for some illnesses there's no explanation; or not only one. Eg. asbestos-related diseases. Some who got exposed to the fibres got a lethal illness; some didn't.

Sure, you wouldn't want to gamble on it.