Health Education: medicine

Showing posts with label medicine. Show all posts

How Drug Stores Profit with Free Meds

According to the CDC, half of  all adults in the USA have at least one chronic disease.  According to the National Council on Aging, 92% of older adults (I do not know what age, but lets assume over 65) have at least one chronic disease and a disturbing 77% have at least two.     Chronic disease include heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, arthritis and some lung conditions.  These are often preventable.  Lifestyle factors that increase the risk of these conditions are physical inactivity, being overweight, poor diet, and smoking.    I have noticed that many pharmacies, like the one at my local grocery store, offer FREE generic diabetes medication.  I imagine that this is because they will make money when they charge customers for all their other medications (because so many of them have more than one disease).      I know people who say that they want to eat what they like (and as much as they like), that they are "fat and happy" and that they don't care to exercise.  Some of them get upset with people like me who support governmental policies that encourage dietary moderation (restraint) and try to reduce the amount of time people spend sitting.    But in the end, I am just trying to save them  money  and increase their healthy, active years of living.  Though I could put the drug companies out of business if everyone listened to me!.

How Drug Stores Profit with Free Meds

According to the CDC, half of all adults in the USA have at least one chronic disease. According to the National Council on Aging, 92% o...

8:04 PM

Why Wait - Isn't this another Vioxx?

Okay, before I get to the point of tonight's post, I have a story that regular readers of the blog might appreciate. I was at the gym doing my weight training, ( one of my friends was there and we were going back and forth talking and doing some exercises together) - when I was over by a weight rack by myself, a man came up and told me that I had this glow about me and such a pleasant attitude. He said it was uncommon to see and he just wanted to tell me. Of course I said thank you, then he asked, "Is it natural or pharmaceutical?" Too funny, I mean, look who he was asking- the anti drug crusader for goodness sakes, and THAT can be my segue. Today the FDA applied restrictions to the weight loss drug Meridia. As you know, I blast weight loss drugs probably more than any other class of medicines. Merida is an appetite suppressant that is sold by prescription only and is in fact a scheduled drug or controlled substance because of fear of abuse. It acts in the central nervous system by blocking the re uptake of certain neurotransmitters. It also elevates heart rate and blood pressure and has been the subject of controversy for no less than eight years. Public Citizen has had it on it's Do Not Use list since 2002 and states that the risks far outweigh the minimal benefit of trace weight loss. Guess what their website suggests one do as an alternative to taking the drug? Oh come on, you know this one: Lifestyle changes, diet, and exercise. Now Meridia, just like Vioxx began with a cardiovascular risk profile. But today the FDA told prescribers not to use it with anyone who has a history of heart disease, specifically, ever having a stroke or heart attack, of having a diagnosis or history of congestive heart failure (regards the inability of the heart to pump sufficiently), of an irregular heart beat, of peripheral artery disease and of high blood pressure that is not kept in control with medicine. This is history about to repeat itself, but not in Europe. Today they banned the drug based on the USAs FDA report. Crazy that they did and USA didn't. I can tell you that I was on Vioxx and my blood pressure seemed to rise when I took it (hey doc, I can hear my heart beating in my ears when I workout) and my doc said, OH, that blood pressure warning is ONLY for people who already have heart disease. And then what? People without a history of heart disease died and the drug was YANKED off the market and multimillion dollar lawsuits followed. SIGH.......... just madness...... More often than not, which is the opposite of what people think, but more often than NOT, pills are the wrong option............they almost always carry risk and we almost always don't know the extent of the risk until people start having heart attacks and such. As I usually say, however, sometimes, the medicine is the RIGHT choice and you should always have a conversation with your health care provider before starting or stopping anything.

Why Wait - Isn't this another Vioxx?

Okay, before I get to the point of tonight's post, I have a story that regular readers of the blog might appreciate. I was at the gym do...

4:56 PM

Botox Indeed

Allergan, maker of Botox, is involved in a little bit of a role reversal in regards the practice of off label use of its product. (off label is a used not approved by the FDA, but legal – as long as the drug maker does not market the drug for said off label use) Most people have heard of Botox and know that it is used for a wrinkle treatment (scary as that is). The FDA has approved Botox for other conditions as well and these include eye twitching and being cross eyed, muscle spasms in the head and neck area and profuse sweating. Botox is made from a bacteria and it is toxic even in small doses. It is used as a medicine however in even smaller doses. It is not without risk, in fact, the FDA just this year ordered not only a label change but specific education to physician’s about dosing and that though there are four marketed products, the dosing of each is DIFFERENT and that needs to be clearly explained to prescribing clinicians. The odd twist is that after the FDA made this “order” to Allergan, Allergan sued them in order to be able to market the product to doctors for off label use! They feel that they need to tell the physicians how to use the product for other conditions so that off label use will be safe and effective. Well, if they KNOW that stuff, they must have some clinical data, some trials they completed , so why not apply to the FDA for the new uses! I am confused though because the fuss seems to be over using the medicine or toxin, for treating muscle spasm. It is approved for cervical dystonia which is a muscle spasm condition, but of the head and neck area. I know that one use Allergan wants to market and explain is for muscle spasms in kids. On the Internet, I found reference to off label uses for neck and back pain as well as migraines. Lord heaven, I cannot imagine any condition that would lead me to have botulinum toxin injected into my body. And if you detect bias in my post today, well you have very good comprehension skills!

Botox Indeed

Allergan, maker of Botox, is involved in a little bit of a role reversal in regards the practice of off label use of its product. (off lab...

5:54 PM

Acetaminophen

The concern regarding acetaminophen or Tylenol is not new today. The medicine itself has been around for possibly a hundred years, but as Tylenol since 1961 (so says Microsoft's Encarta). The concerns about acetaminophen and the liver are also not new. I recall learning as a young adult that people who drank a lot should not use Tylenol. What I did not know is that even the recommended dose of acetaminophen can cause harm to the liver and it is said in the literature that 200 persons lose their lives each year from acetaminophen overdoses. As early as 2002, health care professionals were raising concerns and requesting some label changes because too many products, both over the counter and prescription, contain this drug. People were and continue to be inadvertently taking in more than the 4g limit. Acetaminophen Toxicity Maren Mayhew, MS, ANP, GNP Knowing now that it can cause liver damage in non alcoholics really concerns me. Knowing that it can cause harm after taking the recommended dose for four days, concerns me more. It is likely that all of the medicine hasn't been metabolized and excreted before more is ingested. It is building up. Today an FDA panel suggested a change to the recommended daily dose of the drug. I hope that the FDA itself mandates the label change. Even if they do not change the label dose, YOU know it is too high. In fact,It sounds like extra strength tablets at 500mg a pop are too strong a dose period. That being said, I am not sure why so many of us think that more is always better. I was the same before the Vioxx recall. I then read about NSAIDs and just changed my whole way of thinking about any pills. I went almost a year without taking anything because I thought I would have a heart attack if I took one pill. Now, when I have a bad headache or muscle problem I take ONE 200 mg ibuprofen and wait. I am amazed by two things. One is that it works, just one pill works and two, I used to take three or four, at once. We all need to rely less on medicine and more on ourselves. Instead of extra strength everything we need minimal strength as we seem to be low on common sense. We had a saying at WFUBMC when medicating the elderly.. start low and go slow. Sounds like we ALL need to take that advice. So be mindful as well... acetaminophen is in many products. Also, on some medication bottles it is referred to as APAP. Here is a link that offers a wonderful print out to help you. Also below is a link to an FDA web source on this issue. <a href="http://familydoctor.org/otc/knowmeds.html">http://familydoctor.org/otc/knowmeds.html</a> <a href="http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm168830.htm">http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm168830.htm</a> Most importantly, do NOT take more than the recommended dose and do not take it for more than a few days. If you have been consuming acetaminophen (Tylenol) on a regular basis please let your health care provider know this.

Acetaminophen

The concern regarding acetaminophen or Tylenol is not new today. The medicine itself has been around for possibly a hundred years, but as T...

8:55 PM

Wellness Weekly

The News: Migraines and Me: Today I do not have a headache…. I have not known such gratefulness since I experienced severe back pain, which also resolved. A long time ago, pre 2002, I had a migraine on Christmas Day… my first. After that experience I would always be clear in stating that I had a severe headache or even a submigraine, from time to time, but having had a migraine I would NEVER mis categorize a headache. Since that Christmas Day I may have had two more migraines and I have never sought assistance for them as I am determined NOT to be someone who suffers from migraines. That changed this week. I have had more migraines in the last ten days than in my over 40 years of life. I did everything I usually do and could not barrel through them. I saw my doctor. Good news is that he believes something in the environment triggered a severe episode that just cascaded into migraine after migraine with remission but not resolution. He did say we had to break the cycle. He did say we had to do it with a medication. Readers know that I do not do prescription medication. And my bigger fear is (was) to become someone who has to keep medication on hand. He believed that this is or was an isolated incident and I trust him in that. I also appreciate how he presented the options, there were three. He discussed cost, side effects and other people’s responses. I accepted a sample of a medicine by Pfizer… I know, that alone almost killed me, but I was beyond my capacity to withstand any more pain. I am a distance runner.. I CAN endure pain and thus it was THAT bad. So I took my samples home and I took the first pill and lied (or laid) there two hours waiting for it to work. I was under the impression that I was going to have almost immediate relief and feel like I took morphine or something. HA. The pain trickled away, it did not stop abruptly. That was Wednesday night. Thursday I was traumatized and scared to tears that it would come back… today I feel somewhat more confident. I am writing mostly to address the prescription drug issue as I continue to think pills should be a very last resort, that they are entirely too expensive and the side effects are not to be taken lightly. That being said, Wednesday I did not read the label of my new medicine. The doctor warned of GI upset and that I thought would be tolerable. I can tell you that as I lie there I considered that this prescription drug could kill me and I did not care. So maybe this experience offers me a little empathy to why some people risk horrible side effects when they take meds though it does not change my belief that wherever possible prevention of disease is the better “medicine”. Attention Parents: Childhood Obesity: I am taking a course through the University of Tennessee for my health educator credential (CEUs) and have a few interesting pearls to share with you. The course is taught by MDs, RDs, and PhDs. Dr. Velasquez-Mieyer noted that what we see in adults started as children. Dayle Hayes, M.S., R.D. encourages people who are concerned about children’s nutrition to join their school health advisory committee, also known as SHAC. And Dr. Hollie Raynor offers important strategies for dealing with the treatment of obesity in children. Dr. Raynor is by far my favorite lecturer in this series. She and her team do provide intensive treatment to overweight elementary school aged children. They do this within the university setting and thus can apply rigorous research protocols as well. There are things in her methodology that you can apply at home right now whether or not your child is obese. This includes focusing on behaviors. For example, she does have young children weigh themselves (not a standard thing you should do, this is for children in a targeted obesity treatment program) but when there is a 2 pound weight loss, for example, she offers positive reinforcement and encourages the child to pinpoint what behavior may have led to that. Which of the actions is the cause of the weight change - less TV time, more walking or riding the bike, or even more green foods then red foods (my favorite traffic light program!)? It is also part of this family centered program that the parents adopt the SAME behavior as the child. If the child has to eat less of the red foods, so does the parent! Parents must also increase the physical activity. Even better, she talks about covert and overt food restriction. Dr. Raynor prefers covert. Covert restriction involves not having the food in the house at all. Overt is like buying ice cream but telling the child they can’t have any. This might lead to tantrums and all kinds of issues, but if the food isn’t there it isn’t there! Sure they might eat it somewhere else, but they aren’t eating it at home. Another good point she made was that in children we want to change the food preference. So there may be a less bad option of a food, say baked chips instead of regular chips, but they are still chips. Don’t serve chips! Changing preferences. Serve wheat and or whole grain bread, no other kind. I could go on. Ok one last thing. We want kids to be more active, so TVs out of their bedrooms and action toys available. If they like to ride their bike, then make sure the tires are good and the bike is easily accessible. Generics: Okay, even though Pfizer appears to have helped me out, I am not going to abandon my quest for fairness with pharmaceuticals. I am happy then to report that there are a few versions of bills circulating in the US Congress which attempt to stop drug companies from paying generic makers to HOLD OFF on the release of their cheaper versions. Often times during this extension, the brand name company works to tweak the medicine in question, as I have described before, perhaps making it a long acting type or a liquid type and then convincing the user that they need the new kind. So months later the generic of the medicine you have taken for years is available but your doctor has switched you to the extended release formula and the generic doesn’t come in that. What a bunch of bunk. I hope this is addressed by our legislators. HFCS: High Fructose Corn Syrup is bad. We don’t really need to get into the hows and whys, but it is a highly processed thing and is worse than sugar, even simple white sugar. I bring it up now because I made a comment at work this week regarding one of my favorite portion controlled snacks. These sugar wafer cookies made and or marketed by a Mexican company are lower in calories than other brands. Four of the wafers (chocolate, strawberry or vanilla) have 120 calories. They are long and thin and compared to other sugar wafers, even ones that say they are sugar free, these have less calories. I think the label must be wrong. Still, one of my awesome coworkers (many of my coworkers are indeed awesome) said it is because the other types have HFCS and that is more caloric. HMM. Intuitively I think that the corn syrup is just a big vat of sticky sweet stuff and way high in cals yes, but wouldn’t that mean you’d use less of it than you would sugar. I did check my cookie label, and YES Beth is right so far… NO HFCS. Now, let me do a little Google check and see if I learn anything to uphold the theory…. BRB>>>>>>>>>>> Oh My Gosh. I should have seen this coming…now HFCS is still evil, but it does not have more calories than sugar, in fact it has less. Sugar is a carb with 4 kcals per gram while HFCS has 3/g. So I started looking up all the sugar wafers, esp. the sugar free ones, which mine are not. The culprit isn’t the sugar it is FAT. Mine have 4g of fat per serving whereas the Voortman and Murray…have 8g. That is it right there; they replaced the sugar with fat. I will be damned. Oh and be assured it is not monounsaturated fat. Now I am not claiming my Mexican sugar cookies are a green (GO) food, but that I like sweets too and these are lower in calories. YEAH! Remember neither fat free nor sugar free means calorie free and yes, there is more calorie per gram of fat than sugar – 5 more to be exact. Okay, let’s do some cooking. A Stir Fry Volumetrics Dinner is featured today. Ingredients include: Spices: Onion and Garlic Powder, Cumin and Turmeric Veggies: Zucchini, Sweet Potato, Red Pepper Stir Fry ingredients: Shredded cabbage, onion, mushroom and tomato Protein: Smart Strips steak style (found in the produce section – no nitrates) Fruit: Apple with Waldon Farms SF Marshmallow Dip Oh non fat spray and water is also needed. That will bring us to today’s cooking video. The point of these videos is to assist you in eating food, lots of food really, without adding non nutritive and even disease promoting extras.. like saturated FAT and sugar. BTW, I may have had one of those headaches in this video… I apologize if I am less than bubbly today. Seriously. Live Well Deirdre <iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" class="b-hbp-video b-uploaded" frameborder="0" height="266" id="BLOGGER-video-da5820104457bdf5-1008" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" src="https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxIGGuSdOlErWjW-RQTpFPdMtc5yATJejfgfvO4xL205KFfPYqdAR65iDVvYd-Jbc9ZvfquWD_lCFhVOV7_0FZETzE2lBQJqxZWBM4MdHWAiiU3ZMJvE2g88lwLO2qSEGrweFM&origin=pre-life-crisis.blogspot.com" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" width="320"></iframe>

Wellness Weekly

The News: Migraines and Me : Today I do not have a headache…. I have not known such gratefulness since I experienced severe back pain, whic...

5:11 AM

Health Education

How Drug Stores Profit with Free Meds

Why Wait - Isn't this another Vioxx?

Botox Indeed

Acetaminophen

Wellness Weekly

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