Over dependence and use of medication today

It is quite good to see an MD willing to educate patients to be more self reliant and less dependent on drugs.  Thinking that you need a doctor to prescribe a pill for every little twinge is a sure indication you have turned over your health to some one who might not really offer you the best remedy.

This belief also undermines your right to be in charge of your health.

My advice: Get more education.  And don't be afraid to ask question, demand answers.

All of this is becoming very true too with natural remedies.  Sadly it is true of the new hybrid practice called "naturopathic medicine".

Doctor draws our attention to the uncertainty of medical practice: We are scientists. But the Big Book of Medical Facts is in fact just a pamphlet printed at home, with two paragraphs in a very large font. The only certainty of science is uncertainty. Medicine is often little more than an opinion, a faith system: we believe that what we do is right. This is despite history telling us that what we do now is almost certainly wrong. Our faith has invented words, rituals, elaborate costumes, and a culture of reverence and deference. SOURCE

The over dependence and use of medication in today's society

 

by Nicole Evans M.D.

Everybody over the age of 55 should be on a pill to lower their blood pressure. Oh, and we might as well just go ahead and put statins in the water. Well, at least that's what the latest research suggests.

An impressive study was recently published that analyzed data from over 100 studies on the use of blood pressure medications. This study came to the conclusion that we don't need to measure blood pressure anymore because any decrease in blood pressure is beneficial, whether you have hypertension or not.

These authors suggest we should put everyone on a daily blood pressure pill. Their study came out riding close on the heels of another "landmark" study that was done on statins. The statin study came to a similar conclusion, namely that a daily dose of statin is good for everyone, whether you have high cholesterol or not.

Armed with these study results, a pharmaceutical company is poised and ready to market a break through polypill. A pill that contains a couple blood pressure lowering meds, a statin, and, of course, don't forget the daily baby aspirin. Imagine, all these meds in one little pill for our daily lifetime use. This sounds like a bad sci fi movie about some flawed futuristic society.

Is the human body really so flawed that we all require medications? Have we lost our ability to heal ourselves, to care for ourselves, to prevent disease and illness in ourselves? What in the world is going on?

Our society uses medications to prevent disease, to treat the cause of disease, to treat the symptoms of disease, and to even to treat the side effects caused by all the medications.

Pharmaceutical companies are massively lucrative businesses. Primary care physicians are pharmacists who happen to know how to diagnose and refer patients to surgeons. Natural medicine companies are popping up like wildflowers in response to the consumer's intuitive distrust of prescription meds, allowing individuals to trade one pill for another and feel good about it.

The over dependence and over use of medication is a rampant problem in today's society. Many individual's turn to a pill and away from proactive involvement in their own health. They relinquish power without a second thought but scowl at prescription costs and whine to their doctors about the side effects.

Pills are promising, shiny, colorful little monsters. An easy fix in the palm of your hand. Is there a solution to this problem? Can we empower individuals with alternatives to medications, to means and methods of improving health that could provide benefits far beyond the quick fix?

Some of us would like to think so. The other day a colleague asked if I had any Tylenol for her throbbing headache. Instead I showed her how to rub a few acupressure spots while doing some deep breathing. Problem fixed, no pills involved.

Can we let our food be medicine, our physical activity be medicine, our thoughts be medicine? Can we begin to listen to our bodies and respond to our needs instead of ignoring or repressing them? Can we learn when a pill is necessary and when other medication-free options are the clear answer?

The answer is a brilliant, hopeful YES. But this will require a paradigm shift. Patients, doctors, pharmaceutical companies, medical schools, the healthcare system at large will have to change. Seems like a daunting task, but have hope. Too bad we don't have a pill for that.

Drugs Still Ending up in Water

It is not only prescription drug and over the counter (OTC) products that are polluting our water, but aspartame and sucralose too.

Water treatment is unable to remove metabolites of prescription drugs and many chemical including the poisons, aspartame and sucralose.

Certainly this creates a risk for everyone, and a topic I discussed many years ago while serving as a Health & Environment Commissioner.

Make sure when disposing of drugs and related substances that you take them to an approved location for incineration.  Do not throw them in the trash or flush down a toilet.

By CLARKE CANFIELD, Associated Press Writer 
Sun Feb 7, 2010

PORTLAND, Maine – The federal government advises throwing most unused or expired medications into the trash instead of down the drain, but they can end up in the water anyway, a study from Maine suggests.
Tiny amounts of discarded drugs have been found in water at three landfills in the state, confirming suspicions that pharmaceuticals thrown into household trash are ending up in water that drains through waste, according to a survey by the state's environmental agency that's one of only a handful to have looked at the presence of drugs in landfills.
That landfill water — known as leachate — eventually ends up in rivers. Most of Maine doesn't draw its drinking water from rivers where the leachate ends up, but in other states that do, water supplies that come from rivers could potentially be contaminated.
The results of the survey are being made known as lawmakers in Maine consider a bill, among the first of its kind in the nation, that would require drug manufacturers to develop and pay for a program to collect unused prescription and over-the-counter drugs from residents and dispose of them.
Scientists and environmentalists have long known of the common presence of minute concentrations of pharmaceuticals in drinking water, either through human excretion flushed into sewers or leftover medicine thrown down the drain. Research shows that pharmaceuticals sometimes harm fish and other aquatic species, and that human cells can fail to grow normally in the laboratory when exposed to trace concentrations of certain drugs.
The Maine Department of Environmental Protection found tiny amounts — measured in parts per trillion — of medications ranging from antidepressants and birth control pills to blood pressure and cholesterol prescriptions. The most prevalent drugs were over-the-counter pain relievers, including ibuprofen and acetaminophen.
"People need a way to properly dispose of their drugs, and they're not getting it right now," said Mark Hyland, director of the state Department of Environmental Quality's Bureau of Remediation and Waste Management.
The bill is one of many "take-back" programs under consideration in more than half a dozen states and would be the first of its kind if enacted; it has won committee support and awaits further action.
The bill is opposed by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a Washington-based organization that represents pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and has partnered with other groups to pay for advertising against the proposal.
The lobby acknowledges that previous testing shows trace levels of pharmaceuticals can be found in water supplies and landfills, but says the levels are so small that they pose little risk.
"The amounts of pharmaceuticals (in the environment) are infinitesimally small," said Marjorie Powell, senior assistant general counsel. "We're talking about two drops in an Olympic-size swimming pool. Those two drops are much lower than any doses that would have an effect on humans."
The state last October tested leachate at landfills in Augusta, Brunswick and Bath. Hyland ordered up the study after members of the pharmaceutical industry expressed skepticism about the presence of pharmaceuticals in landfill water.
Leachate at Maine landfills typically is piped or trucked to municipal wastewater treatment plants. Those plants are not equipped to remove drugs from the water before it is discharged into rivers and the ocean.
The pharmaceuticals found in the landfills don't pose a direct threat to drinking water, Hyland said. The landfills are lined to protect groundwater supplies, and in Maine there aren't any wastewater plants that treat leachate and discharge into rivers that ultimately supply drinking water.
But the leachate — in high enough concentrations — can pose a threat to fish and shellfish. Research suggests that hormonal drugs, such as birth control pills, tend to feminize fish. If the trend continues, Hyland said, there could be too few male fish to continue reproduction.
"What you find are greater concentrations of females downstream from where they've seen a dose of hormones, so you find a feminization of the fish population where there are fewer males around," he said.
Hyland said he has questions about the effect on commercial seafood — one of Maine's biggest industries — in ocean waters downstream from the rivers, particularly bivalves such as clams or mussels, which filter water constantly and live near the shore.
"But obviously we need to know a lot more before we can draw a lot of conclusions," Hyland said.
Although landfill leachate doesn't get into drinking water supplies in Maine, it probably does elsewhere, said Andy Tolman, a geologist with the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. And some scientists urge caution about the dangers of drinking such water over several decades.
"Many larger states have big rivers that are used for both waste disposal and drinking water supplies, places like Ohio and Pennsylvania," Tolman said. "The same river gets used a number of times, and they're very concerned about treatment of sewage and leachate."
Powell, from the pharmaceutical lobby, argued that people can properly dispose of their drugs in their household trash. In Maine, much of the trash is burned, she said, and pollution control experts agree that incinerating unwanted drugs is the safest solution.
She argued that if the bill does pass, it will only make drugs more expensive, she said.
Concerns have grown in recent years over pharmaceuticals reaching drinking water supplies. An Associated Press investigation in 2008 reported that the drinking water of at least 51 million Americans contains minute concentrations of a multitude of drugs.
It's commonly believed that the vast majority of drugs that get into water supplies come from human and animal excretion and that smaller amounts come from flushing them down the toilet or drain, a practice the Food and Drug Administration says is not recommended for most medications.
Federal guidelines recommend using community drug take-back programs to dispose of medications. If those aren't available, people should mix their unwanted drugs with cat litter or some other undesirable substance, put them into a sealed container and put it in the trash, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100207/ap_on_sc/us_pharmawater_landfills/print