You’d think knowing that the fourth leading cause of death in the US is correctly-taken prescription drugs would push physicians to prescribe fewer of them. But the facts haven’t entered the collective brain of the medical profession. Big Pharma advertising controls both that brain and yours with its ubiquity of magazine, internet, and TV ads […]
Tag: side effects
Six Commonly Missed Diagnoses +1: Rx Drug Side Effects
I’d planned a series of six commonly missed diagnoses, but today I have one more, a life-threatening addition you’ll want to add to your mental list. If you’ve been following this series you know we’ve covered low levels of vitamin B-12 and vitamin D, subtly underactive thyroid, gluten sensitivity, intestinal parasites, and candida (yeast) overgrowth. […]
A Personal Experience With Side Effects
We’d prefer not to know that all drugs (all of them) are potentially poisonous. Check this out by reading the “overdose” section of the lengthy version of the package insert accompanying your prescription. We don’t set out to intentionally overdose ourselves on common pharmacologic selections–meds for blood pressure, diabetes, birth control, anxiety, sleep, and so […]
Two More Orgasms Per Month? Why Not?
I was at dinner with an old physician colleague of mine who happens to be French. Despite living in the Midwest for decades, he continues his lifetime subscription to Le Monde and preserves–no, cultivates–his accent so efficiently that I miss about ten percent of what he’s saying. Given we were both well into our second […]
Addyi: Big Pharma Botches a Viagra for Women
I hardly know where to begin. This is all too bizarre for me. If you’re a regular scanner of cash register magazines, you’ll be reading about Addyi, released by Big Pharma and approved for something called female hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD), which is essentially no or low sex drive. This story is about a […]
A Personal Experience With Side Effects
We’d prefer not to know that all drugs (all of them) are potentially poisonous. Check this out by reading the “overdose” section of the lengthy version of the package insert accompanying your prescription. We don’t set out to intentionally overdose ourselves on common pharmacologic selections–meds for blood pressure, diabetes, birth control, anxiety, sleep, and so […]
Getting Off Your Meds, Part 1
Wait, don’t tell me. You’re taking a constellation of medications and you’d really like to stop. You hear the announcer listing all those side effects in TV commercials. Worse yet, you’re already experiencing some of them. You’re angry that every day of your life you pop a handful of…what is it you take exactly? You’re […]
The Aching Man And The Sweaty Woman
New patient Phil told me he’d been suffering muscle pain every single day for more than eight years. He’d seen neurologists and rheumatologists, had had an MRI of his spine, was told he had spinal stenosis (narrowing), had cortisone shots, and recently had been scheduled for neurosurgery. Then a friend told him to stop taking […]
Six Commonly Missed Diagnoses +1: Rx Drug Side Effects
Posted 01/25/2012 I’d planned a series of six commonly missed diagnoses, but today I have one more, a life-threatening addition you’ll want to add to your mental list. If you’ve been following this series you know we’ve covered low levels of vitamin B-12 and vitamin D, subtly underactive thyroid, gluten sensitivity, intestinal parasites, and candida […]
More Sleaze from Big Pharma
I can appreciate you might be fatigued with this topic, but let’s face it: for virtually everyone, health care today means going to the doctor and coming home with a prescription.