Overmedicated

With all the recent hype about “Obamacare”, and the deaths of several celebrities in the last year or so due to medication overdosing, it’s interesting to see just where we are with the mirade of medications available. I’m lucky in that for the most part I’ve been pretty healthy most of my life, and never had any inclination to willingly take medications of any sort, both those medications prescribed by my doctor, and particularly not the over the counter stuff recommended by assorted celebrities on TV. It’s not that I don’t trust the doctors, nor do I have any religious conviction on the matter, I simply don’t like taking medications of any sort. I’ll also admit that I’ve had a distinct aversion to needles after a few sessions in the “shot line” while a member of the military. Nowadays however, in consideration of my present “senior citizen” status and the assorted medical problems that go with aging, I find myself taking a medium sized handful of pills on a regular basis irregardless of my wishes! So, being the curious sort, I decided to look into the matter a bit.

It seems that nearly 130 million Americans (almost half our population) swallow, inject, inhale, infuse, spray, or pat on prescribed medication every month according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. There are nearly 3.5 billion prescriptions written every year, and Americans happily devour even more nonprescription drugs. Apparently we buy quite a bit more mendicants per person than any other country in the world. A growing number of doctors, researchers and public health experts are now claiming that Americans are overmedicating themselves, buying and taking far too much medicine, too readily and too carelessly, for their own health. (And that doesn’t include the huge amount of illegal drugs consumed annually.) Do we need all these drugs? A relative few of them do pull people away from almost certain death, while others help a small minority avoid heart attacks or stroke. Yet a balance of risk and benefit is hard to find for the many drugs that treat common, persistent, or daily life conditions: like anti-inflammatories, antacids, and pills for allergy, depression, shyness, premenstrual crankiness, waning sexual powers, or impulsiveness in children. Adding fuel to the fire, over 125,000 Americans die from drug reactions and mistakes each year according to several medical studies of the 90’s. That makes pharmaceuticals the fourth-leading nation wide cause of death, following heart disease, cancer and stroke. Our aging population is partly at fault, with ailments like cancer, heart attacks, stroke and Alzheimer's disease. Other medical conditions have mysteriously proliferated in recent years, including asthma, diabetes and obesity. Assorted studies have shown that exercise and diet ward off heart disease and diabetes just as effectively as drugs do, but Fred Eckel, who teaches pharmacy practice at the University of North Carolina, states that "There tends to be a reliance on drugs as the first option", which is reflected in the fact that prescription drug sales have increased an average of 11 percent per year over the past five years.

According to another study, American children are three times more likely to be prescribed psychotropic medication than are children in Europe. The study, published in BioMed Central’s “Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health” claims that this difference is accounted for by government regulations, and cultural beliefs about medication in emotional and behavioral problems. Julie Zito led a team from the US, Germany and the Netherlands in investigating these prescription issues, and said that “Antidepressant and stimulant prevalence were three or more times greater in the US than in the Netherlands and Germany, while antipsychotic prevalence was 1.5 to 2.2 times greater”. The study also claims that the differences may be due to differing diagnostic systems in that “The US trend of increasing bipolar diagnosis in children and adolescents does not reflect European practice”.

Direct advertising is also likely to account for the increased use of medications in the US, as we try to drug ourselves out of any uncomfortable circumstance. The pharmaceutical industry ran up more than $250 billion in sales last year, mostly in prescription meds according to industry consultants. That roughly equals the sales of all the country's gasoline stations put together! "We are taking way too many drugs for dubious or exaggerated ailments," says Dr. Marcia Angell, author of "The Truth About the Drug Companies." "What the drug companies are doing now is promoting drugs for long-term use to essentially healthy people. Why? Because it's the biggest market." We also overindulge ourselves far too often, the critics say, and violate the classic proscription of Hippocrates: "First, do no harm." Drug safety researcher Dr. James Kaye, of Boston University, remembers a medical school teacher telling the class: "All drugs are poisonous!" Even common vitamins can, if overdone, cause major medical problems. Hospital patients suffer seven adverse drug reactions and three drug mistakes for every 100 admissions estimates Dr. David Bates, a researcher at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital. That works out to about 3.6 million drug misadventures every year.

The use of multiple medications is high among the elderly, and many seniors are given ever larger amounts of drugs that are intended to treat side effects from other prescriptions. Seniors are also more likely to see different doctors who may do nothing more than take a quick look at whatever other medications you’re on, and without checking for side effects or assorted interactions. (I’ve run into that particular problem, and had a few choice words with the Doctors as a result!)

Is appears that we have an almost mystical faith in the ability of medications to instantly cure whatever major or minor ailment we might think we have. If we get a small scrape, we run for the antibiotic spray instead of plain old soap and water. A minor headache immediately calls for some “super strength” aspirin instead of just laying down and closing our eyes for a few moments. Minor aches and pains have their own remedies that cover acres of store shelves, while over the counter cold and flu relief do serve a purpose even if they are seriously overrated, and a real hazard if overused. The number of “do it yourself” allergy cures is quite impressive (and dangerous as well), while the flood of drugs promoted for “natural male enhancement” can cause real problems if the user has other medical problems. Many of the “super bugs” being discovered today have a simple origin, in that we commonly take unnecessary medications for every minor ill that besets us, and the bugs that cause those ills become drug resistant over time. Even worse, we tend to continue taking those medications even when the problem has long been cured. What’s going to happen when you suddenly and seriously need a particular class of medication, and nothing works because you’ve immunized yourself against them? Adding to the super bug problem, the country seems full of hypochondriacs, who often take huge numbers of pills every day, just to garner sympathy from their acquaintances?!

Writer and editor John W. Campbell once claimed that anyone who medicated themselves had a damm fool for a doctor. Considering how long a Doctor goes to school to learn the what, why, and how of drugs, I think he was quite right.