Showing posts with label Big Pharma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Big Pharma. Show all posts

Friday, November 22, 2013

Americans are Popping Sleeping Pills in Record Numbers

Zolpidem
Zolpidem (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The first-ever federal health study about sleeping pill usage suggests that sleep is growing ever more elusive for Americans.1 According to the latest information, between 50 and 70 million Americans suffer from sleep deprivation, with increasing numbers relying on prescription sleep aids.2
The CDC report, based on data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2005 to 2010), found that nearly nine million Americans take prescription sleeping pills in pursuit of good night’s rest.
Usage differences were found based on age, gender, race and ethnicity. The report listed the following key findings:
  • About four percent of US adults age 20 and above use prescription sleep aids
  • The percentage of adults using prescription sleep aids increases with age and education; more adult women (5 percent) used prescription sleep aids than adult men (3.1 percent)
  • Non-Hispanic white adults were more likely to use sleep aids (4.7 percent) than non-Hispanic black adults (2.5 percent) and Mexican-American adults (2 percent)
  • Prescription sleep aid use varied by sleep duration and was highest among adults who sleep less than five hours (6.0 percent) or more than nine hours (5.3 percent)
  • One in six adults with a diagnosed sleep disorder and one in eight adults with trouble sleeping reported using sleep aids
The hardest hit group is the elderly—seven percent of individuals over the age of 80 are relying on prescription sleep aids, including hypnotic drugs (such as Ambien and Lunesta) and sedating antidepressants.

Are You Sleeping Better than Your Pay Grade?

According to a recent British report, the less education you have and the lower your income, the poorer you tend to sleep.3 The report also found that the less money a couple makes, the less they sleep together.
The British report found that sleep also varies by occupation. For example, if you work in the arts, you’re more likely to lie awake at night from worry or stress. But if you’re an attorney, you’re more likely to be successfully bagging your Zzzs.
These trends are quite concerning in light of the fact that the drugs prescribed for sleep come with a number of potentially serious risks—and they don’t work that well for sleep to begin with.
Sleeping pills generally only increase the amount of time you sleep by a matter of minutes (a measly 11), and can impair your functioning the next day by making you less alert. They can also have a rebound effect—meaning, once you stop taking them, you may suffer “withdrawal” symptoms worse than the initial insomnia.

Who Benefits from Sleeping Pills?

Sleeping pills are a goldmine for the pharmaceutical industry. In 2011 alone, an estimated 40 million prescriptions for such drugs were dispensed.4 In 2011, sales of generic Ambien (zolpidem tartrate) amounted to a whopping $2.8 billion and Lunesta another $912 million.5 Prescription sleep aids are some of the most heavily marketed drugs to the public.
Lunesta’s manufacturer Sepracor spent more than $215 million and added 450 salespeople to its physician marketing staff just to pitch the drug to doctors in 2005, when it was released.
And it paid off. Lunesta generated $329 million in sales its first nine months—with one sleep specialist saying it was the only time he’d ever experienced “a line of people outside his door waiting to try a new medicine.”6

In 2005, Ambien and Ambien CR put close to $2.2 billion into Sanofi-Adventis’ pockets.7 Unfortunately, the dangers of these drugs are as impressive as the profits they generate for Big Pharma. By taking prescription sleeping pills, you may be unknowingly putting your life in danger.

Tiny Pills, Big Risks

A startling study in 20128 revealed that people who take sleeping pills are not only at higher risk for certain cancers (35 percent higher), but they are also nearly four times as likely to die as people who don't take them. The list of health risks from sleeping pills is growing all the time, including the following:
  • Higher risk of death, including from accidents
  • Increased risk of cancer
  • Increased insulin resistance, food cravings, weight gain and diabetes
  • Complete amnesia, even from events that occurred during the day
  • Depression, confusion, disorientation, and hallucinations
Studies recently submitted to the FDA revealed that blood levels of zolpidem (found in Ambien and other sleeping pills) above 50 ng/mL may impair your driving to a degree that increases the risk of an accident, especially among women. As a result, FDA recommended manufacturers cut the dosage of zolpidem from 10mg to 5mg for immediate-release products (Ambien, Edluar, and Zolpimist) and from 12.5 mg to 6.25 mg for extended-release products (Ambien CR).9

Are You Sleep-Tweeting?



Aside from increasing your risk for premature death, by taking sleeping pills, you may be in for some extremely awkwardexperiences. Sleeping pills can cause a variety of strange behavioral reactions10 that are not only bizarre but also potentially risky—and at the very least embarrassing. The following are being reported with increasing frequency:
  • Sleepwalking
  • Sleepdriving
  • Sleep eating (including bizarre things like buttered cigarettes, salt sandwiches, or raw bacon)
  • Sleep-sex or “sexsomnia” (sexual acts carried out in your sleep)
  • Sleep-texting or sleep-tweeting
These behaviors, called “parasomnias,” are more common when you are stressed or sleep-deprived, but can also be triggered by certain medications, such as sedatives and hypnotics. Reports of “sleep-texting” are on the rise.11 Users are shocked to find messages they have no memory of sending—some of which are total gibberish. If this happens to you, you may want to hide your smart phone from yourself when you go to bed at night and avoid the use of sleeping pills, which may trigger a social media nightmare.
Dr. Lisa Fine, a neurologist at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, reported that people who use digital devices just before nodding off are more likely to use them during the night. She also stated that sleeping pills are known to cause people to use digital media in their sleep. Dr. Fine told KOMO News:12 “A person may text an inappropriate message emerging out of their unconscious mind that the conscious person would not want to send.”

Insomnia Comes with Its Own Risks

It is extremely important to optimize the quality of your sleep, but drugs are not the answer. Just as sleeping pills come with serious risks, so does insomnia. Poor sleep adversely affects your immune system. Lack of sleep may directly increase your risk of developing a number of serious illnesses, such as:
  • Viral and bacterial infections
  • Depression
  • Hypertension
  • Stomach ulcers
  • Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and many more
Poor quality sleep is associated with decreased production of melatonin, insulin resistance and weight gain. These three factors all contribute to cancer development. Studies have linked poor sleep with prostate cancer in men and aggressive breast cancer (and recurrence) in women. Even if your sleep is disturbed for only one night, there may be significant health risks. Studies show that losing even one hour of sleep, such as after making the switch to Daylight Saving Time, may increase your risk for a heart attack the next day.
Lack of sleep decreases leptin (your satiety hormone), while increasing ghrelin (your hunger hormone), which explains why night shift workers are at increased risk for obesity and diabetes. Researchers have also found higher rates of breast, prostate, colorectal cancer, and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma among night shift workers. If you sleep poorly, you are more likely to crave junk foods and make poor food choices. This is because poor sleep amplifies the part of your brain responsible for cravings, while suppressing the part responsible for rational decision-making. In one study, sleepy people consumed 600 extra calories.13

Vitamin D for Sleepless Elders

A number of vitamin and mineral deficiencies may contribute to poor sleep, the three most common being potassium, magnesium and vitamin D. This is particularly important you are older. Studies indicate that vitamin D deficiency in the elderly has reached epidemic levels, because their skin produces less vitamin D and they spend less time in the sun.14 In addition to vitamin D’s wide ranging health benefits, new evidence suggests it may play a role in sleep quality. This is a significant finding, as sleep drugs are even riskier for the elderly, making natural approaches very important. Although there are not yet many studies examining the connection between vitamin D and sleep, here are a few that I found:
  • A study at Louisiana State University found that vitamin D plays a role in sleep, although the mechanism remains unclear. The relationship between vitamin D and sleep appears quite complex, with skin pigmentation being an additional factor.15,16
  • In a study at East Texas Medical Center, vitamin D supplementation improved sleep in a group of patients with neurologic complaints, possibly due to decreasing their pain.17
  • In a study of veterans with chronic pain, researchers concluded that vitamin D supplementation decreased their pain, and improved their sleep and overall quality of life.18
  • In a sleep apnea study, as the severity of the apnea increased, the more vitamin D seemed to help.19
Vitamin D is important for regulating your mood, energy, immune function, cognitive function, and many other things that are especially challenging as you age. It makes sense there would be a sleep connection—after all, practically everything affects your sleep!
Your should keep your serum vitamin D level between 50 and 70 ng/ml year-round, and the only way to determine this is with a blood test. Sun exposure or a safe tanning bed is the preferred method for increasing your vitamin D level, but a vitamin D3 supplement can be used if necessary. As a general guideline, research by GrassrootsHealth suggests most adults need about 8,000 IU's of vitamin D per day to achieve serum levels of 40 ng/ml.
It’s important to remember that if you’re taking high dose vitamin D supplements, you ALSO need to take vitamin K2. The biological role of vitamin K2 is to help move calcium into the proper areas in your body, such as your bones and teeth. It also helps remove calcium from areas where it shouldn’t be, such as in your arteries and soft tissues. Vitamin K2 deficiency is actually what produces the symptoms of vitamin D toxicity, which includes inappropriate calcification that can lead to hardening of your arteries.
The reason for this is because when you take vitamin D, your body creates more vitamin K2-dependent proteins that move calcium around in your body. Without vitamin K2, those proteins remain inactivated, so the benefits of those proteins remain unrealized. So remember, if you take supplemental vitamin D, you're creating an increased demand for K2.

Better Options for a Good Night's Rest

Numerous factors can influence your sleep, and the good news is that many are under your control. Remember that sleeping pills are not the answer and will probably create more problems than they solve. Below are four strategies for optimizing your sleep, and you will find many more in my comprehensive sleep guide.
  1. Cover your windows with blackout shades or drapes to ensure complete darkness. Even the tiniest bit of light in your room, such as the glow of a bedside clock, can disrupt your sleep and therefore your melatonin production. Close your bedroom door, get rid of night-lights, and refrain from turning on any light during the night, even when getting up to go to the bathroom. If you need a light, install so-called "low blue" light bulbs in your bedroom and bathroom, which emit an amber or red light that will not suppress your natural melatonin production.
  2. Keep the temperature in your bedroom at or below 70 degrees F (21 degrees Celsius). Many people keep their bedrooms too warm, which can result in restless sleep. Studies show the optimal room temperature for sleeping is fairly cool, between 60 to 68 degrees F (15.5 to 20 C).
  3. Check your bedroom for electro-magnetic fields (EMFs). These can disrupt your pineal gland’s melatonin production. In order to do this, you will need a gauss meter, which can be purchased online for between $50 and $200. Some experts even recommend pulling your circuit breaker before bed to kill all power in your house. Move alarm clocks and other electrical devices away from your head. If these devices must be used, keep them as far away from your bed as possible, preferably at least 3 feet. Put away your computer, TV, iPad, and all other similar gadgets at least and hour before bedtime, as they also emit blue light.
  4. Try Earthing. When walking barefoot on the earth, free electrons transfer from the ground into your body through the soles of your feet. These free electrons are some of the most potent antioxidants known to man. Experiments have shown that these electrons decrease pain and inflammation, and promote sound sleep. Spend more time with your bare feet in contact with the earth. You may want to invest in an earthing sheet for your bed.
  5. Exercise to sleep better, but do it early! Exercising for at least 30 minutes per day can improve your sleep, but exercising too close to bedtime (generally within the three hours) may keep you awake.
  6. Avoid foods that interfere with sleep. The worst foods for sleep include alcohol, coffee, dark chocolate, spicy foods, and certain fatty foods.
  7. If you're feeling anxious or restless, try using the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT)which can clear emotional issues and alleviate stress and worries that keep you tossing and turning at night.
Enhanced by Zemanta

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Organized Crime Ring The Pharmaceutical Drug Cartel

English: Example of promotional "freebies...
English: Example of promotional "freebies" given to physicians by pharmaceutical companies (Photo credit: Wikipedia)




By Dr. Mercola
Even though the video above is a few years old now and bigger fines of $3 billion have been assessed to GlaxoSmithKline two years ago, it is a good summary of how the drug cartels operate.
Did you know that nearly 20 percent of corporate crime is being committed by companies that make products for your health?
Sad but true, no less than 19 pharmaceutical companies made AllBusiness.com's Top 100 Corporate Criminals List for the 1990s, and the trend has continued if not increased into the 21st Century. Crimes committed by some of the most well-known drug companies include:
  • Fabricated studies
  • Covering up serious problems with their drugs
  • False claims
  • Bribery, illegal kick-backs, and defrauding Medicare, Medicaid, and even the FDA
  • Immoral threat and intimidation tactics (recall the international drug company Merck actually had a hit list of doctors to be "neutralized" or discredited for criticizing the lethally dangerous painkiller Vioxx. "We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live," a Merck employee wrote, according to an email excerpt read in court.)

Pulling Back the Curtain on Organized Crime

Fortunately, organizations like the Bureau of Investigative Journalism,1 the False Claims Act Legal Center,2 and Politicol News3 have all started investigating and publicizing the criminal actions these companies have been getting away with for decades.
Most recently, the British Medical Journal’s blog featured an article4 by former BMJ editor and director of the United Health Group’s chronic disease initiative, Richard Smith, aptly titled: "Is the Pharmaceutical Industry Like the Mafia?"
The piece is also the foreword to the book, Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare, written by Peter Gøtzsche, head of the Nordic Cochrane Centre, which is considered the gold standard in terms of independent research reviews.
In related news, a recently published study concluded that most drug commercials are misleading or outright false.5 There’s a literal mountain of evidence proving that pharmaceutical companies are untrustworthy at best, and criminal at worst. And yet they’re the backbone of our modern “healthcare” system...
Even Forbes Magazine6 recently published an article with the provocative headline: "Is Big Pharma Addicted To Fraud?" and asked out loud “whether any aspect of the pharmaceutical business can be trusted.”

Is It Fair to Compare the Pharmaceutical Industry with the Mafia?

If you depend on conventional medical care to address your health problems, then you’re basically entrusting your health to organizations that clearly have far more interest in their bottom line than your health. In his article, Is the Pharmaceutical Industry Like the Mafia? Smith writes:7
“The characteristics of organized crime, racketeering, is defined in US law as the act of engaging repeatedly in certain types of offence, including extortion, fraud, federal drug offenses, bribery, embezzlement, obstruction of justice, obstruction of law enforcement, tampering with witnesses, and political corruption.

Peter [Gøtzsche] produces evidence, most of it detailed, to support his case that pharmaceutical companies are guilty of most of these offenses.
And he is not the first to compare the industry with the Mafia or mob. He quotes a former vice-president of Pfizer, who has said:
‘It is scary how many similarities there are between this industry and the mob. The mob makes obscene amounts of money, as does this industry. The side effects of organized crime are killings and deaths, and the side effects are the same in this industry. The mob bribes politicians and others, and so does the drug industry…’
Smith also notes that many more people are killed by the pharmaceutical industry than the mob. Prescription drugs also kill far more people than illegal drugs, and while most major causes of preventable deaths are declining, those from prescription drug use are on the incline.8, 9
For example, prescription drug fatalities more than doubled among teens and young adults between 2000 and 2008, and more than tripled among people aged 50 to 69.
Legal prescription drug abuse is a silent epidemic, and is part of the reason why the modern American medical system has become one of the leading causes of death and injury in the United States.

An estimated 450,000 preventable medication-related adverse events occur in the US every year. Merck’s painkiller Vioxx alone killed more than 60,000 people within a few years’ time before being withdrawn from the market.
“... [T]he benefits of drugs are exaggerated, often because of serious distortions of the evidence behind the drugs, a ‘crime’ that can be attributed confidently to the industry,” Smith writes.“The great doctor William Osler famously said that it would be good for humankind and bad for the fishes if all the drugs were thrown into the sea.
He was speaking before the therapeutic revolution in the middle of the 20th century that led to penicillin, other antibiotics, and many other effective drugs, but Peter comes close to agreeing with him and does speculate that we would be better off without most psychoactive drugs, where the benefits are small, the harms considerable, and the level of prescribing massive.”

'Science-Based' Medicine Has Fallen on Its Own Sword

There are many areas within which corruption can take root, and the drug industry has nurtured corruption in most if not all of them. It would require an entire book to begin to address them all, which is exactly what Peter Gøtzsche has done in his book, Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare.
One of the most dangerous forms of corruption is that which occurs within medical science. For example, according to data from Thomson Reuters,10 the number of retractions of scientific studies have increased more than 15-fold since 2001, and a review11 published just last year showed that nearly 75 percent of all retracted drug studies were attributed to “scientific misconduct,” which includes:
  • Data falsification or fabrication
  • Questionable veracity
  • Unethical author conduct
  • Plagiarism
Corruption of science is incredibly serious, as health care professionals rely on published studies to make treatment recommendations, and large numbers of patients can be harmed when false findings are published. The average lag time between publication of the study and the issuing of a retraction is 39 months. And that's if the misconduct is ever caught at all. What’s worse, about 32 percent of retractions are never published,12 leaving the readers completely in the dark about the inaccuracies in those studies!

Poster Children for Corrupted Science

One clear example of how deadly corrupted science can be is the painkiller Vioxx. There were many indications that this would be a dangerous drug, despite Merck’s claims, and I warned my readers to avoid it before its FDA approval in 1999. In 2008, four years after the drug was withdrawn from the market, an editorial13 published in the Journal of the American Medical Association(JAMA) suggested Merck might have deliberately manipulated dozens of academic documents published in the medical literature, in order to promote Vioxx under false pretenses.
The diabetes drug Avandia is another potent example. Between 1999 and 2007, Avandia is estimated to have caused over 80,000 unnecessary heart attacks,14 although the actual numbers of people harmed or killed by the drug is still largely unknown. Avandia is a poster child for the lethal paradigm of corrupted science as GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the manufacturer of Avandia,hid damaging information about the drug for over 10 years, as they knew it would adversely affect sales!
Two years ago, GSK agreed to a $3 billion settlement over the sales and marketing practices of several of its drugs, including Avandia. This was the largest federal drug-company settlement in US history, surpassing the $2.3 billion paid by Pfizer in 2009(see video above) for illegally promoting off-label uses of four of its drugs. Most recently, GSK’s crooked ways made international headlines yet again when Chinese authorities arrested four of the company’s senior executives on charges of cash and sexual bribery. Another 18 GSK employees and medical personnel were also reportedly detained.15 As reported by The Guardian:16
“The Chinese authorities have accused GSK of acting like a criminal "godfather", using a network of 700 middlemen and travel agencies to bribe doctors with £320m [$489 million] cash and sexual favors in return for prescribing GSK drugs. Gao said the police have evidence that bribery has been a 'core part' of GSK China's business model since 2007.” [Emphasis mine]
As Smith writes in the featured article:
“The drug industry has systematically corrupted science to play up the benefits and play down the harms of their drugs... the industry has bought doctors, academics, journals, professional and patient organizations, university departments, journalists, regulators, and politicians. These are the methods of the mob.
The book doesn’t let doctors and academics avoid blame... doctors and academics are supposed to have a higher calling. Laws that are requiring companies to declare payments to doctors are showing that very high proportions of doctors are beholden to the drug industry and that many are being paid six figures sums for advising companies or giving talks on their behalf. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that these ‘key opinion leaders’ are being bought. They are the ‘hired guns’ of the industry.
And, as with the mob, woe be to anybody who whistleblows or gives evidence against the industry. Peter tells several stories of whistleblowers being hounded, and John Le Carré’s novel describing drug company ruthlessness became a bestseller and a successful Hollywood film.”

New Study Finds Most Drug Commercials Misleading

In related news, a recent study17 concluded that a majority of American drug commercials—60 percent of prescription drug ads, and 80 percent of ads for over-the-counter (OTC) drugs—are either misleading or outright false. Lead author Adrienne E. Faerber told Scientific American:18
“There were cases of blatant lying, but these half-truths form more than half of our analysis.”
In all, the researchers analyzed 84 prescription and 84 OTC drug ads aired on major networks between 2008 and 2010. Ads deemed to be “potentially misleading” omitted important information, exaggerated information, made lifestyle associations, or expressed opinions. Ads making false claims were either factually false or unsubstantiated. Ads promoting erectile dysfunction drugs were among the worst offenders. OTC drugs, which are overseen by the Federal Trade Commission and not the FDA, were also more likely to be misleading or false. Overall, a mere 33 percent of drug ads were found to be “objectively true.”
Interestingly enough, other research published in the journal Psychological Science19, 20 found that warnings of adverse side effects in drug ads can actually backfire over time. While initially making viewers cautious, over the course of time people tend to ignore the warnings. People even began to see the warning as "an indication of the firm's honesty and trustworthiness!" According to the authors:
“In four studies, we demonstrated this phenomenon. For example, participants could buy cigarettes or artificial sweeteners after viewing an ad promoting the product. Immediately afterward, the quantity that participants bought predictably decreased if the ad they saw included a warning about adverse side effects. With temporal distance (product to be delivered 3 months later, or 2 weeks after the ad was viewed), however, participants who had seen an ad noting the benefits of the product but warning of risky side effects bought more than those who had seen an ad noting only benefits.”

But Who Is Behind the Drug Companies?

While it is true that there were fines of $2 billion and $3 billion against the drug companies, that really pales in comparison to the fines being leveraged against the financial industry. JP Morgan will likely receive an $11 billion dollar fine.21 This level of fine doesn’t even begin to come close to what these criminal institutions really deserve for how they have ruined the US economy.
But keeping the article focused on health, you have to wonder if there is some common thread here and I believe there is.  The drug companies are typically owned by other corporations. Just as the featured video shows, the shell game that Pfizer played shielded them by developing tiered lower-level corporations. What is rarely ever explained is that the corporate shield also runs in the other direction. The primary owners of most of these drug companies are the international banksters that are responsible for most of the problems we see not only in the health arena, but in all areas of the world.

How To Avoid Becoming a Disease Statistic

Ultimately, the take-home message here is that even if a drug or treatment is "backed by science," this in no way guarantees it is safe or effective. Likewise, if an alternative treatment has not been published in a medical journal, it does not mean it is unsafe or ineffective. Also, when a drug or treatment does come with warnings, do yourself a favor and don’t tuck that information into some recessed corner in the back of your mind!
You've got to use all the resources available to you, including your own sense of common sense and reason, true experts' advice and other's experiences, to determine what medical treatment or advice will be best for you in any given situation. I advise you to remain skeptical but open -- even if it is something I'm saying, you need to realize that YOU are responsible for your and your family's health, not me, and certainly not drug companies trying to sell their wares and convince you to take dangerous "symptom-cover-ups" disguised as science-based solutions.
When it comes to health, an ounce of prevention is certainly better than a pound of cure, especially when the cure comes in a pill. Please keep in mind that leading a common-sense, healthy lifestyle is your best bet to achieve and maintain a healthy body and mind. And while conventional medical science may flip-flop back and forth in its recommendations, there are certain basic tenets of optimal health (and healthy weight) that do not change, including the following:
  1. Proper Food Choices: For a comprehensive guide on which foods to eat and which to avoid, see my nutrition plan. Generally speaking, you should be looking to focus your diet on whole, ideally organic, unprocessed foods. For the best nutrition and health benefits, you will want to eat a good portion of your food raw.
  2. Avoid sugar, and fructose in particular. All forms of sugar have toxic effects when consumed in excess, and drive multiple disease processes in your body, not the least of which is insulin resistance, a major cause of chronic disease and accelerated aging. I believe the two primary keys for successful weight management are severely restricting carbohydrates (sugars, fructose, and grains) in your diet, and increasing healthy fat consumption. This will optimize insulin and leptin levels, which is key for maintaining a healthy weight and optimal health.
  3. Regular exercise: Even if you're eating the healthiest diet in the world, you still need to exercise to reach the highest levels of health, and you need to be exercising effectively, which means including high-intensity activities into your rotation. High-intensity interval-type training boosts human growth hormone (HGH) production, which is essential for optimal health, strength and vigor. HGH also helps boost weight loss. So along with core-strengthening exercises, strength training, and stretching, I highly recommend that twice a week you do Peak Fitness exercises, which raise your heart rate up to your anaerobic threshold for 20 to 30 seconds, followed by a 90-second recovery period.
  4. Stress Reduction: You cannot be optimally healthy if you avoid addressing the emotional component of your health and longevity, as your emotional state plays a role in nearly every physical disease -- from heart disease and depression, to arthritis and cancer. Meditation, prayer, social support and exercise are all viable options that can help you maintain emotional and mental equilibrium. I also strongly believe in using simple tools such as the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) to address deeper, oftentimes hidden, emotional problems.
  5. Drink plenty of clean water.
  6. Maintain a healthy gut: About 80 percent of your immune system resides in your gut, and research is stacking up showing that probiotics—beneficial bacteria—affect your health in a myriad of ways; it can even influence your ability to lose weight. A healthy diet is the ideal way to maintain a healthy gut, and regularly consuming traditionally fermented foods is the easiest, most cost effective way to ensure optimal gut flora.
  7. Optimize your vitamin D levels: Research has shown that increasing your vitamin D levels can reduce your risk of death from ALL causes. For practical guidelines on how to use natural sun exposure to optimize your vitamin D benefits, please see my previous article on how to determine if enough UVB is able to penetrate the atmosphere to allow for vitamin D production in your skin.
  8. Avoid as many chemicals, toxins, and pollutants as possible: This includes tossing out your toxic household cleaners, soaps, personal hygiene products, air fresheners, bug sprays, lawn pesticides, and insecticides, just to name a few, and replacing them with non-toxic alternatives.
  9. Get plenty of high quality sleep: Regularly catching only a few hours of sleep can hinder metabolism and hormone production in a way that is similar to the effects of aging and the early stages of diabetes. Chronic sleep loss may speed the onset or increase the severity of age-related conditions such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, and memory loss.
Enhanced by Zemanta

Friday, August 16, 2013

Most Back Pain Treatments Are Ineffective and Unnecessary

An estimated 80 percent of Americans will suffer from chronic back pain at some point in life. Nearly 30 percent may be struggling with persistent or chronic back pain right now,1 leading many to resort to prescription painkillers, expensive steroid shots or even surgery.
This despite the fact that, in most cases, back pain is a result of simple mechanical problems relating to poor posture or improper movement, which are best prevented and managed by regular exercise and strengthening your back and abdominal muscles.
It is estimated that back pain accounts for more than 10 percent of all primary care doctors visits each year, and the cost for treatment stacks up to $86 billion annually.2 According to recent research, much of this treatment is unnecessary, while simultaneously failing to successfully address the problem.
As reported by The New York Times:3
“Well-established guidelines for the treatment of back pain require very conservative management — in most cases, no more than aspirin or acetaminophen (Tylenol) and physical therapy.
Advanced imaging procedures, narcotics and referrals to other physicians are recommended only for the most refractory cases or those with serious other symptoms. But a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine4suggests that doctors are not following the guidelines.”

Back Pain Is Often Over-Treated

The team reviewed more than 23,900 outpatient visits for back pain that was unrelated to more serious conditions (such as cancer) over a 12-year period (1999-2010), and found that during this time:5
  • Use of Tylenol and other NSAIDs declined by just over 50 percent
  • Prescriptions for opiates increased by 51 percent
  • CT and MRI scans also rose by 57 percent
  • Referrals to specialists increased by 106 percent
  • Use of physical therapy remained steady at about 20 percent
Needless to say, the trend shows that back pain is increasingly being treated with addictive drugs and diagnostic exams that expose patients to potentially unnecessary and dangerous levels of radiation. Back pain is actually one of the primary reasons why so many American adults get addicted to pain killers.
Furthermore, the existing treatments do not cure back pain—they only treat the symptoms. Senior author, Dr. Bruce E. Landon, a professor of health care policy at Harvard, told The New York Times6 that back pain actually tends to improve by itself in most cases, adding:
“It’s a long conversation for physicians to educate patients. Often it’s easier just to order a test or give a narcotic rather than having a conversation. It’s not always easy to do the right thing.”
Opiates are not the only dangerous drugs being pushed for back pain. One of the most egregious examples of Big Pharma disease mongering7 is the emergence of ads suggesting your back pain may be caused by ankylosing spondylitis, a chronic inflammatory disease of the axial skeleton, which includes the spine.
“Do you have back pain? Are you dismissing it as resulting from "lifting too much" at the gym or "bad posture”? one radio ad asks. “You might have ankylosing spondylitis.”
The drug advertised is Humira, which has a price tag of about $20,000 a year. It is reprehensible for drug companies to promote this expensive and dangerous drug for an exceedingly rare cause of low back pain, which likely is responsible for less than a tenth of a tenth of one percent of low back pain!
Side effects of the drug8 include tuberculosis, serious infections, increased risk of lymphoma and other cancers, hepatitis B infection in carriers of the virus, allergic reactions, nervous system problems, blood problems, heart failure, certain immune reactions including a lupus-like syndrome, liver problems, new or worsening psoriasis, and many more. Considering the fact that most cases of low back pain are not caused by inflammatory conditions, you probably do not need this drug, although your doctor may very well give it to you should you ask.

Don’t Settle for Band-Aids—Treat the Root Cause of Your Back Pain

With the exception of blunt force injuries, low back pain is commonly caused and exacerbated by:
Poor posturePoor physical conditioning facilitated by inactivityInternal disease, such as kidney stones, infections, blood clots
ObesityPsychological/emotional stressOsteoporosis (bone loss)

Since poor posture and/or improper movement is to blame for most cases of back pain, one of the best things you can do to prevent and manage back pain is to exercise regularly and keep your back and abdominal muscles strong. Foundation Training—an innovative method developed by Dr. Eric Goodman to treat his own chronic low back pain—is an excellent alternative to the Band Aid responses so many are given. The program is inexpensive and can be surprisingly helpful, as these exercises are designed to help you strengthen your entire core and move the way nature intended.
Many people fail to realize that many times back pain actually originates from tension and imbalance at a completely different place than where the pain is felt. For example, the very act of sitting for long periods of time ends up shortening the iliacus, psoas and quadratus lumborum muscles that connect from your lumbar region to the top of your femur and pelvis. When these muscles are chronically short, it can cause severe pain when you stand up as they will effectively pull your lower back (lumbar) forward.
The reality is that the imbalance among the anterior and posterior chains of muscles leads to many of the physical pains experienced daily. By rebalancing these muscles, you can remedy many pains and discomforts. Teaching your body to naturally support itself at the deepest level is going to be far more effective than strapping on an external back brace, which over time can lead to even weaker musculature.
http://fitness.mercola.com/sites/fitness/archive/2013/08/16/back-pain-overtreatment.aspx  Catch the rest of the story at Mercola.com at the above link.

Our Notes:

What we have often recommended for many people with back pain isn't really covered here.  We have suggested swimming.  Most of those who followed the idea reported tremendous improvements in their back pain issues to the pain completely disappearing for good after weeks of daily swimming.  Not everyone will have these same results but it's a low cost way to relieve pain and if it does work for you, all the better.

Enhanced by Zemanta