…With more—and worse—drugs?
Mainstream medicine too frequently relies on pharmaceuticals to solve problems that FDA-approved medicines caused in the first place. Take, for example, delirium—a kind of mental confusion that’s a common complication of hospital admission, especially among people over 65. It is one of the biggest drains on the healthcare system, costing between $38 and $152 billion per year in the US alone. Patients who become delirious are more likely to die while hospitalized and in the months after leaving, and many suffer permanent loss of their mental faculties.
Worst of all, say researchers from Vanderbilt University, in many hospitals three-quarters of delirium cases go undiagnosed because patients are often quiet and withdrawn rather than agitated and hallucinating. As you will see, the undiagnosed patients may actually be better off.
Next month, Vanderbilt researchers will begin a study to see if giving antipsychotic drugs in an intensive care unit (ICU) can reduce delirium and subsequent cognitive decline.
Shockingly, the truth is that delirium is often triggered by medication given in hospital. Drugs that boost activity of the neurotransmitter dopamine, or block the effects of acetylcholine, increase the risk of delirium. Sedatives that are widely prescribed in an ICU and to patients undergoing surgery seem to be particularly risky in this respect.
Think about this: Even though one of the triggers of delirium is hospital-prescribed drugs (sedatives), the solution they’re considering is to prescribe even more dangerous and potentially damaging drugs (antipsychotics).
Side effects of the antipsychotic drugs which researchers hope will help with delirium include weight gain, type II diabetes, hyperlipidemia, inflammation of the heart muscle (myocarditis), sexual side effects, cataracts, and even more severe mental problems.
Why would trained researchers want to give delirium patients anti-psychotic medication? Are they delirious themselves? Or is this just more crony capitalism involving the corrupting effect of drug company money? It certainly won’t be hard to find drug company funding for this trial.
Integrative approaches can address the ICU delirium risk factors with less invasive common sense procedures. Keeping patients mobile, well-nourished, hydrated, and mentally active, giving them undisturbed sleep, and minimizing the use of mechanical ventilation have been shown to reduce the risk of delirium by 40%. It is hoped that providing individually tailored treatments, increasing physical therapy and problem-solving exercises, and avoiding certain drugs will further reduce that risk.
This problem—treating delirium with drugs likely to make the patient much worse, is not an isolated case. Drug treatments in general—even commonly prescribed medicines—often do more harm than good. For example, European researchers who tested more than 4,000 elderly people found that those who took an aspirin every day to reduce the risk of stroke were twice as likely to be diagnosed with late-stage age-related macular degeneration as those who did not. That is in addition to the risk of intestinal bleeding from this favorite drug.
Likewise, many common blood-pressure lowering drugs have serious side effects: ACE inhibitors lead to kidney failure, Beta-blockers can cause dizziness and impotence, and calcium channel blockers can increase risk of heart attack. Yet astonishingly, researchers recently recommended that blood-pressure lowering drugs be given to everyone, regardless of their actual blood pressure level!
We have written before about the risk of taking statins, the most widely prescribed drug in the world, for so-called high cholesterol. Even the entrenched medical dogma that HDL cholesterol is good and LDL is bad may not be right, or may at least be oversimplified. Scientists at Texas A&M University have found that LDL cholesterol is actually needed by the body to build new muscle—a finding that is particularly important for us as we get older and lose muscle more rapidly.
All of this illustrates why one-size-fits-all medicine, run or mandated by government and heavily influenced or controlled by corporate interests, will always lead to bad medicine. We need real competition in medicine, with many options available, so that new ideas and new research have a chance to be heard, and which patients and doctors have the right to choose.
I strongly support the Petition.
The health care profession has got to protect the patient from injury or even death.
Dr. Edlich
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our flawmakers and potential flawmakers could run their election campaigns on their resume without the high cost campaign advertisements paid for by corporate America.
Unfortunately the fox is watching the hen house.
This is sad but true article. It’s amazing how the body needs the basics, (nourishment, hydration, mental stimulation….with dementia. They push drugs that are causing people, especially the elderly who often don’t question, to become worse! This is pathetic. Whenever I’ve gone in tot he hospital for being dehydrated they all automatically want to give you morphine! Sometimes they don’t bother to tell you what they are about to give you. I eneded up to messed up to get up and walk out the door and was stuck in the hospital for an additional 2 hours.I watched many people get really strange when taking statins. sometimes what you have is better than the so called “cure” Time to get a clue AMA and doctors.
I have personal experience with my sons. They both have had addiction problem as a result of strong pain pill and being prescribed antidepressants. we really need to explore the solutions for many problems that are natural and much safer. Please do something to stop this cycle.
Unfortunately, doctors aren’t trained to look at dietary factors in any diagnosis! I do believe that 99% of disease is a result of malnutrition and a sedentary lifestyle. They put peoples lives at risk by telling them that fat is bad and processed foods are OK. I don’t even think it occurs to them that most mood problems (with some exceptions) could probably be treated by changing eating habits. The gut is the body’s second brain, whatever we put in there has a direct effect on our mood and every other function.
Something else they don’t bother with is treating PAIN, and when they do, they do it incorrectly! I read an example awhile back about “a real trouble-making patient.” She was described as a hypocrite and an obvious addict, acting sweet during the day, and at night screaming shouting, leaning on the call button DEMANDING pain meds hours early… A new doc on the ward did some checking, and the pain med she was being given had a very short half-life – something like an hour or hour and a half. As the pain increased, she began to panic, and she was being forced to wait up to eight hours for more pain meds because none of the night docs knew the med she was on was short-acting, and she had a VERY painful condition. She was screaming because she was in agony, not because she was an addict! Studies have also shown that elderly patients whose pain is treated by titrating a pure opiate agonist to pain and then the staff stays on it have less danger of delirium, heal more quickly, have better attitudes, better appetite… Opiophobia, thanks to insurance company greed, the DEA and the idiot Drug War, allopathic medicine with its current paradigm makes a hospital stay a crap shoot. And nosecomial infections happen FAR too frequently.
Ian
This has happened to me, let alone the colesterol lowering drug nexium I take twice a day. I really dont understand how mental heath people are allowed to perscribe low blood pressure medicine, when they are not in that feild? I really dont get it! They took me off the meds that really help me , put me on stuff that I dont think even helps! Just because I take my perscribed medicine I dont abuse them like others do! I really feel bad for the seniors, they seem to be a target in this game! Also the poor .do sell your medicine or go with out food, imagine if you were in this perdicament?
Thej above is a particular problem for the 48 million Americans who suffer from multiple chemical sensitivities because we are more likely to get sick to begin with and are more likely to develop serious complications from chemical medications.
Please do not buy my story.
Please check it out.
Anyone is free to google “Multiple Chemical Sensitivities” to see an additional reason to offer patients far more customized care and less “automatic” medication.than most receive right now.
The FDA just gives big pharma. a liscense to kill. There are more oeople who die from per-scriptions than from natural products. Thats why they want to ban natural vitamans.
Thanks for the story. Over the years I have watched numerous folks receive another drug to address the side effect of a drug. Small wonder that many of our seniors take 6+ prescription drugs a year!
Before I pulled my head out and really started to THINK, the VA medical system had me taking 17 pills in the morning, 15 midday and another 17 at night! Most of them were to mitigate the side effects of the main medications, and others were to mitigate the side effects of the second round that were for the side effects of the first round! It’s insane!
Ian
Thanks for the information. I’ve been taking a vairety of pills for several months an notic my breasts are getting larger and flabby. I’ m 89 and in two weeks will turn 90. Is that normal?
I don’t smoke, never been drunk, drink or carouse with loose women, and I’m single 0r the others.
I’m in Lakeside Assisted Living because of variety of minor accidents like accidently biting into a tomato contaminated with slug bait; infected hernia patch job; Buris surgery to right
Knee; temporary, short blindess in right eye; Caralternator quit, all 7 lawn mowers quit;
5 garden tilliers quit. On top of all those;Obama, Johnson, Clinton, Bush, Cheney and CO, ARE USING MY-PROMISED SOCIAL SECURITY MONEY FOR GOLFING, FISHING, HUNTING AND SOMETHING ‘MY MOTHER TOLD US KIDS TO NEVER MENTION!
tomato tainted with slug bait; infected hernia reoair,
“All of this illustrates why one-size-fits-all medicine, run or mandated by government and heavily influenced or controlled by corporate interests, will always lead to bad medicine. We need real competition in medicine, with many options available, so that new ideas and new research have a chance to be heard, and which patients and doctors have the right to choose.”
Well said.
And, we need a lot more lawsuits.
The power of the purse is the main thing to effect change. Real change.
We need to get to work with our pens and expose side effect profiles of drugs, log our own personal experiences with them to the internet (hey, you can always use a pseudonym for privacy) and ask readers to seed the articles around the web.
Again, it comes back to the power of the purse.
Therein lies our hope.
It’s not just the government or corporate interests that harm patients. It’s often the policies of a hospital or insurance company that puts money before patients and the added problem of the God complex of the doctors.
Most doctors are woefully under educated when it come to pain and pain control (often confusing addiction with dependance) and many other areas.
When the added stresser of workers compensation enters the picture punitive therapies are given to patients who are viewed by the system as fakers even when they have
REAL medical conditions. One of the therapies given me was soaking my arms and hands in ice water fro hours.. The only effect was that it intensified my pain and probably damaged my skin and nerves (I now have lesions on my arms and the damage to my hands are much worse). I had one doctor (a neurologist) say there was nothing wrong with me when paid by workers compensation for an IME (an Independent Medical Exam, sadly which are neither independent or medical) then when he saw me months later at the VA suddenly I had TOS and the first real case he had ever seen. Money seems to be the driving force behind many medical decisions and dxs.
I am a massive pain in the butt to most doctors as I’m a patient who listens to her body and often refuses to believe the hype given to her by doctors.
Currently the Veterans Administration medical system has decided to wean all vets with chronic pain but no cancer off their pain meds even when the meds were a good match and allowed the patient some semblance of a normal life. All because some study said that if we were weaned off the meds our pain would magically disappear What BS!
Personally I’m sick of studies that say don’t eat sugar, then yes sugar is OK….don’t eat salt then salt is OK. I have decided to live my life listening to my body and not the opinions of studies.
What people have to face is that medicine has been totally corrupted to the point that doctors create dis-ease with their vaccines and other “treatments”. The plan discussed in the article to use anti-psychotics in ICU patients who have been made psychotic by the drugs they are already taking (as well as not being able to sleep due to constant beeping of machines and lights always on) is the typical “disease management” funnel that I learned in medical school. Almost never are symptoms considered as possible side effects of drugs already given. Instead, another drug is added to the toxic cocktail.
People with a conscience cannot conceive of the evil that pervades the medical profession, where doctors commit murder by medicine every day (especially of the elderly). Since the traitors in the district of criminals have robbed the Medicare trust fund, doctors are being used to get them off the dole. I left my profession in the early 1990’s because of what I was seeing going on, and from the calls I receive (especially in the US & Canada) it is only getting worse and more blatant. My book “What Happened to the Hippocratic Oath?” should be published by the end of this year, and the shocking contents will wake up many people (hopefully the critical mass we need to cause the death of medicine as it exists today).
People also must face the extent to which “alternative” medicine has been corrupted as well by what I call the “grey coats”; “integrative” and “complementary” MD’s who pretty much practice big pharma based medicine, but add a few supplements to the mix to attract patients who are waking up. Supplement companies are being bought out by big pharma and their products corrupted as well. For example, good luck finding a supplement in the pressed tablet form without magnesium stearate. If you are not aware of how toxic this stuff is, a good site to check out is http://www.naturesbiology.com/fucoprime/stearic_acid.php.
Lastly, as far as the statement in the article that “We need real competition in medicine, with many options available, so that new ideas and new research have a chance to be heard, and which patients and doctors have the right to choose” is concerned; until people realize the persecution that any MD who steps out of the big pharma box experiences and stands up for these doctors, there will be no such competition. As those of you who receive the excellent e-mails from the Alliance for Natural Health have already learned, through schemes like Codex Alimentarius, “mandated” vaccines and Obamacare, we are incrementally being robbed of our right to make our own health care decisions. It is critical for the people to “just say no” to the blatant and malicious attacks against doctors who have actually learned how to reverse diseases naturally. Because the Hippocrates Protocol I developed 15 years ago is so successful in reversing all autoimmune disease, non-traumatic seizures and cancer (in people and in pets), the medical mafia has attacked me in many ways. Please go to http://www.reversingvaccineinduceddiseases.com/page/415061574 and listen to the 1st mp3 file; an interview of myself by the Chiropractic Leadership Alliance in which the chiropractors who interviewed me (one of them is also an attorney) researched the action against me by the NYS medical board and determined it was an absolute fraud. Since I never had any complaints against me (even when I was a surgeon), they found me to have a “delusion of conspiracy” because of a public access television show I did exposing corruption in the courts regarding the abduction of my only child by the state. Is it any surprise that so many MD’s ignore their Hippocratic Oath, sell out their patients and do the harm mandated to keep their medical licenses when doctors such as myself are attacked, and the people for whom they risk everything do nothing?
It is interesting how it all worked out; when the medical board ordered me to get psychiatric “treatment” to keep my license, I responded that they can keep their license. I am now a teacher who teaches clients what I would do if I were them to reverse their diseases rather than “practicing medicine” or giving medical advise. I have clients all over the world, and the inability of any member of the medical mafia to refute my realization of the “big picture” involving the cause of all diseases (available on you tube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6dffXhewVE) has made the truth self evident.
Please help spread the word, as my case is proof of what is really going on…
Rebecca Carley, MD
Court Qualified Expert in Vaccine Induced Diseases (the biggest epidemic the world has ever known)
Dr. Peter Breggin’s work deals with this topic in depth.
“Informed Consent” is the term for your legal right and the practitioners legal responsibility to inform the subject about the risks, benefits and alternatives to, what they have to offer.
See Serotonin and Neuroleptic Syndrome to consider the link between pneumonia and death in people old and young – taking psychotropic drugs.
The problem is that MD’s know nothing about non-pharma alternatives, so how can they give a truly informed consent? They can’t. When I was in medical school we had 2 years of classes in pharmacology, and 10 hours in nutrition (2 hours of which taught us that vitamins are a waste of money that essentially create expensive urine).
Everything I teach my clients about to reverse their diseases I studied on my own after experiencing true healing myself with natural therapies, especially homeopathy (which I never learned or even heard the word in medical school). I have had at least 25 MD’s consult with me over the last 15 years to learn how to heal themselves or their children. Not a single one would share this information with their patients, as they told me they knew the medical mafia would go after them if they did.
Dr Carley
This is a very good article.
I have been exposed to doctors wanting me to take statins and beta blockers. It has been proven with good documentation that I cannot tolerate either of these drugs do to suffering severe side effects when taking them. It has also been proven I really don’t need them but they keep insisting I take them to prevent problems. The problem is the drugs make me sicker and I refuse to be a victim of big pharmacy anymore. Instead of using common sense, my family doctor still insists I take a statin even though it has been proven time and time again that my arteries and veins are not blocked and that my problem with the RCA getting blocked is due to restenosis brought on my an overreaction of my body to foreign items being put into my body. I suffer severy myopathy when I go on statins and it also affects my kidneys. Last month I refused to take Lipitor and she threw me out of her office. She is a young doctor and we really need to train these physicians better and get them to not depend so much on test, surgeries and drugs. Lipitor is a big money maker so good luck getting doctors to quit forcibly prescribing it to everyone as a PRECAUTION! Makes me sick just thinking about her alterior motives!!! I hear McDonalds is going to start seliing it in their restaurants… They are also tied to big pharma so I bet they pull it of now that the drug has fallen over the patent cliff!!! I am sad when I think of the populace falling into their trap due to ignorance…
Here is my favorite example of the insanity of toxic drugs “treating” other toxic drugs.
“Fosamax can dramatically increase your chances of getting atrial fibrillation. Atrial fibrillation is a worrisome irregular heart beat. And the increase in risk isn’t small. The drug increases your risk of atrial fibrillation by 86% in just three years. Since Fosamax is a long-term drug, it’s quite likely anyone who takes the drug will eventually have heart problems. To protect you from atrial fibrillation, your doctor likely will have you take Coumadin (rat poison). Coumadin thins your blood and prevents blood clots. But it also promotes osteoporosis. You’re obviously not going to get healthy with this type of system.” Doctor Robert J. Rowen MD
Take the profit out of health care and this may stop.
Side Effects…..Side Effects……Side Effects!
Should I say more?
What about Apples…..Apples…..Apples!