The rash of celebrity prescription drug overdoses that have hijacked media headlines for months signals a growing trend that spans way beyond the boundaries of Hollywood.

Unintentional poisoning deaths from prescription drugs have been on the rise for years, and hospitalizations due to overdoses of prescription opioids, sedatives and tranquilizers increased 65 percent from 1999-2006, according to a report published in the May 2010 American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Researchers from West Virginia University School of Medicine analyzed data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample, which includes data for about 8 million hospitalizations per year. Hospital admissions for opioids (morphine, OxyContin, etc.), sedatives and tranquilizers (Valium, Xanax, etc.) increased from about 43,000 to 71,000 during the seven-year study period.

“Deaths and hospitalizations associated with prescription drug misuse have reached epidemic proportions,” said the study’s lead author, Jeffrey H. Coben, M.D., of the West Virginia University (WVU) School of Medicine, in a WVU press release. “It is essential that health care providers, pharmacists, insurance providers, state and federal agencies, and the general public all work together to address this crisis.”

“Prescription medications are just as powerful and dangerous as other notorious street drugs, and we need to ensure people are aware of these dangers and that treatment services are available for those with substance abuse problems,” he continued.

Click here to read the rest of the article.

As an integrative medicine doctor, for many years I’ve heard rumblings in the integrative medicine literature about the tight connection between the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry-like a revolving door. In addition, from the same sources, I see articles claiming how many deaths there are from pharmaceuticals and how many side effects are from pharmaceuticals.

Most of the articles I have seen were not from what I would call “reputable sources” Sometimes they were from websites with no licensed medical doctors and an obvious agenda. Sometimes I saw it on websites from practitioners who cannot prescribe drugs and whose opinion therefore seemed quite biased.

However, now, this week I bring to your attention a relatively new article from an unquestionable and undeniable source.

This is the article that appeared in the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics (JLME) edited by Mark Rodwin, and written by Donald W. Light, from the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. The co-authors were Jonathan J. Darrow of Harvard Medical School and Joel Lexchin, of York University.

The title of this article is “Institutional Corruption of Pharmaceuticals and the Myth of Safe and Effective Drugs”.

The article points out that “Over the past 35 years, patients have suffered from a largely hidden epidemic of side effects from drugs that usually have few offsetting benefits. The pharmaceutical industry has corrupted the practice of medicine through its influence over what drugs are developed, how they are tested, and how medical knowledge is created. Since 1906, heavy commercial influence has compromised Congressional legislation to protect the public from unsafe drugs. The authorization of user fees in 1992 has turned drug companies into the FDA’s prime clients, deepening the regulatory and cultural capture of the agency”.

Some of the shocking statistics in this article include that “About 90% of all new drugs approved by the FDA over the past 30 years are little or no more effective for patients than existing drugs.”

It also points out that the bar for safety has also been dropped over the past 30 years and that approved drugs have caused an epidemic of harmful side effects, even when they were properly prescribed. They estimate that “Every week about 53,000 excess hospitalizations and about 2400 excess deaths occur in the United States among people taking properly prescribed drugs to be healthier.”

They also point out that one in every five drugs approved ends up causing serious harm.Furthermore, only one in 10 drugs provide a substantial benefit compared to already existing established drugs.

And shockingly they point out that prescription drugs are The fourth leading cause of death in our country. They estimate that American patients suffer from approximately 80 million mild side effects every year.

I urge all of my patients and readers to read the original of this article which you can find HERE

Also please see the references listed below for further information.

Please let me know your thoughts on this new information

Remember to follow me on Twitter and Like me Facebook where you can leave me questions and comments.

References

1. Lexchin J. New drugs and safety: what happened to new active substances approved in Canada between 1995 and 2010? Archives of Internal Medicine 2012 (Nov 26);172:1680-81.
2. Hilts PJ. Protecting America’s Health: The FDA, Business and One Hundred Years of Regulation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf; 2003.
3. Rodwin M. Conflicts of interest, institutional corruption, and Pharma: an agenda for reform. Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 2012;40:511-22.
4. Rodwin M. Reforming pharmaceutical industry-physician financial relationships: lessons from the United States, France, and Japan. Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 2011(Winter):2-10.
5. Sismondo S. Ghost management. PLoS Medicine 2007;4:1429-33.
6. Sismondo S, Doucet M. Publication ethics and the ghost management of medical publication. Bioethics 2010;24:273-83.
7. Schondelmeyer S, Purvis L. Rx Price Watch Report. Washington DC: American Association of Retired Persons 2012.
8. Kozauer N, Katz R. Regulatory innovation and drug development for early-stage Alzheimer’s disease. New England Journal of Medicine 2013 (Mar 13);DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1302513
9. Young JH. The Toadstool Millionaires: a social history of patent medicines in America before federal regulation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; 1961.
   
10. Schiff G, Galanter W, Duhig J, et al. Principles of conservative prescribing. Archives of Internal Medicine 2011;171:1433-30.
11. How Pharmaceuticals Came To Be The 4th Leading Cause Of Death In America;November 20, 2013 by Lisa Bloomquist
12. Institutional Corruption of Pharmaceuticals and the Myth of Safe and Effective Drugs The Original Article as PDF.
13. Risky Drugs: Why The FDA Cannot Be Trusted, Donald Light from the Edmond J Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University

Fish oil been recommended by cardiologists for several decades as an additional way to help prevent and treat heart disease. Health organizations have even recommended to patients to ask their physician if fish oil supplements would be helpful to their heart health.

It is one of the most common supplements that brand new patients tell me they are already taking.

Fish oil has become a major industry, and we now consume over 100 tons of fish oil per year. It has become a multi-billion dollar business.

One company has taken a fish oil supplement and gotten FDA approval to sell it at a price that is estimated to be seven times the price of fish oil sold at a health food store. This is because it is now a prescription drug.

Recently, several studies have been done showing that fish oil does not provide benefit to people with heart disease.

Eric Topol M.D., who is Scripps Health Chief Academic Officer, has built an international reputation for his groundbreaking research and expertise, in cardiology.

After the most recent study about fish oil and heart health was published Dr. Topol filmed this video which you can watch at this site.

He reviewed this study with over 11,000 participants. His conclusion was that “I don’t know about you, but I have an awful lot of patients who come to me on fish oil and I try to implore them to stop taking it.”. “Fish oil does nothing and we cannot continue to argue about “the right dose” or “the right preparation”.

To his website he subsequently added a caveat that this study did not look at the role of fish oil in patients with high triglycerides. He points out that for that select group of patients that fish oil may very well have a benefit.

I would agree with that and it is clear that high-dose fish oils do have the ability to reduce high triglycerides. This might have some benefit in preventing heart disease then.

My colleague and friend Michael Greger, M.D. has done a video where he reviews the major journal articles that look at the benefit of fish oil in people with heart disease.

I urge you to watch it below. He concludes as well that there is NO benefit of fish oil in protection against heart disease.

If you are my patient please feel free to bring this up and talk with me about fish oil in our next appointment. For my readers who are not my patients, please take this latest information about the lack of benefit of fish oil, in protecting against heart disease.

Remember to follow me on Twitter and Like me Facebook where you can leave me questions and comments.

The sugar in your soda and other favorite sugary treats may all go down sweetly, but a groundbreaking new study found they act very differently once in your body.

The three main types of sugar in question are:

1. Glucose: made when your body breaks down starches

2. Fructose: the sugar found naturally in fruits and widely used in the form of high-fructose corn syrup

3. Sucrose: table sugar

Researchers from the University of California, Davis compared glucose and fructose consumption among 32 overweight or obese people and found they resulted in very different health changes.

After drinking either a fructose- or glucose-sweetened beverage that made up 25 percent of their daily calories for 12 weeks, both groups gained a similar amount of weight.

Click here to read more.

The more I practice medicine, the more urgently I realize that preventing disease is the best way to treat disease. And the best way to prevent disease is what we now call Lifestyle Medicine.

This is why I am delighted to have joined the Personalized Lifestyle Medicine Institute.

It is interesting, that we are now seeing articles in the traditional literature that show that lifestyle, including diet, exercise, sleep, self centering and self reflection, is the very best way to prevent people from getting sick.

In addition, new studies keep showing us that a plant-based diet is the healthiest diet to live on.

David L Katz M.D. recently published an article entitled Facing the faithlessness of public health: what’s the public got to do with it. He points out that in spite of compelling statistics showing that we could eliminate 80% of all heart disease and strokes, 90% of all diabetes, and 60% of all cancers with basic lifestyle changes “We have failed to motivate the public to make these changes and failed to motivate policymakers to make healthy choices the easiest choice.”

In this compelling article, Dr. Katz encourages all of us to put a real face on disease. We can do this by looking at friends and loved ones who are suffering with a chronic disease or who may have died with a chronic disease. Dr. Katz encourages us to look at them with the idea that lifestyle could have prevented these diseases. This way the disease becomes a personal reality for each and every one of us, and that can help motivate us to make the changes to our own lifestyle that can help prevent these diseases in ourselves.

Dr Katz discusses why “we do not care deeply enough to turn what we know into what we routinely do.”, in terms of changing our lifestyle.

Caldwell Esselstyn, M.D. along with Dean Ornish, M.D. has asked the question for years of why heart attacks remain the most common cause of death in America, when we totally know how to prevent them.

My colleague and friend Michael Greger M.D. does an excellent job of summarizing this information in the video below, entitled “Convincing Doctors to Embrace Lifestyle Medicine.”

Dr. Gregor goes on further to talk about why the medical establishment sometimes ignores highly efficacious therapies such as plant-based diets for heart disease prevention and treatment. His calls the process of ignoring these treatments, the “tomato effect”. Most people do not realize that for a long time tomatoes had been considered a poisonous plant!

Watch Dr. Gregor’s video here to find out more about this.

I urge all my patients and readers to look at your own lifestyle and your own diet and begin to make changes that move you in the direction of greater health.

Another great video on preventing heart disease

Calwell Esselstyn M.D.’s book on how to treat heart disease

Dean Ornish, M.D.’s eye opening book

Chlorine is one of the most commonly manufactured chemicals in the United States. In gas form, chlorine is poisonous and was actually used during World War I as a choking agent, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. You can recognize chlorine gas by its pungent, bleach-like odor that sometimes hovers around indoor swimming pools.

Chlorine gas can be pressurized and cooled to change it into a liquid form, which is used to make countless industrial and household products including:

• Bleach (both household chlorine bleach and bleach used in the manufacture of paper and cloth)
• Pesticides
• Rubber
• Solvents

Chlorine is also used for water treatment purposes to kill bacteria, so it’s not only likely in your drinking water, it’s in the water you use to shower and bathe with.

Click here to read more.

The first order of business after returning home from a day at the office or out shopping is to plop down your purse (or briefcase), often on the kitchen counter or table. Your kids do it too, with their backpack or lunchbox.
This simple action that most of us do without giving it a thought could be a major source of exposure to germs, bacteria, viruses and other organisms that could make you and your family sick, according to recent research into what’s really clinging to your purse.

Millions of Bacteria … on Your Purse?

Chuck Gerba, a microbiologist with the University of Arizona, used a hand-held germ meter to test how much bacteria was being carried around on women’s purses. Purses, after all, are indispensable for most women, and go with them from the car to the office to the bathroom to the grocery store and everywhere in between.

Click here to read more.

Sometime between the ages of 40 and 50, both men and women tend to have increased difficulty staying slim. For women, weight gain usually coincides with menopause or the years leading up to menopause. Changing hormone levels during this time may result in weight gain of about a pound a year. Meanwhile, these changes can encourage fat to accumulate around your abdomen, instead of your hips and thighs.

At the same time, as people age their bodies promote the replacement of muscle with fat. Since muscle burns more calories than fat does, this change means that your metabolism slows down. Further, physical activity tends to slow down as well. The resulting middle-age spread can quickly add up to 10, 20 or more pounds over a decade, impacting not only your physical appearance but also your health.

Of particular concern is visceral fat, which is located in the abdomen and surrounding vital organs. It can infiltrate your liver and other organs, streak through your muscles and even strangle your heart; and you can have it even if you appear to be thin or have just a small belly.

Visceral fat is linked to everything from bad cholesterol and hypertension to diabetes, heart disease and stroke. And those who are shaped like apples (who carry weight around their abdomen), something that tends to occur with age-related weight gain, are at a higher risk than pear shapes (who carry fat around their hips, thighs and bottom).

The good news is that age-related weight gain is not written in stone. That is, it’s perfectly possible to stay slim and trim no matter what your age, and there are plenty of people who do just that.

Click here to read more.

Gaining greater and greater popularity past the holiday season, cranberries have now gone well beyond their yearly appearance in Thanksgiving and other seasonal meals. Their tangy flavor and bright red color make them a favorite throughout the year (yet they’re most plentiful in fall, as their peak season runs from October to December).

But flavor and color aside, there’s another reason to enjoy cranberries (and even make them part of your diet year-round)–they’re incredibly nutritious and great for your health.

Cranberries and Your Heart

Studies have found that cranberries reduce the risk of heart disease. Most recently, a study presented at the annual congress of the International Union of Physiological Sciences in March/April 2005 found pigs with atherosclerosis (a primary cause of heart disease) that received a daily dose of cranberry powder had restored blood vessel health.

Other studies have also found that people who drink cranberry juice have higher levels of good (HDL) cholesterol and may have improved blood vessel function.

Click here to read more.

 

Over the past 20 years, the prevalence of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has risen dramatically. It is currently estimated that at least one in 88 children are diagnosed with ASD in the United States. I have seen estimates as high as one in 50 male children to now be diagnosed with ASD.

There’s been an ongoing debate whether mercury found as thimersol,a preservative, in children’s vaccinations has played a role in this epidemic or not.

The conventional medicine approach has been that there is no relationship of ASD with mercury, let alone thimerosal. However, an increasing body of evidence is showing that there IS a relationship between thimerosal and ASD.

Now, a brand-new article from the impressive Journal Translational Neurodegeneration, in a very impressively done study, shows a strong connection between mercury exposure in young children and their risk of autism.

In this study, they looked at a group of children who received the typical childhood vaccinations including DTaP, and hepatitis B. In one group, all the children had received their vaccinations containing thimerosal. In the other group the children had received the same vaccinations but in mercury free vaccines.

The findings were that there was over a twofold significantly increased risk for the incidence of ASD following thimerosal – containing DTaP vaccine compared to the thimerosal–free DTaP vaccine.

In phase II of the study they looked at children who had received hepatitis B vaccines containing thimerosal, in the first six months of life, and compared them with children with the same vaccination without mercury. It was again observed that children receiving the thimerosol hepatitis vaccines, were significantly more likely – twice as likely- to be diagnosed as autistic, than the control group who did not receive the mercury containing vaccinations. In this part of the study they looked at those children who received a total of 25 µg of mercury from the thimerosal containing hepatitis vaccine.

In the final part of the study children who received a higher dose of mercury- 37.5 µg of mercury- from thimerosal– containing hepatitis B vaccine, were three times more likely to be diagnosed with autism, than children who received the same vaccines without the mercury.

The authors of this article conclude that:
“Because those exposed to Thimerosal-containing vaccines have a statistically significant increased risk of being diagnosed with an ASD, and because administration of Thimerosal-containing vaccines examined in this study was administered between birth and 6 months of age, it is valid to suggest that a significant number of individuals examined in this study who were diagnosed with an ASD suffered neurodegeneration or a type of progressive encephalopathy for which the etiological pathogenic basis was exposure to organic-Hg from Thimerosal administered as a vaccine component”

Wow! What a powerful statement!

Many orthodox doctors argue that this mercury does not get into the brain.

In another study recently done this past August, further proof of the biologically plausible role of mercury exposure from thimerosal vaccines in the pathogenesis of ASD, was found.

[In yet another study][3,] researchers examined the distribution of mercury after an administration of thimerosal to animals. After administering thimerosal that mimicked the US vaccine schedule from the 1990s, to infant monkeys, researchers found significant levels of mercury present in the brain and they found that this did not decline 120 days after the last dose of thimerosal.

There are many other additional references in the main article, if you wish to refer to them.

I have two questions to ask the obstetricians and pediatricians that help parents birth and care for their children.

1. When will they start paying attention to these studies, and stop giving thimerosal containing vaccines?
2. The second question which is even more important in my opinion, is when will obstetricians begin to pay attention to their patients mercury levels before they conceive? We know from the Environmental Working Group study that all children are being born with significant amounts of mercury in their body. Given that there is no blood brain barrier in the womb or for the first six months of life, mothers are dumping their body burdens of Mercury into their fetus brain directly. When will this stop? Could this mercury from the mother be another contributor to the autism epidemic?

Autism Action Network Article

Your comments and thoughts are invited!