Mixing prescription pills a recipe for disaster.

Howard Cohen 
The Miami Herald

04-16-12

April 14--Dr. Barbara Krantz has a message for those who care for an elderly mom, dad, grandparent or friend: Falls, depression and insomnia should not be so easily dismissed as signs of getting older.

"Those are things that can be attributed to the physiological cause of aging but, if caregivers are aware, it can also be prescription drug abuse or interaction. All of a sudden mom is getting more and more forgetful. It could be her medication. It doesn't have to be her brain,'' said Krantz, medical director for the Hanley Center, a West Palm Beach-based addiction treatment and recovery center.

Senior adult admissions in centers like Hanley for prescription drug abuse have increased 450 percent since 2000 and unintentional overdose is the second leading injury-related cause of death among seniors, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The problem is particularly acute among the elderly.

"Most people in their 70s and 80s average seven or eight medications and have a hard time handling these," said Dr. Daniel Varon, associate medical director for the Wien Center for Alzheimer's and Memory Disorders at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach.

Rising numbers

Nationwide, one person died every 19 minutes of prescription drug overdoses, about 27,000 in 2011, reports the CDC. The bump represents an increase from 2008, when one or more prescription drugs were responsible for about 20,000 deaths. That year, opiate pain relievers like Vicodin, OxyContin and Percocet accounted for 14,800 of those deaths, an almost fourfold increase from 1999.

About half of the prescription painkiller deaths involved at least one other drug, including anti-anxiety medications such as the popular Xanax.

Sales of prescription drugs have tripled from 2000 to 2009. Pharmacies dispensed 111 tons of opioid pain relievers, the category that includes oxycodone and hydrocodone, in 2010. It was the equivalent of giving every man, woman and child in the United States 40 five-milligram Percocets and 24 five-milligram Vicodins.

Many of those pills go to the elderly, who often suffer from memory loss, mild cognitive impairment or the more debilitating Alzheimer's. The result is that the elderly patient can tend to double up on a dose, mix incompatible medications or forget to take a medication altogether. The recipe is a cocktail for disaster.

Read More: http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=13010&Section=Aging

Stanford Study: Drug Side Effects are Potentially 5 Times More Than Advertised.

"New research on Drug Side Effects done at Stanford School of Medicine has discovered nearly 5 times the 70 or so potential reactions that are listed on the average drug insert." 

March 24, 2012

Prescription medications usually always carry a rather frightening (and long) list of possible side effects. These drug side effects may range from mild symptoms like headache or nausea to more serious risks such as seizures or temporary blindness. New research suggests that the side effects listed on the label often represent just a small portion of what users are really experiencing.

Results of the Study

Two separate databases were created to organize the findings of this research and both are available to the public. The first, OFFSIDES, discovered an additional 329 side effects on average for each of the 1,332 drugs that were studied - nearly 5 times the 70 or so potential reactions that are listed on the average drug insert.

The TWOSIDES database relates to drug interactions and is based on more than 50,000 possible medication combinations. An additional 1,301 contraindications were discovered. One of the most important findings is a previously unknown risk of fatal cardiac conditions in patients taking SSRI class antidepressants at the same time as a commonly prescribed blood pressure medication.

While the results of this study are quite alarming, this method of analyzing data will be very beneficial to the medical industry as well as the patients taking the drugs. It may take several years before many of the newly discovered side effects and interactions are mandatorily included in the medication packaging, but doctors and their patients can use the knowledge to determine the most effective prescription combinations for the specified conditions.

Effect of Classical Homeopathy on Allergies; A Study

Recently a real life study was done on the effectiveness of Homeopathy on allergies. Findings were very positive with noted results :

The symptoms of patients undergoing homeopathic treatment were shown to improve substantially and conventional medication dosage could be substantially reduced. 

A prospective multicenter observational study was conducted by general practitioners specializing in homeopathy in nine Austrian test centers. Personal data and symptoms of allergic patients diagnosed with allergic conjunctivitis, allergic rhinitis, bronchial asthma and neurodermatitis before and after homeopathic treatment were assessed by means of questionnaires. 

Read the full filing of the study here: 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ pubmed/22138796