Pill-Popping Nation
CBS News' Sunday Morning show aired an interesting piece last weekend concerning our nation's drug consumption. It began with a startling statistic: the United States makes up just 5 percent of the world's population, but it accounts for a whopping 42 percent of the world's spending on prescription drugs — more than $250 billion just last year. Many people seem to be taking pills for both ailments they actually have and ailments they worry about having.
Other notes from the segment include:
-The average TV viewer is bombarded with an estimated 10 prescription drug ads a day.
- At Brand Institute, Inc., a Miami marketing firm, naming, or re-naming, syndromes for drug companies is 20 percent of the business.
-Every dollar spent on advertising pharmaceuticals produces more than $4 in sales.
My feeling on the topic is that prescription drugs have an important place in our health care system and often contribute greatly to patients' quality of life. The problem that we are facing now is that the industry has become more concerned with the marketing and business aspect of the field, when the focus should always be on what is best for the patient.
Aside from each drug's individual side effect on the body's general health, it is very difficult to determine the interactions that go on between each of the multitude of drugs in a patient's body at one time, which adds to the danger of pill-taking.
Read the full story here.
CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Posted by Jessica Silver, MAOM, L.Ac.
Aiyana Acupuncture and Chinese Herbs
posted by Aiyana Acupuncture & Chinese Herbs @ 9:52 AM
1 Comments
1 Comments:
Thanks for this great post, reminding all of us how we have truly turned into a pill-popping nation. While many of these medications can improve life and may be life-saving, in many cases an alternative remedy is as effective and safer. Should we not be opening our eyes now that the CDC has ranked side effects from pills as second in accidental causes of death following motor vehicle accidents? As physicians, perhaps we should look at the approach to medicine that several European countries take -- and also have lower health care costs and higher life expectancies. In many cases physicians do not prescribe medications, and treatment is left to chemists that combine herbal and pharmaceutical approaches. Perhaps if our physicians break rooms were not filled at lunch with a welcome chance to eat free food while hearing about the latest "designer diagnosis" easily treated with a "safe, effective drug", our approach to medicine would change from disease oriented to wellness oriented.
Lynne Eldridge MD
Author, "Avoiding Cancer One Day At A Time"
http://www.avoidcancernow.com
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