(no subject)

[superbadgirl]

Why I Sometimes Think, While Tragic, Dying Young Isn't a Bad Thing

I know, that sounds bad. I grit my teeth every time a pharmaceutical ad comes on the TV, though. I often wonder if what is being advertised is really helping people's conditions or simply masking them. Wouldn't it be better to spend money on encouraging people to lead lifestyles which might help avoid medical conditions? I realize that some things are unavoidable, but...

Besides that, the list of potential side effects are so horrific that I can't imagine voluntarily taking some of the drugs they want folks to take. And these are only the side effects they know about now - if a drug is new on the market, it could be decades before they really know what else it does to people.

That said, it is very sad to think of so many people dependent on drugs and/or other things. I remember after my father's heart attack how surprised we all were when the doctor warned him to lay off the alcohol along with his drastic change in diet. Even my mother didn't realize how much he turned to hard liquor to help ease the pain of arthritis (my dad's got extremely gnarled fingers from a life of manual labor).

Comments

[seanchaidh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I wonder how much of my mother's problems are actually from the medications they're giving her.

[superbadgirl]

One pill makes you smaller...

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

I agree. I've been having trouble with stomach pains, chest pains, intestinal distress *g*, and so on. So what do they give me? First Prilosec and now Prevacid. Guess what the side effects (of both) are: stomach pain, chest pain, and diarrhea. ??? Ooookay. That makes sense. Yeah, maybe everyone doesn't have the side effects, but how am I supposed to know if I do or not? *g* Anyway, there's no way I'm taking this long-term. I just need to get through a couple of weeks without my esophagus getting a hole burned right through it or something.

But I agree. It upset me when I tried to pursue this before, because rather than looking for a cause, they just wanted me to take drugs--er...forever.

[betacandy.livejournal.com]

I'm a big fan of the chain that goes like this:

Take a drug
Get a side effect
Take another drug for the side effect

If you don't use the phrase "FUCK OFF" to your doctor's face, you can wind up on 8 billion meds that way. But they make more money selling the meds than telling us the dietary cures.

For example, cutting soy out of my diet really helped my thyroid for a long time. But no one other than a naturopath is going to tell a patient that: soy is a huge cash crop, and they'd rather treat you with expensive thyroid meds they get kickbacks from. And yes, I am now going to a doctor with the expectation of going on thyroid meds, but only because I did the diet/supplement thing, and now it's failing. Of course, if my educated guess is right, my whole family has this condition and it's getting worse with each generation, so ya know... that's a pretty good example of when one might need to resort to drugs.

IMO, dietary changes, supplements and activity recommendations should preceed medical prescriptions. But then pharm woudln't be the #1 $$$ industry in the US, even outpacing designer jeans and their 1000% profit margins.

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

Take a drug
Get a side effect
Take another drug for the side effect

Exactly! lol I honestly don't understand it. I don't mind taking a drug to heal a problem for a while, but I want to know what to do about it so that I won't have the problem any more. I realize that with something like diabetes, you're pretty much stuck taking some form of medication/insulin or whatever, but even that can be somewhat controlled with diet. I know of people who managed to get off all medication even for diabetes by changing their diet. (Not everyone can do that, and I realize that, but you'd think that more people would try it. And I don't mean just avoiding sugar or whatever.)

[superbadgirl]

My dad was put on a 'new and improved' medication to help regulate his heartbeat - he suffers the unfortunate rapid heart beat many bypass patients have to endure the rest of their lives - because nothing else seemed to do the trick.

Unfortunately, this wonder drug caused him various other more bothersome problems. He and my mom (ultimately his decision, but she had some input) sat down and decided having a functioning thyroid and rapid heartbeat was preferable to a non-functioning one and a regular heartbeat. Or something. I can't honestly remember the issues, though I know Dad's thyroid has become another part of his body that hates him now.

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

Ugh! :-( That's really too bad. I worry about my parents because they are both on all sorts of medications. My father had a very serious heart attack maybe 10 years ago, but both parents have had some semi-significant health problems since then.

I have a toenail fungus. *g* Fun stuff. Well, my regular doctor told me that the oral medication that could possibly damage one's liver is not worth it. The foot doctor, though, she wanted me to take it and she was rather peeved that my doctor had told me not to take it. (I wouldn't have anyway. Why risk death over a toenail fungus?)

But guess what? My insurance company will pay for the expensive oral medication that could possibly damage my liver permanently and even result in death, but know what it won't pay for? This lovely medication that paints on like clear nail polish and dries in 30 seconds. So...we pay for it ourselves. $170 for a three month supply, though mine is lasting me longer.

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

Adding: I wouldn't have taken the oral medication anyway, because I already knew about the potential side effects. What my doctor said really didn't matter to me.

[superbadgirl]

It's ridiculous how in cahoots both doctors and insurance companies are with the pharmaceutical companies. This might be a total conspiracy theory on my part, but I don't think so. It has always boggled my mind what insurance will or will not pay for - like how it took them ages to finally start covering smoking cessation programs, etc.

Duh, people. It'll save you money in the long run if you can PREVENT folks from becoming asset-sucking patients. You wouldn't believe the rate increase a company will get if there's just one cancer patient on the insurance coverage.

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's a conspiracy theory either. The doctors receive tons of samples and are wined and dined by the drug companies. At least my foot doctor told me about the good medicine, and she did try to get my insurance company to pay for it--twice--but they wouldn't.

[betacandy.livejournal.com]

When I went to a dermatologist in my teens, she gave me two creams to put all over my body, one of them Retin-A. This was MUCH too harsh a treatment, as my current doctor agreed when I told her about it. It caused incredible itching, and when I scratched, it left bruises.

When I went back for the follow-up, the first thing the doctor commented on was she'd gotten a cruise from Johnson & Johnson (who makes Retin-A). When I showed her my bruises, she kind of panicked.

According to my current doctor, the other cream alone is a valid treatment (and in fact, she gave me a variation on that cream). But Retin A is almost never tolerable for my skin condition, and is the last resort.

But the bitch got her cruise, and that's what mattered. Is it unpleasant of me that I wish rape and death and abuse on people who do shit like that? It's not just that I want them to suffer - I just can't for the life of me figure out what else would teach them some empathy, if they're so far gone that a cruise is more important than a teenage girl's entire body bruising.

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

Huh... This is the second comment in two days for which I received no notification. Weird. I wonder how many others I'm missing.

I just can't for the life of me figure out what else would teach them some empathy, if they're so far gone that a cruise is more important than a teenage girl's entire body bruising.

:-( That more than sucks. Words cannot adequately express how much that sucks.

[betacandy.livejournal.com]

I guess some people have no willpower when it comes to food.

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

Oh, I didn't mean it like that. I think willpower is a very difficult thing. As someone whose struggled with weight issues for my entire adult life--and having the dieting lead to borderline eating disorders, and so on, I'd never fault anyone for having those kinds of problems.

No, I meant that people really aren't interested in trying new diets (and I don't mean weight loss diets). People are afraid to veer away from the "four food groups" type of diet, even though even the USDA or whoever has said that's not a good way to "balance" one's diet.

I also find it interesting that, in our culture, diets like Atkins become extremely popular to the point that even people not on the diet believing that carbs are bad, when all medical and scientific evidence is to the contrary, and, in fact, medical evidence shows that that type of diet is very, very bad for people for a whole lot of reasons.

People are so willing to believe that eating meat and fat is good for you, but they think vegetarians are strange and weird and likely to be unhealthy, in spite of all scientific evidence to the contrary.

It's all about as mind-boggling as people voting for G.W. even once, much less twice.