Too Many Pills

Download or read book Too Many Pills written by James Le Fanu and published by Abacus. This book was released on 2022-02-24 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The number of prescriptions issued by family doctors has soared threefold in just fifteen years with millions now committed to taking a cocktail of half a dozen (or more) different pills to lower the blood pressure and sugar levels, statins, bone strengthening and cardio protective drugs. In Too Many Pills, doctor and writer James Le Fanu examines how this progressive medicalisation of people's lives now poses a major threat to their health and wellbeing, responsible for a hidden epidemic of drug induced illness (muscular aches and pains, lethargy, insomnia, impaired memory and general decrepitude), a sharp increase in the number of emergency hospital admissions for serious side effects and implicated in the recently noted decline in life expectancy. The paradoxically harmful, if increasingly well recognised, consequences of too much medicine are illustrated by the remarkable personal testimony of the readers of James Le Fanu's weekly medical column, coerced into taking drugs they do not need, debilitated by their adverse effects - and their almost miraculous recovery on discontinuing them. The only solution, he argues, is for the public to take the initiative. His review of the relevant evidence for the efficacy, or otherwise, of commonly prescribed drugs should allow readers of Too Many Pills to ask much more searching questions about the benefits and risks of the medicines they are taking.

Download or read book Mind Over Meds written by Andrew Weil and published by Little, Brown Spark. This book was released on 2017-04-25 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Too many Americans are taking too many drugs -- and it's costing us our health, happiness, and lives. Prescription drug use in America has increased tenfold in the past 50 years, and over-the-counter drug use has risen just as dramatically. In addition to the dozens of medications we take to treat serious illnesses, we take drugs to help us sleep, to keep us awake, to keep our noses from running, our backs from aching, and our minds from racing. Name a symptom, there's a pill to suppress it. Modern drugs can be miraculously life-saving, and many illnesses demand their use. But what happens when our reliance on powerful pharmaceuticals blinds us to their risks? Painful side effects and dependency are common, and adverse drug reactions are America's fourth leading cause of death. In Mind over Meds, bestselling author Dr. Andrew Weil alerts readers to the problem of overmedication, and outlines when medicine is necessary, and when it is not. Dr. Weil examines how we came to be so drastically overmedicated, presents science that proves drugs aren't always the best option, and provides reliable integrative medicine approaches to treating common ailments like high blood pressure, allergies, depression, and even the common cold. With case histories, healthy alternative treatments, and input from other leading physicians, Mind over Meds is the go-to resource for anyone who is sick and tired of being sick and tired.

Download or read book Ten Drugs written by Thomas Hager and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The stories are skillfully told and entirely entertaining . . . An expert, mostly feel-good book about modern medicine” from the award-winning author (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Behind every landmark drug is a story. It could be an oddball researcher’s genius insight, a catalyzing moment in geopolitical history, a new breakthrough technology, or an unexpected but welcome side effect discovered during clinical trials. Piece together these stories, as Thomas Hager does in this remarkable, century-spanning history, and you can trace the evolution of our culture and the practice of medicine. Beginning with opium, the “joy plant,” which has been used for 10,000 years, Hager tells a captivating story of medicine. His subjects include the largely forgotten female pioneer who introduced smallpox inoculation to Britain, the infamous knockout drops, the first antibiotic, which saved countless lives, the first antipsychotic, which helped empty public mental hospitals, Viagra, statins, and the new frontier of monoclonal antibodies. This is a deep, wide-ranging, and wildly entertaining book. “[An] absorbing new book.” —The New York Times Book Review “[A] well-written and engaging chronicle.” —The Wall Street Journal “Lucidly informative and compulsively readable.” —Publishers Weekly “Entertaining [and] insightful.” —Booklist “Well-written, well-researched and fascinating to read Ten Drugs provides an insightful look at how drugs have shaped modern medical practices. Towards the end of the book Hager writes that he ‘came away surprised by some of the things he had learned.’ I had the very same reaction.” —Penny Le Couteur, coauthor of Napoleon’s Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History

Download or read book Overtreated written by Shannon Brownlee and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-06-25 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our health care is staggeringly expensive, yet one in six Americans has no health insurance. We have some of the most skilled physicians in the world, yet one hundred thousand patients die each year from medical errors. In this gripping, eye-opening book, award-winning journalist Shannon Brownlee takes readers inside the hospital to dismantle some of our most venerated myths about American medicine. Brownlee dissects what she calls "the medical-industrial complex" and lays bare the backward economic incentives embedded in our system, revealing a stunning portrait of the care we now receive. Nevertheless, Overtreated ultimately conveys a message of hope by reframing the debate over health care reform. It offers a way to control costs and cover the uninsured, while simultaneously improving the quality of American medicine. Shannon Brownlee's humane, intelligent, and penetrating analysis empowers readers to avoid the perils of overtreatment, as well as pointing the way to better health care for everyone.

Download or read book Bitter Pills written by Stephen Fried and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2011-04-27 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We take our medicines on faith. We assume our doctors are well-informed, our drug companies scrupulous, our FDA diligent—and our medications safe. All too often we're wrong. Just how wrong is documented in this critically acclaimed portrait of the international pharmaceutical industry by one of our most highly respected investigative journalists. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), adverse drug reactions are the fourth leading cause of death in America. Reactions to prescription and over-the-counter medications kill far more people annually than all illegal drug use combined. Stephen Fried's wife took a pill for a minor infection—and ended up in the emergency room. Some drug reactions go away in a few hours or days. Diane's did not. This emotionally wrenching experience launched Fried into a five-year examination of the entire pharmaceutical industry, the most profitable legal business in the world. Rigorously documented, Bitter Pills is a full-scale portrait of pill making and pill taking in America today, presented through the powerful human drama of doctors, patients, drug companies, the FDA, and government regulators as they war for control of our medicine cabinets.

Download or read book Pain Management and the Opioid Epidemic written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2017-09-28 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drug overdose, driven largely by overdose related to the use of opioids, is now the leading cause of unintentional injury death in the United States. The ongoing opioid crisis lies at the intersection of two public health challenges: reducing the burden of suffering from pain and containing the rising toll of the harms that can arise from the use of opioid medications. Chronic pain and opioid use disorder both represent complex human conditions affecting millions of Americans and causing untold disability and loss of function. In the context of the growing opioid problem, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an Opioids Action Plan in early 2016. As part of this plan, the FDA asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a committee to update the state of the science on pain research, care, and education and to identify actions the FDA and others can take to respond to the opioid epidemic, with a particular focus on informing FDA's development of a formal method for incorporating individual and societal considerations into its risk-benefit framework for opioid approval and monitoring.

Download or read book Are Your Prescriptions Killing You? written by Armon B. Neel (Jr.) and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-07-03 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A veteran board-certified pharmacist cites the high number of annual deaths associated with prescription drug side effects, calling for changes in prescription practices that account for the needs of aging bodies.