Dr. Mercola March 19 2003 1,653 views
Though the safety of prescription drugs has been recognized as important for some time, numerous studies have brought the topic back into the public eye as a major public health issue.
Studies conducted in the 1960s reported that 30 percent of medical patients experienced at least one adverse reaction to drugs during their hospital stay, and three percent of hospitalizations were a direct result of such reactions. During this time, adverse effects of drugs were viewed as an inevitable part of medical care.
Current studies of adverse drug events (ADEs) reveal that ADEs occur in 6.5 percent to more than 20 percent of hospitalized patients, and, unlike in the past, it is now believed that many ADEs are avoidable.
According to one study of Medicare patients, the classes of drugs most frequently associated with ADEs were cardiovascular agents, antibiotics, diuretics, nonopioid analgesics and anticoagulants.
It has been estimated that as many as 1.9 million ADEs occur each year, and up to 180,000 of them could be life threatening or fatal.
In terms of preventability, studies have found a wide range of data indicating that from 13 percent to 70 percent of ADEs may be preventable. Assessing preventability is challenging because studies use different definitions and criteria. For instance, one study considered rashes and diarrhea from antibiotic use not preventable, but if overuse of antibiotics were addressed, these reactions could likely be prevented.
Addressing issues such as errors in prescribing medications, inappropriate, or lack of, monitoring of drug therapies, lack of patient adherence, medication overuse, and underuse of beneficial drug therapies could improve the overall safety of drug use.
Researchers note that medications pose a significant risk to patients and intervention strategies should be implemented to reduce the number of ADEs.
JAMA March 5, 2003;289(9):1154-6
One of the important points to remember here is that you can play a vital role in making your health care safe by becoming:
You need to see yourself as the center of the health care team. You need to ask questions, and if you can't then you need to have loved ones or other advocates speak on your behalf.
Much of the problem would be avoided if you find a physician who uses drugs only as a last resort and who has a firm understanding of the natural medical principles advocated on this site.
As far as professional groups go, chiropractors and naturopaths are the two groups that are generally light years ahead of the traditional medical profession. However, you need to be very careful in selecting any health care provider as ultimately they are individuals and may not be able to provide the top-quality care you require.
A helpful strategy is to ask people in several good health food stores who they would recommend. Normally, health food stores are networked in with the top local health care providers. Be careful to ask a number of different individuals though, as you are seeking a consensus here.
However, if you are left in the hands of traditional medicine you will need to address these drug errors. Although these types of drug statistics seem alarming, they will not surprise any longtime reader of this newsletter. Even more startling is that these adverse drug effects, in combination with other medical errors, likely contribute to killing 250,000 Americans every year.
The last major war the United States was involved in was Vietnam. During that multi-year conflict, 60,000 Americans were killed and there is a memorial (the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial Wall) in Washington D.C. to commemorate their deaths.
However, every year four times as many Americans are killed by medical mistakes, yet we don’t find media attention directed toward those who died at the hands of modern medicine.
We all know that no one is going to make it off this planet alive, but that is not a justification for the premature death and disability that modern medicine inflicts on us at the hands of the pharmaceutical industry.
When one adopts a method that ignores the foundational causes of the problem, these types of results are hardly surprising.
However, our understanding of reality is limited, and we are continuously seeking to improve our perception of the truth. Until we acquire a more accurate appreciation of how our bodies operate we will need to rely on drugs for symptomatic relief.
In my practice I rarely write prescriptions for drugs, but every time I do it is done with a sense of despair and a desire for a better understanding so I can avoid the Band-Aid model in the future.
The most common problem for which I still rely on conventional drugs is for the treatment of advanced rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Over the past 15 years I have treated about 3,000 patients with rheumatoid arthritis. My interest was based on a renegade rheumatologist, Dr. Brown, who over half a century ago recognized that rheumatoid arthritis was caused by an infection.
He championed an antibiotic alternative to the massive amounts of prednisone that were used shortly after World War II for this disease. He was able to help over 10,000 patients into remission with this approach. While there are certainly better approaches to treating RA, this alternative is light years ahead of the expensive and dangerous immune altering drugs for RA that are still used today.
The problem with the antibiotics is that, if they are used without addressing other issues, most patients worsen for six months (Herxheimer reaction) before they get better. In fact, that is why Dr. Brown’s book was called The Road Back, as his major challenge was to comfort patients for those six months.
Over the years I have adopted four additional tools that seem to have virtually eliminated this initial flare up phase:
I wrote up my rheumatoid arthritis protocol and presented it at a conference in Boston in 1995. Fortunately, I am able to help more than 50 percent of my patients without resorting to antibiotics, but if a person has a severe case of the disease I usually prescribe them.
Overall, the success rate for rheumatoid arthritis is quite impressive; well over 95 percent of patients are able to have significant improvement and over 75 percent are able to achieve this without the use of any medications--essentially a permanent remission.
If you know of anyone who has RA, I invite you to seriously encourage the person to review this program. It also works quite well for children--some of our biggest success stories were in children who were crippled with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and were under five years old.
The reason I diverged on this tangent, though, is to expand on the inevitable consequences that can result when one adopts a Band-Aid approach.
My antibiotic treatment program calls for the use of two antibiotics. Minocin and clindamycin. Minocin is typically prescribed twice a day and every day. However, I use a much lower dose of only one pill three times a week. So instead of 60 pills a month, I recommend 15.
The clindamycin is used to simulate an IV dose, and the typical dose is eight pills all at once but only once a week.
Well, the other day one of our rheumatoid arthritis patients called in to tell us that he mixed the two up, and he reversed them and swallowed eight Minocin at once rather than eight clindamycin.
This clearly is not what we recommended and was the patient’s error, but nevertheless it was still a potentially very serious (although not life threatening) adverse effect.
After hearing of the mistake I remained so thankful that I am essentially out of the drug paradigm, and the number of calls to our office complaining about drug side effects are very rare.
Related Articles:
Update on Minocin for Rheumatoid Arthritis Rheumatoid Arthritis Has Been Around for Centuries -- How Best to Treat It? Helpful Tools for Rheumatoid Arthritis Physicians' Protocol for Using Antibiotics in Rheumatic Disease If You Have Rheumatoid Arthritis You Need To Consider NST
Update on Minocin for Rheumatoid Arthritis
Rheumatoid Arthritis Has Been Around for Centuries -- How Best to Treat It?
Helpful Tools for Rheumatoid Arthritis
Physicians' Protocol for Using Antibiotics in Rheumatic Disease
If You Have Rheumatoid Arthritis You Need To Consider NST