[agnuscrucis]

hey guys,

just for your information..
listen to Mrs. D, but it's good to be aware of what I have learned over the years..

better know something rather than not knowing anything. But the more you know seomthing, the more you know the things you don't know. that's why I stop asking (which is a very unwise thing to do, but I'm really tired.) in my experience the pharmacist only know so much.. OK, they know a lot, but in my case, absolutely not enough. I'm the one that have to do all the studying.. and now I'm so tired of studying. in the past weeks scary things have happened to me. It's time that I should start doing my homework to report to my doctors. But I don't even have enough energy to do what I utmostly need to do, so the homework just keep piling up, and dangerous things keep happening. Fortunately so far I still could manage. Believe it or not, my doctors trust me that I know what I'm doing.

And once I went to a American Epilepsy Society meeting, and I stopped by at different companies.. actually they got nervous that I asked questions.. (i could understand why). They all promised to send me the information, but at the end, only one company sent me something.. pretty much what's on ythe PDR. The thing is, once the drug is approved, the company wants nothing to do with studying it anymore. They only need one FDA approval and that's it, all they do after that is selling. long term effects? not their business.

not many people interested to study drug interactions. what for? first it's very expensive to do a proper study, second, they don't make any money out of this, and third, it's impossible to do a proper study anyway. All the studies that have been done have to use strict criterias. If you want a drug to be aprroved for diabetes, your studies will include only people with diabetes, not diabetes and stroke, or diabetes and MS etc. While in the real world, that is not the case. And also in the real world, people are taking so amny different variations of drugs, which are not the case with the people who are the subjects of these studies. And even furthermore, your genetic make ups (and your lifestyle etc.) determine how your body takes on the drug. And of course, a lot of people don't take the drug properly.. in other words, as labeled.

[mrsD]

Here is a good site, listing the most commonly encountered drug-drug interactions:

http://www.aafp.org/afp/20000315/1745.html
It is dated 2000, so some newer things are not listed.
Such as SSRI bleeding risks. But the text is informative, and explanations are
good. Anyone taking multiple drugs should read it.

[mrsD]

In finding the truth among all the contention about the drug industry today,
there is a very good book written by an experienced M.D.:

The Truth About the Drug Companies by Marcia Angell M.D.
Here is part of a review of it:

In what should serve as the Fast Food Nation of the drug industry, Angell, former editor of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, presents a searing indictment of "big pharma" as corrupt and corrupting: of Congress, through huge campaign contributions; of the FDA, which is funded in part by the very companies it oversees; and, perhaps most shocking, of members of the medical profession and its institutions. Angell delineates how the drug giants, such as Pfizer and AstraZeneca, pay physicians to prescribe their products with gifts, junkets and marketing programs disguised as "professional education." According to Angell, the cost of marketing, both to physicians and consumers, far outweighs expenditures on research and development, though drug makers invoke R&D as the reason drug prices are so high. In fact, says Angell, with combined 2002 profits of $35.9 billion for the Fortune 500's top 10 drug companies, the drug industry is America's most profitable by far, thanks to disproportionately high prices, generous tax breaks and manipulation of patents to extend exclusive marketing rights to blockbuster drugs like Prozac and Claritin. Angell mounts a powerful case (and offers specific suggestions) for reform of this essential industry—a case worth bearing in mind as "big pharma" continues to oppose importing cheaper drugs from Canada.

Dr. Angell was editor of New England Journal of Medicine for 20 yrs.
Her experience and research are very revealing. One thing that surprised me is that the R & D departments of many major companies no longer do research.
They buy/lease patents from Universities and other research foundations who actually have the creative talent. Today drug companies mainly market.

While searching the net today, I also found this interesting doctoral thesis published on the Web. It echos Dr. Angell:
http://www.fdastudy.com/

And from the Wall Street Journal this echos the thesis above:

FDA Goes, Hat in Hand, To the Drug Industry
Topics: U.S. government | pharmaceuticals | health | corporations
Source: Wall Street Journal (sub req'd), September 1, 2006
Pills
"Regulators usually don't negotiate their budgets with the industries they oversee," writes Anna Wilde Mathews, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration does. In the early 1990s, drug companies started paying the FDA millions of dollars in user fees, to speed the drug approval process. The fees "now fund more than half the agency's critical drug-review process." Industry groups and the FDA renegotiate the fees and how they're used every five years, giving drug makers "considerable input into which programs receive funding." The FDA is currently negotiating the next agreement, with the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and Biotechnology Industry Organization. The industry groups are pushing for faster decisions on "labels and other conditions on approval" of new drugs, and faster review of ads voluntarily submitted to the agency. The FDA wants more funding to monitor drugs' safety following their approval.

What is a person to do? Well, for starters if you have an adverse reaction to a drug --insist on a Medwatch report being made. Postmarketing has become the time when serious side effects appear. And if reports are not made, these effects damage many people. Right now in the news is the controversy over the antibiotic Ketek.

We are living at a time when patients should have a say, and research their own treatments. And this is just too difficult for many, sadly.



This book is a real eye opener and now is available in paperback. I bought my hardcover copy a while ago from Amazon.

[Chemar]

thanks for that excellent info mrsD!

It adds to the growing list of info and articles that I have on this disturbing subject, and reinforces the need for people to be diligent in researching things for themselves before simply accepting that just because something is FDA approved, that does not automatically mean it is safe or good for us!

ps note to everyone...please dont interpret my post as meaning i am "anti-drug" or saying that all drugs are unsafe....what I am saying is that we need to check out for ourselves what the potential side effects could be and make educated decisions. I know many people owe their lives to pharmaceuticals and so realise the vital importance of medications

[mrsD]

It is really critical to understand that care/and concern about drugs, to be
used properly and safely, is not to be interpreted as anti-drug.
I have been accused of this frequently, and it illustrates to me how emotional
the subject can be. Often doctors do not know much about how drugs work, and which ones are better than others. Today reliance is only on the drug salespeople, and this is very unfortunate.

I have been in this venue for 38 years now, and have seen many many changes.
It can be very alarming.

You know we need to be informed about many things. It is best to know something about cars, when obtaining service (esp if you are female), about
home repair, food safety, etc. We all can be affected by these complex
industries, negatively.

[ConsiderThis]

I have some bad memories related to being refused vitamins and forcefully administered FDA approved drugs.

I have some bad memories related to people taking control of me by saying I was a danger to myself when I wasn't.

In 1997 the bankruptcy court clerks couldn't find something I'd filed, and I said that if things that were supposed to protect me kept failing me that there was going to come a time when I'd kill myself... so the police were called; there were very wide hallways in the old bankruptcy court building in Albuquerque and they totally filled up with armed police. I was taken away to a mental hospital and in the course of events shot up with Haldol against my will. (My roommate was having electroshock therapy against her will, and to my surprise when I told the techs that she was not wanting a man who had come to visit touch her, they said, oh... she didn't speak much English and so it was hard for them to know what she was saying, but the man was her husband and he brought her in for shock therapy every so often... They told me, also, that she was catatonic without it... but she had helped me rearrange my bed and had smiled and communicated with me without words from the time she had been brought in.)

Later, when I read the hospital papers when I was going to try to sue, it said I had barricaded myself in at the IRS building... I wasn't even at the IRS building, much less had I barricaded myself in to anything.

(I was living in the home with hydrogen sulfide by the time I tried to sue, pro se, so there was little chance I could have succeeded, especially given that the judge would not allow me to read and I couldn't keep things straight when I tried to just say them.)

The mental hospital experience was extremely traumatic. It was after that that I first was unable to get my mind to work properly -- Gosh, I just feel like crying.

By "work properly" I'm not referring to memory alone, but to working memory, where you have more than one thing in mind at one time and then compare or contrast, etc.

So now it is extremely scary to me when someone "knows" what was best for me and makes it clear that if I don't agree then I am a danger to myself and can be forced to do as they think is best...

I think I feel so strongly because it was just horrible. They used to throw me to the floor, people I had trusted would surround me and throw me to the floor. (The man who I lived with was supposed to get a lawyer, but he was really a fraud and was looking for a way to get my property. He's in jail now because another woman was more clever than me and had evidence to have him prosecuted.)

I have felt scared a lot of the time ever since that experience.

Haldol is very scary because it can cause shaking for which there is no cure. But, it also as far as I can tell, does brain damage ... It might not do that if someone is not B12 deficient. I don't know. But I was B12 deficient. Only they said that if I had a level of 181, I think it was, that it was normal. They refused to give me a B12 shot or vitamin A which I used to control nasal drainage and without which I couldn't sleep. They said vitamin B12 and vitamin A were too dangerous.

But the Haldol... fine, despite the fact that it sometimes causes "unexplained" death. Haldol is, of course, FDA approved.

I find the established beliefs of people who profit and don't really care about the effects to be devastating.

Therefore, I think it is important that people pay attention to their own health, keep notes on what symptoms they have and how those symptoms are affected by things they take... then, do more for themselves of the things that help them.

[mrsD]

To the new OTC warnings about OTC pain relievers:

http://psychcentral.com/news/2006/12...otc-pain-meds/

For Products Containing Acetaminophen

• To require new warnings which would highlight the potential for liver toxicity, particularly when using acetaminophen in high doses, when taking more than one product with acetaminophen, and when taken with moderate amounts of alcohol;
• To require that the ingredient acetaminophen be prominently identified on the product’s principal display panel (PDP) of the immediate container, and the outer carton (if applicable).
For Products Containing NSAIDs
• To require new warnings for products that contain an NSAID which would highlight the potential for stomach bleeding in persons over age 60, in persons who have had prior ulcers or bleeding, in persons who take a blood thinner, when taking more than one product containing an NSAID, when taken with moderate amounts of alcohol, and when taking for longer time than directed; and
• To require that the name of the NSAID ingredient and the term “NSAID” be prominently identified on the product’s PDP of the immediate container and the outer carton (if applicable).

[Moviemaker35]

Originally Posted by ConsiderThis

I have some bad memories related to being refused vitamins and forcefully administered FDA approved drugs.

I have some bad memories related to people taking control of me by saying I was a danger to myself when I wasn't.

In 1997 the bankruptcy court clerks couldn't find something I'd filed, and I said that if things that were supposed to protect me kept failing me that there was going to come a time when I'd kill myself... so the police were called; there were very wide hallways in the old bankruptcy court building in Albuquerque and they totally filled up with armed police. I was taken away to a mental hospital and in the course of events shot up with Haldol against my will. (My roommate was having electroshock therapy against her will, and to my surprise when I told the techs that she was not wanting a man who had come to visit touch her, they said, oh... she didn't speak much English and so it was hard for them to know what she was saying, but the man was her husband and he brought her in for shock therapy every so often... They told me, also, that she was catatonic without it... but she had helped me rearrange my bed and had smiled and communicated with me without words from the time she had been brought in.)

Later, when I read the hospital papers when I was going to try to sue, it said I had barricaded myself in at the IRS building... I wasn't even at the IRS building, much less had I barricaded myself in to anything.

(I was living in the home with hydrogen sulfide by the time I tried to sue, pro se, so there was little chance I could have succeeded, especially given that the judge would not allow me to read and I couldn't keep things straight when I tried to just say them.)

The mental hospital experience was extremely traumatic. It was after that that I first was unable to get my mind to work properly -- Gosh, I just feel like crying.

By "work properly" I'm not referring to memory alone, but to working memory, where you have more than one thing in mind at one time and then compare or contrast, etc.

So now it is extremely scary to me when someone "knows" what was best for me and makes it clear that if I don't agree then I am a danger to myself and can be forced to do as they think is best...

I think I feel so strongly because it was just horrible. They used to throw me to the floor, people I had trusted would surround me and throw me to the floor. (The man who I lived with was supposed to get a lawyer, but he was really a fraud and was looking for a way to get my property. He's in jail now because another woman was more clever than me and had evidence to have him prosecuted.)

I have felt scared a lot of the time ever since that experience.

Haldol is very scary because it can cause shaking for which there is no cure. But, it also as far as I can tell, does brain damage ... It might not do that if someone is not B12 deficient. I don't know. But I was B12 deficient. Only they said that if I had a level of 181, I think it was, that it was normal. They refused to give me a B12 shot or vitamin A which I used to control nasal drainage and without which I couldn't sleep. They said vitamin B12 and vitamin A were too dangerous.

But the Haldol... fine, despite the fact that it sometimes causes "unexplained" death. Haldol is, of course, FDA approved.

I find the established beliefs of people who profit and don't really care about the effects to be devastating.

Therefore, I think it is important that people pay attention to their own health, keep notes on what symptoms they have and how those symptoms are affected by things they take... then, do more for themselves of the things that help them.

You bring up a great and critical point. The unfortunate truth is that many personal experiences (of hospitals, drugs, ethical treatment of “mentally ill,” and so on) like yours are not congruent with the “patient’s rights” or general, public understanding of what would ideally be a [fundamentally] guaranteed statement, as in the descriptions of services offered by a particular treatment program or doctor or court report. In the end, we only know for sure after a personal experience. Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if people had enough information and awareness of what they are saying “yes” or “no” to beforehand?

[Dr. Smith]

Originally Posted by mrsD

It is really critical to understand that care/and concern about drugs, to be
used properly and safely, is not to be interpreted as anti-drug.
I have been accused of this frequently, and it illustrates to me how emotional
the subject can be.

This goes both ways. There is a lot of dis- & mis- information floating around about opioid pain medications, and that is a very emotional (and political) subject. In efforts to dispel bad information, confusion, and downright lies, I am often concerned about being accused of or labeled pro-narcotic. I am not pro-drug or pro-narcotic; I am anti-pain. I have spoken & written often about ways of coping with pain aside from using medication, but people in intractable chronic pain should not be afraid - or be made afraid - to take medications their physicians prescribe, or stigmatized for taking them.

Here is a list of some links I have found informative:

The Intractable Pain Patients Handbook For Survival
http://pain-topics.org/pdf/IntractablePainSurvival.pdf
Page 10 - Necessity for Opioid Drugs

Definitions Related to the Use of Opioids for the Treatment of Pain
Addiction, Physical Dependence, Tolerance, & Pseudoaddiction
http://www.ampainsoc.org/advocacy/opioids2.htm
There is a lot of confusion about, and misuse of, these terms - even among medical professionals and in the media. Physical Dependence is NOT Addiction.

Pseudoaddiction and Misinterpretation of Symptoms
http://www.beatingaddictions.co.uk/Pseudoaddiction.html

Narcotic Pain Medications
http://www.webmd.com/pain-management...in-medications

The Truth About Painkillers
http://tinyurl.com/2vmnqf

Painkiller Addiction: A Smaller Risk Than You May Think
http://www.health.com/health/conditi...9482_1,00.html

Clinical Guidelines for the Use of Chronic Opioid Therapy in Chronic Noncancer Pain
http://www.jpain.org/article/PIIS152...08316/fulltext

Doc

[smae]

Originally Posted by Dr. Smith

This goes both ways. There is a lot of dis- & mis- information floating around about opioid pain medications, and that is a very emotional (and political) subject. In efforts to dispel bad information, confusion, and downright lies, I am often concerned about being accused of or labeled pro-narcotic. I am not pro-drug or pro-narcotic; I am anti-pain. I have spoken & written often about ways of coping with pain aside from using medication, but people in intractable chronic pain should not be afraid - or be made afraid - to take medications their physicians prescribe, or stigmatized for taking them.

Here is a list of some links I have found informative:

The Intractable Pain Patients Handbook For Survival
http://pain-topics.org/pdf/IntractablePainSurvival.pdf
Page 10 - Necessity for Opioid Drugs

Definitions Related to the Use of Opioids for the Treatment of Pain
Addiction, Physical Dependence, Tolerance, & Pseudoaddiction
http://www.ampainsoc.org/advocacy/opioids2.htm

Pseudoaddiction and Misinterpretation of Symptoms
http://www.beatingaddictions.co.uk/Pseudoaddiction.html

Narcotic Pain Medications
http://www.webmd.com/pain-management...in-medications

The Truth About Painkillers
http://tinyurl.com/2vmnqf

Painkiller Addiction: A Smaller Risk Than You May Think
http://www.health.com/health/conditi...9482_1,00.html

Clinical Guidelines for the Use of Chronic Opioid Therapy in Chronic Noncancer Pain
http://www.jpain.org/article/PIIS152...08316/fulltext

Doc

The Intractable Pain Patients Handbook For Survival is a good handbook and one that I have recommended to people many times. Very good, informative resource!

I agree with you, too. I also am anti-pain. All the natural techniques in the world are not -always- enough to eliminate or control pain. I sure wish I didn't need narcotics, but I am not going to refuse them just because others don't like them. I have to do what is best for me, and right now, that is getting any bit of relief I can.