Welcome to the Medications Forum & Useful Sites!
I didn't notice this was here until today.
Many medication questions should be directed to your doctor and pharmacist. Pharmacies today provide extensive handouts to help you understand your medications. But given the way drugs are marketed today, some effects from newer medications are not completely understood. So a forum of this type is a good meeting place for people to exchange experiences about medications, when they are worried about them, or interactions. A very good reference for drug information is: www.rxlist.com This site gives side effects reported to FDA in table form and is useful to see clustering reports etc: http://www.drugcite.com/ And this is a good reference for drug interactions: http://www.drugs.com/drug_interactions.html This one is very also: http://www.pdrhealth.com/ If you have a problem with a medication toxicity or adverse reaction you can report it here: http://www.fda.gov/ the medwatch program: http://www.fda.gov/medwatch/index.html If you have problems with understanding the medical terminology that you find on the net, I can help members with that issue. I also have experience about what really is going on compared to the dry, medical stuff you can find on websites that give drug info. Some alarming things that you read about, don't commonly happen. And the vice versa, some things you or your doctor don't expect, may happen to you. I hope others come along here and offer web locations that they have found useful as well. |
more links..
Here is a good link to test drug interactions:
http://www.drugdigest.org/DD/Interac...,4109,,00.html And a very good paper on the effects of NSAIDs on the body, including the new FDA warning about them: http://arthritis.about.com/cs/nsaids...tsofnsaids.htm And this database will match up drugs with complementary use of vitamins/minerals/herbs: Alot of interesting information can be found on this database. http://www.umm.edu/altmed/ |
Warning Letters on new and old drugs...
As I come across them, I will post them here.
Unfortunately, many physicians do not read or understand some of the new warnings that come out. Some never see them even. So I will post links here in this post on those that are significant. This is the main link from FDA: http://www.fda.gov/cder/warn/warn2004.htm This is a link to the search engine that you can use to search for your specific drug, if you think a warning letter has been issued: http://www.fda.gov/foi/warning.htm There is some pretty interesting reading at the above site..if you choose by date, you can see many issues the FDA oversees besides drugs. 1) Cymbalta: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/514768 2) Topamax: There are several warnings included in this link: http://www.fda.gov/cder/warn/2004/12547.pdf 3) Zoloft: http://www.fda.gov/cder/warn/2005/zoloft_letter.pdf 4) Enbrel: http://www.fda.gov/cder/warn/2005/Enbrelwl.pdf 5) Celebrex and Bextra: http://www.fda.gov/cder/warn/2005/12560-letter.pdf and http://www.fda.gov/medWatch/SAFETY/2...ty05.htm#NSAID 6) Paxil + pregnancy: http://www.fda.gov/MedWatch/SAFETY/2...hcp_letter.pdf specifically the first trimester when the heart is forming. Discuss Paxil use with your doctor in this event. These are just some examples. The site is huge.. and includes food and devices, and manufacturing issues/safety. |
drugs, oh drugs..
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. :rolleyes: |
Drug interactions:
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. |
For those interested:
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: Quote:
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: Quote:
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. |
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! :Sigh: 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 |
yes, thank you Chemar...
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. |
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. |
Here is a link...
To the new OTC warnings about OTC pain relievers:
http://psychcentral.com/news/2006/12...otc-pain-meds/ Quote:
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