--> Many over the age of sixty-five take six or more different drugs, in addition to over-the-counter medications. Some patients see several physicians for their prescriptions and fill them at different pharmacies so that no one tracks their total usage. Baby Boomers who grew up mixing antidepressants, antibiotics, antihistamines, and other assorted medications will up the ante as they age. | | According to an organization called CANDID (Citizens Against Drug-Impaired Drivers), prescription and over-the-counter medications that cause drowsiness contribute to more than 100,000 car crashes a year. If your drug insert warns against driving while under the influence of the drug, please take that warning seriously!
PRESCRIPTION DRUGS FOR SLEEP
Zolpidem Tartrate (Ambien)
Harvard researchers have discovered that thousands of elderly patients prescribed tranquilizers may be suffering from drug-induced Parkinson's disease. | | How many physicians take the time to find out which medications, including the over-the-counter medications, their patients are using that might be causing depression, anxiety, restlessness, etc. before they prescribe a psychiatric drug? How many patients realize the importance of providing their doctors with information about other medications they are using? How many realize that even mixing the over-the-counter medications with prescription drugs could cost them their lives? Dr. |  Be sure to also enter any vitamins, herbs, or over-the-counter medications. c. Once you have entered the names of all your medications, click on the "Go" tab. d.Then print this information for your review and for your records.
4. Also located on this site is the option for an "eMedAlert."This is an alert system for those patients who actually use this on-line pharmacy as their drugstore. It provides up-to-date information about new adverse drug reactions, interactions, or withdrawals of your particular medications.You may want to ask your personal pharmacy if they provide a similar service. | | According to an organization called CANDID (Citizens Against Drug-Impaired Drivers), prescription and over-the-counter medications that cause drowsiness contribute to more than 100,000 car crashes a year. If your drug insert warns against driving while under the influence of the drug, please take that warning seriously! neglect to tell you is that acetaminophen is very hard on the liver.
Recent research has shown that acetaminophen may inflict most of its damage on the liver by blocking the production of the important antioxidant glutathione. |  Your physician must be informed of all prescription and over-the-counter medications you are taking before beginning warfarin therapy.
Adverse side effects to warfarin include agranulocytosis, alopecia (hair loss), anorexia, bone loss, bleeding, chondrodysplasia punctata, cleft palate, dianhea, exfoliative dermatitis, fetal abortion, intracranial hemorrhage, intraocular hemorrhage, leukopenia, nausea/ vomiting, pruritus (itching), purple-toe syndrome, skin necrosis, and urticaria. | | However, although over-the-counter medications such as aspirin and natural therapies come with a lower risk of hemorrhaging, they should not be substituted fot ptesctiption medication if you are at a high tisk fot thrombosis. Some common conditions that cause a high risk of thrombosis include atrial fibrillation, valvular replacement, recur-tent or chronic deep venous thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, and cancer. |  Incredibly, no one knows the number of serious adverse reactions and deaths from drugs related to over-the-counter medications.
When Melinda was in her midthirties, she sought more aggressive medical treatment of her allergies and asthma, as well as of her increasingly stiff joints. Up to this point, she had used either over-the-counter or prescription antihistamines for her allergies, nasal corticosteroid hormones for her asthma, and ibuprofen (an NSAID, or nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drug) for her rheumatoid arthritis. | | Your physician must be informed of all prescription and over-the-counter medications you are taking before beginning Coumadin therapy.
Adverse side effects to Coumadin include agranulocytosis, alopecia (hair loss), anorexia, bleeding, chondrodysplasia punctata, cleft palate, diarrhea, exfoliative dermatitis, fetal abortion, intracranial hemorrhage, intraocular hemorrhage, leukopenia, nausea/vomiting, pruritus (itching), purple-toe syndrome, skin necrosis, and urticaria. | | Although over-the-counter medications such as aspirin and natural therapies come with a lower risk of hemonhaging, they should not be substituted for prescription medication if you are at a high risk for thrombosis.
In all circumstances requiring anticoagulation therapy or antithrombotic therapy, your physician should be consulted if you desire to substitute your medication because the risk can be life-threatening and the appropriate therapeutic dosing is crucial. | | Your list should include any over-the-counter medications you are taking, even if only occasionally. Also include any nutritional supplements, vitamins, or herbs that you use. These may interact with your prescription medications, and it is important that your physician know exactly what you consume.
Protect your card (I suggest laminating it), and keep it current.This is perhaps the most important card you will carry and you should present it to every physician you see: urgent-care, emergency-room, and especially your primary-care physician. | | The effect of the shift in our diets during the past 100 years has resulted in 44% of Americans and Canadians being afflicted with heartburn, 5% of the population suffering from peptic ulcer disease, and 20-40% of Americans plagued with nonulcer dyspepsia. over-the-counter medications for these ailments are a multibil lion-dollar industry. Nearly every hour on television, there is at least one commercial selling an antacid or similar product.
GASTROINTESTINAL SYMPTOMS
There are five basic symptoms indicating a GIT problem. | | These over-the-counter medications help neutralize the acid in your stomach for up to an hour. That's fine for the moment, but your stomach may respond an hour later by producing even more acid to make up for what was neutralized, causing you to reach for more antacids. They also contain aluminum, silicone, sugar, and a long list of dyes and preservatives. Your stomach acid is one of your front-line defenses against harmful bacteria. Suppress it and the rest of your systems have to work overtime to protect you.
What Do They Do in the Body?
Antacids neutralize stomach acid. | | Inform your physician of any over-the-counter medications you may be taking on a routine basis.
Know which drugs may interact with your particular over-the-counter medication.
Consult your pharmacist anytime you have questions about what you might need to take.
If your symptoms do not improve within a few days, make an appointment to see your personal physician. After all, you have been self-diagnosing and self-medicating; there is a possibility you made the wrong diagnosis and are taking the wrong kind of medication. | | PPA has since been used in more than four hundred over-the-counter medications during the past seventy-four years.4 Most of these medications are either cold preparations or over-the-counter weight-loss treatments.
Table 1 lists the most common medications that contained PPA. | | It's true, physicians are prescribing more drugs than ever before, but not only is the pharmaceutical industry effective in advertising prescription medications, it has overwhelmingly persuaded the American public to buy tons of over-the-counter medications.
Furthermore, the FDA continues to make more and more drugs available without: prescription. Medications I once prescribed for my patients can now be purchased over the counter, such as ibuprofen, Naproxen,Tagamet, Pepcid, and Rogaine.We can be certain that in the years to come, this trend will continue. | | Don't procrastinate in making decisions about over-the-counter medications until you are so ill you can hardly find the box. Do some research now. Some helpful guidelines and resources are provided at the end of this book.
Are you feeling ready to give up on drugs altogether and consider instead natural treatments? Wait. Before you visit your local health-food store, read the next chapter about the pharmaceutical properties in herbal therapies. | | You should be sure to tell both your doctor and pharmacist what drugs you're taking as their records may not have them all listed in your records and be sure to include over-the-counter medications as well as some of these can create interactions.
Important Question Number Two
This leads to a second important question you can ask your doctor that might save you a lot of health problems. Suppose you're in a health care system that works with a ; PBM, and that you have a serious illness. | | Chapter 9:
Medications
As noted in the introduction, international pharmacetical corporations and governments are working together to limit the use of over-the-counter medications and "food supplement" alternatives. Understanding how this is done can do much to help you keep it from happening as well as to choose alternative treatments and medications that will save you money.
Part of the problem has been created by the push to keep costs down. | | If you're paying for medications out of pocket (rather than having them covered
196 ibid by a health plan), then it pays to check to see if there's over-the-counter medications available that will take care of your problem, (of course if you are on a plan that pays for medication, then you should avoid asking about the possibility of an over-the-counter medication working because chances are the plan won't pay for it while it will pay for prescribed medications. |  And watch out for the over-the-counter medications that contain caffeine. Check the labels to be sure. The most likely place you'll find it is in cough and cold remedies, to which the caffeine is added to counteract the drowsiness that these agents often induce. (See page 45 for foods containing caffeine.)
The next day, that is, two days before you leave, is a "fast" day, but not quite as rigorous as Yom Kippur or Ramadan. Limit your intake to 800 to 1,000 calories, consisting of salads, clear soup, plain toast, and fruit. | | Even though some foods and over-the-counter medications are known to prevent cancer, lower blood pressure, or stave off heart attacks, for years the FDA prevented manufacturers from advertising these facts unless they first did expensive studies on their own, studies that would have duplicated those already done by independent researchers.
(One good example of this is aspirin. As will be noted later in this manual, taking aspirin each day is a proven preventative of heart attacks; yet the FDA prohibited aspirin manufacturers from stating this fact in their advertising. | | Check labels on over-the-counter medications because many diet preparations, analgesics, pain relievers, diuretics, and cold and allergy remedies contain caffeine. Also, prescription drugs can contain caffeine.
Avoid animal fats.
Eat lots of fresh fruit, vegetables, nuts, and berries.
Eat fish and other seafood rich in iodine.
Have regular mammograms. Check with your gynecologist regarding frequency.
IN ADDITION TO YOUR DAILY SUPPLEMENTS, PACE xxiv, TAKE
Vitamin E: 400 I.U. a day.
Beta-carotene: 10,000-25,000 I.U. a day.
Primrose oil: one or two capsules three times a day. | | Sometimes the use of over-the-counter medications like Pepto-Bismol, Kaopectate, or Imodium A-D can be helpful only if used to control the most acute symptoms.
Avoid antibiotics, antacids and other medications, excessive vitamin C, and artificial sweeteners, which can cause diarrhea.
If your diarrhea is accompanied by pain, bloody stool, fever and chills (unrelated to a flu), jaundice, severe abdominal cramps, or severe weakness, or if it lasts more than a couple of days, you should consult your doctor. | | It is in a number of over-the-counter medications, and it also occurs naturally in almonds, apples, apricots, blackberries, boysenberries, cherries, cucumbers and pickles, currants, dewberries, gooseberries, grapes or raisins, nectarines, oranges, peaches, plums or prunes, raspberries, strawberries, and tomatoes. I tell my hay fever patients to avoid salicylates in foods and medications, and to try to stick to a low-fat diet. | | If your diarrhea is not acute and is not due to the causes discussed above, you should not continue to take over-the-counter medications. They will only serve to mask the symptoms and can ultimately be dangerous. You need to get at the root of the problem and consult your doctor. The most common chronic conditions are: lactose intolerance. Many of my patients have found that when they deal with their lactose intolerance, their diarrhea disappears. See Lactose Intolerance, page 231.
Inflammatory Bowel Disease ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease. food allergies. | | Pharmaceutical companies are in business to make money; with the exception of over-the-counter medications that will be sold in great numbers, the only way a pharmaceutical company can make lots of money is by developing medications that can be patented. Natural herbs and foods as well as medications that can no longer be patented won't be "pushed" in advertising because there's no real money to be made on them.
A good demonstration of this fact can be seen in the use of aspirin. |  In addition, commonly prescribed medicines such as cholesterol-lowering agents, chemotherapy drugs, and psychotropic drugs can cause liver damage over time, as can seemingly innocuous over-the-counter medications such as acetaminophen and aspirin. Infections like hepatitis, inflammation of the liver, can also result in impaired liver function. Numerous clinical studies have documented that PC can halt and even reverse liver damage, giving the liver time to heal. In particular, PC has been used on patients with hepatitis B infection and alcohol-related liver damage. | | You use them in much the same way as other over-the-counter medications, and for the same problems. For instance, you might consider taking a homeopathic remedy for a cold, flu, headache, indigestion, or insomnia. However, if you do not feel better within 24 hours, or the symptoms worsen, it is a sign that you should call your physician or natural healer. Because homeopathic remedies are so diluted, there are no side effects from homeopathy.
The big question is this: can any remedy that is diluted down to the point where it is barely detectable actually be effective? |  That brings us to the second important discovery that the writers made: Vitamin and mineral supplements should be treated with the same care and concern for safety that you reserve for prescription and over-the-counter medications.
Large doses of certain nutrients can be toxic. They can cause side effects.
They can interact with medications that you might be taking. So there are a few rules to follow when using this book.
Please take the Medical Alerts seriously. They are there for your safety. | |
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