-->| It doses teenagers up on prescription drugs as if drugs are the answer to every problem. Then they have another answer when these kids go out and shoot each other. The answer, then, is prison time. "We'll lock these kids away because they're dangerous to society."
Instead of spending a few dollars on nutrition to raise a healthy, balanced human being with a functioning nervous system, we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars, over the life of this person to keep them incarcerated. We build more prisons. |
| Meanwhile, we have 100,000 Americans (and that's a conservative number) dying every year just from prescription drugs side effects, and it gets no attention. Why? It's not violent. These 100,000 people die separately, and they die quietly. They die in homes or in hospitals. There's no fiery crash, there's no late-night footage for the news, there's no big explosion and there's nothing to report to the tabloid papers. It's just 100,000 people dying silently.
Also, more than 16,500 deaths a year are caused by over-the-counter pain medications. |
 Table 2.4.5U, but this amount does not include drugs used in hospitals and other such facilities.
5 Americans spend more on medicines than do all the people of Japan: According to statistics from IMS Health's "Retail Drug Monitor: 12 months to Feb. 2005." Available at imshealth.com.
5 65 percent of the nation now takes: "Outpatient Prescription Drug Expenses in the U.S. Community Population, 2003," Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Chartbook No. 16. Available at meps.ahrq.gov.
5 build their laboratories on . . . |
 I have to ask you because when I saw that decision by the panel it made me wonder, "What is the threshold of danger or safety now for prescription drugs?" That bar has certainly been raised high with the number of deaths from Vioxx.
Simontacchi: Yes, they're looking at 140,000 adverse events from Vioxx and Celebrex.
Mike: Do you see that as being a dangerous precedent by the FDA? What's your take on it?
Simontacchi: Again, you're asking me to talk about my own cynicism. It's based on dollars. |
| REPPED: Mike: We're here with Carol Simontacchi, author of "The Crazy Makers" and a new book entitled, "Natural Alternatives to Vioxx, Celebrex and other Anti-Inflammatory prescription drugs." Thanks for sitting down with us for a few minutes, Carol.
Simontacchi: Thank you. It's a pleasure.
Mike: What gave you the motivation to write this book? Why do you think it's important for people to read?
Simontacchi: Well, over my professional lifetime, I have developed a huge amount of skepticism about the pharmaceutical industry. |
 They might be zoned out on prescription drugs, and when you add a cell phone to the equation, they do become a danger to the other drivers on the road. But there are individuals who are perfectly capable of talking on the cell phone or operating other non-visual electronic devices while they are driving. For example, I'm recording this article while I'm driving, and I have a perfect driving record.
I think the real test of driver safety should be determined by the reaction time of individuals, not simply noting whether they using a cell phone or other portable electronic device. |
| Another third or so are caused by people on alcohol or illegal drugs. So prescription drugs are causing just as many accidents as people doped up on cocaine, marijuana and alcohol. And occasionally there are really bad drivers -- people who are taking antidepressant drugs, smoking pot, drinking beer and trying to talk on a cell phone to hook up their next drug deal. They're an accident waiting to happen. But fortunately, that's not what you will normally see on the street.
So should cell phones be banned from the hands of drivers? |
 At the same time, the agency can't produce any Americans who have been harmed by prescription drugs from Canada either, but there are a hundred thousand people falling over dead from using prescription drugs purchased from U.S. pharmacies -- a statistic the FDA conveniently ignores. |
 I frequently write about the dangers of prescription drugs, and I’m a strong advocate of natural health, an outspoken critic of the pharmaceutical industry, the FDA and prescription drugs in general. I wouldn't take a statin drug if you paid me millions of dollars. I wouldn't touch a pharmaceutical unless it was used in an extreme emergency, for a short term only.
For example, if I were in an accident and needed a drug to deal with trauma or pain I would avail myself of that prescription drug. But I would never take a prescription drug long term. |
 The patient information was anonymous, but the data gave marketers a good idea of which prescription drugs were selling, what geographical areas were slow to adopt new ones and which were fast, whether prescriptions were being refilled, and so forth. But there was no data about individual physicians and their prescribing behavior.
Vanderveer learned the IMS system and then went on to work at Medco, the huge prescription mail-order house that Merck acquired in 1992. Medco had the physician data — who prescribed what, when, and how. |
| The chief of Eli Lilly: "The potential pressures of public advertising of prescription drugs on the scientific decisions of the physician are both unwise and inappropriate." The head of Johnson and Johnson: "[DTC] could adversely affect the traditional patient-physician relationship. Physicians might find themselves having to defend their choice of what they consider an appropriate medication simply because the chosen drug is not heavily advertised and not familiar to the consumer . . . |
| Consider that the amount spent to advertise prescription drugs directly to consumers (called DTC) in 1980 was $2 million. In 2004, it was $4.35 billion and soaring. Twenty-five years ago, as this book will demonstrate, most drug company executives believed that DTC advertising not only wouldn't be good for business, but also, in the words of one pharma CEO, would be "one of the worst things that could happen to the doctor-patient relationship." Today, reality suggests that they were wrong about the business angle; DTC has been a gold mine. |
| Unlike potions and lotions for one's skin and hair, they are not products that we "decide" we want. prescription drugs are products that highly educated people, whom we trust with our money and our lives, tell us that we need in order to survive or to avoid undue risk to our health.
Over the past decade the use of these drugs, almost all for chronic diseases, has soared. The average number of prescriptions per person, annually, in 1993 was seven. The average number of prescriptions per person, annually, in 2000 was eleven. In 2004, it was twelve. |
 Avoid taking nonprescription drugs while taking prescription drugs for a medical problem.
• Before your doctor prescribes for you, tell him about your previous experiences with any drug—beneficial results, side effects, adverse reactions or allergies.
• Take medicine in good light after you have identified it. If you wear glasses to read, put them on to check drug labels. It is easy to take the wrong drug at the wrong time.
• Don't keep any drugs that change mood, alertness or judgment—such as sedatives, narcotics or tranquilizers—by your bedside. These can cause accidental deaths. |
| And in terms of real dangers to public safety, cell phones don't even come close to the dangers posed by prescription drugs and over-the-counter drugs. Approximately 40% of all drivers are on at least one drug at all times, and if you include nicotine and caffeine, that number goes up to around 70%. The abuse of drugs is the root cause of the vast majority of automobile accidents. |
| The bottom line is that you can start making changes now to lower your cholesterol and improve your overall health that don't involve taking prescription drugs, and this is the thing that's going to keep you healthier in the long term. Sure, you can mask symptoms by taking prescription drugs, and as more symptoms appear you can take more and more drugs to mask those as well. By the time you're 60, you'll be on 12 medications a day, you'll spend $1500 a month, and you'll be a chemical wreck. |
 I'm curious if they're going to develop some products to help with Alzheimer's, or dementia, or the lack-of-cognitive-function conditions that seem to be greatly increasing out there, partly due to the fact that so many people are taking prescription drugs.
Prescription drugs damage your nervous system
Prescription drugs slam your nervous system and greatly impair cognitive function. Statin drugs are one class of drugs that has a highly destructive effect on nervous system function, including brain function, awareness, memory function, and so on. |
 REPPED: Lie #1: prescription drugs will make you healthier.
Truth #1: prescription drugs only mask symptoms. They do nothing to correct the underlying biochemical causes of disease. Simultaneously, most prescription drugs cause nutritional deficiencies which lead to further progression of chronic disease.
See http://www.newstarget.com/001352.html
Lie #2: You should actively treat the swelling of sprains, strains and other injuries.
Truth #2: Swelling is your body's natural strategy for enhancing the flow of blood and nutrients to the injured area. |
| Although these drugs may be safe when taken alone, interactions between these medicines and other nonprescription or prescription drugs, when taken together, may produce undesirable or unsafe results. So, for your own safety, you should study the information in this book with regard to the ingredients of each brand-name cough or cold medicine you are taking. Follow these steps to learn about the safety of your drug:
1. Determine the brand name of your drug.
2. Look on the label for the generic ingredients that are used in your brand of medicine.
3. |
| They do not appear on prescription drugs. Your pharmacist can tell you all active and inert ingredients in a prescription drug.
Occasionally, a tablet, capsule or liquid may contain small amounts of sodium, sugar or potassium. If you are on a diet that severely restricts any of these, ask your pharmacist or doctor to suggest another form.
Some liquid medications contain alcohol. Avoid them if you are susceptible to the adverse effects of alcohol consumption.
BASIC INFORMATION-3—Habit Forming
A drug habit can be physical or psychological. Either leads to drug dependence. |
| No Drug class: Narcotic
Treatment for dependence on narcotic (opioid) painkillers including prescription drugs and illicit drugs such as heroin. Should be used in conjunction with an addiction treatment program that involves counseling and/or behavioral therapy. Only certain qualified doctors are able to start in-office treatment and provide prescriptions for ongoing medication. Subutex (buprenorphine only) is used in the first few days of treatment. Suboxone (buprenorphine plus naloxone) is then used for the maintenance phase of treatment. |
 This is partly why the FDA is pushing so hard to approve so many prescription drugs as over-the-counter drugs. This bypasses doctors and allows drug companies to sell prescription chemicals directly to consumers. (There's a plan at the FDA right now to convert up to fifty percent of all prescription drugs to over-the-counter drugs in the next few years!)
A clever way to get there is to shift some drugs to "behind-the-counter" status first, meaning they are essentially prescribed by a pharmacist. |
 Chapter 8
Final Thoughts
FINAL THOUGHTS
The National Center for Health Statistics reported that between 1997 and 2002 expenses for prescription drugs increased 75%. Since then, this trend has only continued to increase. Approximately 45% of Americans use at least one prescription drug.1 2 The Kaiser Family Foundation reports 2.1 billion prescriptions were written in 1994 and 3.5 billion prescriptions were written in 2004—a 68% increase. Spending for U.S. prescription drugs was 188.5 billion dollars in 2004, a 450% increase since 1990. |
 They don't tell you the rest of the story. prescription drugs are now the fourth leading cause of death in this country. The drugs approved as safe by the Food and Drug Administration are now killing 100,000 Americans a year.
Prescription drugs make deaths from terrorism, murder, automobile collisions and illegal drug use seem tiny by comparison. The number of deaths from prescription drugs dwarfs just about everything else that's happened in this country in terms of fatalities. That's the story they absolutely do not want you to know about. |
 I also eat raw foods, drink superfood smoothies and avoid all prescription drugs. And I have yet to meet any person on pharmaceuticals who even compares to the level of health that I (and many others like me) experience on a daily basis. You show me somebody taking twelve prescription drugs, and I'll show you someone with a toxic liver, impaired brain function, stressed kidneys and unhealthy blood. Drugs don't make people healthy. And most drugs, by the way, actually deplete the body of essential nutrients. |
 When you look at
Americans of all ages, we consume about two hundred billion dollars' worth of prescription drugs each year, a figure that's expected to continue rising by more than i o percent a year until at least 201 o. We spend as much on drugs as we do buying retail goods online, and we take from 25 to 50 percent more prescription drugs per capita than citizens of Canada and European countries. |
 Anyone taking prescription drugs, especially statin drugs for high cholesterol, needs to be taking a superfood supplement like LivingFuel Rx Super Greens. Why? Because most prescription drugs -- and statin drugs in particular -- cause nutritional deficiencies. LivingFuel Rx Super Greens helps overcome those deficiencies, giving your body the nutrients it needs to return to full health.
"I strongly recommend LivingFuel Rx Super Greens to anyone who wants to improve their health. |
 Vitamin D works better than prescription drugs
Did you know that most prescription drugs don't even work on most people? This was admitted by one of the top executives of a leading drug company. He said that most drugs simply don't work on most people and he gave actual numbers, such as Alzheimer's drugs only working on about a third of patients. You can go on down the list, drug by drug, but the bottom line is that prescription drugs only work on a fraction of the people who take them.
But did you know that sunlight works on everybody? |
 The sale of prescription drugs has more than doubled in just the past eight years!1
In 1990 Americans spent $37.7 billion on prescriptions. In 1997 that spending increased to $78.9 billion. prescription drugs have been the fastest-growing portion of health-care costs over the past decade, rising at the rate of about 17 percent per year (well above the average rate of inflation).2 Physicians and insurance companies have placed all their hopes in drugs as the way to approach and hopefully slow down this epidemic of chronic degenerative disease—much to the delight of the pharmaceutical industry. |
 Give up prescription drugs, boost your energy and look better!
Almost 22 percent of readers say they have completely eliminated their dependence on one or more prescription drugs. That's a strong number -- a little more than one out of five. I hope that number will climb as people learn about the natural healing alternatives to prescription drugs that can be found in food, herbs and other natural modalities such as sunlight.
Almost half of the readers, 48.4 percent, reported experiencing improved energy. It's a big issue for a lot of people. They feel fatigued all the time. |
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