You think that painkillers are pretty harmless?

You think that painkillers are relatively harmless? Then I think you may be wrong. See these most recent reports about harm caused by painkillers:

J&J To Pay $48M To Man Hurt By Motrin
A Los Angeles jury has ordered Johnson & Johnson and its McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit to pay $48.2 million to a man who developed a severe skin disorder and blood blisters in his mouth after taking the Motrin over-the-counter pain reliever.
Read article at pharmalot.com

Diclofenac Deaths May Dwarf Vioxx Disaster: Health Agencies Helped It Happen
The world was shocked by the number of deaths caused Vioxx, but that number may be dwarfed by another NSAID, diclofenac. Vioxx was sold only by prescription. Diclofenac is sold both by prescription and over the counter.
Read article at gaia-health.com

Cancer specialists warn about the high costs of excessive unproved cancer treatments

BBC News informs us that a "group of 37 leading experts from around the world say the burden of cancer is growing and becoming a major financial issue... Lead author Prof Richard Sullivan told the BBC: "It's not just pharmaceuticals. Biomarkers, imaging and surgery are all getting through with very low levels of evidence - the hurdles are set too low." The report calls for a proper evaluation of the relative merits of conventional surgery and less invasive robotic surgery."

This is a view that certainly finds favour with me. With the incidence of cancer so much on the increase, it is more and more clear that cancer prevention is of paramount importance. Most people know that smoking is the main cause of lung cancer. As well as cigarette smoke, many other chemicals, including household chemicals, are carcinogenic. Also radiation, so avoid scans unless they are strictly necessary. - See http://www.patient.co.uk/health/Cancer-What-Causes-Cancer?.htm And be wary of artificial sweeteners. And do you know that breast feeding reduces cancer risk in mothers? There is a great deal more information about cancer prevention on this page.

Added later: I forgot to draw attention once again to the need for a legal ban on food manufacturers adding transfats to so many of their products. Transfats have been linked to breast cancer risk, as well as to many other health problems. So these cancer experts may like to consider pressing Andrew Lansley, the 'Health' Secretary, to get transfats banned pdq, instead of leaving it to the food industry to go at their own, s-l-o-w, voluntary rate of reduction.

Pharmaceuticals plus Salt: the Deadly Duo

It is a commonplace for doctors to assume that the weight gain of people taking amitriptyline or other antidepressants is actually caused by over-eating, and they commonly assert that depressed people indulge in comfort-eating. But the doctors are wrong; the weight gain consequent on starting to take amitriptyline is caused by salt and water retention, not fat.

When people find the side-effects so unpleasant, and the drug so unhelpful for their chronic pain, for instance, that they stop taking it, they find that much of the weight gain disappears.

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

If you have gained a lot of weight and become obese because of taking prescribed steroids or HRT then I have very good news for you! - You have gained weight because of excess water stored in your body - mainly in the veins. You are suffering from what is called hypervolaemia - that is, abnormally high blood volume - and it is easy to reduce this abnormally high blood volume by losing some of the excess water. Another name for the problem is sodium retention. - This is the name that often appears in the reference books doctors have, that they use to look up correct doses of drugs they prescribe and side-effects that can result from taking the drugs.

To prevent or reduce the weight gained, you need to cut down on salt and salty food, because the sodium retention has made you sensitive to salt.

If you have been inappropriately prescribed or over-dosed with corticosteroids or HRT or any of the many other drugs that cause weight gain, then you may well have developed drug-induced Cushing's Syndrome, a very serious illness, frequently far more serious than the health problem for which the drugs were prescribed. It is, to the best of my knowledge, an entirely preventable illness if doctors conform to the protocols for prescribing these drugs and if they monitor patients' progress on the drugs, and if they warn patients about salt. It is VITALLY important that it be realised that weight gain resulting from these drugs is from sodium and water retention, so patients taking these drugs should be warned not to eat salt, or foods containing salt, while taking the medication. They should also be informed that any weight gained in this way can easily be reduced by eating less salt/sodium, and they should be warned not to try to lose weight by eating less food or restricting calories because this will not help them to lose weight and is harmful.

If you gain weight suddenly and unexpectedly when you start to take prescribed medication that I have not mentioned on this page, it is highly likely that the weight gain is caused by the drug. You may like to consider whether you really need to take that drug, or whether the dose could be lowered. At any rate if you continue with the drug, try to reduce your salt intake in order to reduce the weight gain.

So all you have to do is eat less salt. - If, at the same time, you increase your potassium by eating more fresh fruit and vegetables (unsalted vegetables), then you will lose the water and the weight even faster. - You will already have discovered that calorie counting and 'slimming' do not help you to lose weight if you are a steroid victim. - Take my advice, eat less salt, and the weight will fall off you like magic.

See also my Fat Retention page.

One of the many people I have helped with information about sodium retention was Dame Muriel Spark, who died in April 2006. Even she, as famous as she was, had not been warned to avoid salt while taking steroid medication and so had gained a lot of weight. She had also been taking some effervescent tablets which were high in sodium, but she discontinued these when she learned from me that they were contributing to the excess weight.

A Note about Pain-killers:

The class of drugs known as NSAIDs - Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs - is listed as causing Sodium Retention and in particular causing swelling in the lower legs and ankles. These include commonly used pain-killers, which are available both as prescription drugs and over the counter drugs. Examples are Ibuprofen (Brufen), Aspirin, Diclofenic and many others.

Also remember that effervescent tablets may contain a high proportion of sodium, so you may prefer to change from taking effervescent tablets to taking the non-effervescent type.

Putin Proposes a Ban on Drug Company Reps Visiting Doctors to Promote their Drugs

Putin’s Proposed Reform Worries Drug Producers
MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has promised to ban pharmaceutical makers from sending representatives to doctors’ offices, a practice they spend up to 50 percent of their revenue on and one of the last open channels for companies to promote prescription drugs. “We should get rid of these so-called pharmaceuticals representatives working in medical institutions,” Putin said Oct. 9 at a meeting on the development of the drugs industry. In the past 10 years, Russia has seen the rise of “a clearly abnormal type of interaction” between medicine producers, particularly foreign companies, and parts of the medical community, he said. It is impermissible to have “pharmaceutical holdings paying specialists to prescribe patients substances produced by these companies,” Putin said.
Read article in The St. Petersburg Times (Russia)

Is there enough evidence to support the policy of immunising people against seasonal flu?

BBC News reports the claim of an expert, Tom Jefferson, in the British Medical Journal, that there is not enough evidence to support the policy of immunising people against seasonal flu. Mr Jefferson, who works for the Cochrane Library, a body that determines the relative effectiveness of health interventions, has found that flu vaccines have "little or no effect on many influenza campaign objectives such as hospital stay, time off work, or death from influenza and its complications." He believes a re-evaluation of the evidence is urgently necessary, in view of the financial cost to the taxpayer of flu campaigns.

My own concerns about vaccines, as about other prescribed pharmaceutical medications, are about their safety and ubiquity, as well as their effectiveness or otherwise. When pharmaceutical drugs do harm patients, as they so very often do, this costs the drug companies so little financially or in any other way, that there is little to spur them into ensuring the safety of their products. See Drug firms dodge swine flu liability

You can boost your immunity by optimising your nutrition. Good nutrition has no adverse side-effects.

Do you know anyone who has, or has had, swine flu? - I don't..

Do you know anyone who has, or has had, swine flu? - I don't. - And furthermore I don't know anyone who knows anyone who has, or has had, swine flu. - There's certainly an awful lot of hype about this supposed but largely imaginary pandemic. My personal, admittedly jaundiced, opinion is that the hype is engineered in order to increase the take-up and sales of overpriced pharmaceuticals - tamiflu et al, and the "fast-tracked" (for "fast-tracked" read 'under-tested': see Times article) vaccine when it is finally unleashed on a fearful populace. Here's a welcome article that plays down the hyperbole: Dr Max Pemberton's article in the Telegraph.

I reckon the sensible thing to do is to build up your natural resistance to infection and improve your general health by good nutrition. - Good nutrition is the best prophylactic in my opinion.

A simple first step in optimising nutrition is to minimise salt/sodium intake. This ensures that your body makes the most of the nutrients it takes in. And of course an absolute essential for good nutrition is to avoid dieting/slimming/counting calories. - Dieting is unnecessary, inappropriate, ineffective and usually harmful. - The safe, natural way to lose excess weight is to cut down on salt and salty food.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver damage and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods

FAT RETENTION

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

Vulnerable groups

See advice for pregnant mothers

Children and Obesity

Associated health conditions

FDA Warns Again of High Risk of Liver Damage from Acetaminophen

See U.S.News & World Report

Acetaminophen is a pain-killer. It's not the only pain-killer that can cause damage to the body.

Pain is not caused by painkiller deficiency.

It's shame that people have been led to believe that the best thing to do if you have a pain is to rush and take pain-killers. It isn't - and sometimes the pain-killers don't work anyway. And all pharmaceuticals have side-effects.

I must state that my experience of great and lasting harm from pharmaceutical drugs leads me to view them with disfavour. If you are like me and would prefer to avoid taking drugs if you possibly can, then you may like to try cutting down on salt and salty food. This does help with a lot of pains, particularly chronic pain , such as that from osteo-arthritis.

It's also helpful to consider your nutrition. Many people are short of calcium, and according to a great deal of recent research probably most of us are deficient in vitamin D. Remedying these deficiencies can help reduce chronic pain and improve sleep. - But don't go from one extreme to another and overdose on these nutrients.

Vioxx manufacturer Merck and Co drew up a hit list of doctors to discredit

Drug company, Merck, made a hit list of doctors who had to be "neutralised" or discredited because they criticised the anti-arthritis drug the pharmaceutical company produced. Staff at US company Merck &Co emailed each other about the list of doctors - mainly researchers and academics - who had been negative about the drug Vioxx or about Merck. "We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live," a Merck employee wrote, according to an email excerpt read to the court by Julian Burnside QC, acting for the plaintiff.
Read article in The Australian (Australia)

Top 11 compounds in US drinking water

This blogpost, including the Comment section, is cut and pasted from the Dr Rath Foundation newsletter.

A comprehensive survey of the drinking water for more than 28 million Americans has detected the widespread but low-level presence of pharmaceuticals and hormonally active chemicals.
Read article at newscientist.com
Comment: The drugs found include beta-blockers; drugs used to treat bipolar disorder; anti-cholesterol drugs; tranquilisers; painkiller and anti-inflammatory drugs; anticonvulsants; antibiotics; and others. Similar findings have been made in other countries. In the UK, for example, powerful cancer and psychiatric drugs have been found in tap water, leading doctors to express concern about exposing pregnant women to drugs that could harm an unborn child. For further information about how pharmaceutical drugs contaminate drinking water, click here.

Senators investigate Merced groundwater pollution

The state's two U.S. senators want to know whether groundwater pollution in Merced caused by pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. is connected to illnesses suffered by some local residents. Sen. Dianne Feinstein has sent a staff member to Merced to investigate. Sen. Barbara Boxer's office is making local inquiries. An attorney for Merck says a subsidiary of the company polluted the site with Chromium 6, the carcinogen Erin Brockovich campaigned against when it was found in Hinkley's drinking water.
Read article in the Modesto Bee (California/USA)

Genentech Warns Of Liver Damage From Tarceva

A letter went out alerting doctors about cases of liver damage among patients who took the cancer med in a post-approval study. One patient died from rapidly progressing liver failure and another died from a liver complication called hepatorenal syndrome, according to the letter sent by Genentech and OSI Pharmaceuticals.
Read article at pharmalot.com

GlaxoSmithKline could pay Swiss company Actelion up to 3.3 billion Swiss francs (1.6 billion pounds) to develop an insomnia drug

GSK to pay Actelion up to 1.6 bln for drug rights
Article in International Herald Tribune

Extract:

"Glaxo, Europe's biggest drugmaker, beat many of the world's top pharmaceuticals companies to partner Actelion's sleeping pill almorexant and the deal sent the Swiss biotech's stock soaring nearly 10 percent on Monday."

If you suffer from insomnia you can improve your sleep without taking drugs. - Reducing salt/sodium intake improves sleep so just try to avoid salt and salty food.

Glaxo 'downplayed' warning on heart-attack risk from Aids drug. Can GSK be trusted?

Glaxo 'downplayed' warning on heart-attack risk from Aids drug

Extract from The Independent

"The multinational drugs company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) downplayed an early warning about the rising number of people who have suffered heart attacks after using one of its drugs, abacavir. An anti-Aids medication, abacavir is taken by tens of thousands of people worldwide.

GSK was officially told of the possible risk in May 2005, three years before it issued a statement to its investors saying that the findings of an even stronger potential link between heart attacks and abacavir are "unexpected" and "unconfirmed". The company also said that it could find no association between abacavir use and heart attacks following a trawl through its internal data. However, it failed to mention that its own summary of product characteristics issued when the drug was launched in the late 1990s had described "mild myocardial degeneration" in mice and rats given the drug for two years.

Some scientists moni-toring the safety of Aids drugs are privately furious with GSK for downplaying the significance of one of the biggest safety trials of abacavir – one of several anti-virals taken by Aids patients in combined HIV therapy – when the findings were published last month.

"GSK was extraordinarily well prepared in terms of a statement that downplayed the significance of the findings," said a scientist close to the safety study. "As a consequence, people are confused. They think there is something wrong with the study because GSK said it cannot find evidence to support findings of a link with myocardial infarction [heart attack]."

Alastair Benbow, European medical director for GSK, said the company takes information about drug safety seriously but did not want to highlight what may be "spurious observations" about abacavir.

The first public sign that abacavir may be linked with increased heart attack risk emerged this April when The Lancet published the worldwide "DAD" study into adverse reactions to anti-HIV drugs after clinical observations of 33,347 Aids patients across Europe, Australia and the US.

The study found that the risk of having a heart attack in patients taking abacavir was almost double that of HIV patients who did not take the drug."

In fact there are MANY other prescription drugs that also increase the risk of heart attack: - all the drugs that cause weight gain, in fact. That is all tricyclic antidepressants, e.g. amitriptyline, most steroids, e.g. prednisone, prednisolone, HRT and some contraceptives, some anti-psychotics and many other drugs.

For your health's sake, you should avoid prescribed drugs if you possibly can.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html (The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Children and Obesity

vulnerable groups

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See FAT RETENTION

advice for pregnant mothers

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations

Walking, gardening or doing housework for 30 minutes most days can cut the risk of dementia by more than a third, scientists have found.

Exercise 'cuts risk of dementia'

Extract from the Telegraph:

"Walking, gardening or doing housework for 30 minutes most days can cut the risk of dementia by more than a third, scientists have found.

A team of researchers in Italy measured the calories burnt by more than 700 pensioners each day and found those who were most active were least likely to develop vascular dementia, in which the blood vessels that feed the brain become damaged and lead to mental decline.

Those sticking to guidelines of walking for 30 minutes on at least four days a week were 39 per cent less likely to develop the condition.

Vascular dementia is the second most common form of mental decline after Alzheimer's disease. There are about 700,000 people with dementia in Britain and the vascular form of the condition accounts for 17 per cent of cases.

Symptoms include problems with concentration, memory difficulties, depression, seizures and confusion."

You can also significantly reduce your risk of developing vascular dementia by avoiding eating salt and salty food and avoiding pharmaceutical drugs unless these are essential, because many pharmaceuticals - including steroids like prednisone and prednisolone, HRT and other oestrogen-containing drugs, tricyclic antidepressants like amitriptyline and other psychotropic drugs - do great harm to the blood vessels.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, vascular dementia, osteopenia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html (The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/steroids.html

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ami.html

vulnerable groups

How to Lose weight!

Children and Obesity

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

Wider implications of the flawed theory that excess calorie intake causes obesity

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free.

How helpful would it be if we too were to execute medicine regulators who take money from the pharmaceutical companies?

China's toxic system - Telegraph

Extract:

"The execution of the former head of China's food and medicine regulator will perhaps be seen as the effective response of an all-powerful government to corruption. In fact, the sentence passed on Zheng Xiaoyu is a desperate response by a state that is incapable of rooting out graft. And that rottenness stems from the Communist Party's refusal to match economic reform with political liberalisation. Mr Zheng may have been executed for taking bribes from eight pharmaceutical companies, but, in a polity that lacks democratic accountability, his death will do little to stop the venal connivance between cadres and businessmen, particularly at local level.

The fate of Mr Zheng and the safety concerns over Chinese exports, from pet food to toys, tyres and toothpaste, illustrates the limits of the most extraordinary economic boom the world has ever seen. Deng Xiaoping unleashed the country's phenomenal productive potential with his "Four Modernisations", but Tiananmen Square put paid to what the dissident Wei Jingsheng called the fifth, the introduction of democracy. Nearly 20 years on, much of the country has been transformed out of recognition, but at a cost."

In my country people who similarly defend the drug companies rather than protect the safety of people's life and health do not get punished! - In fact, it appears that they are paid for it! - See http://aboutsalt.blogspot.com/2007/04/is-mhra-medicines-and-healthcare.html

Not much 'democratic accountability' in this 'democracy'...)o:

It's important to read the label carefully when using over-the-counter medications. Track star, Arielle Newman, died after using too much muscle-rub.

Muscle-rub blamed for death of athlete, Arielle Newman - New Scientist

The Nigerian government is suing the world's largest drug manufacturer, Pfizer, over trials of anti-meningitis drug that killed and disabled children

Nigeria sues Pfizer for £3.5bn over 'illegal' child drug trials - Guardian

Extract:

"The Nigerian government is suing the world's largest drug manufacturer, Pfizer, for £3.5bn in damages for allegedly carrying out illegal trials of an anti-meningitis drug that killed and disabled children.

The children died or suffered serious side effects when the antibiotic Trovan was administered in Kano during a meningitis outbreak in 1996.

The government of Kano, a northern state in Nigeria, also has civil and criminal cases pending against Pfizer.

The Nigerian authorities say 200 children were involved in the Trovan experiment, without the approval of local regulatory authorities. They allege that as many as 11 died because of the treatment and that others developed deformities, including brain damage and paralysis.

Trovan was approved in the US in 1997 for use by adults but not by children. Two years later the US Food and Drug Administration warned that the drug could cause liver damage. The medicine has since been discontinued."

A terrible tragedy...

And there are equal and lesser tragedies every day from prescription drugs...

There are so many pharmaceutical drugs that do terrible harm to patients, even when they have been fully tested and even when they have been being prescribed to patients for many years. - Prednisolone, another drug that Pfizer makes, harms many, many people in a host of ways - destroys their lives, in fact. As a steroid victim myself I have earned the right to give my opinion, and my opinion is this: pharmaceutical drugs do far, far, far more harm than good, and if you can possibly avoid taking them, I would advise that. - See http://aboutsalt.blogspot.com/search/label/dying%20patients and other blog entries I have made. - Have a look through my blog.

See also my website pages http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/steroids.html
http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ami.html
http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html

GlaxoSmithKline shares fell as doctors avoid prescribing Avandia, their diabetes drug.

GSK suffers as doctors avoid allegedly risky diabetes drug - Guardian

Extract:

"GlaxoSmithKline took another hit yesterday amid signs that doctors in the US were avoiding its blockbuster diabetes drug Avandia after a study linked it to increased risks of heart attacks and death.

Data from ImpactRX indicated that the drug's share of the market for newly prescribed oral anti-diabetics in the US fell to around zero from about 10% in the two days after the study was published on May 21st. ImpactRX, a market intelligence firm, tracks the impact of pharmaceutical promotion on the prescribing behaviour of physicians in the US.

A Deutsche Bank note, which highlighted the information, said: "This reaction is far worse than we had anticipated and suggests that there could be as much as 22% downside risk to GSK's near-term earnings, suggesting that there is still further downside to GSK's share price."

It added that switching rates, or patients moving from one drug to another, were currently three times their usual level.

Shares fell accordingly, closing down 28p, or 2.1%, at £13.06, having tumbled 9% last week following publication of the study in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).
Avandia is GSK's second-biggest selling drug, with sales around £1.4bn last year."

An excellent non-drug measure people with diabetes can take is to reduce their intake of salt and salty food to a minimum. It really does make a big difference. This has the added benefit of reducing any excess weight and reducing high blood pressure and risk of stroke, etc. - See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/conditions.html

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Avandia is suspected of increasing risk of heart attacks.

Health alert over diabetes drug linked to heart risks - Guardian

Extract:

"A review of the safety of a diabetes drug used by millions of patients was launched in America last night after a study linked it to an increased risk of heart attacks.

Patients using Avandia, the brand name given by GlaxoSmithKline to rosiglitazone, ran a 45% higher risk of a heart attack than those using a placebo or alternative treatment, according to the results of the study published in a leading medical journal.

The US regulator the food and drug administration (FDA) responded by issuing a formal alert to doctors. And congressional leaders in Washington announced that the House oversight committee would hold hearings on GSK's handling of the drug next month.

GSK, the UK's leading pharmaceutical company, disputed the study's findings, arguing it was based on "incomplete evidence and a methodology that the author admits has significant limitations".

Avandia has been taken by more than 6 million people worldwide since it was licensed eight years ago. The drug is one of a group that lower blood glucose levels for people with type 2 diabetes - the late onset form of the disease which is linked to obesity. The FDA warned doctors to be aware of the study published online by the New England Journal of Medicine linking it to heart disease. "

Pharmaceuticals usually carry risks...)o: - You can reduce your risk of developing type 2 diabetes by eating less salt/sodium. And if you already have type 2 diabetes, you can improve your condition by eating less salt/sodium.

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Pharmaceuticals 'need clinical trial regulation'

Pharmaceuticals 'need clinical trial regulation'

Never was there a truer statement!

See this report:

Pharmaceuticals 'need clinical trial regulation'

See also Sleaze in the Medical Profession - an earlier entry in this Blog.