There's
something scary about drugs that concerns a growing number of physicians and should
wobble the knees of every patient on the planet. It's obvious to any
mathematician but somehow has escaped the general scrutiny of the health industry.
It
has to do with combining multiple drugs.
Ever
since I can remember I have been fed the perception that drugs are governmentally
evaluated and thus are safe if taken under the guidance of competent physicians. However,
even if we accept the presumed safety for the ingestion of one
drug, we must ask ourselves how might that safety change if we take multiple
drugs?
For
safety assurances, proper testing should be done for every drug combination we
are advised to take. If we take Prozac and Tylenol, for example,
we should be presented with all the possible benefits and consequences before
allowing these two foreign substances to mix with the chemicals our bodies already
create. Same thing goes for combining Paxil with Viagra
or Interferon with Lipitor.
The
list of possible problems here is monstrously long because there are a b'zillion
drugs and mega b'zillions of combinations. Nonetheless, I've never seen
or heard of any studies that test any of these combinations ... have you?
Thus,
if you take two drugs, the odds of their combination having been adequately tested
for safety are skimpy at best. But if you take three or more drugs the danger
possibilities multiply even faster.
Here's
how the mathematics work: If you take three drugs then adequate safety testing
of the various combinations require seven separate tests. If you take four
drugs the combinations require 25 separate tests. If you take five drugs
it amounts to 121 tests. If you take ten drugs the number of required safety
tests total 362,881.
The
conclusion here should be obvious. Namely, there is questionable safety
testing if you take two drugs and nominal, if any, safety testing if you take
three.
Beyond
that you are clearly into the land of, "I have no idea what these combinations
of drugs will do."
To
me, this tosses our dedicated docs into a tenuous position. They have patients
with problems who aren't willing to exercise, eat right, do EFT
for emotional issues or much of anything else to help their own health.
Instead, the patients hope the physicians will produce a magic pill (or pills)
to make their problems go away.
I
have met many patients who are on several drugs and take some drugs to counteract
the effects of other drugs. As a non-physician I look at this with a shudder.
These folks are being fed chemical cocktails with little or no safety testing
behind the combinations. Maybe I need some help with my perceptions here but,
to me, they are playing drug roulette.
I
don't know if lawyers have picked up on the simple, but compelling, math here.
But I do know that I wouldn't want to be a doctor in court facing these clear
facts.
In
the 15+ years I have been involved in the health field, I have had the good fortune
to count many physicians as my personal friends. With few exceptions, they
agree that it is our lifestyles, diets and emotional stresses that cause most
of our health problems ... and ... the vast majority of these problems would vanish
if people would live common sense lives. Yet patients repeatedly abuse their
bodies and ask for more and more "miracle drugs" as the convenient
solution. I don't envy the docs at all as I often hear them complain that
this is a highway to NobodyWinsVille.
Maybe
what we really need are good salespeople to persuade folks to take care of themselves.
I suspect that, if truly persuasive, they would do more good than the ocean of
multiple drugs at our disposal.
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