“Psychiatry has destroyed my life in so many ways.”

So says Jarrett, a young man from Orange County, who for the past three and half years has been taking a cocktail of various psychiatric medications, including America’s best-selling drug, Abilify.

Less than four years ago Jarrett was a newly minted university graduate with a bright future ahead of him. But he hit a bit of a rough patch. Discouraged by his failure to find a job, he went into counseling, which dredged up some painful memories he now believes would have been better left alone. Continue reading →

Medicare spent $4.5 billion last year on new, pricey medications that cure the liver disease hepatitis C — more than 15 times what it spent the year before on older treatments for the disease, previously undisclosed federal data shows.

© David Paul Morris/Bloomberg A research scientist for Gilead Sciences Inc., works on the synthesis of a potential hepatitis C virus drug candidate at the company’s lab in Foster City, California, Feb. 8, 2012.

The extraordinary outlays for these breakthrough drugs, which can cost $1,000 a day or more, will be borne largely by federal taxpayers, who pay for most of Medicare’s prescription drug program. But the expenditures will also mean higher deductibles and maximum out-of-pocket costs for many of the program’s 39 million seniors and disabled enrollees, who pay a smaller share of its cost, experts and federal officials said. Continue reading →

Advocates distorted statistics and downplayed side-effects say experts

The benefits of taking statins have been exaggerated, two leading experts claim.

They say the cholesterol-lowering medicines – hailed as miracle drugs when they hit the market 20 years ago – are not as safe or effective at preventing heart attacks as patients have been led to believe.

Although they can dramatically cut cholesterol levels, they have ‘failed to substantially improve cardiovascular outcomes’, says an analysis of data in clinical trials. Continue reading →

Adults and children must cut amount of sugar they consume every day in fizzy drinks and sweet foods to lower their risk of obesity and tooth decay, the World Health Organization said.

People should reduce the amount to less than 10 percent of their daily energy intake — about 50 grams or 12 teaspoons of sugar for adults which is about half the current rate in North and South America, experts at the U.N. body told Reuters. Continue reading →

Artificial sweeteners may disrupt the body’s ability to regulate blood sugar, causing metabolic changes that can be a precursor to diabetes, researchers are reporting.

That is “the very same condition that we often aim to prevent” by consuming sweeteners instead of sugar, said Dr. Eran Elinav, an immunologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, at a news conference to discuss the findings.

The scientists performed a multitude of experiments, mostly on mice, to back up their assertion that the sweeteners alter the microbiome, the population of bacteria that is in the digestive system. Continue reading →

…and 21 Other Facts About America’s Endless Pharmaceutical Nightmare

Has there ever been a nation more hooked on drugs than the United States? And I am not just talking about illegal drugs – the truth is that the number of Americans addicted to legal drugs is far greater than the number of Americans addicted to illegal drugs. As you will read about below, more than 30 million Americans are currently on antidepressants and doctors in the U.S. wrote more than 250 million prescriptions for painkillers last year. Sadly, most people got hooked on these drugs very innocently. They trusted that their doctors would never prescribe something for them that would be harmful, and they trusted that the federal government would never approve any drugs that were not safe. And once the drug companies get you hooked, they often have you for life.

You see, the reality of the matter is that some of these “legal drugs” are actually some of the most addictive substances on the entire planet. And when they start raising the prices on those drugs, there isn’t much that the addicts can do about it. It is a brutally efficient business model, and the pharmaceutical industry guards their territory fiercely. Very powerful people will often do some really crazy things when there are hundreds of billions of dollars at stake. The following are 22 facts about America’s endless pharmaceutical nightmare that everyone should know… Continue reading →

How half of the 80,000 overdoses a year are caused by MEDICINES

Around half of the 80,000 deaths a year attributed to drug overdoses in America are caused by medication, new figures suggest today.

They also show that the rate of all drug overdoses in the U.S. has more than than doubled over the last decade.

A database maintained by the National Center for Health Statistics keeps a tally of all deaths listed on certificates, which are required by law to include an underlying cause. Continue reading →

The Food and Drug Administration has just loudly re-endorsed perhaps the oldest truth in science—that the dose makes the poison. Paracelsus, the father of toxicology, told us 500 years ago, “All substances are poison. There is none which is not a poison. The right dose makes the difference between a poison and a remedy.”

Even sunlight and water are poisons at high doses. Continue reading →

For cancer patients, life can be full of worry, pain and the stress of needing to take time off from a job. On top of that, many are struggling with a huge jump in the average price tag for branded oncology treatments, which have doubled to $10,000 per month in just a decade. During the same period, the consumer price index has increased by 23 percent.

That jump is contributing to a surge in global spending on oncology treatments, which reached a whopping $91 billion last year, according to a new report from the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics. The U.S. is the largest segment of that market, with American patients and their insurers paying $37.2 billion for oncology treatments in 2013. Continue reading →

Cancer drug prices have doubled in the past decade, from an average of $5,000 per month to more than $10,000.

Eleven of the 12 cancer drugs the Food and Drug Administration approved for fighting cancer in 2012 were priced at more than $100,000 per year, double the average annual household income.

Thousands of cancer patients, even many with insurance, face the same dire decision: Go bankrupt or die.

Many are struggling with a huge jump in the average price tag for branded oncology treatments, which have doubled to $10,000 per month in just a decade.

That jump is contributing to a surge in global spending on oncology treatments, which reached a whopping $91 billion last year, according to a new report from the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics. Continue reading →

Earl Harford, a retired professor, recently bought a month’s worth of the pills he needs to keep his leukemia at bay. The cost: $7,676, or three times more than when he first began taking the pills in 2001. Over the years, he has paid more than $140,000 from his retirement savings to cover his share of the drug’s price.

“People with this condition are being taken advantage of by the pharmaceutical industry,” said Harford, 84, of Tucson, Arizona. “They haven’t improved the drug; they haven’t done anything but keep manufacturing it. How do they justify it?”

As the pharmaceutical industry, led by Pfizer Inc.’s proposed $100 billion takeover of AstraZeneca Plc, is in the throes of the greatest period of consolidation in a decade, one reality remains unchanged: Drug prices keep defying the law of gravity. Continue reading →

Microbiologist Tatiana Travis in the Infectious Disease Laboratory at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (AP / DAVID GOLDMAN)

Get ready to crawl into a hole, forever: Gonorrhea, urinary tract infections, and pneumonia are just some of the infectious diseases that are becoming resistant to antibiotics, a new report finds. The newly-released World Health Organization document finds that in every region of the world, the growing rate of antimicrobial and antibiotic resistance is a serious threat to human health. Minor infections that were once considered beaten could kill again, and lengthier stays in hospitals and higher healthcare costs are a near-guarantee. Continue reading →

Say hello to five natural blood thinners that protect against strokes and blood clots

The November 2011 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine reported that most emergency hospital visits for the elderly are caused by side effects and overdosing from taking blood thinners to prevent strokes and blood clots. Conventional doctors wait until you’re at risk of a stroke or have had your first stroke to prescribe blood thinners in hopes of preventing additional strokes. What they don’t warn you about are the serious possible side effects from these drugs including internal bleeding, stomach ulcers, muscle aches and pains, headaches with dizziness, kidney failure and a boat load of other negatives that can destroy your health. However, there are several natural substances that possess powerful anti-inflammatory properties and also help to thin the blood. These herbs can also produce their own side effects and should not be taken in combination with pharmaceutical drugs. Don’t take any unfamiliar medicinal herb unless supervised by a well-trained herbalist or natural health practitioner. Continue reading →

A U.S. jury imposed $6 billion in punitive damages on Takeda Pharmaceutical in a case involving allegations that the company hid the cancer risks of its Actos diabetes drug.

A U.S. jury imposed $6 billion in punitive damages on Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. in a case involving allegations that the company hid the cancer risks of its Actos diabetes drug.

Takeda on Tuesday said that it disagreed with the verdict by a jury in Louisiana and that it would seek to overturn it. Continue reading →

In a nation that seems to thrive on popping pills for a range of different health woes, it really should come as no surprise that deaths due to the overdosing of prescription drugs are on the rise in the United States, and will likely to continue to be so. Though there is a definite need for a number of these prescription drugs, and they provide relief from pain, infections and a host of other uncomfortable ailments, history is starting to tell the story of how these medically prescribed medications can be abused by patients. Many physicians, too, simply write a prescription as a cure-all for their patients rather than spend the time and make the effort to get to the root cause of the issue. Continue reading →