Prescription drugs and over-the-counter drugs: legal and lethal...)o:

This is an article from the Times. It is long, but well worth reading.

Prescription drugs: legal and lethal

Extracts:

"In one of its less sensational aspects, our escalating fondness for taking drugs that won’t get you arrested can be measured in the 10% annual rise over the past three years in the use of antidepressants, notably our old friend Prozac. The NHS issued 31m scripts for Prozac in 2006, a blanket figure that, however it breaks down in terms of the numbers of users referred to, suggests that a lot of people are regularly taking a powerful antidepressant. Then there are the Valium guzzlers. The Council for Involuntary Tranquilliser Addiction (Cita), run by Liverpool University, guesstimates that there are as many as 1.5m nervous types in this country who have become accidentally addicted to benzodiazepines, the family of tranquillisers to which Valium belongs. Others take them knowingly, for fun. According to Professor Heather Ashton of Newcastle University, author of a pamphlet on addiction to benzodiazepines, these “are now taken illicitly in high doses by 90% of drug abusers worldwide. They are part of the drug scene”. So well integrated are they that abusers will crush the pills and snort or inject them, the same way they might cocaine or heroin.

More worrying in a way, because they attract less attention, are those habit-forming drugs that can be bought without prescription at high-street pharmacies. Concern about these has given rise to a new coinage in the world of drug dependency, “OTCs”, an abbreviation for painkillers bought “over the counter”. This usually refers to the more powerful varieties of OTCs, such as codeine, which contains synthetic opiates. At a conference of the General Medical Association in 2004 it was suggested that there might be 50,000 OTC addicts in Britain today. The authorities are also concerned about OTC drugs causing suicidal tendencies: the European Medicines Agency is calling for OTC drugs to come with a “suicide rating”."

"The prescription drugs causing most concern are antidepressants. Prozac, which has been around for 20-odd years, is old news. The two newcomers currently causing medical debate are the branded drugs Efexor and Cymbalta. These are classed as “selective seratonin and noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors”, or SSNRIs. The added “N” is what makes them special. Unlike Prozac and other SSRIs, these drugs do not simply increase levels of seratonin, the brain chemical that makes us feel more sociable and relaxed. They also boost adrenaline, making us more energetic and sometimes slightly manic."

Just because a doctor has prescribed it, it doesn't mean a drug is safe.

Over the counter version of slimming pill, Alli, is going to be made available from pharmacists.

Slimming pill to be available from chemist

From the Telegraph:

"GlaxoSmithKline has applied for a lower dose of its anti-obesity drug Xenical to be made available under the supervision of chemists.

The new version of the drug, called Alli, has a lower dose of the active ingredient orlistat and has been available without prescription in the US since June.

People taking it three times a day for 12 weeks were twice as likely to have lost at least 10 per cent of their bodyweight, but experts warn the weight may creep back on once the course is finished."

"Xenical works by stopping the body absorbing fat from the diet, but reported side effects include headaches, diarrhoea, abdominal discomfort, depression and fatigue."

There is no need at all to take this pharmaceutical junk with its unpleasant side-effects in order to lose excess weight. Nor is it necessary to diet to lose weight. - Dieting is harmful and ineffective. - Overweight people can lose weight fast and completely safely by cutting out salt and salty food.

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.)

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

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Death from overdosing on Nurofen Plus.

Death sparks call for restrictions on drug sales

Extract from the Telegraph:

"A coroner has called for tougher restrictions on the sale of over-the-counter drugs after the death of a woman who became addicted to Nurofen Plus.

Linda Docherty, 49, trawled supermarket pharmacies and High Street chemists so she could take up to 64 pain-killing tablets a day.

She finally confessed her addiction to her husband and the family’s GP after two years.

However, by then it was too late and she died of kidney failure four days later.

At an inquest in Bury, Greater Manchester, yesterday, the coroner Simon Nelson recorded a verdict that Mrs Docherty died "by reason of an addiction to over-the-counter medication".

He said he would be writing to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society to ask whether the current regulations concerning over-the-counter drugs were sufficiently rigorous. "I feel that the system has to be looked at again.""

Pharmaceutical drugs do tend to damage the kidneys - and the liver too, come to that.