Patients’ concerns about drug side effects are often shrugged off by their doctors, according to a survey of 650 patients who were taking cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins.

Statins, such as Lipitor and Zocor, are common drugs with widely known side effects that include liver damage, muscle problems, memory and mood changes, and more. In the case of muscle problems, if the side effect is not recognized it can progress to a potentially fatal condition called rhabdomyolysis.

Nonetheless, patients who responded to the survey said that they had to initiate a discussion about side effects with their doctor, and when they did:

• 47 percent said their doctors dismissed their muscle or cognitive problems, and said they were not statin-related
• 51 percent with a type of nerve pain called peripheral neuropathy said their doctors denied a connection to the drugs
• 32 percent said their doctors denied a connection between their symptoms and statins
• 29 percent said their doctors “neither endorsed nor dismissed the possibility of symptom link to statins”

Rather than attributing the patients complaints to the drugs, many doctors instead blamed the “normal aging process” or denied the symptoms entirely. Aside from not addressing the health concern in the patient, this ignorance toward a potential adverse drug reaction (ADR) means that no “adverse event report” is being given to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Side effects are already underreported by 90 to 99 percent, according to one Harvard Medical School expert, and the FDA relies heavily on such reports to gauge a drug’s safety once it hits the market.

In short, the survey suggests that the FDA is missing out on a wealth of ADRs because doctors are not recognizing them in patients.

The study’s authors believe that statin-related side effects are not the only one’s being missed.

They suggest that many other drug side effects are also being ignored. The researchers speculated that doctors’ tendencies to ignore drug side effects may be due to the powerful ad campaigns touting medications’ benefits and downplaying side effects.

Drug Safety August 2007 30(8):669-675

Dr Mercola Comments: (http://tinyurl.com/6bbcrt)

I strongly agree with many of the posters on this article that doctors should not be made scapegoats to this unfortunate finding. Most physicians are intelligent, well intentioned individuals who truly believe that they are dong the best they possibly can for their patients. They are clueless that they are merely pawns in the system that is spending tens of billions of dollars EVERY year to manipulate and deceive them into believing drugs and surgery are the best solution for chronic degenerative health conditions.

When you think about it for awhile it is not that much of a stretch since it certainly true for acute traumas, all they had to do was extend that view to degenerative diseases and when you have tens of billions to invest in purchasing the best marking minds on the planet, this is a relatively easy change to achieve. The results speak for themsevles, the drug companies have been fabuloulsy successful in capturing the minds of logic of most of the brightest and educated professionals our country has ever seen.

BUT, they have only done this temporarily. The Internet will change all that. This site is helping to educate consumers and health professionals alike about the fraud and deception. So many physicians are deceived that they are not at all motivated to listen to their patients’ concerns about the medications they’re taking. This is particularly tragic when you consider that prescription drugs result in more than 700,000 visits to the emergency room in the United States every year.

It is also a shame that doctors are so quick to interrupt their patients as it may be only have about 23 seconds to state your concerns before your doctor will interrupt you, which may at least partly explain why most patients had to initiate the drug side effects conversation, or not have it at all.

Physicians certainly do have some responsibility here, particularly in being familiar with, and open to, the fact that drugs often cause side effects (and sometimes strange ones at that).

Drug Companies Are Influencing Your Doctor

In the United States an estimated 80,000 drug company representatives, backed by more than $19 billion of industry’s combined annual promotional budgets, are visiting doctors every day.

These visits are influencing your doctor, essentially biasing him or her in favor of drugs.

Drug companies do not stop there. They spend millions each year to influence Congress, and similar amounts to influence YOU (via TV commercials, magazine ads, and the like) to ask your doctor specifically for their drug, the way you might ask for a particular brand of food in the supermarket.

Only a very well-informed, open-minded physician will be able to withstand this brainwashing (that actually starts way back in medical school)!

What can you do?

You are making the first major step already; you’re getting informed about what’s really going on.

YOU now know that if you suspect a drug is causing you a side effect, you must be sure that your doctor does not dismiss it. If he or she refuses to acknowledge it, you must seek out another doctor who will. As many Vital Votes readers have also pointed out, you can make a difference by printing out informative articles from Mercola.com and elsewhere, and giving them to your doctor.

Doctors are only human, and many will be very receptive to the information contained in these pages.

As the Washington Post article points out, you can also report drug side effects to the FDA directly (regardless of whether or not your doctor does), and I urge you to do so if you’ve experienced any.

Finally, my advice for your health and wellness holds true in this circumstance as well; you can reduce your reliance on the fatally flawed medical system (and thereby your risks of drug side effects) by eating the right foods for your nutritional type, exercising, and relieving stress with a tool such as the Emotional Freedom Technique.

We invite your comments….

Article has inputs from: www.mercola.com

The side effects of prescription medication can be horrific. Is it really worth taking medication if the cure is worse than the disease?
Here 26 side effects that come with many prescription drugs currently on the market.

1. Drainage, crusting, or oozing of your eyes or eyelids
2. Swollen, black, or “hairy” tongue
3. Changes in the shape or location of body fat
4. Decrease in testicle size
5. Sores or swelling in your rectal or genital area
6. Blue lips or fingernails
7. Purple spots on your skin
8. White patches or sores inside your mouth or on your lips
9. Irregular back-and- forth movements of your eyes
10. Enlarged breasts in males.
11. Unusual risk-taking behavior, no fear of danger
12. Extreme fear
13. Hallucinations, fainting, coma
14. Fussiness, irritability, crying for an hour or longer
15. Paralysis
16. Thoracic Hematoma (bleeding into your chest)
17. A blood clot in your lung
18. Liver damage
19. Kidney damage
20. A lump in your breast
21. Decreased bone marrow function
22. Congestive heart failure
23. Shingles
24. Nerve pain lasting for several weeks or months
25. Bleeding that will not stop
26. Coughing up blood or vomit that looks like coffee grounds

One drug on the market, EvaMist – a treatment for menopause symptoms such as hot flashes – has possible side effects that include cancer, stroke, heart attack, blood clots, and dementia!
But this is only a partial list of the potential side effects of prescription drugs. There are, unfortunately, many more out there.
Sources:
HealthMad March 20, 2008

Dr Mercola’s comments: (http://tinyurl.com/6bbcrt)

Every year, more than 2 million Americans suffer from serious adverse drug reactions. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), these reactions cause about 100,000 deaths per year, making prescription drugs the fourth-leading cause of death in the country.

Compare this to the death toll from illegal drugs – which is about 10,000 per year – and you begin to see the magnitude of the problem.

However, if you dig a little deeper you find that these reported reactions only skim the surface of what’s really going on. You see, drug side effects are not always recognized as such. Doctors often attribute them to other causes, people downplay them or do not report them altogether. And when you add in other medical errors, unnecessary procedures, and surgery-related mishaps, well the modern health care system actually becomes the LEADING cause of death in the United States. Consider, for instance, that:

• The recorded error rate of ICU’s is like the post office losing more than 16,000 pieces of mail every hour of every day, or banks deducting 32,000 checks from the wrong bank account every hour, 24/7.
• The recorded medical errors and deaths equate to six jumbo jets falling out of the sky each day, 365 days a year.

• Since 2001, a recorded 490,000 people have died from properly prescribed drugs in the United States, while 2,996 people died on U.S. soil from terrorism, all in the 9/11 attacks; prescription drugs are therefore 16,400 percent more dangerous than terrorism. If deaths from over-the-counter drugs are also included, then drug consumption leaps to being 32,000 percent more dangerous than terrorism. And conventional medicine viewed as a whole is 104,700 percent deadlier than terrorism

Your Body is Not a Petri Dish

How can it be that clinically tested, FDA-approved drugs that are supposed to “cure” diseases are ending up hurting, and in some cases killing, so many people?

Because even under the BEST circumstances, such as a drug going through unbiased, stringent, long-term testing, when it is released into an uncontrolled environment (your body), anything can happen.

You may be taking another drug that interacts badly with it. Or perhaps a food you eat causes an unforeseen reaction. There are countless possibilities, and only a tiny fraction has been “tested for” in a lab.

And that is under the best circumstances. Often, studies are biased, results are skewed, and drugs are put on a fast-track to be approved before anyone really knows whether they’re safe. In a sense, it is all a gamble, and there are no 100-percent safe drugs.

This is why just about every time you open a newspaper or skim the news online, there is a new headline about another drug disaster: an unforeseen side effect that has harmed innocent people.

It’s YOUR Body

The take-home message from all of this is to remember that, ultimately, it’s your body, and your decision what to put in it. If your doctor suggests you take a drug, do some research before you take it, because once you do, it could be too late.

Make sure you are aware of the potential side effects of the drug, read the package insert, and remember that even if it lists a side effect as rare, it can still happen to you.

Many, many drugs are vastly over-prescribed and unnecessary. So make sure that you make drugs a last option, not a first choice. For example, all of the following conditions can be treated or prevented with LIFESTYLE CHANGES, yet if you go to a typical doctor, you will likely be prescribed a potentially dangerous drug instead:
• Diabetes
• Heart disease
• High blood pressure
• High cholesterol
• Insomnia
I realize that it takes a massive shift in thinking to realize that your body can heal itself, and that often drugs only hinder the process. But I believe that you, and society as a whole, are ready for it.

But here’s the thing: don’t wait until you’re sick or slowing down to make healthy changes. Do them NOW. Become an active participant in your health, and leave the horrific drug side effects behind for good.

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