Medical Hints

Archive for the ‘Drug Prescriptions’ Category

I have a cousin who is having to look into alcoholism treatment centers. Her husband has been dealing with alcoholism for a long time, and it’s recently gotten to a point that she can’t deal with it any longer. Luckily for her, and for all of us, there are facilities to help treat problems like alcoholism.

The statistics on alcoholism are sad and staggering. Almost seven million children who are considered minors — under the age of 18 — have at least one alcoholic parent living in the home with them. Nearly 80 percent of all high school seniors in the United States admit to alcohol use. In fact, over 60 percent of all seniors have admitted to getting drunk. It has also been shown that alcohol abuse occurs much more in men than in women. In the United States, there are about 3.9 million women who abuse the drug, while about 9.8 million men do. There are about 50,000 reported cases of poisoning from alcohol in the United States each year. Unfortunately, these numbers only show those statistics that are provable. There are, for example, more alcohol poisonings than are shown, but since they are not reported, they obviously are not counted.

Luckily, with alcoholism treatment centers there is help. In fact, treatment has shown that it helps to reduce activities that are considered criminal in up to 80 percent of those who deal with alcoholism. Treatment for alcohol abuse and alcoholism is available. There is help; you just need to be ready to seek it. No one will change if they are not ready; in fact, I said this to my cousin. She understands, but feels that her husband will be ready by the time they find the right help. We all hope for her and her family’s sake that she is right!

Understanding addiction is difficult for people who do not struggle with substance or alcohol abuse. While there are fairly cut-and-dry physical and physiological explanations for addiction, there are many psychological and circumstantial reasons people become dependent on drugs or alcohol that are not yet understood. The best way to understand how people first become addicted is to ask the addicts themselves. A recent survey of patients who were undergoing drug rehab shed some light on how they became users of alcohol, illicit drugs, and prescription drugs.

Of 75 people undergoing either prescription drug rehab or receiving treatment for other drug addiction, almost half confided to physicians that they initially became addictedto prescription drugs that had originally been prescribed for pain management. Twenty-four of the patients began using when they started taking the prescription of a friend or relative. The last 20 people initially got addicted to street drugs. Over half of the participants said they began taking pills to legitimately deal with pain; the rest said they tried pain pills out of curiosity.

But nearly all of the participants (92 percent) told their doctor that once addicted, they started taking heavier drugs, especially heroin. The patients said that they took drugs regularly because they helped them feel normal, and the drugs helped them deal with painful emotions and stress.

Prescription drug abuse has been steadily on the rise for the past decade or so, and doctors are working to understand the origins of dependency. This particular survey revealed that there is a somewhat standard progression from opioid-based prescription drugs to harder opioid street drugs, like heroin. Study results will be used to help both medical students and practicing physicians recognize signs of addiction so that interventions can take place earlier and help make Prescription Drug Rehab more sought earlier.

There are few areas of the health and medicine industry that see as much political controversy as pharmaceutical innovation and development. The large number of regulations from the FDA (food and drug administration) seek to strike an appropriate balance between protecting consumers and allowing companies the freedom to create effective treatments and profit from them. Pending changes made public in August of 2010 have been causing more than a little tension between the pharmaceutical development industry and lawmakers, however, due to proposed increases in regulation.

There are two major sectors that the FDA touched on with these proposed changes. The most primary concerns medical devices. Here, the FDA made it blatant that they were looking to increase regulations in the field. Changes of this sort would impact diagnostic devices, prosthetics, and more. Currently, an approval pathway known as 510(k) allows medical device developers to get their devices approved quickly as long as the device is essentially the same as an earlier device. However, lawmakers have stated that this has created problems, and that the 510(k) method has unintentionally been granting streamlined approval to products that make a significant change in the device’s function. This loophole is one area that lawmakers intend to close, but doing so will also create delays for products that are authentically an upgrade to a previous device model.

The second major sector that will be impacted by this is the regulation of medicine. The large number of recalls for prescription medications, and even some over the counter drugs, has prompted FDA regulators to look at all medicines more carefully prior to approval. Official regulations have now been proposed in order to make the already challenging approval process more stringent in order to safeguard consumers.

While many in the regulatory industries, and as consumers, feel that these changes are appropriate precautions in a field as risky as the health and medicine industry, those in pharmaceutical innovation feel that these alterations to current law will stunt medical growth. The increased difficulty of having products released to the public is likely to prevent many innovations from ever reaching the market.

Prescription painkillers are one of the most common addictions in modern America. These addictions often start out in entirely reasonable and honest ways. A patient will have an intense injury or surgery, and will be given a prescription for a powerful pain killer. After consistent use, however, many of the stronger opiate based painkillers will give patients withdrawal symptoms. Patients will then often turn to the drug to alleviate these symptoms or cope with other life issues. Medical practitioners are now put in a difficult position, since knowing when to prescribe medications and how much to prescribe can be difficult.

A doctor, because of their unique position of trust, must assume that patients are being honest about conditions and symptoms that they describe. While there is a risk that patients are lying in order to get medications, ignoring the complaints may lead to worsening a patient’s condition and getting involved in a sticky medical malpractice lawsuit. On the other hand, the amounts that are prescribed by doctors are often more than is necessary. They are so high that a large number of deaths occur each year due to accidental pain killer overdose.

Some state that the most appropriate method is to avoid these highly addicting drugs when at all possible. The opiate based pain killers like hydrocodone and oxycodone are closely related to heroin and other powerful opiums that are far more notorious for their addictive properties, which is something that many patients may not realize. Still, many circumstances require that a patient either suffer immense pain or risk the possibility of addiction through high powered prescription drugs.

Pain killers are not the only drug prone to abuse in this way. Tranquillizers, steroids, and sleeping pills all see overprescription and overuse, and carry with them the possibility for permanent physical damage, addiction, and even death. While responsibility should largely fall on the consumer, there is also a growing push for general practitioners to educate their patients on the risks of drugs more thoroughly, and provide less addictive alternatives, as well as lower dosages.