I could maybe function without my thyroid med but I recall how awful I felt in college before I was correctly diagnosed. I gladly take my pill everyday. Last year I addded another pill but I do think it is beneficial. Both my drugs are very inexpensive.
I’m very grateful for my meds. Back when I was a child, there wasn’t much you could do for allergies and a lot of asthma was untreated unless you had an incident where you “turned blue”. Our standards have changed and it’s a good thing in some ways.
OTOH, most allergy meds have gone OTC in the timespan listed for this study. I guess the only real prescription drugs I have left are my inhaler and MS shots. I’ll take it!
Rather than just the raw data, ie, 50% or whatever take A prescription drug, I would like to see what the top 10 drugs or type of prescription drugs are, in terms of numbers and $$. As someone asked already, are birth control (prescription drugs taken daily) included? I would guess so. Millions (including me) are on statins. Millions more suffer from chronic conditions that require daily meds. I guess I would say, more data required, before I can react to that article. I resisted doctor’s recommendation to take a statin for a few years because I knew I would probably stay on it for the rest of my life. So far, so good.
PSA–You don’t win any awards for taking less medication than the person standing next to you. It’s not a race. (Well, it could be race because some of it is genetics…).
The important thing is to take what is necessary to improve your health.
And then refine that list by having it reviewed on a regular basis.
The other thing, some are combo drugs–is it better to take one inhaler that has 3 main ingredients A, B, and C than 3 separate inhalers A, B, and C? It depends on cost, method of delivery, need to titrate dose and other factors, imho.
For the first 2 decades of my life, I rarely took any medications and was quietly miserable with allergies. Taking allergy treatments judiciously has immensely improved my quality of life. Taking antibiotics as needed has as well.
As long as medications and supplements are thoughtfully prescribed and regularly reviewed holistically, they can really improve lives.
I don’t take any regular medications. I feel very, very fortunate.
Some “natural” alternatives are not drugs. Various kinds of exercise are obvious examples.
But if you can maintain your health with fewer or no drugs, then the risk of drug interactions is lower when you need some drug for a new condition that you encounter, right?
“Some of the rx advertisements are for drugs that a tiny handful of people might ever need. I don’t understand why the rx industry wastes its money.”
Advertising dollars are very seldom wasted.
It’s a two edged sword in many respects.
One side is people wanting something they don’t really need.and doctors hopefully refusing requests.
And the other are people finding a cure for something they have but their doctors didn’t know a treatment existed until the ad appeared…
It has been shown that drug advertising definitely drives sales for those drugs.
But if you have a condition that your doctor doesn’t have a treatment for and an ad for that shows up? It’s worth a look to you as a potential consumer. (This actually happened 30 years ago when ads were approved–game changer in my loved one’s life).
“But if you can maintain your health with fewer or no drugs, then the risk of drug interactions is lower when you need some drug for a new condition that you encounter, right?”
If you have a heart attack because you didn’t take meds for high blood pressure you may not live to know…
My point is that if diet and exercise keep blood pressure in the optimal range without drugs, wouldn’t that be better than having to take drugs to control blood pressure?
Yes, if your health is optimized without drugs, I think that’s awesome and I wish I were so fortunate.
I am grateful that medications allows me, H and D to live pretty good lives with our health conditions, and I don’t believe S is taking any regular medications other than some allergy relief as needed. Mom is in her 80s and doesn’t take any regular meds or supplements. Dad hardly takes any either.
I had a mastectomy, radiation and reconstruction in 2008. I left the hospital after the mastectomy with meds (after they accidentally prescribed the one I was allergic to, and I caught the error.) As per their instructions, I took one when I got home. I never took the rest.
I lost half my thyroid in 2009. I’m not, and never have been, on any meds for that.
When I had my wisdom tooth removed, I filed the prescription for Oxycodone. I never took any.
I take nothing on a daily basis. If I have a bad headache, I take one extra strength Tylenol. If I’m coming down sick with a cold, I take cold meds.
My daughter has an issue with ovarian cysts. The birth control pills she takes mean she missed far, far, fewer days of school last year than she did before the meds. The pain was awful, poor babe. I’m so glad we found the solution.
My other 2 kids take nothing, aside from the occasional OTC for a cold or a Tylenol for the occasional headache.
What I found funny about the article was that it focused on American drug use, not American doctors and the drugs they’re prescribing.
Also, as an aside: Last year my husband’s sugars were so off the charts he had seizures, and I had to call 911. The EMT gave him Narcan-- at least twice-- and both times it broke through the seizures for a few minutes. As luck would have it, the cop who appeared at the door was a family friend. At the hospital, he asked me numerous times what meds my husband was taking, since the reaction to Narcan seemed to indicate that he was into some serious stuff.
When we eventually got the hospital report back, under Initial Diagnosis, it said “Drug Overdose” even though the final diagnosis was elevated blood sugar. The blood work showed no evidence of any substance beyond sugar.
We wrote the hospital and got that changed. I get that the initial evidence seemed to indicate a drug issue, and I’m thankful that they did what they needed to to help my husband. But I did no want “drug overdose” on any record.
He now does take a bunch of meds to keep those blood sugars under control, as well as the AFIB issues that came up while he was in ICU.
"Also, as an aside: Last year my husband’s sugars were so off the charts he had seizures, and I had to call 911. The EMT gave him Narcan-- at least twice-- "
bjkmom–That is concerning that the EMT assumed drug overdose. It seems to me it was not only inappropriate use of Narcan but also a very dangerous one. Anyone with a different view is welcome to chime in.
I have no medical background. What I know of Narcan is what I learned that night, and what I learned at the parent assembly on the drug epidemic given at my daughter’s school.
My guess is that it’s SOP-- if it is a drug overdose, they need that info to best help the patient. And when the first one “worked” and snapped the seizure, it was probably reasonable to assume that a second would work as well. I’m fine with the EMT doing what had to be done to help my husband, and once we let him know what had happened, he was too.
I asked the cop at the assembly about the incidence of false positives for Narcan, and she said my husband’s was the first she had ever heard of.
Remember when people only went to the doctor when they were sick?
That time is long gone. Now, you sit in a doctor’s waiting room and often, everyone in the room looks perfectly healthy. It’s the era of preventive medicine, and preventive medicine often involves taking drugs – particularly for blood pressure and cholesterol, but sometimes for other things, too.
I have no problem with this or with the use of drugs to manage a condition. I do think, though, that there’s a need to make sure that people aren’t taking inadvisable combinations of medicines. And it would be nice if all health care providers who do procedures that require people to go without food and water for a period beforehand were well prepared to give patients explicit instructions about what to do about taking or not taking each of their medicines. Some doctors are knowledgeable about this sort of thing, but some don’t seem to have a clue, and they look at you funny when you ask.
What’s with the click bait thread title? “Drugs” implies something different. If it said “prescribed medications” that would imply something different. And research has shown patients expect to walk out of their Drs office with a prescription, or may be unhappy with their Dr. Patients are responsible here too.
I take one drug and that is recent. I was diagnosed with glaucoma last month and the eye drops keep me from going blind (worst case scenario). Given that option, I will use the prescription drops every night.
This is my concern for my H. I think he is too quick to lean on medicine before even trying lifestyle/diet changes. He is on Predisone long term (and will never get off it) for a lung condition. That medicine is a blessing and a curse. If he hadn’t gotten better, we’d have been on transplant list, BUT long term use has given him Type II diabetes and neuropathy. He takes the diabetes med and doesn’t even attempt to eat better or to exercise (his feet hurt and swell and he takes meds for that) which makes all above worse. We blow through our deductible on his meds every year.
I very much worry about drug interactions and read the information with every drug he brings home. I’m the one who figured out before the docs why he spiked a high fever that landed him in hospital when on one of early lung drugs. But I can’t tell a grown man what to do.
@Bromfield2. My dad had glaucoma and used the eye drops faithfully for the last 15 years of his life. He was able to read normal print and drive a car throughout that period. When he finally noticed some visual impairment, it turned out to be due to cataracts, not glaucoma!
We shouldn’t get so carried away about possible overuse of drugs that we ignore cases where they have very valuable effects – in this case, helping people maintain good vision and therefore independence and a high quality of life.
My dad was also on , IIRC, 3 glaucoma meds. Calling them, appropriately, meds, is less negative-sounding than “drugs” which has that negative, illicit connotation.