Heart Health

There is a wonderful idiom, several times used as the title to a movie and offering the comparative warning, “It shouldn’t happen to a dog.” It refers to some proposed act or omission that is so unpleasant to humans, it should not even be wished on a dog (being a mere animal, it might be expected to bear most things, but not this). Human culture has grown up with animals a part of our lives. Whether as pets, living as one of the family in our own homes, or as working beasts, we value them for “who” they are and what they can do for us. This means treating them in much the same way as humans. If they get sick, we give them our medications. Sometimes, they retaliate by acting as incubators to encourage viruses to mutate and, as with “swine” or “bird” flu, return the favor by passing… Read More…

Many people think the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) role is limited to licensing new drugs and medical devices, but it actually has a post-marketing role as well. Doctors and hospitals all round the US are required to report any and all adverse side effects to drugs. It’s not uncommon to find that drugs can pass through clinical trials involving only thousands of participants, but show side effects when millions start taking them. Obviously, many problems come from those who abuse the drugs in one way or another but, every now and again, serious problems emerge over time. Once a pattern emerges, the FDA can either change the labels on the drugs to give stronger warning to patients or, in the worst cases, withdraw the licenses for the drug to be used. Since withdrawal can have a dramatic effect on the manufacturer, the FDA prefers to improve the level of… Read More…

Wherever you go on the internet, whichever newspapers and magazines you open, there’s a familiar marketing message. Apparently, it’s easy to lose those unwanted pounds. Yeah, right. The marketers target our insecurities. They show us “before” and “after” pictures and suggest we too can become an “after” person if we buy their product. “Just spend your dollars with us,” they wheedle, “and we’ll heal your pain.” There are a mass of interesting assumptions in all these ads. It seems almost everyone is a target. We all want to shed pounds. That means we must all be unhappy with our current body shape. We must feel uncomfortable, perhaps even the victim of discrimination. Perhaps the health message is getting through and we begin to feel real fear of blocked-up arteries, high blood pressure and heart disease. Whatever the reason, the advertizers scent blood in the water and they are circling round… Read More…

There used to be a joke going the rounds about the relationship between doctors and a patient. When the patient asks for treatment, the doctors reply: “This is a time for mind over matter. We don’t mind and you don’t matter.” It may not be very funny joke, but it makes the point that many doctors have very poor people skills and frequently do not really care what happens to their patients. The notion of doctoring as a caring profession is just another of those urban myths. The majority are in the game for the money and high status. They want the maximum revenue with the minimum effort. Yet, there is another side to the joke. There has long been real scientific evidence of the so-called placebo effect. Put simply, this occurs when a patient given a fake medication or an ineffective substance gets better because he or she believes… Read More…

How often have we heard the doctor say, “Remember to take the full number of tablets.” but, when we feel better, we stop. It always seems such a waste. Antibiotics are expensive. We always justify keeping the half-empty bottle alongside all the others. You never know, we say to ourselves, they may come in useful. Except, they never do. So, when the day comes for clearing the shelves, what do we do with all these now unwanted drugs? In more innocent days, we might just have thrown them into the dumpster or flushed them down the toilet. Now we should think more about the consequences. Most of the trash from the dumpsters goes into landfill sites. Water washes through the mounds of rubbish, leaching all the chemicals into the ground. Over time, they move down to the water table and from there into streams and rivers. Similarly, what we flush… Read More…