Prescription Drugs Are Killing Us – Meet One Of The Doctors Who Just Published A Paper About It

Source: Prescription Drugs Are Killing Us – Meet One Of The Doctors Who Just Published A Paper About It – True Activist

By True Activist

August 3, 2016

Re-posted Aug 20, 2017

 

“The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical industry, not only in terms of practice of medicine but also in terms of teaching and research.”

 Many might say that a doctor saves lives and helps increase the average life span, but this is not true. Sure, they save a life here and there, but do they really relieve suffering? Patients extrapolate what doctors say, but they don’t realize that, while doctors do know about the diseases in depth, they know very little about the drugs they prescribe.

Arnold Seymour Relman (1923-2014), Harvard Professor of Medicine and Former Editor-in-Chief of the New England Medical Journal says:

“The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical industry, not only in terms of practice of medicine, but also in terms of teaching and research. The academic institutions of this country are allowing themselves to be the paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry. I think it’s disgraceful.”

The pharmaceutical industry is the most prevalent medicine industry worldwide, as it is hypothesized that the medicines provided by it quickly gives respite from ailments and treats a person, despite of the fact that thousands of people die every year from prescription drug use.

According to a new study, almost 80 percent of meta–analyses had some sort of industry tie-up, either through sponsorship or speaking fees, research grants and things like that, which again leads to the fact that drugs may help someone by giving some sort of relief or lowering pain, but they can also cause a large amount of harm.

These drugs can instantly relieve acute pain and distress. But the treatment of chronic diseases poses a grave problem. Thus, in relieving a diseased condition, other abnormal physiological and pathological problems may develop. The side effects from these drugs can range from mild side effects like fatigue and constipation, to strong side effects like suicidal thoughts, insomnia, coma, severe infection and so on.

“Any drug causing more side effects than benefits will not be called a medicine. It would rather be called a poison.”

Here, we are talking about antidepressants. Dr. Peter Gotzsche, co-founder of Cochrane Collaboration (the world’s foremost body in assessing medical evidence), is currently working to make the world aware of the fact that the side effects associated with the several pharmaceutical grade drugs are actually killing people all over the world. According to his research, 100,000 people in the United States alone die each year from the side effects of correctly-used prescription drugs. He published many papers reasoning the fact that antidepressants are making people suffer with its harmful effects to a large extent.

In context of antidepressants, recent example is a study published in the British Medical Journal by researchers at the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen. It states that the pharmaceutical companies are not disclosing all information regarding the results of their drug trials.

Tamang Sharma, a PhD student at Cochrane and lead author of the study, said:

“We found that a lot of appendices were often only available upon request to the authorities, and the authorities had never requested them. I’m actually kind of scared about how bad the actual situation would be if we had the complete data.”

This is not the first time that the pharmaceutical companies are portraying only the half truth of their drug trials to get the antidepressants on to the shelves. There are many other examples where we can see that the drug companies are selling their drugs on the basis of a bunch of lies and half-told truths.

Why these statues must go

J. Marion Sims was a gynecologist in the 1800s who purchased Black women slaves and used them as guinea pigs for his untested surgical experiments. He repeatedly performed genital surgery on Black women WITHOUT ANESTHESIA because according to him, “Black women don’t feel pain.” Despite his inhumane tests on Black women, Sims was named “the father of modern gynecology”, and his statue currently stands right outside of the New York Academy of Medicine. #FightSupremacy

BYP 100

 

Medical errors now third leading cause of death in the U.S., reports new study

This is old news from last year. It floors me that no one is following up on this story.

Source: Medical errors now third leading cause of death in the U.S., reports new study

By: D. Samuelson

newstarget.com

May 10, 2016

Add 250,000 reasons not go to western medicine trained physicians. That’s how many deaths were due to medical error between 2000 and 2008, according to safety experts at Johns Hopkins Medicine. On a scale of one to ten, deaths due to medical error is now in third place overall. EurekAlert.org reports:

“Their [250,000] figure, published May 3 in the BMJ, surpasses the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) third leading cause of death — respiratory disease, which kills close to 150,000 people per year. 

“The Johns Hopkins team says the CDC’s way of collecting national health statistics fails to classify medical errors separately on the death certificate. The researchers are advocating for updated criteria for classifying deaths on death certificates.

“‘Incidence rates for deaths directly attributable to medical care gone awry haven’t been recognized in any standardized method for collecting national statistics,’ says Martin Makary, M.D., M.P.H., professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and an authority on health reform. ‘The medical coding system was designed to maximize billing for physician services, not to collect national health statistics, as it is currently being used.’”

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) uses a coding system that hides the facts about deaths from medical error

USA Today reports:

“Death certificates in this country don’t have a place for hospitals to acknowledge medical error, which the authors say shows reporting needs to be improved so the problem can be better estimated and addressed.

“Death certificates in the United States, Canada, Great Britain and more than 100 other countries rely on what’s known as International Classification of Disease (ICD) code, so human and system errors can’t be recorded, according to the World Health Organization.

“‘People don’t just die from billing codes,’ said Makary, author of the 2013 book Unaccountable: What Hospitals Won’t Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care. ‘We do not have an open and honest way of measuring medical error.’”

Health care in the U.S. is really disease maintenance until one dies, isn’t it?

Our physical bodies were originally made from the earthen elements. Plants and herbs were our original medicines and we have been subject to synthetic imitations by pharmaceutical companies for many years. It’s front page news that death from prescription drugs has skyrocketed in the past two decades. Just what is a medical error? The article doesn’t say. Does it include mistakenly prescribing opiates that lead to death, a misdiagnosis of cancer that leads to a deadly chemotherapy, surgical error, vaccinations or just plain western medicine ignorance? Billing codes, not facts, are used to describe how death occurs.

Since 1949, billing codes tally the cause of death, mainly to maximize physician profit

EurerkAlert.org reports:

“‘Incidence rates for deaths directly attributable to medical care gone awry haven’t been recognized in any standardized method for collecting national statistics,’ says Martin Makary, M.D., M.P.H., professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and an authority on health reform. ‘The medical coding system was designed to maximize billing for physician services, not to collect national health statistics, as it is currently being used.’

“In 1949, Makary says, the U.S. adopted an international form that used International Classification of Diseases (ICD) billing codes to tally causes of death.

“‘At that time, it was under-recognized that diagnostic errors, medical mistakes and the absence of safety nets could result in someone’s death, and because of that, medical errors were unintentionally excluded from national health statistics,’ says Makary.”

Western medicine kills. The method has been hidden for decades. Time to find healing therapies, don’t you think?

(Photo credit: USA Today)

Sources:

EurekAlert.org

USAToday.com

Google.com

Science.NaturalNews.com

Multiple Studies Show that Sugar is Linked to Depression

 With thanks to Doc Stewart at stuartjeannebramhall.com

Research continues to confirm the adverse effects of sugar intake.

Source: Multiple Studies Show that Sugar is Linked to Depression – Waking Times

Anna Hunt, Staff Writer
Waking Times

August 18, 2017

 

“Sweet food has been found to induce positive feelings in the short-term. People experiencing low mood may eat sugary foods in the hope of alleviating negative feelings. Our study suggests a high intake of sugary foods is more likely to have the opposite effect on mental health in the long-term.” ~ Anika Knüppel, Ph.D. student at the Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London

Knuppel’s research supplements many other scientific studies on the link between sugar and mental health. In the end, they all seem to reach the same conclusion: In addition to the physical damage sugar does to our body, an effect on mental health definitely exists. What we presently don’t know is the magnitude or the exact scope of these negative effects.

Sugar Linked to Depression in Multiple Studies

The team at University College London examined the amount of sugar in the diet and common mental health problems in a large sample of 5000 men and 2000 women who were part of the 1980’s Whitehall II study. They compared groups of participants based on their sugar intake and their sex.

The researchers concluded that men with the highest sugar intake had a 23 percent higher chance of suffering a mental disorder. They based this estimated risk on a comparison with other men who consumed the lowest levels of sugar. Interestingly, the analysis did not identify the same link in women.

Knuppel’s isn’t the first researcher to link high-sugar diet to a higher risk of depression. Here are the findings of several other studies conducted over the last couple of decades.

1. A study out of Baylor College, published in 2002, analyzed sugar consumption in six countries. The researchers found that higher rates of refined sugar were associated with higher rates of depression.
2. In Spain, researchers assessed the relationship between consumption of fast food and commercial baked goods (muffins, doughnuts, croissants) and the incidence of depression. They discovered that participants belonging to the group with higher consumption quantities showed an increased risk of depression compared with those belonging to the lowest level of consumption.
3. Another study exposed the link between sugar and depression in 2014. This one evaluated the consumption of various types of beverages in over 260,000 participants with self-reported depression diagnosis. The researchers concluded that frequent consumption of sweetened beverages, especially diet drinks, may increase depression risk.
4. Finally, in 2015, yet another US-based study evaluated the effects of added-sugar and naturally occurring sugar intake in 70,000 women. In conclusion, researchers associated progressively higher consumption of dietary added sugars with increasing odds of depression.

Sugar in the Modern Diet

Research continues to confirm the adverse effects of sugar intake. Consequently, if you seek better long-term psychological health, lowering your intake of sugar may be a beneficial preventative measure.

Unfortunately, people typically eat excessive amounts of sugar. Here are some statistics:

The World Health Organization recommends that people reduce their daily intake of added sugars (that is, all sugar, excluding the sugar that is naturally found in fruit, vegetables and milk) to less than 5% of their total energy intake. However, people in the UK consume double – in the US, triple – that amount of sugar. Three-quarters of these added sugars come from sweet food and beverages, such as cakes and soft drinks. The rest come from other processed foods, such as ketchup. (source)

There are many factors that contribute to mental illness such as depression. Scientific proof continues to point the finger at diet as an important and significant culprit. Therefore, radically reducing or even eliminating sugar altogether may a crucial step to not only treating but curing symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Read more articles by Anna Hunt.

About the Author

Anna Hunt is the founder of AwarenessJunkie.com, an online community paving the way to better health, a balanced life, and personal transformation. She is also the co-editor and staff writer for WakingTimes.com. Anna is a certified Hatha yoga instructor and founder of Atenas Yoga Center. She enjoys raising her three children and being a voice for optimal human health and wellness. Visit her essential oils store here.

As Yemen Cholera Cases Reach 500,000, US and UK Condemned for Complicity

Source: As Yemen Cholera Cases Reach 500,000, US and UK Condemned for Complicity | Common Dreams

Common Dreams

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

Monday, August 14, 2017

The epidemic is a “man-made disaster driven by national and international politics,” said Oxfam’s Katy Wright

“Thousands of people are sick, but there are not enough hospitals, not enough medicines, not enough clean water,” said WHO director-general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. (Photo: ibrahem Qasim/Flickr/cc)

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday announced that the number of cholera cases in Yemen had reached 500,000.

“In backing this war with billions of dollars of arms sales and military support, the U.S. and the U.K. are complicit in the suffering of millions of people in Yemen.”
—Katy Wright, OxfamThe WHO also noted that around 5,000 people are being infected with cholera daily, “and nearly 2,000 people have died since the outbreak began to spread rapidly at the end of April.”

“Yemen’s cholera epidemic, currently the largest in the world, has spread rapidly due to deteriorating hygiene and sanitation conditions and disruptions to the water supply across the country,” WHO noted in a statement. “Millions of people are cut off from clean water, and waste collection has ceased in major cities.”

WHO director-general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus observed that Yemen’s health system—which has suffered mightily from endless conflict and insufficient funds—is not capable of handling the epidemic.

Yemen’s health workers are operating in impossible conditions. Thousands of people are sick, but there are not enough hospitals, not enough medicines, not enough clean water. These doctors and nurses are the backbone of the health response—without them we can do nothing in Yemen. They must be paid their wages so that they can continue to save lives.

To save lives in Yemen today we must support the health system, especially the health workers. And we urge the Yemeni authorities—and all those in the region and elsewhere who can play a role—to find a political solution to this conflict that has already caused so much suffering. The people of Yemen cannot bear it much longer—they need peace to rebuild their lives and their country.

Responding to the WHO announcement, Katy Wright, head of advocacy for Oxfam, called the cholera epidemic a “man-made disaster driven by national and international politics.”

Wright went on to single out two world superpowers—the United States and the United Kingdom—that have fueled conflict in Yemen by providing weaponry and intelligence to Saudi Arabia, which has for years been waging a relentless bombing campaign against its neighbor.

“All those fighting and backing this war need to stop fueling the madness and instead come to the peace table for the sake of civilian families in Yemen. Too many people have died, too many have lost everything they owned, too many have seen their futures put on hold, Wright concluded. “In backing this war with billions of dollars of arms sales and military support, the U.S. and the U.K. are complicit in the suffering of millions of people in Yemen.”

It Took Just One Distorted Study for the Media to Freak Out Over Health Risks and Marijuana

A new, widely reported study sensationally claims that marijuana poses significantly greater risks to cardiovascular health, particularly with regard to hypertension, than does cigarette smoking. Don’t believe the hype.A careful review of the study’s methods give reason to pause.

Source: It Took Just One Distorted Study for the Media to Freak Out Over Health Risks and Marijuana | Alternet

AlterNet

By Paul Armentano

August 10, 2017

Fear spreads far too easily when it comes to cannabis.

Photo Credit: sruilk / Shutterstock

A new, widely reported study sensationally claims that marijuana poses significantly greater risks to cardiovascular health, particularly with regard to hypertension, than does cigarette smoking. Don’t believe the hype.

A careful review of the study’s methods give reason to pause.

Authors of the study utilized a “retrospective study” design. Rather than identifying current marijuana consumers and comparing their health to non-users, researchers instead identified subjects who previously acknowledged having “ever used” cannabis in a 2005-2006 nutritional survey (the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey). Those participants who fessed up to having engaged in past pot use where then automatically classified by the study’s researchers as current users of the drug, despite the fact that no evidence exists to corroborate this claim.

Even more problematically, to calculate the estimated duration of each subject’s marijuana use, researchers simply subtracted the age participants first reported trying pot from their current age. (For example, if one acknowledged to NHANES having tried cannabis at age 20 and is now 40 years old, the study’s investigators classified this person as a 20-year-long “marijuana user.”)

Of course, making the presumption that someone who has ‘ever used’ marijuana will continue to use pot for the rest of their life is simply absurd. As noted by Gallup and others, while an estimated one-half of all adults acknowledge having tried cannabis – typically during young adulthood – most of these individuals do not continue to consume it long-term, particularly after age 30. (Gallup reports that only about one in eight Americans say define themselves as current users of marijuana.)

While the authors begrudgingly acknowledged this serious limitation in their press release (“[T]here were limitations to the way marijuana use was estimated,” they wrote. “For example, it cannot be certain that participants used marijuana continuously since they first tried it.”), they opined that such unconventional methodology was necessary because there exists an “absence” of longitudinal data assessing the long-term use of cannabis and cardiovascular health. This assertion, however, is false.

Notably, a pair of longitudinal trials have been published in recent months explicitly addressing marijuana use and heart health. For example, data published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported on the relationship between marijuana use over a 20-year duration and overall health in a cohort of 1,037 individuals. “We found no association between cannabis and cardiovascular risks [e.g., high blood pressure, higher cholesterol],” the authors wrote. “In general, our findings showed that cannabis use over 20 years was unrelated to health problems early in mid-life.”

More recently, an international team of researchers writing in the American Journal of Public Health assessed cumulative cannabis use and cardiovascular risk in a cohort of over 5,000 subjects over a period of more than two decades. Authors reported, “Compared with no marijuana use, cumulative lifetime and recent marijuana use showed no association with incident CVD (cardiovascular disease), stroke or transient ischemic attacks, coronary heart disease, or CVD mortality.” Their findings are similar to those of several other well-controlled studies – such as those here, here, and here – finding that cannabis exposure does not appear to be independently linked with significant cardiovascular risk in otherwise healthy subjects. By contrast, cigarette smoke exposure is a well-established contributor to adverse cardiovascular outcomes. For instance, smoking tobacco cigarettes has been estimated to increase stroke risk by as much as 600 percent.

That said, the authors’ findings that cannabis may influence vascular function is hardly a novel one. In fact, it is well established that cannabinoids, both exogenous and endogenous, can influence blood pressure. Both hypotension and hypertension have been reported following cannabinoid administration — though tolerance to these physiological effects appears to develop rather quickly. Nonetheless, such effects can lead to various potentially problematic outcomes such as tachycardia, particularly in more naïve subjects, and possibly on occasion may stimulate even more severe effects in those susceptible to adverse cardiovascular events. Therefore, it is reasonable to advise that certain potential high-risk populations ought to refrain from cannabis inhalation because of these concerns. But sensational claims that cannabis poses a greater risk to heart health than cigarettes are simply not evidence based and should not be taken seriously at this time.  

Paul Armentano is the deputy director of NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) and serves as a senior policy advisor for Freedom Leaf, Inc. He is the co-author of the book, Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? (Chelsea Green, 2013).

A New Epidemic – Alcoholism on the Rise in America

  “American alcohol consumption is on the rise, and it is now estimated that 1 in 8 Americans are alcoholics.”

Waking Times

Alex Pietrowski, Staff Writer

August 10, 2017

 

Alcohol is a most destructive drug. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that some 88,000 people a year die from excessive alcohol use, while over 10,000 people die each year as a result of drunk driving, a third of all traffic fatalities. Never-the-less, the alcohol industry continues to grow with nearly $500 billion a year in sales of beer, wine, and spirits. Big business, with big consequences.

 American alcohol consumption is on the rise, and it is now estimated that 1 in 8 Americans are alcoholics. This is a growing epidemic, as demonstrated by two surveys showing unprecedented increases in alcoholism.

“Two large surveys carried out in 2001-02 and 2012-13 have found that harmful levels of drinking are increasing among almost all demographics in the US. The number of teetotallers is falling, while high-risk drinking and alcoholism rose sharply during the 11-year period, according to an analysis published in JAMA Psychiatry.” [Source]

The rise is statistically significant, and the greatest increases were seen among those in the ‘severe’ use category, a sign that this trend is likely to produce an increase in alcohol related disease and accidents.

“The number of people who had consumed alcohol in the past 12 months went up 11.2% in the time between surveys. High-risk drinking went up by almost 30%. This means that at present about 29.6 million Americans are putting their health at risk due to their drinking habits.

The largest change was in the most severe alcohol use category. The number of people who had received a diagnosis of alcoholism over the period of the two studies shot up by 49%, affecting 12.7% of the total population. This means 1 in 8 Americans received a diagnosis of alcoholism in the year before the latest survey.” [Source]

Some experts blame the affordability of alcohol for the increase in abuse of alcohol.

“The price of alcohol has fallen sharply over recent decades, and that is the most compelling explanation for why the population is drinking more. Even the heaviest drinkers respond to changes in the cost of alcohol.” ~Keith Humphreys, a drug policy expert at Stanford University

This may indeed be relevant, however, it’s not just alcoholism that is rising to startling levels, but also the overuse of opioids and other drugs. As addiction expert Gabor Maté recently explained in an interview with Brian Rose of London Real how alcohol is used as an escape mechanism to dull the pain of unresolved trauma and past experiences which have had a lasting effect on one’s psyche.

READ: 20 COMMON THINGS PEOPLE REALIZE WHEN THEY QUIT DRINKING ALCOHOL

“It is a known by many that ingesting alcohol depresses the nervous system, kills brain cells, is toxic to the liver, weakens the immune system, and has many other harmful effects. We are taught that long-term alcohol use can lead to unwanted weight gain, diseases of the liver, lowering of intelligence, and negative effects on hormones. Drinking alcohol while pregnant can lead to birth defects, mental retardation, and deformities in the developing fetus. Yet still, it is mass promoted and supported by our mainstream culture. Have you ever considered that alcohol is a slick tool of the supporters of the Matrix (global mind control and oppression program) to keep people on a path of disempowerment and sickness?” [Source]

There are also spiritual consequences of drinking alcohol to excess, as noted by Zahra Sita:

“How many times have you or someone you know, after becoming quite intoxicated with alcohol, behaved in a manner uncommon to them? Perhaps you experienced the changing of voice, violence, sexual promiscuity, ingesting of harmful substances, destruction to property, conflictual behavior, and other negative expressions. Consider these experiences and ask yourself – is this the manifestation of light, love, and positivity? Do these occurrences represent a path of consciousness and health?” [Source]

Quitting alcohol has many positive benefits, and many people see common things change in their lives.

“Not drinking alcohol can give you a serious edge in a society where most everyone else is boozing it up on a regular basis. The zeitgeist of alcohol is that it makes life more fun, but the reality is that it is a massive industry pushed onto the public which has created a culture of self-destructive behavior.” ~Sofia Adamson

Read more articles by Alex Pietrowski.

About the Author

Alex Pietrowski is an artist and writer concerned with preserving good health and the basic freedom to enjoy a healthy lifestyle. He is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com. Alex is an avid student of Yoga and life.