The Science, Health, and Technology Room
Prior to COVID the media largely ignored vax adverse reactions. Not so with the COVID vax. Perhaps the sudden presence of this information caused awareness in people who are now reporting adverse reactions at a higher rate??
The article thinks it is people taking too many scripts together. I have said here before that once when I checked two meds prescribed to me (on WebMD) a major drug interaction came up. You would think the doc would check that out. And the pharmacist.
Pharmaceutical Adverse Reactions Are Skyrocketing
Researchers published some shocking statistics about the dramatic rise in adverse drug reactions in the UK in a study published in BMJ Open in July. Many of these adverse reactions were related to the number of prescriptions prescribed to the study participants.
“Polypharmacy,” the term for prescribing multiple drugs, is at the heart of an epidemic of overprescription. The issue has been snowballing in the past decade as big pharma continues to develop new drugs. To truly achieve better health, patients need to be advised and supported to make lifestyle changes that support health. That’s because most of the chronic conditions that people are being treated for arise directly out of factors ranging from a poor diet and lack of exercise to habits such as smoking and drinking. In the case of immediate need, drugs can provide a stop-gap measure, but true healing requires addressing the root causes of the illness. Unfortunately, this rarely happens. Instead, health care providers simply prescribe drugs for a condition—sometimes with multiple prescriptions.
When a patient ends up taking multiple prescriptions, it’s called polypharmacy, a term that is used often but with varied definitions. According to one article, the term polypharmacy “was used over one and a half centuries ago to refer to issues related to multiple-drug consumption and excessive use of drugs.”
No matter when the term originated, it’s commonly accepted that polypharmacy is the prescription of too many medications. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “Polypharmacy, often defined as the simultaneous use of five or more prescription drugs, is more common in an aging population where multiple coexisting chronic conditions often occur.”
The use of multiple prescriptions is almost always to treat several chronic conditions at the same time. Yet this causes side effects, can trigger additional health concerns, and can even lead to death. The results from the featured study demonstrate the depth of the need for deprescribing to affect a real change in people’s health.
Polypharmacy Driving Adverse Drug Reactions
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by jigglepete
