Book Review: Overdosed America

Just finished reading the book Overdosed America by Dr. John Abramson. I picked this book up at Barnes and Noble because I think it was in the "Bargain Books" section... I will often go to their bargain section and just get a million books for the price of 5. I found this book to be very interesting as it picked apart the "medical benefits" of Statins, NSAID, Hormone Replacement Therapy for women and Osteoperosis treament.... It's interesting because it talks about how Americans view and do everything is also applied to medicine and medical care is fundamentally eroding the quality of medical care and killing us quickly, not slowly. Our constant search for the newest and greatest which may not be the best...brand names are better....what's popular is better is essentially making us more sick.

So some interesting thing I found in the book:
Statins: Created to reduce cholesterol levels, it ends up reducing the levels of both good and bad cholesterol. It may not sound bad considering reducing the bad cholesterol is more important - but I learned that cholesterol is a building block for many of the body's functions....the body essential needs fat (cholesterol) for things to happen...without it - thus by the overuse of statins, we rob our bodies of the fuel needed to grow cells, etc.

NSAID: Lots of new arthritis meds have come onto the market...however they are no more effective than the older meds out there. In fact, they have tested to be only marginally better but often have more serious side effects like increased chances of heart attacks and other complications. However with "creative marketing" by the pharmaceutical companies, more and more patients are drinking the kool-aid and asking for them and overworked doctors to prescribing them. I am happy to announce that the Camino Medical Group (my med group) merely told me to use ibuprofen to ease a recent foot pain.

I am a fan of capitalism and of free enterprise, but I must say that it is a shame the affect that pharmaceutical cmpanies are having on American medicine...shamelessy promoting drugs that provide little to no greater benefit than their predecessors. Also, the negative reverse impact that HMO's are having on us as well...the formerly good idea of preventive care has turned into rising medical costs and leaving more and more people without care.

I am more than happy to report that Camino Medical Group (Part of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation) is great with primary care especially in taking the time to listen to their patients (me) and explain in detail what's going on. They also don't like to prescribe medications unless absolutely necessary...but will make every attempt with preventive and diagnostic test to rule out all possibilites. I recently went in for an x-ray for my foot pain...when the x-rays came back, instead of just looking and saying "no breaks or fractures," the doc went over the xray explaining all the bones in my foot and based on where my pain is isolated, where there should be signs of stress in my foot bones....it's nice when they take the time to explain it to you.