E-cigarettes seem to be a very popular product these days, so I thought I’d do a bit of research to figure out what the heck an e-cigarette is and to try to answer the question, “Are e-cigarettes safe?”
It appears that the primary reason people use e-cigarettes is to avoid smoking, either as a way to get their nicotine in areas where smoking is prohibited, or as a means to try …
E-cigarettes: Are there better ways to quit smoking?
Media outlets are reporting the results of a small, but very important study regarding a new treatment for Alzheimer’s Disease. Most Americans are familiar with Alzheimer’s because it is so common (President Reagan had it), so devastating, and without a cure. This new study gives hope to people who have or are at risk for the disease.
Recently at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference 2012 in Vancouver, researchers presented the …
IVIG for Alzerheimer’s: Cost is a barrier
One summer in college, when I couldn’t think of what else to do, I lived near campus in a punishingly hot walk up apartment, held down three boring jobs, and took intensive Latin. Every morning we met in a blissfully air-conditioned classroom–that was the upside!– to conjugate and decline: a whole year of Latin in 6 weeks. I remember nothing I learned, of course. I’m reminded of the great Woody …
Go behind the scenes of naming a drug
In a recent report released by the UNAIDS, the number of new HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) infections has fallen by 19% since 1999. And of the 33.3 million people living with HIV, only a little over 5 million people are receiving HIV treatment. That is, roughly 15 percent of the world’s population. Ghastly, some might say, but improving, optimists would say.
According to the 2010 UNAIDS Report on the Global Aids …
The HIV vaccine does not promise the end of AIDS
Most of the American public doesn’t know that different pharmacies can and do charge drastically different prices for their prescription drugs. Does that surprise you? It sure surprised me when I found this out a few months ago in my medical school class.
I consider myself well educated. I’m a college graduate and in the throes of professional school — in healthcare nonetheless. I have an open mind and I read quite …
Pharmacies can charge different prices for their prescription drugs
This weekend I tried to buy Plan B over the counter at a Rite Aid and was denied.
Let me explain. It wasn’t for me, I have a Paraguard and my boyfriend had a vasectomy. Basically, the chance of me getting pregnant is so astronomically impossible that we’d be pimping the story out to every tabloid and we would aim for a reality show, which we would call The Second Coming.
What …
Requiring ID to buy Plan B is ludicrous
Bath salts are a relatively new group of designer drugs sold as tablets, capsules, or powder and purchased in places such as tobacco and convenience stores, gas stations, head shops, and the Internet.
They are stimulants that mimic cocaine, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), methamphetamine, or methylenedioxymethamphetamine (ecstasy). According to a recent article in the Journal of Psychosocial Nursing, the most common bath salts are MDPV, mephedrone, and methylone. These drugs cause …
What are bath salts and why are they dangerous?
A recent economic analysis concluded that patients with metastatic cancer value their treatments significantly more than regulators recognize, with many expensive new therapies looking like veritable bargains to most patients. Yet the study ignored the values really driving oncology spending—the warped incentives oncologists have to promote their own bottom line by prescribing expensive treatments.
Let’s start with the economic analysis, another in a series of studies by a USC team of …
Do oncologists have an incentive to prescribe expensive treatments?
An article in the New York Times recently described the increasing use of stimulant medications such as Adderall and Ritalin among high-school students. Titled “The Risky Rise of the Good-Grade Pill,” the article discussed how 15 to 40 percent of students, competing for straight-As and spots in elite colleges, use stimulants for an extra “edge,” regardless of whether they actually have ADHD. I’ve written about ADHD. It’s a real …
Applying ADHD lessons to medical marijuana
It seems like every day in the office I see at least one man concerned about testosterone deficiency. If you look at the symptoms of testosterone deficiency most of us have one or more of these symptoms at least some of the time. Fatigue, depression, weight gain, lack of energy, reduced sex drive, loss of physical strength, and moodiness are all described as symptoms typical of testosterone deficiency. Making the …
The decision to prescribe testosterone replacement therapy or not
Acute and chronic pain is bad. Proper pain management is essential and has been strongly emphasized by the American medical establishment for the past nearly two decades.
Simultaneously, during these years, both the quantity of opioids prescribed by physicians and dentists has increased dramatically and prescription opioid abuse has escalated at an alarming rate among chronic pain patients and the general population. Opioid analgesics now result in Read more…
How to intelligently prevent opioid abuse
Everybody knows that some medications can cost a lot of money. I always try to take the cost to my patients into account when prescribing a medication- after all, if someone can’t afford it, they are not going to take it. When it’s appropriate (and 9 times out of 10 it is), I try to prescribe a generic medication. They are much cheaper and work just as well as the …
Don’t accept the face value price of a drug
Hydrocodone as it is currently prescribed in the U.S. is a schedule 3 drug. The FDA puts rules and regulations on the prescribing of medications that have a significant potential for abuse, diversion or addiction, and the lower the schedule number, the more the restrictions.
Schedule 1 drugs are illegal in the U. S. They are deemed to have no legitimate medical purpose. Examples are heroin, LDS, methamphetamine, marijuana (strange but …
Should hydrocodone be changed to a schedule 2 drug?
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I am employed by a hospital, and have health insurance through my job. The coverage is comprehensive, and the cost has an employer contribution and employee contribution. I still get confused (though I have the hospital’s own plan) about what is covered and what is not. I can only imagine how hard it must be for my patients.
The prescription plan that comes with this insurance is straight forward: $40 for …
The impact of prescription drug costs on health spending
Now more than ever, the growing consensus among many is that doctors should avoid seeing pharmaceutical sales representatives, otherwise known as drug reps. A position statement from the AAMC, the head organization of all US medical schools and residency programs, recommends that all academic health centers avoid having drug reps on their campuses, hospital and clinics. Many medical institutions including the VA and Kaiser have also enacted similar policies banning …
Is there a harm to not seeing drug reps?
Willful blindness of our public health officials on tobacco is still killing hundreds of thousands of Americans each year.
Here are the facts:
i) There are approximately 46 million tobacco smokers in the United States.
ii) While three-quarters say they want to quit smoking, and about one-third try to quit each year, fewer than 10% succeed.
iii) The FDA-approved smoking cessation aids simply do not work: They improve quit rates only minimally, if at …
The truth about reduced risk smokeless tobacco
I am not a huge baseball fan to begin with, and when I am, I root for the Nationals. Thus, I pay little attention to the New York Yankees, and was not aware that Yankee player Mark Teixeira had been suffering from a cough for the past month until it the story from the New York Times came through one of my Twitter feeds. According to the story: “Mark Teixeira had …
Using Advair to treat postinfectious cough
Some things in medicine are obvious. Despite the endless worship of ‘evidence-based’ medicine, and the constant barrage of studies on every conceivable topic, we do certain things because we know they just seem right. I take as evidence the fact that we daily try to save lives, devoting research time, untold gazillions of dollars and heroic clinical effort to our continued goal of staving off death. Why is this? Do …
When self-evident truth in medicine is systematically ignored
When you are handed a prescription by your physician or your pharmacist there are many questions you should know the answer to before walking out the door.
1. What is this medication for?
This may seem obvious, but countless times when I ask a patient if they know what their prescription is for they tell me they have no idea. When someone doesn’t know what a medication is for, there is little motivation to take it correctly or …
5 questions to ask about your prescription
Nine months ago I saw a new patient, a delightful 86-year old male. His past medical history included lymphoma many years ago, a stroke five years ago, dyslipidemia and hypertension. Medications included aspirin, a generic statin, and a non-generic ARB-HCT combination, which he had been on for years. He lived alone with a lot of support from his loving and attentive family. The patient looked great. I refilled his meds …
Who pays for the cost of switching medications?
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