The Menacing Mathematics of Multiple
Medications
By Gary Craig
There's something scary about drugs
that concerns a growing number of physicians and should wobble the
knees of every patient on the planet. It's obvious to any mathematician
but somehow has escaped the general scrutiny of the health industry.
It has to do with combining medications.
Ever since I can remember I have been
fed the perception that drugs are governmentally evaluated and thus
are safe if taken under the guidance of competent physicians. However,
even if we accept the presumed safety for the ingestion of one drug,
we must ask ourselves how might that safety change if we take multiple
drugs?
For safety assurances, proper testing
should be done for every drug combination we are advised to take.
If we take Prozac and Tylenol, for example, we should be presented
with all the possible benefits and consequences before allowing these
two foreign substances to mix with the chemicals our bodies already
create.Same thing goes for combining Paxil with Viagra or Interferon
with Lipitor.
The list of possible problems here
is monstrously long because there are a b'zillion drugs and mega b'zillions
of combinations. Nonetheless, I've never seen or heard of any studies
that test any of these combinations ... have you?
Thus, if you take two drugs, the odds
of their combination having been adequately tested for safety are
skimpy at best. But if you take 3 or more drugs the danger possibilities
multiply even faster. Here's how the mathematics work: If you take
3 drugs then adequate safety testing of the various combinations require
7 separate tests. If you take 4 drugs the combinations require 25
separate tests. If you take 5 drugs it amounts to 121 tests. If you
take 10 drugs the number of required safety tests total 362,881.
The conclusion here should be obvious.
Namely, there is questionable safety testing if you take 2 drugs and
nominal, if any, safety testing if you take 3. Beyond that you are
clearly into the land of, "I have no idea what these combinations
of drugs will do."
To me, this tosses our dedicated docs
into a tenuous position. They have patients with problems who aren't
willing to exercise, eat right, do EFT for emotional issues or much
of anything else to help their own health.
Instead, the patients hope the physicians will produce
a magic pill (or pills) to make their problems go away. I have met
many patients who are on several drugs and take some drugs to counteract
the effects of other drugs. As a non-physician I look at this with
a shudder. These folks are being fed chemical cocktails with little
or no safety testing behind the combinations. Maybe
I need some help with my perceptions here but, to me, they are playing
drug roulette. I don't know if lawyers have picked up on the simple,
but compelling, math here. But I do know that I wouldn't want to be
a doctor in court facing these clear facts.
In the 15+ years I have been involved in the health
field, I have had the good fortune to count many physicians as my
personal friends. With few exceptions, they agree that it is our lifestyles,
diets and emotional stresses that cause most of our health problems
... and ... the vast majority of these problems would vanish if people
would live common sense lives.
Yet patients repeatedly abuse their bodies and ask for
more and more "miracle drugs" as the convenient solution. I don't
envy the docs at all as I often hear them complain that this is a
highway to NobodyWinsVille.
Maybe what we really need are good
salespeople to persuade folks to take care of themselves. I suspect
that, if truly persuasive, they would do more good than the ocean
of drugs at our disposal.
Love, Gary
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