The Menacing Mathematics of Multiple Meds
The Menacing Mathematics of Multiple Meds
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 meds.
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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Scrubs up well!
Don't 'e scrub up well! He looks a proper charmer! Wot wif 'is waistcoat and all! Will 'is arms fit into 'is sleeves when 'e grows up! :-)
Dress the part!
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Just a bunch!
The other day a friend told me he had been drinking with some top brass from the Met after being on a course;it reminded me of a time when Bob, my friend and colleague, who I had been seriously injured with in a riot, attended an organised police event. We had been invited to a do in our honour I even think we were presented with a cup or something. We had taken over a Greek restaurant for the day, a well known restauranteur that was GTP (Good To Police). After a great meal of Meze we were getting stuck into the wine and I noticed that Bob in his medical collar and stick was completely wasted. Another time when we found that prescribed drugs and alcohol doesn't mix at all. He was desperate to 'say a few words'. I kept saying "don't do it Bob it won't be good mate". He became insistent and somewhat violent and made it clear he was going to do it one way or another. Now he was wound up and angry and pissed! Not a great combination. He climbed onto the table, how I don't know, there were chinking of glasses as he shouted "I want to say a few words!" the venue fell silent as about 70 'old bill' stopped and looked on including 'top brass'. Words of wisdom you hope but no, Bob is in pain, angry full of drugs and alcohol. The room went deadly quiet "I jussh wanna say a feww woirds! You're all a bunch of C*nts!" He fell off the table into a heap. I picked him up and dusted him down. The 'old bill' in true style continued to chatter and drink, "It's only Bob, poor soul" was all you could hear. We left shortly afterwards for a drink!
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New Cop on the block!
My dearest friend Bobs son, Paul, joined up. He is a 'chip off the old block'. Even looks like him way back in the Seventies! Well done Paul nice helmet!
Superman!
I remembered this yesterday, it was an incident some time further on in my career. It came to me as I was taken a lift from my friend Jim, he was driving a 16 seater mini-bus. I sat in the back and sat in the 'hot seat' next to the sliding door nearside. Everyone wanted this seat as you were generally the first out and could make the most arrests! Memories came flooding back of days on carriers. One in particular was a call to a serious disturbance outside an East End pub. Calls of "HE'S GOT A DOUBLE SIDED AXE!" could be heard over the 'bat phone' I could see total mayhem outside the pub and the geezer with the axe take a swing at a male, it hit him hard on the forehead and the male dropped like a sack of ....! I was not in the 'hot seat' on this occasion but in the next best seat at the rear. I found myself out on the back step and bumpers, adrenaline pumping, the driver still motoring in, very fast. He braked at the last moment opposite the axe man, I jumped and managed to catch my heels on a pedestrian barrier, suddenly I was horizontal and traveling at speed. I heard the 'hot seat' cop shout "Jaysus! it's fucking Superman". I hit the guy with the axe, he didn't have time to even take a swing. Safely secured, I looked at the poor man with no face lying with his back against the pub wall. One of my colleagues realised that he hadn't completely lost his face and the axe had neatly cut his forehead in a slice and the skin had flapped down covering his nose an mouth. He flapped the skin back! I think he had 140 stitches. Axeman was well and truly nicked!
