Prescription Drugs

For Alesandra Rain, it all started with sleeplessness. In 1993 she was having marital troubles and her business wasn't doing well. Anxiety kept her up at night, so her general practitioner prescribed sleeping pills.

According to the New York Time, the number of people treated in hospitals in the United States for problems related to medication errors has surged more than 50 percent in recent years. In 2008, 1.9 million people became ill or injured from medication side effects or because they took or were given the wrong type or dose of medication, compared with 1.2 million injured in 2004, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Our affiliate, ANH International, is preparing for a legal challenge against EU herb laws. As we reported to you last November, thousands of products associated with traditional medicine will become illegal throughout the European Union. And more and more, European Union (EU) legislation influences US domestic policy, especially where health-related laws are concerned.

Retired NFL players use painkillers at a much higher rate than the rest of us, according to new research conducted by investigators at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

The global effort to outlaw herbs, vitamins and supplements is well under way, and in just four months, hundreds of herbal products will be criminalized in the UK and across the EU. It's all part of an EU directive passed in 2004 which erects "disproportionate" barriers against herbal remedies by requiring them to be "licensed" before they can be sold.

An over-the-counter herbal treatment believed to have medicinal benefits has minimal impact in relieving the common cold, according to research by the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. The study, published in this month's Annals of Internal Medicine, involved echinacea, a wild flower (also known as the purple coneflower) found in meadows and prairies of the Midwestern plains.

Complementary medicines (CAM) can be dangerous for children and can even prove fatal, if substituted for conventional medicine, indicates an audit of kids' CAM treatment published online in the Archives of Disease in Childhood. But parents often misguidedly think CAM treatments are better for their children because they are "natural" and therefore less likely to have harmful side effects, say the authors.

For most of us, the "placebo effect" is synonymous with the power of positive thinking; it works because you believe you're taking a real drug. But a new study rattles this assumption. Researchers at Harvard Medical School's Osher Research Center and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have found that placebos work even when administered without the seemingly requisite deception.

Using acid suppressive medications, such as proton pump inhibitors and histamine2 receptor antagonists, may increase the risk of developing pneumonia, states an article in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

Manufacturers who put tainted or undeclared ingredients into dietary supplements were warned Wednesday by the Food and Drug Administration that they can no longer market them as such. The FDA has received reports on well over 100 products over the last few years, a number of them detailed serious injuries, even deaths. In fact, since 2007 the agency has sent out consumer alerts about 300 adulterated products.

Wonder drugs they may be, but PPIs are overprescribed and pose some health risks. In the arms race against heartburn, one class of drug outperforms the competition by going straight to the source. The proton pump inhibitors, PPIs for short, block acid manufacture at the subcellular level.

When an antibiotic is consumed, researchers have learned that up to 90 percent passes through a body without metabolizing. This means the drugs can leave the body almost intact through normal bodily functions.