(no subject)

[hummingwolf]

My ability to concentrate hasn't been all that good lately, but I have been reading Greg Critser's book Generation Rx in bits and pieces, and have been thinking it might be an interesting exercise to create a list of every prescription drug I can remember taking before I ever got an actual diagnosis and then find out how many of those drugs were pulled from the market for safety reasons. One potential problem with this exercise is that certain medications might have damaged my heart so much that it might kill me to let myself get that pissed off.

Funny thing--I remember one of the doctors who freely prescribed one of the killer drugs shaking his head and telling me that I should stop taking magnesium supplements because they could do me harm. There are, of course, several vitamins and minerals which can be quite dangerous if you ingest much more than your daily recommended value. Excess magnesium, on the other hand, pretty much just gives you the runs.

Comments

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

critser writes scary books. i read his Fat Land and nearly plotzed from fear of my joints and so on. that said, he has lots of evidence for his scary ideas.

think i'd better stay away from that book, though. just yesterday i read that Ketek has killed people or damaged their livers. jeff took that a couple of years ago and sort of flipped out. thank god it didn't kill him.

this is why i avoid drugs when i can....

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

I've never read Fat Land, but I bet he made it a good, if scary, read. As a person who hates to take any more drugs than I have to, I do get more than a little annoyed by doctors who feel the need to prescribe the latest drugs to patients who don't want them just because the drug companies say it's a good idea. Of course, the bad science ticks me off too. I hate messing with my poor body any more than I have to.

None of this makes me less likely to get my Ritalin refilled as soon as I can, though. I'm just more determined than ever to argue the next time a doctor tries to tell me I need to take yet another drug that's too much like all the others that never helped me.

Oh, reading Generation Rx does make me appreciate my hard-working liver more than ever, though. Especially since at least one of the drugs I took that wasn't withdrawn because it caused heart problems was, instead, withdrawn because it was a powerful liver toxin. Eep.