Medicine Hypocrisy
Firstly, let me introduce myself, I stumbled across steemit today and immediately found potential to see a rise in demand of this coin. The blogging style of this site is quite influential. I have been reading a lot into medicine blogs and have found more than enough controversial stories, whether it be cancer ideologies or vaccination and its link with autism etc. Immediately I shake my head in disbelief, being a graduate in pharmaceutical sciences, and currently taking on a master’s degree in pharmacy, I can see a lot of inconclusive and bias findings from many people.
After studying for many years in the field of medicine and 'the drug process' I can tell you all, there is a lot more to be learnt behind the scenes of what really goes into the development of therapeutics. All therapeutics are heavily regulated, especially where I am from, Australia. Here the Therapeutics Goods Administration (TGA – our regulatory agency) regulates many products such as, medicines and blood products, including complementary medicine (in which I will write more blogs about as I know this a controversial field for many people), medical devices, such as implants, in vitro diagnostics and low risk medical devices. The TGA also regulate biologics, whether it be human stem cell(s)/therapy or cell-based products etc.
The term ‘regulate’ can create a mind map in itself, it involves the process of analysing hundreds, possibly thousands of pages of clinical trial information, before the drug registration process even begins. The TGA will analyse information from processes before clinical trials also, which is subsequently referred to non-clinical data (no surprise), such as safety and toxicity trials in small animals during drug development stages (post development stage), they will also maintain post marketing analysis (otherwise termed pharmacovigilance here in Australia) to prevent cases such as the disastrous thalidomide case that occurred in the early 60's (if you are unsure of this case I can also write a blog on this, it changed the quality use of medicine to how we know it today). I could ramble on and on about the safety of medicines due to regulatory authorities. However, my point is that medicines and medicine products are highly regulated interventions, they have been put onto the market for a reason, this is due to its efficacy, or in easier terms 'because it works', it serves as a purpose, to treat, prevent or in some cases cure a disease.
Sure, there are risks with taking medicines (I mean to be honest there are risks with any endeavour in life) but, being a future pharmacist - my job will be to balance the risk with benefits or in better cases outweigh the risks with benefits - to guarantee my patients follow a safe and efficacious drug regime to treat their symptoms or disease.
Any who I digress a lot when I write, I just want to say everything you read on the internet is going to mislead your views on medicines. Many people write articles in conjunction to affiliation with companies and have an extremely bias proposal, whether it be a good or bad result to a medicine, etc. So, if you need accurate data and information on any drug regimes, comment them below and I’ll give my professional advice to anything you require, whether it be medicine advice, illicit drug advice, current stages of therapy or if you just need someone to talk to, that is my job and I will be here for you all.
Subsequently, please jot down ideas about future blog stories, I can write about the pharmacology of certain drugs, pharmacokinetics, therapeutics or anything, I love to teach the quality use of medicines.
Thank you all for reading!
NB. I know there are probably many gaps in this blog, I could write for days about medicine, but in my following posts I will try to be more concise and include less jargon.
Thanks for trying to paint an objective view of the medicine market. It seems quite riddled with controversy. As someone about to launch a book on memtal health soon, anything you do to shed light on these matters can help.
thanks for the prompt comment, mental health is quite a large field, I've spent almost a semester of lectures learning about it. Firstly, one main problem in mental health are the outsiders, or everyone around the victim of the issue, especially if these people have never experienced any factor of mental health in their lifetime. These outsiders could be family, friends even relationship partners, it is absolutely vital that these important people in the victims life understand there is a physiological process occurring whether it be to the reduction in Lithium level (an elemental metal responsible for the stabilisation of mood and love) or previous history (maybe sexual assault, which is not uncommon) that can trigger the victim to have an increase in stress hormones that can send them into shock which is extremely unwanted for obvious reasons. It is also prominent that many people hide the fact that they have mental issue in which could trigger subliminal anger towards a person that loves them most, it can destroy relationships unfortunately :(, but yes, it is a serious topic that many often overlook!
You are spot-on with these observations! Mental health can have such a ripple effect.
Welcome franzee. I'm a physician in the US who finds himself at odds with much of western medicine. I prescribe certain medications (statins, vaccines) to my patients because it's the standard of care, but in my heart I question whether I'm helping or harming. The literature, as you note, can be misleading. For example, a drug that touts its reduction in cardiovascular deaths might require treating 100 people for 3 years to prevent 1 death, while the other 99 risk muscle aches, liver damage, memory loss and diabetes. I look forward to hearing your point of view on some of these issues. Voted, resteemed and followed.
Good to meet you kunschj :), it seems to me as these are all possible side effects of statins, the gold standard of lipid lowering treatment and certainly the first line agent here in Australia to prevent cardiovascular events such as STEMI's and NSTEMI's which lead to the progression of acute coronary syndromes, which is what we aim to prevent. Rosuvastatin and Atorvastatin are the most prescribed statins here in Australia, but mainly depending on drug metabolism to prevent the increased risk of muscle aches and pains. If the patient is telling us that they have muscle aches we will refer them to get their creatinine kinase levels checked to make sure they withdraw from therapy before rhabdomyolysis occurs which is unlikely as it is a serious case. Any who I say this because, statins are a great therapy for their indication and many of the side effects can be managed easily and withdrawn if need be, but as I say benefits always must outweigh risks. We need to factor in the patients lipid levels (obviously), family history, BMI, previous cardiovascular events etc, before we know we can give the drug any ways. Therefore, the drug is given for good reason, there are definitely benefits with the treatment.
Muscle aches with statins are also more common in those with low levels of vitamin D. Taking a CoQ10 supplement may also help prevent muscle aches with statins.
Very interesting, thank you for the input, that is something new I learned. Usually because of increased sun exposure especially towards northern states here in Australia, Vit D levels are usually on par, but supplements could definitely help patients in lower orientated states.
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