Aspirin a Day Can Kill

I hear ya PD. The only meds I take are puffers for my asthma. These days if you're shy around people, it's a disorder. If you love food and are fat, it's a disorder. If you have a problem consentrating in school because the teacher is boring, it's a disorder. If you think too much which may cause you a bit of stress, it's a disorder, and the list goes on forever. There's just no end to it and I cringe everytime I see a comercial promoting all these meds. I believe that these comercials are actually making people think they are sick when they are perfectly healthy. The mind is a powerful tool and if you think long enough, you can actually make yourself sick.

hahah...mantra of a society saturated in misinformation...first you market the disease... then push the pills...


Newswire article

Word of the hidden epidemic began spreading in spring last year. Local news reports around the United States reported that as many as 10 million Americans suffered from an unrecognised disease. Viewers were urged to watch for the symptoms: restlessness, fatigue, irritability, muscle tension, nausea, diarrhoea, and sweating, among others. Many of the segments featured soundbites from Sonja Burkett, a patient who had finally received treatment after two years trapped at home by the illness, and from Dr Jack Gorman, an esteemed psychiatrist at Columbia University.
The disease was generalised anxiety disorder (GAD), a condition that, according to the reports, left sufferers paralysed with irrational fears. Mental-health advocates called it "the forgotten illness". Print periodicals were awash with stories of young women plagued by worries over money and men. "Everything took 10 times more effort for me than it did for anyone else," one woman told the Chicago Tribune. "The thing about Gad is that worry can be a full-time job. So if you add that up with what I was doing, which was being a full-time achiever, I was exhausted, constantly exhausted."
The timing of the media frenzy was no accident. On April 16 2001, the US food and drug administration (FDA) had approved the antidepressant Paxil, made by British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, for the treatment of Gad. But it was a little-known ailment; according to a 1989 study, as few as 1.2% of the US population merited the diagnosis in any given year. If GlaxoSmithKline hoped to capitalise on Paxil's newapproval, it would have to raise Gad's profile.
That meant revving up the company's public-relations machinery. The widely featured quotes from Burkett were part of a "video news release" the drug maker had distributed to TV stations around the country; the footage also included the comments of Gorman, who has frequently served as a paid consultant to GlaxoSmithKline. On April 16 - the date of Paxil's approval - a patient group called freedom from fear released a telephone survey which revealed that "people with Gad spend nearly 40 hours per week, or a 'full-time job,' worrying". The survey mentioned neither GlaxoSmithKline nor Paxil, but the press contact listed was an account executive at Cohn & Wolfe, the drugmaker's PR firm.
The modus operandi of GlaxoSmithKline - marketing a disease rather than selling a drug - is typical of the post-Prozac era. "The strategy [companies] use - it's almost mechanised by now," says Dr Loren Mosher, a San Diego psychiatrist and former official at the national institute of mental health. Typically, a corporate-sponsored "disease awareness" campaign focuses on a mild psychiatric condition with a large pool of potential sufferers. Companies fund studies that prove the drug's efficacy in treating the afiction, a necessary step in obtaining FDA approval for a new use, or "indication". Prominent doctors are enlisted to publicly affirm the malady's ubiquity, then public-relations firms launch campaigns to promote the new disease, using dramatic statistics from corporate-sponsored studies. Finally, patient groups are recruited to serve as the "public face" for the condition, supplying quotes and compelling stories for the media; many of the groups are heavily subsidised by drugmakers, and some operate directly out of the offices of drug companies' PR firms.
The strategy has enabled the pharmaceutical industry to squeeze millions in additional revenue from the blockbuster drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), a family of pharmaceuticals that includes Paxil, Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa, and Luvox. Originally approved solely as antidepressants, the SSRIs are now prescribed for a wide array of previously obscure afflictions - Gad, social anxiety disorder, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, and so on. The proliferation of diagnoses has contributed to a dramatic rise in anti-depressant sales, which increased eightfold between 1990 and 2000.
For pharmaceutical companies, marketing existing drugs for new uses makes perfect sense: a new indication can be obtained in less than 18 months, compared to the eight years it takes to bring a drug from the lab to the pharmacy. Managed-care companies have also been encouraging the use of medication, rather than more costly psychotherapy, to treat problems such as anxiety and depression.
But while most health experts agree that SSRIs have revolutionised the treatment of mental illness, a growing number of critics are disturbed by the degree to which corporate-sponsored campaigns have come to define what qualifies as a mental disorder and who needs to be medicated.
When Paxil hit the market in 1993, the drug's manufacturer, then known as Smith-Kline Beecham, lagged far behind its competitors. Eli Lilly's Prozac, the first FDA-approved SSRI, had already been around for five years, and Pfizer had beaten Smith-Kline to the punch with Zoloft's debut in 1992. With only a finite number of depression patients to target, Paxil's sales prospects seemed limited. But SmithKline found a way to set its drug apart from the other SSRIs: it positioned Paxil as an anti-anxiety drug - a latter-day Valium - rather than as a depression treatment.
SmithKline was especially interested in a series of minor entries in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM), the psychiatric bible. Published by the American psychiatric association since the 1950s, the DSM is designed to give doctors and scientists a common set of criteria to describe mental conditions. Entries are often inuenced by cultural norms (until 1973, homosexuality was listed as a mental disorder) and political compromise: it is written by committees of mental-health professionals who debate, sometimes heatedly, whether to include specific disorders. The entry for GAD, says David Healy, a scholar at the college of medicine at the University of Wales and author of the 1998 book The Antidepressant Era, was created almost by default: "Floundering somewhat, members of the anxiety disorders subcommittee stumbled on the notion of generalised anxiety disorder," he writes, "and consigned the greater part of the rest of the anxiety disorders to this category."
Critics note that the DSM process has no formal safeguards to prevent researchers with drug-company ties from participating in decisions of interest to their sponsors. The committee that recommended the Gad entry in 1980, for example, was headed by Robert L Spitzer of the New York state psychiatric institute, which has been a leading recipient of industry grants to research drug treatments for anxiety disorders.
SmithKline's first forays into the anxiety market involved two fairly well-known illnesses - panic disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Then, in 1998, the company applied for FDA approval to market Paxil for something called social phobia or "social anxiety disorder" (SAD), a debilitating form of shyness the DSM characterised as "extremely rare".
Obtaining such a new approval is a relatively simple affair. The FDA considers a DSM notation sufficient proof that a disease actually exists and, unlike new drugs, existing pharmaceuticals don't require an exhaustive round of clinical studies. To show that a drug works in treating a new disease, the FDA often accepts in-house corporate studies.
With FDA approval for Paxil's new use virtually guaranteed, SmithKline turned to the task of promoting the disease itself. To "position social anxiety disorder as a severe condition", as the trade journal PR News put it, the company retained the New York-based public-relations firm Cohn & Wolfe. (Representatives of GlaxoSmithKline and Cohn & Wolfe did not return my phone calls.)
By early 1999 the firm had created a slogan, "Imagine Being Allergic to People", and wallpapered bus shelters nationwide with pictures of a dejected-looking man vacantly playing with a teacup. "You blush, sweat, shake-even find it hard to breathe," read the copy. "That's what social anxiety disorder feels like." The posters made no reference to Paxil or SmithKline; instead, they bore the insignia of a group called the social anxiety disorder coalition and its three non-profit members, the American psychiatric association, the anxiety disorders association of America, and freedom from fear.
But the coalition was not a grassroots alliance of patients in search of a cure. It had been cobbled together by SmithKline Beecham and Cohn & Wolfe handled all media inquiries on behalf of the group.
The FDA's advertising regulations also helped the Cohn & Wolfe strategy. "If you are carrying out a disease-awareness campaign, legally the company doesn't have to list the product risks, notes Barbara Mintzes, an epidemologist at the University of British Columbia's centre for health services and policy research. Because the "Imagine Being Allergic to People" posters did not name a product, they did not have to mention Paxil's side effects, which can include nausea, decreased appetite, decreased libido, and tremors.
Cohn & Wolfe's strategy did not end with posters. The firm also created a video news release, a radio news release, and gave journalists a press statement stating that SAD "affects up to 13.3% of the population," - one in eight Americans -and is "the third most common psychiatric disorder in the United States, after depression and alcoholism." By contrast, the diagnostic and statistical manual cites studies showing that between 3-13% of people may suffer the disease at some point in their lives, but that only 2% "experience enough impairment or distress to warrant a diagnosis of social phobia".
Cohn & Wolfe also supplied journalists with eloquent patients, helping to "put a face on the disorder", as account executive Holly White told PR News. Among the patients most frequently quoted in stories about social anxiety disorder was a woman named Grace Dailey, who had also appeared in a promotional video produced by Cohn & Wolfe.
Also on that video was Jack Gorman, the Columbia University professor who would later make the rounds on Paxil's behalf during the GAD media campaign, appearing on numerous television shows, including ABC's Good Morning America.
Gorman was not a disinterested party in Paxil's promotion. He has served as a paid consultant to at least 13 pharmaceutical firms, including SmithKline Beecham, Eli Lilly, and Pfizer. Another frequent talking head in the SAD campaign, Dr Murray Stein of the University of California at San Diego, has also served as a Smith-Kline consultant, and the company funded many of his clinical trials on SAD.
Cohn & Wolfe's campaign on SAD paid immediate dividends. In the two years preceding Paxil's approval, fewer than 50 stories on social anxiety disorder had appeared in the popular press. In May 1999, the month when the FDA handed down its decision, hundreds of stories about the illness appeared in US publications and television news programmes, including the New York Times, Vogue, and Good Morning America. A few months later, Smith-Kline launched a series of ads touting Paxil's efficacy in helping SAD sufferers brave dinner parties and public speaking. By the end of last year, Paxil had supplanted Zoloft as the nation's number-two SSRI, and its sales were virtually on par with those of Eli Lilly's Prozac. (Neither Prozac nor Zoloft has anapproval for SAD.)
The success of the Cohn & Wolfe campaign didn't escape notice in the industry: trade journals applauded GlaxoSmithKline for creating "a strong anti-anxiety position" and assuring a bright future for Paxil. Increasing public awareness of SAD and other disorders, the consulting firm Decision Resources predicted last year, would expand the "anxiety market" to at least $3bn by 2009.

winchilina, WELCOME to A2K. c.i.

Update on my friend: It has come to light that in addition to damage caused by strong doses of aspirin she also had been storing her meals on wheels food in the refrigerator: With no organization about it she would have a number of dishes in there from which she would randomly eat. Some of it might have been a few weeks old by the time she ate it. Much mold and bacteria. At any rate, word has it she is soon to come out of rehab and be back home. Home for her is a small apartment on her own. I check on her as much as I can and so do other friends, but she is alone far too long for her age and health condition. We have tried without success to persuade her to move to a managed care facility.

This is surely difficult. Does she have any relatives? Forcing someone's hand in leaving their home is a horrible thing to do/have to do and edgy if they are mentally competent. Not to mention the money involved. But I think some of these places leave you with at least some autonomy.

And leaving her there eating badly...is not a lot better.

I don't know how Meals on Wheels runs, what their procedures are or are supposed to be. It seems it would be nice if they would make sure she ate yesterday's meal....

She says one meal is too much to down at a sitting. That's why she was saving them. Meals on wheels basically just brings food to the door. But, when she had to go to the hospital (and the day before) one of their people worked along with the rest of us, some cleaning her up, the rest cleaning her apartment.
This woman was a music teacher. Her hands no longer cooperate when she's at a piano. I have brought her cassettes of many of her favorite pieces.
I sincerely hope she discovers while in therapy that it is much easier and more pleasant to have people around her all the time. - I am told she has a step son somewhere around the area and that he visits her in the hours that I am not around. Personally I've never met him in six years.

This is so sad!

Very sad indeed. I understand the lady's feelings about wanting to be in her own home though. There is a program available here in Canada for the elderly who choose to live at home that's fantastic. Someone comes out to their homes every day for about an hour who cleans, cooks, helps them bath, does their shopping, etc... I'm not sure if that program is available in your area, but it might be worth mentioning it to her children, so they can look into it. I know that's the way I'm going when I get too old to take care of everything myself. I don't think anyone should be forced against their will into a home unless they are not in their right mind which would make them a danger to themselves.

Hmmm. Sorry about your friend, EB. I wouldn't want to move into a home & be among a bunch of strange people. I can truly sympathize with her feelings.

Couldn't somebody just mark the throw-out dates on those meals on wheels? Older people get a little odd about food for whatever reason. My grandma was a terrific saver and was found to have old bulging cans in her pantry... very scary. Even my father-in-law, when he was on his own, had a very confused understanding of how long food could be safely kept in the frig or freezer.

We won't try to force this woman to do anything against her will. But, if you have ever witnessed an elderly person all banged and scarred up from falling down several times each month, and this always happening while she is all alone, you will see why I am so concerned. She is a delightful conversationalist, of exemplary character, and it would pain me to see her go. But I would rejoice to see it happen.
I had a friend in a similar situation, but this one did have someone to come and cook, clean, etc. I don't know why one qualified for it and the other not. The other friend was coerced to move by her friends and family, but she came to like her new home right away, so it worked out.

I truly understand you concern Edgar and I do hope that everything works out for her.

My friend went home today. She is extremely happy to be back. Her mind is lucid. I am not sure how well she gets around. She has made a decision to move to an assisted care facility as soon as her lease is up. I believe that's the end of March. Too long, in my view. The manager has advised her to break her lease, to go early, but, my friend believes in doing everything in its proper course. Well, I will continue to drop in on her daily and will see how it goes. Of course, I don't communicate all these worries to her.

That's great Edgar. Atleast now you know that she'll get the help she needs :-)

Once again I get to be teacher's pet.

;-)

Satacillic acid is a very mild blood thinner, it is the active ingredient in many pain killers. It is a natural substance derived from plants in the family Salicaceae, some members of which are the black willow (salix nigra) and a tree who's common name I forget (populus deltoides). The Native Americans used to treat pain by chewing on the bark of the willow, making tea with it and what have you.

So here's how it works: by taking a small amount of asprin every day, you are slightly thinning out your blood. This can help prevent clot formation (as in strokes, thrombosis) and having thinner blood can also prevent heart problems. [note: this is why people with heart problems/high blood pressure shouldn't eat a lot of salt: it raises your blood pressure]

There are two major side effects that can occur from taking pain killers, one of which it sounds like your friend experienced: The satacyllic acid, if it hits the stomach just right, can burn the stomach causing an ulcer. When this happens, it's usually pretty nasty. The other problem is that taking a whole lot of it (more than one a day - this problem is more likely with the strong acetaminophen based hydrocodone) is that your liver has trouble processing it and it can cause liver damage.

Thanks, Portal Star. This is important information.

This from David Williams, of Alternatives mag:
Doctors are urging millions of Americans to take an-aspirin-a-day to prevent stroke and heart attack. But studies show this can actually increase the risk of these two conditions.
Even worse: New research finds that an-aspirin-a-day can slowly destroy your eyesight, resulting in blindness later in life.
Sorry; I don't have a link or access to any studies. I am posting this in the hope that other a2kers may be quicker than I at finding out the truth.

Well, THAT is very interesting, as masses of elderly - which I now take as a fighting word since I understand sixty to be just a short multiple of six, and can extrapolate to eighty as not being as old as I have alway thought, except maybe physically...really, mentally I see it as just getting things together - masses of socalledelderly have eyesight problems.
That aspirin could (perhaps) affect eyesight is nice and scary.

I have myself, lessee, routine astigmatism, pretty hefty nearsightedness esp in left eye, retinitis pigmentosa (loss of rods, extremely gradual in my case though I was once in wild panic about it), glaucoma (borderline) and cataracts (beginning, both eyes). Need I mention I make my living and my pleasure to great extent by my eyes?

Let me not get macular degeneration, then I will absolutely be forced to cry.

But in the meantime, I am actually fine, and have great visual pleasure. I just don't want to take aspirin for my heart and find I am killing my eyes. So thanks for the mention here, whether or not it turns out to be true.

In macular degeneration, aspirin causes seeping of blood, for one thing. Here is one link about it.