Archive for September, 2008

What’s with the spam filter these days?

Saturday, September 20th, 2008

I begin to think I will have no peace, my inbox gets another of those annoying spam messages telling me how wonderful Levitra is (or how many times Paris Hilton has had sex with the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra). Gone are the days when I could just tweak the filter to include the latest permutation on cheap Viagra. Now these ingenious spammers are into jpgs and all kinds of other tricks to get through the mail servers. Images are hard to filter out.

It’s not that I mind being reminded every now and then what the wonderful little blue pill can do. After all, there was that time a year or so back when I had a bad patch and found out how good Viagra is. But to have something every few minutes is just egregiously bad. Why this post? Let me tell you. When I was just starting out in IT, one of the standard tools was ASCII - a code for characters, numbers, symbols, etc. And what did we clever people do when we got bored? We made pictures out of all those characters. And guess what’s just popped into my inbox. You got it. It’s a headline, “Viagra - $1.10″ with the message built out of ASCII. So it made me sit up and take notice - just like taking Viagra really. Those clever spammers have found a new way to beat the filters.

Xanax is the most popular benzodiazepine in the US

Thursday, September 18th, 2008

Government now accepts that prescription medications are routinely abused. You only have to go into the emergency departments of hospitals to see the truth of this. In 2005, there were more than 2 million admissions caused by the non-medical use of drugs. One of the reasons for this is the easy availability of drugs that can give you a “high” both over-the-counter and through the internet. But it’s not helpful to see drugs as the only solution. Yes, xanax relieves anxiety, but you don’t want to become an addict. You need to change yourself. The way the world works today, people do need help. Drugs like xanax really do help them to cope with the stress. In the medium to long term, psychological support is the way to learn how to control your fear and worry. Live life the natural way, don’t pay endlessly for “help” through a bottle of tablets.

Every year, Xanax has been winning the prize in the “most prescribed” category. Naturally, Pfizer, the manufacturer, loves these annual headlines. They help customers believe this drug is so popular because it really works. Well, that’s true to some extent. If you take xanax for the right reasons and under proper medical supervision, it does reduce levels of panic and anxiety. But you can’t change the fact that it’s one of the benzodiazepines. That means it’s habit-forming. Take it for too long or at too high a dose and you’re likely to get hooked. So before you go down this path, think carefully.

A book review of “Insomniac” by Gayle Greene

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

All that we can say with any certainty is that those who are deprived of sleep do not do as well as those who sleep through the night. The sleepless so often end up demotivated, their sense of humour worn thin, their judgement warped. Some grow fat. Others find their immune system affected. Sleep seems so indispensable yet no-one can really control it. Greene describes everything she has tried over the years from relaxation therapies to medication like Ambien, but concludes that, like any intimate relationship, how we relate to sleep is always personal. Well, yes, I am going to tell you something about a new book. Appropriately enough for a site devoted to Ambien, it is Insomniac by Gayle Greene. So here is an autobiographical take on what it is like to live with insomnia by a woman who ought to know. She wins this prize even though not a medical researcher because she is the “patient representative” on the board of the American Insomnia Association, which operates within the AASM’s umbrella. In her spare time, she labours at the Scripps College, Claremont California as Professor of Literature and Women’s Studies. This latest tome adds to her impressive resume of academic publications.
This is a highly personal account by an articulate and intelligent woman who has been afflicted by insomnia for most of her adult life. In one sense, the only person who can really tell you what it is like in a foreign country is one who has been there. For those of us who have always been able to sleep without difficulty, insomnia is like a foreign country, and the idea of having to use a medication like Ambien as the passport to get into sleep is alien. Conventional wisdom always says that insomnia is somehow related to anxiety or stress levels, perhaps aggravated by drinking too many cups of real coffee. Greene comes up with a simple and practical explanation of what insomnia is. Insomnia means nothing more than you cannot get the number of hours of sleep you need to feel good about yourself and function efficiently. There is no reason for this. It is nothing more than a failure to sleep. There should be no pejorative implication. To use stress as an excuse is to blame the person for being weak or neurotic when there is no reason to blame yourself or anyone else. Instead of looking for some psychological explanation or a less judgemental physical cause, we should just accept that it happens to about 20% of the population at one time or another during their lives. Such a vast number of people yet so little is spent on researching the condition and its causes. Greene comments that the National Institutes of Health in the United States spent less than $20m in 2005, whereas Sanofi-Aventis spent more than $120m promoting Ambien in the same year. This is neither to praise nor condemn Ambien. It is all a question of priorities. Why bother to spend Government money on researching the cause of a condition when private capital has already invented treatment as a cure for it? She debates what we really understand about cause and effect. It is so easy to get the cart before the horse, or should that be the other way round? Perhaps conventional wisdom has also got things back-to-front. Instead of stress and anxiety being the cause of insomnia, perhaps living with insomnia makes you stressed and anxious. But was that actually the case? Who can say what the real biological norms were before electricity came along and gave everyone the chance to live through the darkness. As it stands, no researcher can actually explain why we have to sleep nor why some people sleep more than others. It is all guesswork. She is a passionate advocate for greater patient power to persuade disinterested bodies to research insomnia. For one who has had to depend on Ambien and the other medications for so long, she feels she and all other sufferers deserve better answers than those served up by the pharmaceutical companies. For one who has never had problems sleeping nor had to take Ambien, Insomniac was a riveting insight into the condition and the problems it causes. Required reading for everyone who reads this article.

Is it a social conscience or self-interest that should motivate us to dispose of medications safely?

Saturday, September 6th, 2008

It is object of the great interest to surf on the internet. There is always somebody thinking something interesting somewhere in the world. All you have to do is to find him or her. Take just one story from Minesotta as an example. It raises the difficult question of how you should dispose of “pills” you no longer need or which have expired. You could, of course, get in your car and drive down to your local pharmacy. Many offer a service to dispose of old and unwanted medications for you. But, the majority of us probably find the effort involved a deterrent. Why go to so much effort when you have a dumpster just outside your door? Or, if even that is too much effort, there is always the option to flush the problem away. Who would know? Who cares anyway? Do you ever wonder what happens after casual disposal? Your local waste management authority comes round to collect the refuse which is then dumped. There is little or no effort to sort the waste. Most authorities simply drive to the nearest landfill site and tip each load on to the growing mound of other rubbish. This pile then rots down as rain washes through it so, sooner or later, dissolved drugs end up in the watertable and potentially get recycled into your drinking water. The medications flushed go more directly into the water supply. So here is the worry. The rivers downstream from you supply water to the local towns and cities. That water supply contains what the experts call a “sub-lethal” cocktail of antibiotics, sedatives, painkillers, hormones and whatever else you so casually threw away. Perhaps you have no interest in the people downstream of you. I wonder what the people upstream think of you. But, back to Ambien. Ambien is, of course, a nonbenzodiazepine hypnotic. The DEA’s Office of Diversion Control aims to prevent the diversion of legitimately manufactured (or used) controlled substances into the illegal drug traffic. If there is no-one else immediately available to handle the disposal, the controlled substances should be collected by a law enforcement officer. So, if your local pharmacy has not registered with the DEA, their only way of disposing of your unwanted drugs is to call the cops. No wonder they looked so pleased when you asked. But San Mateo County, California has placed collection boxes inside the entrance halls of eleven police departments. Anyone can walk in and leave their unwanted medications and walk out - no questions asked. And is this a welcome service? Over the first fifteen months of the program, local citizens have deposited 1,800 pounds of medications. I am never reassured by the prefix “non”. In fact, Ambien works in exactly the same way as a conventional benzodiazepine and is probably just as addictive. For this reason, Ambien is listed by the Drug Enforcement Agency as a controlled substance in Schedule IV. You will be pleased and delighted to know that the US Government has your interests at heart. It always wants to protect you and the environment. State and Federal regulations limit the handling and disposal of controlled substances to DEA-authorised individuals and organisations. So there is clearly a demand for this kind of service. It is pure self-interest, of course. Who wants to get high from drinking tap water? And do we really want all those bacteria out there to get used to all those antibiotics in the water? If you don’t know the answers to these and other questions of social conscience, take an insomnia remedyand sleep on it.

How can therapy support pain management ? 2

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

But there are many who do respond well, moving away from reliance on drugs such as tramadol as they learn how to function within the limits set by their bodies (and minds). Unfortunately, this approach is expensive. A physician sees a patient for a few minutes, writes a prescription and moves on to the next patient. This is an “efficient” use of resources. Conventional hospital and health service models find this an uneconomic use of scarce resources (often choosing not to research the effectiveness of this approach to treatment). Nevertheless, there is a growing and substantial body of research now attesting to the effectiveness of this form of approach. If you have chronic pain, you should consider it. Learn more about tramadol pain relief medication from www.tramadolbliss.com

How can therapy support pain management?

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

The research strongly suggests that a mixture of physical and psychological therapies offers the best chance for improving outcomes. One of the most common forms of pain pain affects the lower back. Yet it is often the case that there is no biological evidence of the cause of the pain. No apparent external injury. No x-ray or other scan image of internal injury. The most usual association is with changes in mood, variations in the levels of anxiety or stress, or social episodes which trigger the sensation of pain. In other words, the way you perceive pain cannot be divorced from you as a person and the collection of memories and experiences that define you as an individual. So if pain persists despite the standard medical treatments (including the use of drugs such as tramadol), it is time to expand the range of treatment to include therapy. The primary problem is that people quite naturally make their own condition worse. When they feel pain, they stop moving. They generally avoid doing the things most likely to cause the pain. More often than not, this means they rest. Unfortunately, when you rest, you lose muscle tone and tend to become stiff. This actually worsens the initial condition. Because you feel you cannot continue to function, you lose self-respect. Now confining yourself to bed, you lose your role as breadwinner or homemaker. This may impose financial hardship on the family or damage your relationship. As your mood darkens, depression can further amplify the symptoms. Physicians are trained to apply a “scientific” approach to patient care. They make a diagnosis and supply the treatment recommended. If the diagnosis is correct, the patient gets better. Psychiatrists and therapists do not deal with the world in such black-and-white terms. They take a more holistic view of the patient. If there is disability and distress, those symptoms should also be addressed. The intention is to improve the way in which anyone deals with the pain. It offers coping strategies, problem solving and giving people a way to resume activities and thus relieve frustration. The more people can be given back some control over their lives, the more likely it is that they will begin to think more positively about their situation. It is important to begin with physical therapy to improve mobility. Therapists will analyze activities and teach people how to get the same results by modifying their behavior. Add in relaxation training and stress management exercises, and you now begin to see a more complete route to recovery. This is a team effort with psychologists working alongside occupational therapists, physicians and nurses. Thus, if a physiotherapist gains some insight into the beliefs and fears a patient has about mobility, a program of reward and reinforcement can be established which teaches people about how their body works and why their fears are exaggerated. Noone can force you into anything. But if you are shown a better way, most will take it if given the right incentives. Not everyone does respond to therapy, resisting interference in the way “they” do things. It also relies on effective management of the team expected to deliver these results. So, it is easy for non-medical treatment to fail (which will often confirm the patient’s prejudices).

Cannabis as medication: good or bad?

Monday, September 1st, 2008

On 15th July, the Federation of European Pharmacological Societies Congress began a discussion of the medicinal role of cannabis. Why does this work? Because the human body naturally produces cannabinoids and has cannabinoid receptor cells in all parts. Science is now designing medications that focus on the parts of the body affected by disease and not the central nervous system. It is routinely used for controlling nausea among patients on chemotherapy and for encouraging appetite among AIDS patients. It is now licensed for the control of neuropathic pain in adults suffering from cancer and multiple sclerosis. So medical science has been able to strip away the “unwanted” psychoactive symptoms and use the cannabinoid components to target the specific diseases. So, for example, when the body is injured cannabinoids are naturally released in the affected area and reduce pain. Unfortunately, the effect is very short-lived. Thus, research is now aiming to produce more medications that maintain cannabinoid levels in the affected areas for pain relief and for the control of anxiety and depression. If you take cannabis as a weight loss medication, it really can help you to forget about food. So, medications like acomplia that block the cannabinoid receptors help to reduce addictive behavior and reduce appetite. The July conference heard news that one constituent of cannabis, THVC, may offer a better way to reduce appetite than acomplia and, more importantly, may be effective to treat neurodegenerative disorders like Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Why is more not heard about these advances? Possibly because of the prejudice that cannabis is a drug that should be banned. By coincidence, the French health authority Afssaps also released new statistics confirming the safety profile of acomplia in relation to depression. People with no history of depression show no adverse symptoms. Others only show an increase in depression at the beginning of a course of treatment.