I noticed that taking pain-killers is a very common thing in american TV shows. The main protagonist (male hero) gets hurt, goes to the bathroom, hastily pours a handful of pills into his hand and pops them into the mouth. Not one, but a hand full of pills, cleary too many. I've seen it so much, I'm starting to wonder if it's a TV trope.
I'm wondering if pharmaceutical companies are sponsoring this. It's akin to product placement.
A version of the drug habit/self abuse trope that used to be demonstrated with late nights alone with booze bottles in some depressing living room.
A blazing modern signal that the protagonist is hurt but continues anyway, to distinguish him from some impervious Superman or unfeeling Terminator clone.
The writers are mildly concerned about the plot discontinuity and rushing him to the next scene. See also the bullet wound self-care with improvised extraction and bandage from ripped clothing, which leads to miraculous physical rebound. No debilitating blood loss, nerve damage, or torn connective tissue in this plot!
It's a dramatic trope. I'm an american, born and raised as they say, and I've never seen that. It probably happens sometimes in places I'm not familiar with, but ... come on, it's absurd, anyone would be incapacitated by that many pills.
I was thinking about this when watching The Shape of Water, Michael Shannon's character is in his car, arms shaking, pouring the whole pill bottle on his face ...
I wonder how much these tropes and storytelling techniques shifts the baselines of cultural norms. For example, a sitcom would often find it convenient to have friends meet daily in a bar and somehow drinking almost daily is perceived to be a normal thing to do.
For this particular example, if anything I think drinking frequently with friends and family was much more frequent in times prior to television. But agree that television has this effect in general, shaping perception around social norms. I suspect it is used this way intentionally in some cases.
In the 80s there was a show called Cheers centered around the same people being at a bar every day. I don't think it is a new phenomenon and it has actually been going the other way - it used to be typical to hit the bar after work every day (and still is in a lot of places) and was generally more about winding down/socializing than consuming alcohol.
It's a "problem" nearly as old as America. One of the scapegoats much touted in handbills and pamphlets of the "ills of society" that led to Prohibition in the US was that "fathers spend too much time in the pubs drinking alcohol after work rather than at home raising children".
It was the source of many jokes in sitcoms in the 1960s, too, not just the 80s, including notably what we think of today as a "kid's show" (despite being a primetime show when aired) in that it was a recurring thing in The Flintstones.
That's just like how shampoo companies advise you to "lather, rinse, repeat". It's a great way to boost sales, but besides being unnecessary it's terrible for your hair, your water bill, fish living downstream, and your wallet.
Personally, I've had much better results with repeating, but I haven't bothered to experiment enough to see if it's from "rinse, lather, rinse" or the full "lather, rinse, lather, rinse".
I’m curious. What does the second iteration accomplish? Is it dirt and grease that is embedded in your skin? What kind of job do you have if you feel comfortable answering?
It's not usually needed, but if I'm really sweaty and sticky the first washing removs dirt, and the second washing adds "squeak" is the best way I can put it.
It just feels cleaner. I assume it's because the additives in the shampoo become overloaded on the first use, and are active on the second.
I like the squeak too. I recently moved to a place with hard water and so everyone has water softeners. With this super soft water I can't get the squeak ever. It just feels slimy to me.
It’s definitely a trope, but it’s not product placement. It’s just old fashioned over-embellishment by Hollywood for the sake of drama. They do it for everything else, why wouldn’t they for self-medication?
This does not logically make sense. It's TV. On TV, a guy can shoot an automatic and not reload for a full ten minutes. He can get shot at by 20 people with rifles and they all miss, while he kllls them all with a handgun that holds 10 bullets.
That is not sponsorship by gun companies. It is TV.
I'm sorry - you actually think the movies with a lot of shooting is an advertisement for guns, and when someone chugs pills out of the bottle is an ad for big pharma?
if I may ask - and this is very much on topic - who won the 2020 election, and do covid vaccines contain nanobots?
Hmm, well I wouldn't recommend taking a whole handful of ibuprofen, but it probably shouldn't kill you (unlike a handful of acetaminophen/paracetamol, or opioids), it would be hell on your stomach, but I suppose fast-paced drama doesn't have time for realism.
I think chronic over-usage is a more serious concern. Taking even handful of pills is not that likely to result in permanent damage (unlike paracetamol). Up to 100 mg/kg shouldn't be that risky (so 20 400mg pills for somebody who weighs 80kg)
Is this true? I can’t actually think of any examples of this off the top of my head. I can think of examples of popping anxiety pills to show weakness and lack of resolve, pills that suppress their acuity in some way, or some sort of amphetamine because they need energy.
But pain pills don’t ring a bell. The classic move is strongly taking a swig of hard alcohol and then pouring it over a wound and wincing.
In my opinion, people shown to be taking pills are usually portrayed as weak or digging themselves into a hole.
Perhaps with some exceptions to people shown taking pills which I interpreted as a display of competence and experience more than anything.
I think it's video game logic imported into films. Pills are a common health pack symbol so more pills = more health regained = more return to normal stats.
With the toxin they put in Tylenol (to prevent abuse), you'd blow out your liver if you did that.
In books, you get "chewing asprin without the water." So yes, it's dramatic, but not realistic. It's just a way of conveying through action "Ouch, that really freaking hurts."
The confusion here is that "tylenol" in the US basically means just Acetaminophen - technically tylenol 3s have opiods, but most americans know tylenol as the over the counter tylenols, which are just acetaminophen.
In other places tylenol must mean what we think of as tylenol 3
I hate these articles. While yes, this is true, it's also true that _many_ people have severe, untreated illness that they're just "toughing it out." My friend with BPD ruined his life because he's "stronger than the disorder, I don't need to take my meds"
Spent millions foolishly, genius engineer - horrible story. Easily fixed.
There is a fine and very important distinction to be made here.
If you have a health problem, you should do your best to get exercise, eat healthy, etc. However, that doesn't mean medicines are wasteful or pointless. People often greatly benefit from them.
I've struggled with ADHD, depression, and anxiety my whole life. And indeed, yes, the best treatment I've found is diet, weight training, and long-duration cardio. Which I do.
But people who are "in the hole" need medicines to dig them out. And also, people with kids/multiple jobs don't have as much time as I do. And these habits take years to finally stick. And I still need ADHD medication.
And the best treatment for things like this is to try every treatment you can together, but don't overwhelm yourself in the process (and it takes wisdom to not overwhelm yourself).
People on Twitter opine about this kind of stuff piss me off. They think their vague notions about what is right for society--that they have no experience with--should take precedence over my decades of (informal) research and lived experience. It's okay to have opinions and discuss things, but don't try to bully the people who actually know what they're talking about.
Diet/sleep/exercise/sunlight are always the first step, and if you don’t at least get those, you’ll be hard-pressed to feel decent no matter what else you do, regardless of whether you have other medication-dependent conditions.
That said, there are way too many people out there who have no experience with conditions which require medication, who seem to think that those things are a substitute for medication rather than a baseline that must be kept up alongside medication.
I’m no psychologist, but I tend to assume that a driver to thinking this way might be the sense of safety that comes with self-righteousness. Similar to victim-blaming in crimes, where people pick at the personal faults of crime victims (however slight) in order to reassure themselves that a similar thing couldn’t happen to them. Imo it’s a coping mechanism for a world where long-term suffering can be brought on totally at random.
> That said, there are way too many people out there who have no experience with conditions which require medication, who seem to think that those things are a substitute for medication rather than a baseline that must be kept up alongside medication.
It is complicated. Some people have mental health conditions which are always going to require medication. Some people have mental health conditions which are never going to require medication. And some people have mental health conditions where it depends on environmental circumstances. For that last group, lack of sleep/diet/exercise/etc can be part of the environmental circumstances which makes medication required, so fixing that can make medication less required, and may even go some way towards making it no longer required. Even if certain other things can make medication no longer required, sometimes it is still helpful in the short-to-medium term to give you the space to implement those things
> but I tend to assume that a driver to thinking this way might be the sense of safety that comes with self-righteousness
There are serious concerns about iatrogenic harm in mental health due to overdiagnosis, misdiagnosis and overprescribing. Some people who are critical of medication are approaching the issue, not from some sense of superiority, but rather from negative personal experiences with the topic, for themselves and/or family members.
Taking psychiatric medication and being critical of it are not mutually exclusive-I myself do both. Medication is the least worst thing for me right now, but I hope one day I can solve some other problems in my life and remove some stressors and I may eventually wean myself off it. And simultaneously I believe a lot of people out there are being harmed by being prescribed the wrong medications. For example, the widespread prescribing of antipsychotics to adults and children without psychosis, by prescribers who are ignorant of the risks of brain atrophy [0] and who don’t communicate those risks to patients/parents. If you have schizophrenia, those risks may be the lesser evil; if you have a kindergartener with Aspergian traits and mildly violent behaviour, I’m not convinced it is. Maybe as a last resort once you’ve exhausted every alternative, but I know clinicians for whom risperidone is their first resort for such a patient not their last
I was hospitalized for two severe manic episodes in my late teens and was told I would have to take lithium for the rest of my life or I would inevitably end up back in the hospital. I did take it (and Zyprexa) for about nine months during my freshman year of college, got the fattest I've ever been, and spent almost the entirety of my free downtime zoned out in my dorm room.
That summer after my first year of college, I spent my days moving stuff around in a furniture store and golfing 9 holes after work was done, and weaned myself off of it. I haven't relapsed into the hospital in two decades since, despite more than a few high risk periods I've gone through over that time, and a lapse during fatherhood in my ability to keep up with exercise as much as would be ideal. I don't know whether my brain was sufficiently re-wired by those 9 months of pills or what, but it's a bit strange to me that essentially every psychiatrist would have insisted something like this was impossible.
> I don't know whether my brain was sufficiently re-wired by those 9 months of pills or what, but it's a bit strange to me that essentially every psychiatrist would have insisted something like this was impossible.
Bipolar disorder disappears in some people spontaneously. Around 10% of people who have a first bipolar episode will not go on to have a second one, even if they permanently discontinue medication. And some people who have a second episode will never have a third, even if they stop taking medication, although I don't have an actual statistic on that. Let's suppose it is 1% of all bipolar cases – which is a figure I just made up, but probably in the right ballpark. Since bipolar is around 1% of the population, people like you would be around 0.01% of the population. That sounds insignificant, but in a country like the US there would be over 30,000 people like you, and worldwide could be over 700,000.
I think the psychiatrists who told you this is "impossible" probably knew that it actually wasn't. It is just that it is rare, and they don't want to give patients and their families false hope or encourage non-compliance with treatment, so instead of telling you the truth that it is 10% or 1% or whatever of all cases, they tell you a "white lie"/"simplification" that it is 0%. 90-99% of the time, their lie turns out to be true for the person they told it to.
In terms of whether 9 months of medication "rewired your brain" – it is impossible to say. It is possible that without medication you would not have gone into remission, and would have had further episodes. It is also possible that you were always going to remit anyway, and still would have even without medication. Nobody really knows. The fact is, for just about all psychiatric disorders, our knowledge of what causes them, and how the medications work, is extremely incomplete, and we don't know enough to answer those questions in individual cases.
Yeah, as someone with ADHD, good diet, exercise, sleep, etc. are critical for managing symptoms. They're also effectively impossible to maintain consistently without medication.
> They're also effectively impossible to maintain consistently without medication.
This is key. As someone with bipolar disorder, I'm forever stuck in a cycle of stable with good habits -> episode happens -> can't keep the habits -> get worse -> medication changes/episode passes on its own -> I go back to good habits -> stable...
With mental illness you never know when it's going to act up and ruin your life, so the least you can do is use your energy - when you have it - to keep your body in a decent baseline.
Thankfully, this cycle takes many months to start again, so I live a decent life most of the time.
Reminds me of Steve Jobs. He had the extremely rare TREATABLE form of pancreatic cancer, and the money for the best treatments, but died because he chose green smoothies over medicine.
Yeah, I don't think people realize how many conditions exist that are highly treatable now but were prolonged, miserable death sentences less than thirty years ago. Taking "too many pills" sounds bad on the face of it, but it's an infinitely better alternative than letting your intestines slowly rot inside your body or your nervous system fray itself to pieces.
As far as I know, there is no evidence-based treatment for BPD based in medication, except for basically what amounts to tranquilizers.
What's common is to prescribe SSRIs and similar medication for all kinds of psychiatric illnesses, including BPD. The evidence that this would help in the long-term is vague to non-existant, and I'd avoid trusting it (as with almost all research on anti depressants).
The best-researched facts about SSRI antidepressants are the increase in suicide rates and the "side effects", which are still often underreported, and include problems with basically all bodily systems, because serotonine is an importat
t neurotransmitter. Not to forget about
Personally, after being on an antidepressant (Effexor) for 6 years, I can also say that they massively reduced mental stability and self-awareness for me.
There are many meta-studies about this by now, somehow ADs are still seen aa evidende-based medicine comparable to insuline for diabetes. This is far from the truth, the mechanisms of action are poorly understood and effectiveness has been painted in an unrealistic way by pharma companies who make these pills.
Exactly. Nuance is the missing ingredient here, no pun intended.
I currently have untreated inappropriate sinus tach where my heart rate is continually 100+ BPM. This will require a cardiologist to sign-off, probably for ivabradine since beta blockers are giving me depression. And it's my understanding that node ablation has a low success rate and I'm not interested in a pacemaker.
Who are you to say that spending your millions is foolish this way or that way? We all end up as dirt. Why not live eccentrically and take risks? It makes for a good story which you have conveniently cast as horrible. I bet that story is plenty interesting and worthwhile as is yours.
Maybe because there are dependents that needed that money for school, shelter, clothing, or food.
There was a story in the news recently about a guy who spontaneously gave away $200k by throwing bills out of his car window. Seemed like a feel-good story, at first. It turns out that he gave away his family's life-savings and they're now destitute.[1]
Money can absolutely be wasted and spent foolishly.
You can't just hand wave "you've been breaking the rules badly". I haven't done anything of the sort, you know me I can break the rules as I have in the past and stopped doing.
I am expressing myself and sometimes I use sarcasm or reductio ad absurdum and people don't understand. By time they have flagged and downvoted it is too late to edit and give context.
The end result is... they downvote me and no one reads it. The system works. I really don't know what you are talking about, but this wouldn't be my first misunderstanding. Thanks for listening but thread has turned into a waste of people meta-analyzing the comments and it's not worth our time. Life is too short.
My suggetion to you: whoever flagged my comment is wasting your time and should be punished for pearl clutching.
When you post "You are a fascist control freak", there's no need to explain how that's breaking the rules—it should be obvious to anyone who has read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You could hardly have broken them more blatantly—for example, the one against name-calling.
If you say you meant something else by it, I believe you, but that sort of intent unfortunately doesn't communicate itself—you have to encode it explicitly in your comment or else it will land with most readers as a garden-variety attack. I realize it sucks to have to do that—it's a constraint on expression—but there are constraints we have to live with in order to have a large, open internet forum that doesn't destroy itself.
If you'd just calibrate your comments to be more substantive and thoughtful, things should be fine.
That was exactly what I’m talking about. What an interesting story and we have only heard it from a single perspective. Imagine the stories of the people it affected, I’m sure it made someone better off.
When you say BPD are you referring to borderline or bipolar? Because borderline is usually treated with therapy as the first-line treatment, while meds are definitely the norm and most effective for bipolar.
OPs description of his friend ruining his life by not taking his meds seems more like bipolar.
He spent it on gorging himself on fried chicken delivery and electronics he piles around his horde room. His parents have to manage him to keep him from suicide. It's not a funny situation.
As someone who takes a pill daily that fixes my brain chemistry, I would like to clarify that it is simultaneously possible that many people are taking pills they don't need and many people are not talking pills they do need.
I despise generalized statements like "xyz medication is over prescribed" because it is also in some ways probably underprescribed. I didn't seek treatment for a dibilitating illness for many years because I was repeatedly told that the medication was abused and all I needed were lifestyle changes. For me, the medication was underprescribed.
People want pills or miracle diets. People don't want lifestyle changes. They're busy, stressed, strapped for cash, and anyway they like the standard American diet. Collectively, we could shape our environment so healthy decisions are easier and unhealthy choices are harder, but we can't even agree to tax sugar. So we won't make policy changes anytime soon, and individually many of us will fail to make healthier choices. What more is there to say?
I used this same reply elsewhere, but it’s relevant here as well:
Diet/sleep/exercise/sunlight are always the first step, and if you don’t at least get those, you’ll be hard-pressed to feel decent no matter what else you do, regardless of whether you have other medication-dependent conditions.
That said, there are way too many people out there who have no experience with conditions which require medication, who seem to think that those things are a substitute for medication rather than a baseline that must be kept up alongside medication.
I’m no psychologist, but I tend to assume that a driver to thinking this way might be the sense of safety that comes with self-righteousness. Similar to victim-blaming in crimes, where people pick at the personal faults of crime victims (however slight) in order to reassure themselves that a similar thing couldn’t happen to them. Imo it’s a coping mechanism for a world where long-term suffering can be brought on totally at random.
As a doctor it's your job to give your patient something that will treat them. You can't tell someone "if you exercise an hour a day, your problem will go away" because at least 9/10 people won't do it.
I expect my doctor to give me the best medical care. If that's telling me to make a lifestyle change, that's what I want (whether I follow his advice is an independent issue). I 100% don't want a doctor to give me medication that isn't necessary.
I’ll tell you what your doctor might not be telling you:
- 30 minutes of cardio, 3x a week is a bare minimum. The more cardio the better, so consider endurance sports.
- Resistance training is necessary too, and can be done at home with no equipment
- Get at least 10 minutes of sunlight right after you get up or right after the sun comes rises, even if it’s cloudy, if possible
- Don’t drink more than 2 drinks in a day
- Try to reduce stress as much as possible
- Get plenty of sleep
- Cut out digital distractions
- In general try to eat as many natural foods as you can, especially more fruits and vegetables. Avoid eating chemicals if you can, hydrogenated oils, etc.
Now you’ve heard it, as well as everyone else reading this thread. It’s up to you to do it. But odds are, for the most part, you’ve heard it before and don’t need reminding.
If you’re confused about any of the details on this list, you are all people who are in the top quartile (at least) in learning things on the internet, and can figure the rest out yourselves.
I don't think 30 mins, 3 times a week of exercise is remotely close
only stretching back a few decades, my grandfather was working his own land as a subsistence farmer without much "automation"...probably doing the equivalent of three hours of CrossFit a day, basically every day. looking back at pics of him now...he was strapped, even in his late 70s (what was also known as "normal").
my genetics probably come from hundreds of generations of people who led similar lives, yours too
I achieved my "normal" body weight with a minimum of two+ hours per day, every day, of exercise...just like all of my ancestors who shaped my genes
90 mins a week is probably not enough to even slow down weight gain, we are dramatically underestimating how much exercise we need, and dramatically underestimating how much we need to clean up our diets...in 1880 basically anyone doing subsistence farming (most people) was the equivalent of a CrossFit nut with a "clean" diet...everyone
5 hours per week of 3 METs (a 2.5mph walk is 3 METs) reduces your risk of Cardiac disease by 70%. This is from one of the bigger meta analyses I’ve ever read. The US’s exercise guidelines are based on it.
In general more is better, but it’s diminishing returns, and you could argue that more time than this could be better spent doing other healthy tasks.
I don’t have the energy to refute these claims one by one, but I would recommend you do some more research into the lifestyles and health conditions of previous generations.
Glad you’ve found something that works for you though
It’s one of the most researched topics in science.
5 hours at 3 MET (a 2.5 mph walk is 3 MET) a week lowers your risk of cardiac disease by 70%. It’s not affected by gender for the basic numbers. This is from one of the bigger meta analyses I’ve ever read. The US’s exercise guidelines are based on it.
Can’t speak for the recommendation of endurance sports. Definitely not a requirement. The research does show that, in general, the more cardio the better.
I think the idea is that there are diminishing returns. 1 versus 2 hours of exercise per week is significant, but 21 vs 22 hours of exercise per week is not.
Just that everyone's heard it, so the doctor isn't going to repeat it to you with every visit.
I think a doctor absolutely should gently remind people that those things improve a variety of conditions, and occasionally push a little harder in certain situations (you need to start doing X now or your condition is going to be a big problem). Many of them already do, of course.
Sure, a doctor isn't necessarily going to give generic health advice on every visit. That wasn't what I was saying.
What I was saying is that if I go see a doctor for a condition, and the proper way to resolve that condition is to make a lifestyle change, then that is what I want the doctor to tell me.
What I don't want the doctor to do is to just give me a prescription if the actual treatment is to behave differently in some way.
But difficult to treat chronic conditions aren’t that straightforward, and virtually all of them respond to general good health as outlined on that list.
Everything else is either a straightforward treatment, is untreatable, or has a lifestyle change that the doctor will tell you about (like with IBS and a low FODMAP diet for instance).
Good; I was worried I'd stumbled into some some paleo-esque "only drink from puddles at dawn and dusk to maximize your gut flora development" nonsense.
I have some struggles, and this is basically the plan that I try to follow. I can notice how it really helps with mood, energy, everything, and how a single day of falling off it leaves a big mark the next few days. Cheers.
I'll tell you what your doctor might not be telling you, doctors have the highest suicide rates of any profession. Should I trust them to tell me what is healthy?
Not sure where you're getting that, but the CDC indicates that oil and gas extraction workers top the list in terms of suicide risk- doctor suicide stats aren't high enough to even make the list.
Actually yes. If the patient refuses treatment you do not give them a prescription they is useless but rather tell them of an alternative if one exists. If none exists then tell them that.
In the end, it’s the patients right to have the treatment they want and can afford so long as it’s efficacious.
I'm being real. Lots of people work 10-12 hours a day. How are they supposed to shop and cook for only fresh and healthy food, as well as do 30 minutes of rigorous cardio per day, in the remaining four hours a day when they're not asleep? What if they have family obligations?
My experience was that I was scheduled 12 hours a day, the reality is that we all commuted 1h both ways and turnover often took 30-45 minutes. We were bussed in, and we arrived 15-20 minutes early. To put the final little bit in, we also had to commute to the bus depot. Whatever extraneous time I had was spent in the shower.
While I did manage to eat decently I also had the benefit of years of working in kitchens and I opted for vegetarianism years prior so I had to delve into a novel culinary discipline which served to broaden my horizons both in what I considered a meal, and what I was willing to eat, and how I was willing to eat. Looking at the rest of the cohort: yeah, it was bad. A lot of industries we interfaced with had a lot of very evident cases of poor diet. I expect among the whole the chronically single and childless were the few that could manage their health in the context of that schedule or any modern American regime, really.
Beyond diet it's physically taxing, especially considering that my industry, and every industry touching it worked some variation of swing shifts and if not that, 24/7 on-call. That alone is extremely taxing and has prolific long-term implications. Alcohol and drug abuse are commonplace, whether licit or illicit substances. And there's a huge emotional layer to it as well, if that isn't obvious. Mind you these are the people paid by the companies that keep your lights and heat on, transport all your food and fuel...
But even outside of that extreme edge case the other jobs I've had can have their own sets of challenges. It's not always overeating that gets you, but undereating is a hazard as well. And workplace injuries are not so avoidable as the institutions like to profess. If you're pressured, your peers are pressured, your customers are pressured, etc... the culture itself becomes go fast or die trying — they'll tell you to work safe but God forbid if you do you'll be punished for it, ask me how I know. And that's without factoring in RSIs, which in some occupations are virtually inextricable.
I had a general comment about toxic materials but I'm putting it here because I'm very familiar with this type situation:
>Beyond diet it's physically taxing, especially considering that my industry, and every industry touching it worked some variation of swing shifts and if not that, 24/7 on-call. That alone is extremely taxing and has prolific long-term implications. Alcohol and drug abuse are commonplace, whether licit or illicit substances. And there's a huge emotional layer to it as well, if that isn't obvious. Mind you these are the people paid by the companies that keep your lights and heat on, transport all your food and fuel...
Looked at your profile and see your admission from "someone who sorta bootstrapped from a pretty shitty starting position"
Really there's not much difference between overwork to recover more completely from disaster, compared with ambition to make faster progress when opportunity exists.
This is the kind of situation where things like drugs are never the answer, seems like sometimes the toxic effects of chemicals are on steroids when the "setting" does not allow for much recovery between toxic exposures. If the medical benefit were not clearly in excess of the toxic load or significant side-effects I would not want to take the pill.
Each pharmaceutical is like any other consumer product. It didn't used to be as bad when mass-marketing direct to patients was still widely recognized as too unethical for serious consideration.
Once a consumer product reaches the most satisfying rapid market saturation on its own merit, the main way to continue the bonanza is to create desire among the nonengaged consumers who don't actually need the product but who can be convinced that it might be nice to have anyway for some reason or another. By then anybody with any interest at all knows it's already popular and accepted.
Then after the drugmakers and insurers got into a fortuitous spiral (for the corporations) on prices the incentive got even more extreme. Even though the insurers have to pay more for each dose, they just raise the premiums and "everybody wins".
Plus there are still really not enough doctors to go around but it used to much worse. However in the 21st century I think doctors are much more likely to recommend a simple pill (or more than one these days) rather than a more complex treatment.
Also when doctors were spread much thinner people went to them much less often, long ago it was like only going to the doctor when you needed to be cured of a cold or flu or broken arm or something.
So they got the exam, took one bottle of medication, got over the cold, and they were cured.
Then it was discovered there was no cure for the common cold. OTC approaches to treat symptoms proliferated with mass-media television and it was seen consumers would continuously purchase more pills on their own initiative to treat the same disorders which had not had that scale of returns in the form of doctors' prescriptions.
The prescription-industrial complex was going to have to advertise to compete.
Attitudes began the gradual change to continuing visits and ongoing treatment for more & more conditions, not just the things that would be expected to require a continuing lifetime of medication, such as insulin.
And a whole generation of doctors who have been influenced by very persuasive drug companies that have carefully built a reality distortion field where any tendency to discontinue medication once prescribed has been de-emphasized like never before.
>I opted for vegetarianism
I don't think the full risk is known when it comes to steroids in meat or pesticides in vegetables, but looks like vegetarians these days are more conscious of avoiding toxic additives than average, so this may be the safer move for that reason alone.
If you have kids, particularly several, the weekend is usually completely packed with activities and obligations. I know can’t ever get any shopping done over the weekend.
That's completely by choice. My parents didn't do any of that with me. That wasn't really a thing in my generation (growing up in the 80s and 90s in Polan).
I think it’s more common that you think. Very rarely does someone check in right at 9 and out right at 5. Add onto that a commute which might be anywhere from 30-60 minutes each way, and you are pretty close to that window.
In communist Poland, both of my parents worked, and yet my mother cooked every day after work. Work + commute took her around 9 - 9.5 hours per day. On top of that, there were long queues to buy anything at the stores, so you were spending easily an extra hour shopping per day (not to mention spending time bartering with family and neighbors the goods you managed to buy, but didn't need for stuff you actually do need).
My own grandparents came from very rural settings in pre-WWII Slovakia and almost all of the cooking was done by the adults, not by the kids. The kids helped around (carrying water, taking care of poultry etc.), but it didn't interfere with their schooling.
There's a huge confounder missing in your analysis which is that they're also typically quite old by the time they retire. People don't change their habits easily at that age.
I'm the same. It's just human nature to not want to expend effort. We love excuses, like - I'm too stressed, to busy etc. - but quite often, they're just that - convenient excuses.
All humans in environment A get fat, develop heart disease, and are depressed. All humans in environment B are lean, live long lives without medication, and are happy. The only logical conclusion: everyone in environment A is lazy or otherwise morally deficient.
What's with the denial? A significant portion of population of developed countries is not obese. It's easy to look that up. This proves that we don't live in an environment that makes everyone obese.
Please don't cross into personal attack, regardless of how provocative another comment is or you feel it is. It only makes things worse, and we're trying for something different here.
I had surgery last year, and had to give a list of the medications I currently take. My list had a single item, OTC allergy medication.
The surgeon and intake nurse both independently double-checked that my list was complete. They told me that it's almost unheard of for someone of my age to have no ongoing prescriptions and they wanted to be sure a mistake wasn't made.
I was very surprised by this. I was even more surprised when I surveyed my friends and discovered that every single one of them has at least one ongoing prescription.
I have no idea. This whole thing surprised me -- I just assumed that I was "normal" in this respect. I don't have a secret, as far as I can tell. I am moderately physically active, and I do eat moderately healthy, but not exceptionally so on either count.
I suspect that, rather than being a role model, I just drew a lucky number in the genetic lottery.
Luck definitely has something to do with it. It took me a while to get that given that I thought my mom was a hypochondriac. It turned out she was just sick her whole life. I’m 48 now and don’t have any prescriptions yet, I hope I can maintain that.
Who exactly is responsible for the patient’s wellbeing long term? The old idea of doctors and pharmacists should be putting themselves out of a job doesn’t seem to be reflected in many healthcare systems. It is also not morally responsible for patients who may not be self reliant to do so for a number of reasons(I.e. not in right health or mind).
On the reverse, how many doctors or pharmacists actually recommend lifestyle and supplementation changes before resorting to a prescription through observation? My experience has been quite disappointing and I lose faith every time I get a checkup.
For what it is worth, I’m not on any prescriptions and actively refuse recommended prescriptions when only seen for 30 minutes every half year. It always feels like an up sell when all you want is to be sent on your way with an acknowledgment that you’re healthy.
This article would be much more informative if it told us more about categories of pills (or diseases), how frequently they are taken, and the ages of the people who take them. Almost half the US population has hypertension [0], and 19 million have stage 2 hypertension -- those people should be on drugs. Each year, 800,000 Americans have a stroke, and another 800,000 have a heart attack -- these people should be on drugs. My doctor's office has me on more than 5 drugs, but I only take 2 regularly -- the others are for specific short term conditions (e.g. poison ivy). In general, statins, aspirin, and anti-hypertension drugs cost effectively save lives.
I have no doubt that there are too many people who take too many pills, but there are also too many people who should be taking medication and are not. The article does not make a strong case that, for a given age group, we are being over medicated.
Probably not. The meme of the "doped up women on prescription pills" has been a thing since probably the 50s.
There was lots of over-prescription targeting "house-wives" before the opioid crisis e.g. diet pills, sleeping pills and tranquillizers. Your 80s doctor would ply you with all sorts of amphetamines, barbiturates, quaaludes etc. Lots of these have since been withdrawn due to causing medical problems. Marilyn Monroe dying from a barbiturate overdose in the 60s.
Too many people also don't take enough pills - because they can't afford them.
Myself, friends and family all have untreated conditions and aren't getting preventative care because the out-of-pocket cost of meds and treatments are more than their total earnings. Due for Shingles vaccine? $400. Need an inpatient visit to resolve something before it becomes serious? $2800.
Five hundred here, $5000 there and pretty soon healthcare becomes an alternative to housing.
Interesting to see which countries have these problems. Reads to me like it’s very much a political problem. In my country I practically have to fight my doctor to get pills or an xray if they deem it unnecessary. Which is great in the end, as it saves our society a lot of healthcare costs.
I'm just so glad I didn't start taking SSRI's, my doctor almost forced them down my throat but I didn't take them because I felt like I don't need them. And I didn't need them.
