That's Fit

Instead of easy-to-prescribe drugs, should doctors be prescribing more exercise to many patients? I've said that for years, and in an odd twist, the American Medical Association and others are now saying the same thing.

Perhaps its an overload of patients that cause many doctors to just write a prescription instead of the hard task of telling people to exercise -- who knows.

The new push for exercise should be prescribed to virtually all patients, according to the AMA. That is awesome and it's something I completely agree with. Now, if we could get all these processed foods out of people's kitchens...

A report released yesterday concluded that pharmaceutical sales in the U.S. will drop to a third of global sales in 2008. In 2005, that share percent was 50, so we're looking at a 17percent drop in just three years. I wonder why that is?

Well, for starters, its that big pharma companies are shopping their drug wares all over the world instead of a somewhat-stifling regulatory environment in the U.S. As usual, profits are probably the number-one priority here, not helping people overcome health problems.

The report stated that China, Brazil, Turkey, Mexico and other countries are seeing a sharp intake in pharmaceutical drugs at the same time patent protection starts being a problem for many blockbuster drugs as well. In other words, lose lucrative protection, sell to anyone else to make up for revenue loss. Sounds logical to me.

When the National Health Service in Britain planned to switch patients to lower-cost generic drugs instead of name-brand prescription products, the pharmaceutical industry did not take it lightly.

In fact, British drugmakers are actually suing the Service to ensure those more expensive drugs are continued in terms of doled-out prescriptions. Excuse me? What right do manufacturers have to require any entity to use specific products?

The "potentially unsafe" argument being put forth seems like a smokescreen to protect profits to me. No surprise here, since the markup on name-brand prescription drugs is so high it makes some of us cringe. Well, unless you own the stock of any drugmaker, that is.

It's a shame that the pharmaceutical industry is focused on sales instead of helping patients, but that is what has been happening for years now. Why on earth are drug companies advertising so much? Because -- patients tend to believe advertising (unfortunately) that promises a "quick fix".

But, some doctors are getting tired of drug company sales representatives invading their offices so regularly to sell more and more information that will lead to more and more prescriptions. The drug gamut encircles drugs from cholesterol management to insomnia to depression. Name a "possible condition" and there is probably a drug for it -- one with insanely huge markups.

Will this continue? Probably not -- and hopefully the medical industry will get back to the business of healing patients with care and genuine health methodologies -- and will stop using the "cure all" drugs that promise to fix just about any condition (real or not). Pharmaceutical drug reps will most likely be looking for alternative employment if this trend of shutting them out of physician offices continues. Are you for it?

Late last week, the FDA issued a safety alert over Pfizer's Zyvox antibiotic product which found a higher chance of death in seriously ill patients after being given the drugs. Although the results came from clinical trials of the medicine, this is yet another disturbing situation about prescription drugs that have very unfortunate side effects.

The clinical trial involved Zyvox being compared to three rival drugs: vancomycin, oxacillin and dicloxacillin. The trial's results concluded that Zyvox patients infected certain types of bacteria saw a greater risk of death -- and the only excluded group was those infected with gram-positive bacteria.