If you either subscribe to, or have access to BEST PILLS WORST PILLS, which is published regularly, you will recieve information on adverse effects from combinations in almost every issue.

Also, it gives you warnings and information about such procucts that you are unlikely to obtain anywhere else.

In addition it evaulates such products and assigns a rating. I.e. It lists products that it recommends should not be taken. Gives the names of alternative products that are effective and a better safety record as well as products that should be taken only under precise circumstances.

It is a good publication.

Natural pain relievers beat Big Pharma drugs

by Craig Stellpflug

(NaturalNews) Want your headache gone? Take two Tylenol in your hand, drink a glass of water, throw the Tylenol away... headache gone. Dutch researchers found the same recovery rate of drug takers versus placebos. It is the water that you drink that does the job. Not the liver-toxic-internal bleeding-hearing loss-impotence-problems-Tylenol. Drinking water and staying hydrated alleviates pain time and time again as dehydration causes histamines to react in areas of pain in the body. One of Big Pharma's biggest dirty secrets is that most medications are in fact, antihistamines that treat the localized symptoms of pain - but not the cause.

There's no credible evidence that proves "aspirin therapy" can lower heart attack risk either. In fact, aspirin damages the stomach, causes ulcers, gastrointestinal bleeding, hemorrhagic strokes and has recently been linked to causing cancer. A study published by the National Cancer Institute found that women who took two or more aspirins a week for more than 20 years had a 58 percent increased risk of pancreatic cancer compared with women who rarely, or never, used aspirin. The risk of pancreatic cancer rose the more aspirins were taken. Women who took 14 or more aspirins a week had an 86 percent increased risk of pancreatic cancer over non-users.

The natural answers for pain

• Water is always the first choice of natural treatment for pain. Drinking two eight ounce glasses of natural spring water or reverse osmosis water can chase away abdominal pain, heartburn, back pain, arthritis pain, colitis, angina and even migraine headaches and more. Water has been reported to prevent and reverse premature aging, cure asthma in a few days, cure hypertension without diuretics or other medications and even help with weight loss effortlessly and naturally, without strict dieting.

• Fish oil reduces inflammation pain. A 2006 survey of arthritis patients found that daily fish oil supplements reduced pain in 60 percent of patients. One study found 59 percent of pain med takers discontinued taking their prescription NSAID medications for pain and 80 percent stated that their joint pain had improved after taking fish oil for one month. The kicker: There were no significant side effects reported with fish oil.

• Vitamin D deficiency was noted in 69 percent of inflammatory joint diseases or connective tissue diseases, 77 percent of soft tissue rheumatism, 62 percent of osteoarthritis, 75 percent of back pain, and 71 percent of osteoporosis. Avoid taking synthetic calciferol and get your vitamin D naturally from the sun or take the natural cholecalciferol D3 form.

Other natural remedies are Meadowsweet and Willow Bark,, Fructo Borate (shown to reduce joint pain in 79 percent of mild to moderate osteoarthritis), Bromelain (reduces pain and swelling, improves joint mobility and promotes tissue repair), cilantro tablets move pain-causing heavy metals out of the tissues while chlorella tablets bind to the metals for removal, Boswellia (works like the current OTR COX-2 inhibitor drugs), coffee enemas (reduce body toxin loads and inflammation), liver cleanses (unburden the liver and gall bladder that are the cause of a lot of mid-back pain), and acupuncture (works by releasing adenosine - a natural painkiller).

Stop treating the symptoms

Would you purposefully cut the wire to your oil warning light to your car engine to keep it from blaring at you? It costs about $6 for a quart of oil and $3,000 or more for an "engine transplant." There is no big money in selling the customer the quart of oil, but there is a lot of money to be made in the "hospital" (mechanics shop).

There's a king's ransom being paid to Big Pharma to do just this with our body's pain signal system. Big Pharma medications short the body's system out by treating the symptoms only. Pain is a symptom and not a disease to be "managed." Find the cause and fix it.

Sources for this article:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk
http://www.consumerreports.org
http://www.naturalnews.com/Report_water_cure_1.html
--end of article--

Note: Flaxseed oil is the vegetarian alternative to fish oil.

Suzanne

Prescription painkillers kill more Americans than heroin and cocaine combined

by Sherry Baker, Health Sciences Editor

(NaturalNews) According to a new report from Brandeis University, prescription painkillers -- opioid or narcotic pain relievers like Vicodin (hydrocodone), OxyContin (oxycodone), Opana (oxymorphone), and methadone -- are now responsible for more fatal overdoses in the U.S. than heroin and cocaine combined.

"An epidemic of prescription drug abuse is devastating American families and draining state and federal time, money and manpower," Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said in a media statement about the study. "Law enforcement and health officials are doing heroic work and, thankfully, this report provides a road map to help them further."

So police and health "officials" are the key to stopping what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has called an epidemic of prescription painkiller deaths? Maybe there is another key factor, another proverbial elephant in the room that needs to be dealt with but that few, including those who wrote this report, want to acknowledge -- specifically, the doctors who prescribe these drugs in the millions and who have increasingly prescribed them for over a decade.

Let's breakdown the new painkiller drug study's "road map." The report's primary conclusion is that "prescription drug monitoring programs should shift from a reactive to a proactive approach." It points out that most states have programs to curb abuse and addiction but that many don't fully analyze the data they collect. And the report explains how analyzing trend data can help law enforcement agencies identify "pill mills" that illicitly distribute prescription painkillers and how getting more doctors to participate in and utilize prescription drug monitoring programs (revealing patients who "doctor shop" to get multiple prescriptions) could reduce fatal prescription painkiller overdoses.

But wait a minute. Is the so-called epidemic of prescription painkiller deaths really going to be halted primarily by more monitoring? Isn't the key for doctors to cut back on vastly over-prescribing these highly addictive and dangerous drugs in the first place?

If you think these drugs aren't handed out too readily by MDs, consider this statistic: according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, enough prescription painkillers were prescribed in 2010 to medicate every American adult around-the-clock for a month. Although many of these drugs ended up being misused or abused, the CDC also notes most of these pills were legitimately prescribed for a medical purpose. But narcotic and opioid drugs are not the only way pain can be relieved. While they may be the drugs of choice in extreme circumstances, other kinds of pain relief from less toxic drugs to natural therapies -- including acupuncture, yoga, chiropractic and exercise -- can often provide relief to countless pain sufferers without the danger of addiction and death.

Bottom line: the dramatic increase in mortality and overdoses from prescription drugs is largely due to a vastly increased use of these drugs by doctors. In fact, between 1999 and 2010, the sales of these Big Pharma, highly addictive and potentially killer drugs increased four-fold.

And while it is a terrible and sobering fact that, according to the CDC, about 15,000 Americans die from overdosing on prescription painkillers each year, let's put this tragedy in the larger perspective of the ongoing Big Pharma drug nightmare. The truth is, overdose deaths from painkillers are not the biggest drug problem in the US. Consider that 100,000 Americans die each year from their prescriptions due to known side-effects -- not because the doctor made a mistake and prescribed the wrong drug, or the pharmacist made a mistake in filling the prescription, or the patient accidentally took too much or overdosed on purpose.

Sources:

http://www.pewhealth.org
http://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/PainkillerOverdoses/index.html
http://news.yahoo.com
http://www.pewhealth.org

Suzanne

Drug companies pushing to replace nutrition with pharmaceuticals; take your meds even if you have no symptoms

by J. D. Heyes

(NaturalNews) Medications are nutrition. That's essentially the rationale behind a couple of Big Pharma corporations' decision to give a failed Alzheimer's drug a second chance.

In early August, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson said they were ending large-scale clinical trials of their experimental drug bapineuzumab in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease, because patients taking it did not show signs of improved memory or thinking skills.

That was disappointing to millions of Alzheimer's sufferers and their families, though the results of the trials were all but expected by researchers and investors who believed the drug had little chance to succeed.

Such pessimism is driven by a new belief among scientists who think the disease is actually a decades-long process "in which the toxic protein beta amyloid gradually builds up in the brain before dementia sets in," Reuters reported.

If at first you don't succeed...

That belief has led scientists to conclude; therefore, that clinical trials for new Alzheimer's drugs should be conducted years in advance, before the disease has had a chance to do its damage - though some experts think Big Pharma will balk at such a notion after already spending billions on failed trial.

"Even though the scientific rationale might still be valid and strong and not adequately tested in the phase of the disease where you might expect the therapy to work, that may be lost to investors," Dr. Ronald Petersen, director of the Mayo Clinic Alzheimer's Disease Research Center in Rochester, Minn., told the newswire service. "I hope that is not the case."

Neither company has said yet whether they intend to conduct trials in people who have risk factors for Alzheimer's but do not yet have symptoms, but the companies - who are developing the drug jointly - are set to present data in September showing whether or not the drug reduced levels of beta amyloid and other so-called biomarkers in the brain. That data will determine whether bapineuzumab is appropriate for use in earlier trials.

In short, Big Pharma wants to treat a disease even before it ever shows up. What's more, an unproven medicine, rather than nutrition, is being pushed as the most effective way to deal with Alzheimer's.

There's a better way to guard against Alzheimer's that doesn't cost billions of dollars, risk your health or drive up the cost of medications.

Antioxidants and other natural nutrients

According to prior Alzheimer's research, evidence shows that the build-up of beta amyloid plaque is a major component of the disease. They show that high levels of beta result in neuronal cell death, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information at Bethesda, Md. In addition, researchers have found that beta amyloids can increase in the absence of friendly endothelial nitric oxide (eNOS), which is essential to the proper function of our vascular system. While more research is needed, some studies have shown a relationship between the disease and the chemical resveratrol, which can increase eNOS and thereby lower levels of the plaque seen in Alzheimer's (resveratrol "is a natural protective compound found in high concentrations in red grapes, red wine, purple grape juice, peanuts, and some berries," wrote NaturalNews.com's John Phillip).

There's more causal evidence.

"Our data suggest that endothelial NO (nitric oxide) plays an important role in modulating APP (amyloid precursor protein) expression and processing within the brain and cerebrovasculature," one study by the National Institutes of Health has concluded.

Other evidence suggests the naturally occurring antioxidant carnosine can also drastically reduce the formation of beta amyloid plaques, as can carcumin, the primary ingredient in curry.

Research is ongoing but it seems odd to try to replace a nutrient-based solution with an unproven medication that could have damaging side effects.

Sources:

http://www.reuters.com

http://www.naturalnews.com/031465_Alzheimers_prevention.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3064266/

Suzanne

I have a medical friend whose specialty is curing the side effects of medication his patients have been using in the past.

It is those side effects which enrich the medical producers because with them the patients remain patients who are in need of expensive medication.

Another medical friend of mine on FaceBook has just posted an illustration which shows another medication with fatal effects - chemical therapy. 75% of doctors who use it on their patients do not use it on themselves if they get cancer, because they know how dangerous it is.

This information is a must for our health. Thank you!

Urgent warning: Widely used sleep, anxiety drugs double chance of dementia

by Sherry Baker, Health Sciences Editor

(NaturalNews) There is probably no more dreaded illness associated with getting older than Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other forms of dementia - and the number of people with this identity-destroying, mind-robbing horror is growing. The increase is mostly blamed on the aging population but that doesn't explain why dementia hits some and not others in the first place.

Now, breaking research suggests a strong link between widely used drugs known as benzodiazepines (which include Xanax, Klonopin, Valium, Ambien, Halcion, Restoril, Lorazepam and dozens more) and a doubling in the risk of developing dementia.

The study by scientists from Harvard University and the University of Bordeaux in France, was just published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and involved 1,063 men and women who were all free of dementia at the start of the trial. Followed for several years, those who began taking benzodiazepines demonstrated a 50 percent increase in developing Alzheimer's type problems compared to those who never used the drugs.

"The analysis of the cases of dementia in the first population group shows that individuals who began treatment after five years during the follow-up period had an increased risk of developing dementia," one of the lead researchers, Tobias Kurth, said in a media statement; he noted that the results were"robust."

So were the people who developed dementia taking high amounts of benzodiazepines for very long periods? Not at all. In fact, patients who had taken the pills at least once over the course of a week or so at some point in the previous 15 years were found to be at heightened risk. While the people in the study were elders, the research raises disturbing questions about what these popular pills are doing to anyone of any age who takes them.

If you take a drug like Xanax for years as a young or middle-aged person, does it mean you are raising the odds you'll end up with dementia? Unfortunately, no one knows. After all, previous studies have shown that side effects of benzodiazepines, along with problems like nausea, headache and lethargy, can cause memory impairment and personality changes. Some research has found impaired cognitive abilities can last long after a person goes off the drugs - suggesting they may well cause changes in the brain that last.

Dr. Kurth, who works jointly at Harvard University's School of Public Health and the University of Bordeaux, cautioned that this single study "does not necessarily show everything that is going on, so there is no need to panic." However, he admitted in a statement to the press that "There is a potential that these drugs are really harmful. If it is really true that these drugs are causing dementia that will be huge."

This is not the first worrisome clue that benzodiazepines have dangerous long-term effects. In 2011, scientists from Cardiff University found that Britons between the ages of 45 and 85 who had taken the drugs at least once over the last two decades were 60 percent more likely to develop dementia. And this year, a U.S. study by scientists showed that people taking between four and 18 of these pills a year were 3.6 times more likely to die prematurely. People taking 132 pills a year or more were 5.3 times more likely to face an early death

The new BMJ study concludes: "Considering the extent to which benzodiazepines are prescribed and the number of potential adverse effects, indiscriminate widespread use should be cautioned against." However, that caution could continue to fall on proverbial deaf ears. After all, these drugs are huge money makers for the drug industry, which keeps coming up with new uses for them - they are now heavily advertised as sleeping pills.

Prescribed primarily for anxiety, panic attacks, to relax muscles and as sleep aids, this family of drugs accounts for approximately 33 percent of all prescription drugs in the U.S. and they rake in over a billion dollars yearly for Big Pharma.

Sources:

http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e6231/rr/605111
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-10/ind-bua100512.php
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
http://www.dailymail.co.uk
http://www.upi.com

Suzanne

Study: Tylenol, acetaminophen linked to causing blood cancer

by Jonathan Benson, staff writer

(NaturalNews) A new study out of the University of Washington (UW) provides even more evidence that taking over-the-counter painkillers can kill you. Published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the study explains that taking acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, for extended periods of time can increase a person's risk of developing blood cancer.

Dr. Roland Walter, an assistant professor of medicine at UW, and his colleagues examined data on nearly 65,000 men and women between the ages of 50 and 76 who participated in the Vitamins and Lifestyle (VITAL) study, which was published in the American Journal of Epidemiology in 2004. They found that participants who took acetaminophen at least four days a week over the course of four years were twice as likely to develop certain blood cancers compared to people who took less or none of the drug.

"We found that high use of acetaminophen, one of the most frequently used medications worldwide, was associated with an almost twofold increased risk of incident hematologic malignancies," said Walter, referring to non-Hodgkin lymphomas, plasma cell disorders, and myeloid neoplasms. "Acetaminophen use on the majority of the days over many years appears to be associated with this new adverse effect."

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) already warns that acetaminophen is toxic to the liver, and is linked to liver failure and other serious problems (http://www.fda.gov/drugs/drugsafety/informationbydrugclass/ucm165107....). Acetaminophen is found in many common drugs, including in Excedrin, Nyquil, and Theraflu. Previous studies have also linked acetaminophen to kidney damage, asthma, and death (http://www.naturalnews.com/acetaminophen.html).

According to a 2009 study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, acetaminophen is the leading cause of drug overdose-related emergency room (ER) visits among children. More than 7,000 children end up in the ER every year from acetaminophen overdoses (http://www.ajpmonline.org/webfiles/images/journals/AMEPRE/AMEPRE_2545...).

Sources for this story include:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20110511/hl_hsn/chronictylenolusemaybelin...

Suzanne

Pharmaceutical giant Genzyme withdraws MS drug in order to re-brand it and sell at 20 times the original price

by Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

(NaturalNews) Thousands of British patients suffering from the devastating chronic inflammatory disease known as multiple sclerosis (MS) now have one fewer conventional treatment option at their disposal thanks to the merciless greed of the Sanofi-owned pharmaceutical giant Genzyme. The U.K.'s Independent reports that Genzyme has intentionally withdrawn a popular MS drug known as alemtuzumab in order to re-brand it and sell it for up to 20 times its current price.

The drug, known as alemtuzumab, has been specifically licensed for the treatment of leukemia. But because it also apparently works quite well at alleviating MS symptoms in many patients, alemtuzumab is the drug of choice for many doctors successfully treating the condition. A study presented at the 64th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology back in April found that alemtuzumab actually works better than most of the other available drugs specifically approved as treatments for MS. (http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/244718.php)

Just like in the U.S., off-label drug prescriptions are technically legal, which is why many doctors have chosen alemtuzumab over its various alternatives. But Genzyme, in a bid to significantly boost its profits, has decided to pull alemtuzumab from the market in order to run it through new clinical trials, and eventually re-brand it as "Lemtrada," which is expected to cost many thousands of dollars more than currently-available alemtuzumab.

"Many of us think [alemtuzumab] is the best drug for patients with aggressive MS in the early stages of the disease," says Professor John Zajicek from the University of Plymouth, one of many who is calling on the U.K. Health Secretary to stop Genzyme from restricting the drug's use. "It's the greedy behavior of the drug company that upsets me. They are just trying to re-brand it and put the price up. It is morally corrupt."

Genzyme's greed could end up needlessly killing thousands of MS patients

As a result of Genzyme's decision, alemtuzumab will now only be available as a treatment for leukemia patients, and not for MS patients. This is particularly concerning to Zajicek and many others who recognize that thousands MS patients currently rely on alemtuzumab for relief. Many people are questioning how Genzyme could be so heartless that it would pull a vital drug from the market, leaving thousands of patients without treatment.

"There is no good reason why people with MS who have been allowed to benefit from the treatment should now be denied it," Doug Brown, Head of Biomedical Research at the Multiple Sclerosis Society, is quoted as saying by the Independent. "Genzyme needs to come up with a scheme, quickly, that makes their product available to all those people currently being treated and, if it's licensed, price the drug reasonably so it is deemed cost effective on the NHS (National Health Service)."

Since MS is a chronic inflammatory disease, there are also a number of natural remedies that may help quell this serious disease and provide lasting relief without the need for pharmaceutical drugs. Here is a great article by our own Dr. David Jockers that explains some natural strategies for beating MS: http://www.naturalnews.com

Sources for this article include:

http://www.independent.co.uk

Suzanne

Taking aspirin as few times as once a week triples risk of blindness

by Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

(NaturalNews) Many conventional doctors advise their patients to pop one every day like a multivitamin in order to supposedly ward off heart attacks, strokes, and even cancer. But taking an aspirin as few times as once a week, especially when you are not actually sick or in pain, can be incredibly dangerous, especially for your eyesight. This is the conclusion of a recent study published in Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), which found that "supplementing" at least once a week with aspirin can triple the risk of going blind.

For their study, researchers from Australia tracked nearly 2,400 middle-aged and elderly individuals for 15 years. Among this group, 257 individuals were determined to be "regular" uses of aspirin who took the drug at least once a week, while the rest were occasional users that took the drug less frequently. All participants were evaluated at the end of the study to determine their health status in conjunction with aspirin intake.

Upon analysis, the team found that only one in 27 of the "occasional" aspirin users developed a condition known as "wet" age-related macular degeneration, or neovascular AMD, which can lead to blindness. This figure represents 3.7 percent of all "occasional" users. But among "regular" aspirin users, nearly one in 10 developed the condition, or 9.4 percent, which represents a nearly threefold increase in blindness risk among those who take aspirin at least once a week.

"Regular aspirin use was significantly associated with an increased incidence of neovascular [wet] AMD," wrote the authors in their study conclusion. "The increased risk of age-related macular degeneration was only detected after 10 or 15 years, suggesting cumulative dosage of aspirin may be important," added study author Jie Jin Wang from the University of Sydney.

The study's authors and other commentators were quick to dismiss the findings, suggesting that they do not imply that patients should stop taking daily aspirin for disease prevention -- after all, just think of the immense profit losses that would result for the pharmaceutical industry. Some doctors even went so far as to manufacture ridiculous fear phrases like, "a healthy eye with full visual capacities is of no use in a dead body," suggesting that not taking aspirin will somehow kill you.

At the same time, these same doctors and researchers were unable to deny the fact that previous studies have also found a link between aspirin intake and blindness, including a 2011 study out of Europe which found that daily aspirin intake can double the risk of vision loss. Similarly, other previous studies have uncovered the fact that low-dose aspirin intake can lead to other serious health problems including intestinal bleeding and ulcers.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk

http://online.wsj.com

http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Suzanne