Today (May 8, 2006) Disney Corporation announced that it would no longer cross promote with MacDonald’s by putting figurines in happy meals. The reason being that too many children are gaining weight and MacDonald’s is implicated in that weight gain. Now if Disneyland and Disneyworld could be persuaded to serve Healthy Meals to its visitors it would be a perfect world.
The Los Angeles Times reports that, according to the April 24th issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, older women who took calcium supplements twice a day reduced their risk of breaking a bone, but getting them to take the pills proved to be a problem.
There’s a huge caveat in this announcement. Nearly half the 1,460 healthy women older than 70 who participated in the study did not consistently take the twice-daily 600-milligram pills, which led the researchers to doubt whether supplements could be useful as preventive therapy. Taking extra calcium in supplement form did help those women who took them consistently.
The study found that among the 310 women in the study who took at least 80% of their allotted calcium, 10% suffered a fracture within one year compared with 15% of the 320 women who regularly took a placebo.
At first glace 10% compared to 15% doesn’t look like a huge number. But, it’s a five percent difference. Multiply it out across the huge numbers of senior citizens facing this life-threatening problem and you begin to see a huge difference. There’s a 5% difference between the group that did take the calcium and those that didn’t. That’s 5 out of every 100 seniors, 50,000 out of every million. That’s a lot of people. It’s a lot of money – when you think in terms of hospitalization and nursing home care, the explosion of baby boomers entering the senior’s realm. Most of all, it’s a lot of unnecessary pain and suffering. There is a direct link between bone fractures and death in the senior community. Some of it is linked directly to nursing home care and nursing homes are where seniors go when they have fractured hips or thighs.
Something that doesn’t seem to have been factored into this equation is exercise. Bones respond to weighted exercise by getting thicker and stronger. By taking up more calcium. Walking for 15 minutes a day, with two-pound hand weights in each hand or even heavy shoes can make a huge difference to your long-term health. Waling in the morning is best because it helps clean out your lymphatic system and set your metabolism for the day. Don’t stroll – push your pace.
Accirding to UPI, the Prescription Access Litigation Project (PAL), an organization dedicated to keeping prescription drugs affordable, announced the second winners of its “Bitter Pill Awards.”
The Awards began last year and were designed to highlight the overly aggressive marketing of medicines and pharmaceutical products.
“Drug ads expand the market for newer drugs far beyond those patients that actually need them, interfere with the doctor-patient relationship, and perpetuate the myth that ‘there’s a pill for every ill’ and that ‘newer is better,’” said a statement released by PAL, which is a coalition of 118 local, state and national consumer health advocacy groups.
The five award winners were Lunesta, a sleeping pill made by Sepracor Inc.; Lipitor, Pfizer Inc.’s treatment designed to lower cholesterol; Ambien, a sleeping tablet made by Sanofi-Aventis; Strattera, an ADHD treatment manufactured by Eli Lilly and Co.; and Crestor, a cholesterol drug made by AstraZeneca Plc.
I don’t watch a great deal of television, so when I do it’s a complete shock to me to see the number of drug ads. When I was growing up, drugs used to be limited to hemmerhoid creams, analgesics and anti-histamines. Now, for some program, prescription drugs occupy 90% of the advertising slots. Many times the ads don’t even tell you what the drug is supposed to do, just that it will make you better. And then there’s the rush of complications – headaches, diarrhea, insomnia. I’m particularly amused by the four hour erection – I can’t imagine someone presenting themselves at an emergency room complaining of an unstoppable erection. There have been recent reports that parents have been giving some of these prescription drugs to children – without their doctor’s advice or approval, and with some very bad results. I would personally like to see prescription drugs put back into the realm of a discussion between a doctor and his/her patient and banned – like cigarettes – from television.