HEALTH CHECK: Over-medicated America

AUGUSTA, Ga. - As a nation, Americans take more prescription drugs than any other place in the world. A global research group, IMS Health, reports 51 percent of insured Americans take at least one prescription drug on a regular basis. For many people they're life saving. But some don't really need to be taking prescription drugs. Earl Wright has been an Augusta pharmacist for 30 years. He's proud of what he does. "Business is good, we're moving right along," Wright said. Wright says medications are a necessary part of today's society. "Well, we live in a fast world and they have a lot of problems, illness and diseases that need to be dealt with. ”I honestly think that we overuse medications in this country," said Dr. Russell May. Dr. May says people have become lazy when it comes to taking care of themselves. “I think we’d rather take a drug to solve the problem that way, than do diet and exercise, because that’s not easy. You can lower cholesterol significantly with diet and exercise, but that takes a lot of effort and it’s much simpler jut to take a tablet and your cholesterol will be lowered," May said. The Centers for Disease Control says the most commonly prescribed medications in our country are for high cholesterol and blood pressure, depression, sleep, pain and anxiety. “That’d probably be the national average, but we follow pretty closely. People are the same everywhere,” Wright said. Wright sees hundreds of people a day and says though drugs help his customers, it’s important for people to take them right. “We have instances where they may not read the directions on the bottle or just assume that they know what they’re doing,” May said. Irresponsibility, misreading directions, along with taking more than one drug may create more problems for people than solutions. “There are no drugs without side effects. The more drugs that you take, you increase the potential for a drug interaction with another drug that could cause a more serious problem,” May said. An example Dr. May has seen in the emergency room more than once is when a patient combines a blood thinner- Warfarin - that they use for a heart problem, and a respiratory infection drug like Levaquin that they use for a cold. “The Levaquin can interact with the Warfarin and make it much more potent. So instead of having their blood thinner, they could have a major bleed," May said. One of the reasons the U.S. may be the most medicated country is because we’re the only country with direct to consumer advertising. "I think there's an issue of patients putting undue pressure on physicians to prescribe drugs that may or may not be necessary. A good physician will overcome that problem, but obviously looking at the number of overuse of medication there are some problems out there," May said. “We do have those sort of problems, and ahh those unfortunately is the elderly where we see a lot of noncompliance,” Wright said. But it, isn't just the elderly. Everybody needs to be responsible and aware of what they're taking. The best way to find out more about the drugs you take is to bring them to a pharmacist, set up an appointment and talk about them. He or she can help you learn how to take prescriptions responsibly, which prescriptions you don’t need, and how you can save a few bucks. Ten percent of women 18 and older and four percent of men take antidepressants.

 

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