Vioxx is gone -- now what?
CNN.com - Arthritis drug Vioxx being pulled - Sep 30, 2004
Drugs have side effects. How much harm is done while a drug is in use, until a health risk is found?
What can you do if you've been using Vioxx? Take the Wellness Profile and see what your body is missing to put it back on track to booming good health. http://healthyfrontiers.com/html/process22.html
Wellness Profile compares your answers with a large database of other people, then issues you a snapshot of your health today. You will receive a free report and free 15 minute phone consultation (optional).* This is a service of Southwest Wellness Center, based in Tucson AZ.
Wellness Profile may suggest lifestyle, dietary, and other changes. You may retake Wellness Profile 60 days later to see if these changes are working for you.
Here's one example of how it has worked for someone. If you take the profile, please add your story here:
A 58 year old woman who was careful with her diet and used supplements found that every spring she felt as though she were coming down with the flu. She ached so much that she found work difficult, but then she never really came down sick. She took the Wellness Profile and found she was low in magnesium, which she added to her supplement routine. The aches went away. But why just in the spring? Because then she began to exercise again, each year, and exercise uses up magnesium. It also was lost in her sweat.
The doctor had prescribed ibuprophen and bedrest. But what she needed was magnesium.
If the doctor has prescribed Vioxx for you, now would be a good time to find out what you really need. Go to http://healthyfrontiers.com/html/process22.html and take your Wellness Profile today.
Your turn! PL
*We do not prescribe or diagnose. We simply share the patterns the Wellness Profile detects, and the suggestions it makes.
This post may be reproduced in an email or newsletter only without changes and as long as it contains this statement and the following: (c) Peg Lewis 2004. To subscribe to this service, please visit http://healthfrontier.blogspot.com and join the Southwest Wellness Center mailing list.
posted by Peg Lewis @ 8:22 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
More on Vioxx -- Alternatives come to light
The Journal of the American Medical Association has linked the popular and heavily marketed arthritis drug, Vioxx, to dangerous blood clots, heart attacks, and strokes. In response, the company has pulled the product from the market.
This popular 5-year old pain medication accounted for 2.5 Billion in sales last year. Vioxx has been prescribed heavily for arthritic pain complaints. As a Cox-2 inhibitor, it was considered the “safe alternative” to the use of NSAIDs like Aleve. This is the last in a long line of pain relief preparations that have turned out to cause serious health risks.
More about Cox-2 pros and cons.
In 1998 the American Journal of Medicine reported that approximately 107,000 patients are hospitalized annually for non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID)-related gastrointestinal (GI) complications and at least 16,500 NSAID-related deaths occur each year among arthritis patients alone. (1) This number of deaths is equal to the number of dead there would be from three jumbo jet plane crashes a week.
What can a person in serious arthritis pain do if Cox-2 inhibitors are now implicated in unnecessary deaths? What do you do?
Clearly NSAIDS are not a good alternative, with such a high death rate. This article on NSAID risks is enlightening -- and scary.
So what choices are left? Stayed tuned while we investigate the options.
The following quotation from an article at CNN.com discusses the intimidation of an employee of the FDA who discovered the dangers of Vioxx before Merck pulled the drug two weeks ago. According to an investigation by the Senate Finance Committee, his work was suppressed until after the drug manufacturer itself brought the dangers to light.
A "picture is emerging of an agency that can't see the forest for the trees," Grassley said. "Merck knew it had trouble on its hands and took action. At the same time, instead of acting as a public watchdog, the Food and Drug Administration was busy challenging its own expert and calling his work 'scientific rumor."
For the complete article, see http://www.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/10/08/fda.vioxx.worries.ap/index.html.
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