Half of America is on drugs
Posted by aranya | Filed under Uncategorized
Apparently, half of America is on prescription meds
“Americans buy much more medicine per person than any other country. But it was unclear how their prescriptions compare to those of insured people elsewhere. Comparable data were not available for Europe, for instance.
Medco’s data show that last year, 51 percent of American children and adults were taking one or more prescription drugs for a chronic condition, up from 50 percent the previous four years and 47 percent in 2001. Most of the drugs are taken daily, although some are needed less often.”
So, if we are increasing at a rate of about 1 percent of the population ever couple of years, it would appear that 100 percent of Americans might be dosing up with prescription medicine within the next century or so. In the Time magazine article, one doctor mentions that a lot of these statistics have to do with the epidemic of obesity in our country.
“Dr. Robert Epstein, chief medical officer at Franklin Lakes, N.J.-based Medco, said he sees both bad news and good in the findings. ‘Honestly, a lot of it is related to obesity,’ he said. ‘We’ve become a couch potato culture (and) it’s a lot easier to pop a pill’ than to exercise regularly or diet.”
I personally think this is an incredibly accurate observation. There has yet to be a miracle weight loss drug, and the only sure-fire method proven to result in permanent weight loss is a combination of a healthy diet and exercise. Despite this glaring fact, our society is hell-bent on finding the quick-fix, the magic cure all fat incinerating pill. Pharmaceutical manufacturers are climbing all over each other in a mad rush to be the company that comes up with this miracle drug, and in the process (phen-phen, ephedra, etc.), people are dying. Why is it that we just don’t want to get up off the couch?
