Are they Really the Answer?

 

It would not be a far-fetched comment to say that this generation of people is very fond of instant gratification. We like to know and do things fast and we don’t like to waste time. We have engraved in our minds that faster is better. It is all about simplifying our lives; making it easier and more fitting to our busy schedules. While that may have positive outcomes, like the advancement of technology, it is not necessarily a positive idea when it comes to pharmaceuticals especially pain and medications. There is no denying that when it comes to pharmaceuticals, our nation is top notch. However, our dependence on medication has increased. People in today’s world are overly dependent on pain and sleep medications with a significant contributing factor being that doctors prescribe medication as a quick fix to everything, which is not always the case. When it comes to the topic of medicine, most of us will readily agree that the advancement of the medical field has made this country stronger and has led to endless opportunities and discoveries. Where this argument usually ends, however is on the question of prescription drugs being overused and overprescribed. Whereas some are convinced, prescribed meds are always used for the better; others maintain that we tend to overuse medications, which can lead to dangerous outcomes along with the doctors not hesitating to prescribe them to patients.

               In the article titled Let’s End the Prescription Death Epidemic, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, associate chief of neurosurgery at Grady Memorial Hospital and CNN's chief medical correspondent, talks about the dangers of overused medication and how it needs to be stopped. In this article Dr. Gupta writes, “No doubt, many are for perfectly legitimate reasons and are not misused or abused. Yet culturally, we have become increasingly intolerant of even minor amounts of pain and increasingly comfortable with taking heavy-duty medications.” In other words Dr. Gupta is saying that we aren’t really aware of the danger we are putting our body in because we want to get rid of the minor pain we are having that very moment. He clearly believes that there are definite legitimate reasons for such medications, but not all situations where pain medications are prescribed are classified as legitimate. According to Dr. Gupta, our pain tolerance has become surprisingly low and what doesn’t help is that doctors prescribe a pain pill for just about anything. Dr. Gupta emphasizes that idea when he states, “Truth is, it is easier for a doctor to write a prescription than to explore other effective options to combat pain. And it is easier for patients to take those prescription pills than to search for alternatives themselves. Both those things must absolutely change.”  I agree that doctors are too quick to prescribe pain medications because my experience of a particular doctor visit confirms it.

               I am a Certified Nursing Assistant at a nursing home. Unfortunately, this job involves a lot of physical work and proper body mechanics. I had the unlucky event of hurting my back while lifting a patient who had fallen on the floor. The back pain was getting in the way of my daily activities along with my job. I visited a doctor to figure out how to fix the continuous pain. Within 5 minutes of my appointment, the doctor had already prescribed me a pain pill. He asked no specific questions and to this day I’m not even sure he would have asked how it happened had I not told him. He had prescribed me a very strong pain pill called Vicodin, which I was hesitant to take because I had googled the side effects which included, among others, spasm of the ureter, which can lead to difficulty in urinating. I decided to do some research and found myself at a chiropractor’s office. I have visited the chiropractor about 3 times and my back pain has decreased dramatically. The chiropractor assured me that it was simply a mal-alignment issue regarding my sciatic nerve and that I should be pain free in just a handful of visits. I did not need that Vicodin and I am sure that a few chiropractor visits is far better off than constant refills of Vicodin and its side effects. The doctor never mentioned any alternative I could take besides the Vicodin; he simply prescribed it and walked out. What I am trying to say is that at times or in various cases, medication is not needed. Sure the opioid would have diminished my pain almost instantly, but the root of the problem would have remained unsolved.

Zachary F. Meisal, M.D. and Jeanmarie Perrone, M.D. talk about the fault doctors have in the rise of fatalities caused by prescription painkillers, in their article titled, Are Doctors to blame for Prescription Drug Abuse. Meisel is an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine and medical editor of the LDI Health Economist, both at the University of Pennsylvania. Perrone is an associate professor of emergency medicine and the director of the Division of Medical Toxicology at the Perelman School of Medicine. According to Meisel and Perrone, “Beyond the increase in prescriptions, doctors are more likely than ever to diagnose patients with chronic-pain syndrome.”  They complicate matter further when they write, “But we doctors also need to start scaling back on prescribing opioids for acute pain, since some acute pain turns into chronic pain.” In other words they are suggesting that instead of prescribing opioids right away, doctors should start patients with a high dose of ibuprofen or Tylenol. Though I concede that Tylenol or ibuprofen should be prescribed to patients instead of the opioids, I still insist that there are alternatives that can be tried in other areas besides medicine. Meisel and Perrone stated the acute pain can become chronic pain and when referring to my back pain that was not a risk I was willing to take. Meisel and Perrone stated, “As doctors, we must stop fearing patient-satisfaction surveys and talk honestly to our patients about pain. It may take an extra few minutes, but it will save lives.” I assume there are many people with similar situations and maybe given the options would do better without medication. I by no means am saying the medication is not needed, I am however saying that maybe we are abusing prescription medications and confusing our symptoms.

 In the article titled, Pill Nation: Are we tooreliant on prescription meds? , Linda Caroll NBC News Contributor, talks about the reliance of people when it comes to certain medication. She starts off the article with examples on what different situations make people take pills. She makes it very clear that she believes we are overusing them for situations that are no necessarily adequate. Americans want a quick fix. There is literally a pill for everything from having trouble sleeping to having trouble focusing. The pill or medication is sought as instant gratification. While there are clearly situations in which pain pills are used by patients that truly need them, many cases are not the same story. Addiction to medications is a serious and common issue that Linda Caroll talks about in this article. According to this article, The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration estimates that there are 2.1 million Americans addicted to prescription medications. The general idea that Linda Caroll portrays is that we expect a quick fix and that mentality has caused us to be more reliant of medication as opposed to other alternatives because those other alternatives, such as behavioral therapy, take time. Other alternatives should be provided to patients that are not suffering from serious issues. There are options beyond medications.

I have already shared with you an alternative to back pain in my personal story regarding the chiropractor. There are many ways to deal with pain that don’t involve pain prescribed medications.  The answer is not always written on a piece of paper followed by a scribbled signature. Sometimes, an effort of finding alternatives is up to the patient. The answer could possible lie in holistic medicine or even something as simple as exercise. I am by no means saying that every symptom can be cured without medicine because that is not true. There are most definitely situations in which a lot of medicine is required and completely vital to someone’s health. However, many situations just require a creative outlook. Doctors prescribe medication as part of their job but sometimes that is not the answer or the quick fix.

In his article titled American Epidemic of over-prescribing, Cory Franklin former director of medical intensive care at Cook County Hospital in Chicago for over 20 years and an editorial board contributor to the Chicago Tribune op-ed page, talks about the rise of prescription medications from the 1970s. He explains that on average, a U.S doctor prescribes 12 prescriptions per year per American. He goes on trying to explain the reasons for this significant increase in numbers. One of his top reasons is the declining health of Americans today.” The average American tends to be older, have high cholesterol and have more joint problems such as arthritis, than the adults in the 70s.” Cory Franklin is aware of the benefits of medications, however he believes patients should be assessed more in detail. In many situations, a patient should be reassessed after beginning the medication to determine whether the medication is a right choice for the patient.  A point that Cory Franklin makes is that patients should have full knowledge on medications. “It seems that doctors are just putting these medications of the patients’ regime and most of the time; the patient is not fully informed of the medication itself.” I agree with his opinion completely. I feel that doctors are not following up enough with their patients and at times not clarifying what medication they are going to be taking and what the side effects are going to look like. My mother suffered from headaches and so she went to the doctor who prescribed her a medication. After a month of taking it, she found out she had liver problems. Those liver problems were due to the medication being taken for her headaches. She was never informed of that side effect and had she been informed, she would have denied due to pre-existing liver problems.

  Doctors continue to prescribe medication on the fast track and the worst part is that those patients could overdose and kill themselves. Susan Okie, a medical journalist and a clinical assistant professor of family medicine at Georgetown University School of Medicine, shares her findings about the increasing deaths due to opioids in the article, A Flood of Opioids, a Rising Tide of Deaths.  In it, she shares information about overprescribed opioids and the dangers it causes to the patient. Her article states, “According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), deaths from unintentional drug overdoses in the United States have been rising steeply since the early 1990s (see bar graph) and are the second-leading cause of accidental death, with 27,658 such deaths recorded in 2007.

The article continues to talk about the statistics of deaths of overdoses and some of the contributing factors. “Reducing deaths from opioid overdoses is challenging because such deaths stem from multiple factors, including providers' inappropriate prescribing or inadequate counseling and monitoring, patients' misuse or abuse of drugs, sharing of pain pills with relatives or friends, “doctor shopping” to obtain multiple prescriptions, and diversion of opioids leading to illicit sales and abuse.”

In some cases, patients visit the doctor complaining of symptoms of a disease, but are really drug addicts. Psychiatric evaluations are most likely a good way to figure out whether or not  patient truly needs the prescribed medication. In a study done with fibromyalgia patients, it was revealed that 6 person of the group (which is equivalent to 12-13 people) were actually people seeking the drugs prescribed to fibromyalgia. They did show symptoms of the disease but the drugs were misused. The article titled, Opioid Use, Misuse, and Abuse in Patients Labeled as Fibromyalgia, explains the experiment and forms the conclusion that opiate drugs are not in fact the best option for fibromyalgia patients. It also talks about the negative effect of opioids. This article shows that even some serious diseases can’t just be cured with a pain pill and sometimes a deeper understanding of the patient is needed.

While, I agree that there are patients that survive because of medications and are able to live because of them, I don’t think that that is the answer to every single person who visits the doctor. Often, people go into the doctor’s office complaining of things like not being able to sleep or being tired all the time or even depression. These symptoms are not necessarily life threatening and there may be other ways to fix them. Medications can cause one symptoms to disappear but give light to another.  We need to start loosening up with the idea that medication fixes everything, work on our pain tolerance and be fully aware of medication we are taking and putting into our bodies.  I believe that opioids are overprescribed and the American people tend to take advantage of them whether it be knowingly or not. Our dependence on medication has hit an extreme and we need to fix the epidemic by figuring out other alternatives as well as becoming more educated with the subject. Doctor’s need to do their part and help with the education process and not always resort to prescriptions.