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Prescription Drugs
The Road to Even More Suffering?
This is an account of a journey within the UK's National Health Service during the past forty years, during which I have suffered the debilitating lifestyle effects of Crohn's Disease (a chronic autoimmune condition where your body's immune system attacks healthy cells, causing inflammation of the digestive and musculoskeletal systems) and other medication-related problems that I have discovered much more about during that journey.
It is not intended to be a clinical or scientific tome at any level. It is simply an illustration from my perspective. My comments are not intended to constitute advice of any kind. Neither do I seek to influence sufferers of any condition or
disease to persuade them to eschew the treatments or medications they have been offered or prescribed.
What I do want to do is make people think before they unquestioningly accept what is suggested for their wellbeing, because it might not always be the best solution for them. It is everyone's right to challenge any decision that could harm their life.
I only wish I had followed my advice earlier in life. Still, the sad reality is that it was not fashionable to challenge anything that doctors or clinicians decreed in those days. Indeed, I recall my parents being in complete awe of doctors and even doctors' receptionists, and would probably be shocked and even embarrassed that I would have the temerity to challenge commonly held perceptions. But that was then, this is now.
The internet has been vilified for years by medical professionals because of patients looking things up and drawing the wrong conclusions. But that is protectionism. It is everyone's right to be fully informed about any treatment that may be
planned for them. I would say a sensible alternative to what I believe to be the biased views of the medical profession should be to 'educate before medicate!'
I believe it is also reasonable that clinicians should tell someone about any particular problem they could experience from taking prescription medication, given their knowledge of each patient. It is not acceptable in my view for a doctor to say something like 'read the information leaflet to learn more about the medication' because that means, effectively, they are
putting the onus on someone who has no clinical background. Subsequently, if something does go wrong, they have
absolved themselves of any responsibility. Of course, it is precisely because of the myriad side effects and contraindications (conditions or factors that serve as reasons to withhold specific medical treatments due to the harm they would cause the patient) that they adopt this approach.
The horrors that can befall anyone taking prescription medication are, in many cases, too awful to contemplate. I, for one, have paid the price of misinformation, or more precisely, no information!
Pain is something that every single one of us has endured in our lives. Very few of us are lucky enough to have gone through life pain-free! When you include problems such as colic and ear infections in infants, dental issues, injuries
caused by work, play and accidents, you soon begin to realise that pain is an inevitable part of life from the very earliest
stages. But as you will read later in this book, suffering is optional.
I will refer many times during this book to Crohn's Disease, but that's only because, as a long-term sufferer, I have intimate knowledge of it. The same principles apply whether you are a fellow Crohn's sufferer or have to deal with pain caused by Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Ulcerative Colitis, arthritis in all its forms, fibromyalgia, polymyalgia, sciatica, polymyalgic rheumatica, bursitis, and many more conditions and diseases.
I apologise in advance if I overlook any condition or disease in this book, but rest assured that I empathise with your plight at all levels. I have personally spent approaching forty years battling against the effects of Crohn's Disease and its side-hustles. The pain is sometimes quite debilitating. It can and will rule your life if you let it. I choose not to.
Having said all that, I must confess that I didn't know for many years the debilitating effect that prescription medications
could and would have on my life, because of the severe health conditions that developed as a direct result of taking them. I will explore this subject in detail throughout this book.
And of course, as with any 'invisible' disease, sufferers have to endure snide remarks from so-called friends who opine that 'so and so is ill yet again. Are they hypochondriacs or what?' If only they knew...
Crohn's is one of many 'silent' diseases, where sufferers don't display external characteristics that make them look ill all the time. Admittedly, there are times when I look pale or exhausted, but if you work twelve hours a day or more, you're going to look pale or tired! I'm one of the lucky ones, because many sufferers of silent diseases cannot work for
weeks on end.
Crohn's disease can cause significant problems in two main areas: gastrointestinal (where the problem can occur anywhere in the alimentary canal - anywhere from the mouth to the anus) and the musculoskeletal system, which presents itself as Reactive Arthritis.
One of the significant problems of gastrointestinal issues is a mix of stomach and intestinal pain which can be crippling,due in part to the ulceration and swelling of internal systems,cramping, thickening of stomach, duodenal and intestinal walls,intestinal fistulas (abnormal connections between twohollow spaces, such as blood vessels, intestines, or other hollow organs) and additional effects the disease can cause in the gall bladder and pancreas.
This is not helped by the body's immune system attacking itself, a significant indicator of Crohn's, which also renders you more susceptible to infection. With all the information now being promulgated by the NHS about sepsis, you will
quickly realise how lethal this is! One of the more vexatious aspects of Crohn's are rigours (sudden feelings of cold with shivering accompanied by a sharp rise in temperature), where the body shakes uncontrollably due to pain and inflammation. I was told for many years that it was the body's way of regulating high temperatures. Poppycock! What it means is that there is an infection in the body somewhere that needs to be dealt with urgently. If not treated, these infections turn quickly to sepsis (also referred to as blood poisoning or septicaemia, a life-threatening condition triggered by an illness or injury where the body's immune system goes into overdrive), which in many cases is fatal. Sepsis is one of the largest killers in the UK today.
Anyone who has seen the 2016 British film Starfish (written and directed by my close friend, the late Bill Clark) about a Rutland couple whose lives were devastated by sepsis will understand how fortunate people are not to experience the horrors endured by Tom and Nicola Ray when his sepsis was not caught quickly enough. This resulted in hisarms, legs and part of his face having to be amputated and debrided (debridement is the surgical removal of dead, damaged, or infected tissue to improve the healing potential of the remaining healthy tissue), respectively.
I would urge anyone who suddenly develops a very high temperature accompanied by acute abdominal pain to call 999
without delay!
Crohn's disease also causes Reactive Arthritis, joint pain and swelling triggered by an infection in another part of the body - most often the intestines, genitals or urinary tract. This condition usually targets the knees, ankles and feet. Inflammation
also can affect the eyes, skin and the tube that carries urine out of the body (urethra), which can render the sufferer
immobile due to the excruciating pain it causes in the musculoskeletal system. Some patients alternatively get Enteropathic
arthritis, which is a type of inflammatory arthritis associated with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) such as Crohn's Disease and ulcerative colitis. It can cause joint pain and stiffness, as well as gastrointestinal symptoms related to the IBD.
The level of inflammation in both cases is intense, and painkillers of any description do not touch it. The only medication that does work is a high but reducing dose of corticosteroids (prednisolone is one example of an oral corticosteroid), which have certainly caused me long-term problems that I have only discovered recently, due to a lack of information from the medical profession beyond them saying that 'you shouldn't be on steroids long-term'.
But in all honesty, without the relief they have given, I would probably have aged beyond recognition due to the mental stress and anguish the pain has caused over the years. Many times, I have wondered how much of my own experience with chronic pain might have been down to the adverse effects of prescription medication as it turns out,
quite an enormous amount. I 'll give you insight into my theory, based on the physical ramifications I have suffered, later in this book.
My objective in writing this book is to help people in a similar situation to me. I want to share with you how I believe you can manage your chronic pain and many other conditions, such as eczema, psoriasis, asthma, COPD and others,
without suffering the serious adverse effects caused by prescription drugs.
I will also tell you about some of the natural products I have developed in collaboration with specialist scientists and other relevant individuals. I consider it appropriate to give some background on areas I have researched with the help of friends who are researchers, clinicians, and fellow chronic pain sufferers over the years, as detailed later in this book. Some of these findings have even been published in trade magazines, including The Pharmacist, for which I was extremely grateful and indeed proud. The more people know the facts, the more they can look after their health, perhaps even managing to reduce their reliance on prescription medications and their adverse effects and contraindications. I sincerely hope so!
It is not just pain drugs that can cause multifarious problems for people who are prescribed them. One sufferer of eczema was unsuccessfully treated at various times using prescription-only solutions, including Aqueous Cream BP (which a recent study showed led to sufferers' skin becoming thinner, drier and more irritated!), E45 (which contains hazardous ingredients, including sodium lauryl sulphate - used to degrease car engines! - lanolin and soft white paraffin,all known allergens that can trigger flare-ups of atopic eczema. In short, nothing worked!
The sufferer finally drew the line when his doctor suggested considering a choice of either oral corticosteroids
(prednisolone) or immunosuppressant drugs such asciclosporin or methotrexate. The doctor even suggested tryingone of the newer drugs available: immunosuppressant medicines called calcineurin inhibitors.
All these drugs come with a vast - and potentially serious - list of side effects. Consider someone suffering from dry skin. People suffering from these types of long-term dry skin conditions (described by doctors at various times as eczema, psoriasis, fungal infections) end up so depressed about it that they avoid wearing short-sleeved shirts even on the hottest and muggiest days!
Long-term usage of prednisolone (a corticosteroid) can cause weight gain, diabetes, glaucoma, cataracts and osteoporosis,
whilst methotrexate can cause abnormal liver function, nausea and vomiting (classified as 'dose-dependent' side effects), mouth sores, diarrhoea, gradual hair loss, and - irony of ironies - skin rashes! The very thing it's supposed to cure!
In the USA, calcineurin inhibitors come with an FDA 'black box' safety warning if used over prolonged periods. But that's not all! In the UK alone, over 22,000 patients die each year from prescription drugs through errors involving dispensing or prescribing procedures. That is over 60 people every day who lose their lives due to being given prescription
medications!
It is pretty amazing that not more people die, because in the NHS alone, staff make over 237 million errors with prescription medications every year - a mind-boggling figure to be sure. What is more worrying is that over 25% of these errors injure patients and harm their wellbeing, apart from the appalling waste of money (approaching £2 billion per
year) that could be better spent on the front line of the NHS.
According to a group of 36 studies conducted by researchers at the Universities of York, Sheffield and Manchester, errors play a direct role in 1,700 deaths per year and play a significant role in another 22,300 deaths..
These appalling statistics comprise a mix of doctors prescribing incorrect doses, pharmacists handing out the wrong medicine or giving patients someone else's prescription, and nurses mixing up patients altogether. In fact, over one in twelve prescriptions contains at least one error!
This is an excerpt from Prescription Drugs: The Road to Even More Suffering?