It Takes Some People a Little Bit Longer...

Most of you that read my blog also read Fed Up With Lunch, a great blog about the deplorable condition of school food in the US. I look forward to reading Mrs. Q's posts every day, and because of her large following, I often find the comments to be highly entertaining. Mrs. Q, an anonymous teacher who has eaten school lunch every day in 2010, has a diverse following. It is clear that some of the commentors are gluten free folks, some are Michael Pollan devotees, some are Real Food people (or Practical Real Food People), some are political about food, and some just love food in general and hate to see it bastardized. And then there are others who I believe follow the blog because they find it interesting. School IS is hot topic these days after all.

This week Mrs. Q made a small, practically throw away, comment about the link between cancer and cupcakes earlier this week in a post about how certain PTA's had been banning bake sales. I don't mention it here to rehash it. I am anti-sugar, I believe that sugar is ruinous to one's health. And while my system was once happy to eat sugar, now even just a chocolate truffle or two is enough to disrupt my energy levels. I still eat sugar and sweet things now and again (more during these Holidays), but I am more conscious of it. And I am more choosy with what sugary treats I eat, and it has become easier for me to say no altogether.

Nope, I am not bringing it up because I want to discuss it further. I bring it up because some of the comments were downright astonishing! Many called Mrs. Q uninformed, and referred to the possibility of a link between cancer and sugar as "ludicrous" or "bullshit". I was disappointed by how many people vehemently defended sugar by saying that there was nothing wrong with ONE cupcake. I suppose I have been living in my nourished corner of the Internet for too long. I have forgotten that most of the population eats an average of 150 pounds of added sweeteners (according to USDA data from 1996), and that translates to roughly 40 teaspoons of sugar every day for every American out there. That is about 4/5 of a cup of added sugar from both sucrose and HFCS combined. That is a hell of alot of sugar. But also, most of the population isn't noticing that their health problems might be related to sugar.

Furthermore, I had a strange experience at my office last week. As we made our way to an outside office event that centered on the Holidays, someone overheard me make a teasing comment to my boss about how he should eat plain yogurt with no sugar, or worse aspartame, if he wanted the full effects of the yogurt's probiotics. After hearing me make said comment, several folks from my office teased me about how they loved aspartame and preservatives. And now every time they offer me some Christmas treat they jokingly tell me that it is organic. They are essentially making fun of me for eating healthy. Whaaaa? I mean, if you haven't met me, I am a bit of a know-it-all. I try hard not to have it come out, but it happens. But I also know that deep down inside, all the changes I have made in my life support me and my health and that might make others feel bad about themselves. People really do bully you because they feel bad about themselves. Mom was right all along.

When I looked for evidence about sugar suppressing your immune system I found alot of people debating it. Most of those who believed that sugar suppressed the immune system cited a 1973 study where they gave test subjects 100 grams of sugar to eat. After some time passed they drew blood from those patients and in a petrie dish they added bacteria to the blood. The white blood cells had a harder time fighting off the bacteria in test subjects who had ingested the sugar. Because this test happened in a lab as opposed to in a real live person, there are those that are skeptical. But Dr Sears, a popular pediatrician and web personality, still believes that there has to be some connection since his office fills up with sick kids just after Halloween. I also believe that there is some connection, because in the last 6 months I have ingested less sugar per day than I have at any other time in my life, and this fall I have had fewer colds, sick days, and I have felt better. It could also be the coconut oil, the grass fed meat and milk, or the greater amount of fat in my diet. Whatever it is, something is working.

Nutrition information is gray. And the results of scientific studies are often vague enough to allow for a variety of different conclusions. And particularly if you do not have evidence in front of you or something that is specific to you, it may be hard to believe something so radical as sugar's ability to negatively affect your health. Also don't forget that major cases showing the ill-effects of sugar on one's health are likely to be suppressed by those who have an interest in selling you sugar. (There were four different links in there in case anyone was interested). But since I have reduced my intake of sugar I have found that my system is far more sensitive to even a few teaspoons. About 30 minutes after eating something with refined sugar (probably more that three teaspoons) I start to feel tired and dragging. If I don't eat meat for a few days I don't feel that way when I go back to it. If I go a couple days without eating veggies (yes it does happen from time to time), when I eat veggies again I actually feel better!! So my reaction to sugar leads me to believe that it has profound affects on the body. You might be able to acclimate to it if you eat enough of it. But does that mean that the problems have disappeared? Or that you no longer notice them?

No, those that defend one cupcake might not have examined the amount of sugar in their own diets. They might not have realized that their 4 pm slump has to do with the soda they drank at lunch. Alot of times people don't realize how much they are affected by a certain food or drug until after they stop it. And even if one cupcake is fine, clearly many folks are eating one cupcake after having three sodas in a day. No individual food is so bad, it matters what kind of food-day in which it was eaten. But there is more attention being placed on soda as being a food to be vilified. Refined sugar is not needed in the diet. We can get all the glucose the body needs from other foods that have actual nutrients attached to them. And don't forget that that 40 teaspoons of sugar came from added sweeteners, not 100% juice, whole fruit, milk, or other foods that already contain naturally occurring sugars. Add in all those things and we are eating a whopping amount of sugar each day.

The body of evidence of fructose and sucrose's role in the rise of obesity is growing. And with more attention being placed on the need to eat more vegetables and nutrient dense foods, someday, those folks who angrily protested Mrs Q the other day will fall in line. We are now in a place where there is alot of doubt among the population about conventional nutritional wisdom, but not alot of studies done to test theories about sugar's effect on the body. And don't forget about an angry Sugar Lobby waiting in the wings to sue you if you publish any scientific data to the contrary.

I might not know exactly what it is about sugar that makes it bad for me. But I have enough bits of information plus my own experience. Our culture is one that relies on scientific studies in order to believe that something is true. But in the case of nutrition and nutritionism, I am not sure that we are ever going to get the study that we are looking for. In the mean time, I follow my gut. That is the closest thing to a traditonal food culture that I have at this point.

Kombucha, Finally

So by now I have teased you with two different Kombucha posts, but no actual tea. And just now I am finally brewing an actual batch!

I began rehydrating my starter culture about a month ago. Now the process gets to be ridiculously easy.

This week, to make my batch of Kombucha, I heated up a big pot of water on the stove. I then poured the water into a one gallon jar along with 8 tea bags and one cup of organic cane sugar. I have been told not to use whole sugar/ rapadura, brown sugar or honey. The thing that works the best is plain old white sugar. Once the tea has cooled completely (like 12 hours) I then poured my starter in, which includes my culture SCOBI and about two to three cups of kombucha.
Now, I wait. I will try my brew about once a week. As the tea brews longer it will become more sour, more fermented and less sweet. When I find a good ratio of sour to sweet I will stop. That is where things finally get interesting! Sadly, I thought I would be enjoying Kombucha on New Year's Eve. I am not sure if that is going to be possible now given the time. Sigh. Waiting makes the heart grow anxious.

Food is a Socio-Economic Problem, Part Two: How Processed Food Began

Food is a socio-economic problem. The more wealthy you are in the United States, the more likely that you will eat nutrient dense food. Poor nutrient quality food, excessive sugars and overly processed fats are omnipresent in the diet of low-income Americans. That is not to say that every person of meager means is eating a crappy diet of cola and fast food hamburgers. So no need to write me any letters scathing me for being elitist. But being low income increases the likelihood that you will be eating lousy food, simply for financial reasons.

I have been interested in how we got here. If you read Fast Food Nation then you know the story about McDonald's being started in Southern California by the McDonald's brothers. They had a restaurant or two, were making a good living flipping burgers. And they ordered a ton of ice cream mixers made for milkshakes. The mixer salesman was so intrigued by the large mixer orders that he went down to check the place out and he discovered a gem. Ray Kroc was the mixer salesman and shortly after meeting the McDonald brothers he bought them out. Now I wrote that from memory, and I read the book 6 years ago, so please correct me if I am wrong. But I tell the story because how does something grow from a fun diner you hang out with your friends to becoming the nations largerest purchaser of beef and potatoes? How did they go from being a charming burger stand to a national pariah sickening hundreds of thousands with their low quality fare?

My honest opinion? It wasn't their fault. I cannot blame McDonald's for being McDonald's. And in my mind it isn't even them that is the problem. They are part of the problem, one finger of a national body of problems that is our sickened food culture. But I repeat, how did we get here? How did we go from homemade healthful food to soda and fake food in a mere 100 years? Baby steps, baby steps.

I have been reading an interesting book recently: Something for the Oven by Laura Shapiro. The book examines food in the 1950's, largely from the perspective of the women cooking it, but also with a fair amount of company insight. I admit, when I began reading I had some preconceived notions about how processed food evolved. I thought (as I bet 90% of you guys do) that processed foods like TV Dinners and cake mixes began when our environment began to modernize and consumers began to demand faster products. But Shapiro corrects me. That wasn't exactly how it happened, that is just what the food marketers want you to believe.

In the beginning of the 20th century the average homecook was spending virtually all her food dollar on food that she prepared from scratch. If she lived in the country, she was shopping locally, gardening and canning much of what she grew. She was doing alot of work, defeathering chickens, fileting her own meats, trimming and washing all her vegetables, etc. Major advances in freezing (I'll write about that later) and canning created companies that had vision for America. Food companies realized the potential for their time savers: frozen spinach that was washed and chopped and ready to use, canned macaroni and cheese, complete dinners prepared and frozen solid? Many manufacturers assumed that this would be something that the average housewife could not resist! More leisure time? Yes, please!

But the average housewife did not care for the first processed foods. However in a sea of canned hamburgers and frozen tasteless peas, there were certain stand out favorites. TV Dinners eventually took off, but the average family reported using them for a meal fix. For example she might buy them for the children to be eaten on a night that husband and wife were going out rather than far Sunday dinner or when you had company coming over. Other products also took off, frozen orange juice concentrate, cakes mixes, etc. After reading the book what stands out to me is that the products that took off were products that tasted reasonably good and replaced very time consuming things that most women really hated doing, like juicing oranges and baking cakes. If you think about it, these products are largely unnecessary, yet making them is difficult. I like having dessert at a meal, but if I am too busy I simply will omit it. For a food company, making dessert easy makes it more likely that someone will prepare it (or buy it) at all.

It steamed the early food companies that women looked down upon ready made food like a second class citizen. If you really wanted to show your love for your family, you made a from scratch dinner. You didn't open up a can and just throw it onto a plate. Most women liked cooking above other household duties, and early processed foods took away their most pleasurable chore. And if it didn't taste good why on earth would you accept that? Not to mention that many women experienced guilt in serving food that was so easy to prepare. The food companies knew that these issues were inhibiting sales. So they worked hard on their marketing.

Glamorizing was the tool that food companies latched onto that really helped sales. Glamorizing is what takes time saving into the socio-economic realm. Glamorizing is the art of taking a simple box of cake mix and dressing it up with homemade frosting and fresh fruit, for example. A woman could buy canned soup and add a little cream and voila! A homemade delicacy that required real creative ingenuity! This is where processed foods finally found their niche and acceptance. For the homemaker, the guilt was removed, because she was contributing to the final product. Now a cake mix could be used for company, because the cake could be adorned with coconut, or pecans or whatever! Food companies heavily marketed glamorizing to low and middle income women, because it allowed them access to the other food trends of the 1950's, cooking with wine and cognac or more difficult french recipies, all that were time consuming and challenging. Shapiro states "Glamorizing sounded expensive, but it was utterly democratic".

Once the door had been opened for packaged and processed foods, their rise to the top could finally begin. "As the concept of easy haute cuisine spread from kitchen to kitchen, often via pantry shelf items, it banished the dowdy image of packaged foods and gave them a powerful boost toward the ranks of company cooking", Shapiro states. I have mentioned before that the journey forward then becomes generational. Children of the Fifties remember the special occasions that they ate TV Dinners and they readily served them to their children. Their children of the Seventies and Eighties ate and loved processed foods, however they were expensive. But by the time they had children in the new century, that had changed and now delicious packaged fare was cheap. Not to mention that our lives are now filled with new activities like talking on cell phones and texting and Facebook! Who has time to cook anymore?

And by the time we got to this new century, there were few home cooks left to teach kids how to cook from scratch. My own mother "cooked from scratch" with canned vegetables. She is turning over in her grave right now because I have just told the world that she didn't cook from scratch. But truthfully, while my mother did cook from scratch to the best of her ability, she bought such fine ingredients as Velveeta Cheese and Tater Tots and Crisco Vegetable Shortening. I always had a hot (and usually homemade) dinner on the table every night, but we ate the same way as other middle-class Americans did. With no Internet, we didn't have the knowledge that certain groups of people were starting to see that this fake food was hurting us.

Food is a socio-sconomic problem. It always has been, since the days when being poor meant being hungry, to today where being poor means that you are more likely to be diabetic. Our culture needs to be examined. We seriously need to look at our taste buds, our food policies and our defense of all things drive through and fastfastfast! This is a bigger problem than just McDonald's and soda. It is a cultural issue.

Winter CSA Share # 2

Oops. I never told you about the start of our Winter CSA share.

I got my first CSA Winter Share the day before we left for Morocco. I got the email from the farm and said "Oh S***!!" We had so much to do, and I guess that picking up vegetables from Ft Tryon Park was one more thing we had to add to the list. Fortunately winter vegetables store well, so when we arrived home 8 days later everything was still fresh and we ate them just like we always would.

The second share arrived today and it consisted of 2 delicata squashes, a netted bag of potatoes, a plastic bag of carrots (and 3-4 of what looked like parsnips), a netted bag of red onions, a plastic bag of leeks, a large bag of apples, some trimmed yukina and some dark red lettuce. and what I think is a sugar pumpkin, though I can't be 100% sure. The amount, just like last month is good for a once a month delivery. Actually last month every single thing got consumed (even the beets!!) I have full faith that we will get to everything before it goes bad.

Okay-confession time: I have been buying alot of out of season vegetables. I assume that they have been trucked into New York from far flung places, and a few might have possibly been flown in. I don't feel good about it, but I am not exactly doing much about it.

I have a couple of rules, I won't buy berries in the winter, because I know that they will either be terrible, gassed to make them vibrantly colored, or they will flown in from South America. And that is too far for me. I won't buy tomatoes in the winter, mostly for the gassing reason. But also because winter tomatoes taste awful. It just isn't right. I have been buying oranges, which technically are in season, but only somewhere far far from where I live. The kids love them and they are a special treat. They especially love the mandarins with the soft wrinkly skins and the leaves still attached. I have also been buying cucumbers and spinach. The cucumbers are probably where I have been feeling the most guilt. Cucumbers have no place in my kitchen right now. They are a true summer food, and the cukes I have been getting are kind of lousy. They are definitely hothouse cucumbers, and they don't seem firm and fresh like my summertime CSA varieties. However, my kids are eating fewer veggies these days. But they both like cucumbers. And they are a good stand in for other more gluten-ey snacks so I will allow them in my fridge this winter.

Overall we are all eating more meat and more potatoes and rice this winter (uggh, winter hasn't even really begun). I keep trying to make winter veggies, but whether it is pumpkins, squash, leeks, parsnips, turnips or curly kale, I can't find a winter veggie that my kids like. We are traversing a particularly picky place right now. So I am just trying to keep gluten down and whole foods up. So far we are staying on track with getting real food meals on the table and keeping prepared ingredients/ foods at bay. And both the kids are still loving my pumpkin pie smoothies and carrot stick. So they are getting veggies. Thank God for carrots!

If anyone has any kid friendly recipes for winter veggies let me know! I am ready to throw in the towel and just give them three smoothies a day. Only that might undermine the whole "solid food" thing. Ha!

Inspired by Nature

It is a delight to find beauty in nature no matter what the season.  Of course, I suppose it depends on your perspective of beauty.  For me this time of year it can be the silhouette of a deciduous tree’s branches against a grey sky ... or the pale brown leaves of American Beech (Fagus grandifolia) that remain on the young trees in a wooded area.  

The view from my back deck today

 

These images and many others come back to me when I’m deciding what to plant in my own yard.  I remember the silhouette of the large tree’s branches, and I am inspired to include some trees - like oaks - that will one day be large enough to create that effect.  I remember the leaves of the young beech trees, and I promise myself to rescue a few beech trees on my next rescue so that I can add some more to my yard.  Those leaves that stay in winter provide movement when the wind blows as well as some measure of privacy.  By late winter, they have faded to the color of antique lace, gracefully enrobing the branches.

Nature has some really good ideas!  This picture helps me remember that moss glows like a jewel in the wintertime, providing color and life in an otherwise brown winter landscape.  It helps me remember that I need to let moss grow where it plants itself, and I need to move bits of it into new places so that I can have more of these cheery patches of green.  Moss is also a great “nursery” plant, allowing the seeds of other plants to stay moist and fostering germination.

Sedum ternatum in moss

 

This picture reminds me to leave things where they land.  This log is sporting a healthy crop of moss, allowing it to become a nursery log.  The decomposing wood will feed thousands of insects, support the growth of fungi, and might be a home for small mammals.

 

These two pictures show me that plants naturally spring up in the oddest of places: this is Rue Anemone (Thalictrum thalictroides) next to a moss covered root

Rue Anemone (Thalictrum thalictroides)

Trillium luteum

and Yellow trillium (Trillium luteum) sprouting up from a clutch of rocks.  If I want to recreate some of nature’s good ideas, these are the concepts to remember. 

Here is a picture that challenged my perception of color combinations.  I don’t know that I would have put these plants together on my own, but they looked fabulous together when I came across them on a field trip to the Pocket in North Georgia.  The red/yellow flower is Red Columbine (Aquilegia canadensis), the purple flower is Scorpion-weed (Phacelia bipinnatifida) and there is a white flowering Sedum ternatum in there as well.

Scorpion-weed, Red Columbine and Sedum

 

I hope that you might consider that nature can inspire you too.  Take pictures to help you remember how a tumble of lichen-covered rocks on the trail looked so picturesque and how that sweep of ferns around the bend was just right.  Find a way to incorporate those ideas into your landscape and bring a bit of nature home with you.

Winter's Holiday

At this time of year I take a winter holiday for rest and reflection. We truly thank you for all of your support over the many years we have been providing Natural Health News in its various forms. 

In 2011 we will begin the 8th year of the blog, and the 12th year of Natural Health News.  I hope you'll join me when I return in January with the many new things planned to come from Creating Health Institute and The Oake Centre for natural health education, Simply4Health.

To borrow words from a friend:   

Sing Joy, Live Peace 

I wish you all, in whatever way you celebrate this season, 

the very best of everything. 

Peace & health in the coming New Year.

The Case of a Sequestered Mind

11 Jan, 2011 -  The list of psychopharmaceutical chemicals forced on my mother included Zyprexa, Celexa, Neurontin, Depakote, and Ativan,  Mind you, my mother suffered a closed head injury in 2003 and developed expressive aphasia.  She was never evaluated by a neurologist as I requested, nor did she have rehab or speech therapy. The drug interaction profile will tell you that many of these are NOT supposed to be given together, and the research tells you that Zyprexa is not for Elders, especially women. My younger brother, a MetLife salesman, refused to act to create a more beneficial care plan for her.


Now, a new report has been issued regarding new findings that many "prescriptions for the top-selling class of drugs, known as atypical antipsychotic medications, lack strong evidence that the drugs will actually help" and they are costing billions and "serious effects as weight gain, diabetes and heart disease..."

Too late for my mother, but not too late for you.




December 18, 2010 - Please refer to this recent Natural Health News post: Drug Death FDA and YOU http://naturalhealthnews.blogspot.com/2010/12/drug-death-fda-and-you.html


Truth telling seems to be the Mode O'Day with WikiLeaks being front and center in the news. In some small way this is one of my WikiLeak-type stories -

Imagine losing your ability to communicate following a closed head injury.  Imagine knowing that excellent neurological care is locally available in your community but the person with Power of Attorney over your care refuses a family member’s request to take you there.

On the surface this sounds cruel at the very least.  In the depths of this many-year saga it is very ugly.

Just the other day I was working on some drug information for a client in my Health Forensics® program.

At the same time I was listening to a very good discussion of problems with health care in the US, especially drugs that kill about 300,000 people annually, and posted an informative article on the subject to my blog.

This topic is very important to me because a related event happened in my family.

Given the fact I grew up I a medical family I had a different involvement than this brother, younger by seven years.  I went in to the medical field; he is a commissioned salesperson for a major insurance company offering annuities and mutual funds.

Sometime early in 2003, although I have never been told the exact date, my mother suffered a closed head injury. From what information I was able to scout out there was no definitive proof whether my mother fell and hit her head or experienced a stroke.

This brother was given power of attorney as the youngest, so my mother explained. When my mother called me to tell me this both my youngest daughter and I expressed concerns.  We suggested someone outside the family would be best.

As PoA, my brother took more than three months to contact me to tell me about the event.  During this time he either sold or removed all of my mother’s belongings, or gave items to other family members.  He never asked me if there were things I wanted, or that my mother wanted me to have: there were. 

After a very brief sentence or two I was told that my mother was at the same place where she had been living since a year after my father died, except in the nursing home division.

Even though I was experiencing shock because of the way the information was manipulated, I managed to order flowers and sent a card to my mother.  I called the facility to and to further exasperate the situation, the so-called “nurse” had no idea my mother had a daughter, and there was no mention of me in any of my mother’s records.

I did however manage to get a list of the drugs being prescribed to my mother, and found out who the attending doctors were.

Now for the third shock wave!  The list of drugs was so egregious and inappropriate I could not grasp what was happening.  Other than this being the typical way nursing homes, even the “5 star” rated one like this place, do things.  I hoped I’d find otherwise.

I phoned the GP internist.  He was not used to being asked questions so he complained to my brother.

Then I phoned the psychiatrist (another red flag) to ask about the drugs he was prescribing, seven to be exact.  I asked how he was able to diagnose my mother’s condition if she was experiencing aphasia.  He could not answer yet gave a diagnosis of depression.  He also diagnosed leg pain but could not explain why he gave Neurontin to someone who could not tell him if she had this complaint. Neurontin causes garbled speech among its other wonderful side effects; are you thinking what I thought?

Aphasia is an acquired communication disorder that impairs a person's ability to process language, but does not affect intelligence. Aphasia impairs the ability to speak and understand others, and most people with aphasia experience difficulty reading and writing. An Aphasia Therapy Program is an intensive communication program designed to improve communications skills, reconnect with those around them and attain a greater quality of life.  Based on recent studies, individuals with aphasia greatly benefit from treatment provided intensively over a short period of time. http://www.aphasia.org/docs/Bill%20of%20Rights.pdf 

I still couldn’t figure out why my mother did not have a neurologist as her primary provider.  When asked of the Director of Nursing, she said, “She had an MRI in the hospital, so she must have had one”.  She added later in our discussion that “…you know how those people are after they have a head injury” after I asked who was supplying prescription drugs to the facility and had they provided a drug interaction profile on the drugs prescribed for my mother.  She never answered this line of questions.

I ran a drug interaction profile the next day and again was shocked, so I called a colleague at the FDA who was one of their top pharmacologists.  He specialized in psychiatric drugs.

Politely he said, “This combination would knock out a healthy 30 year old!” and went on to express his real concerns.

I passed this on to my brother and asked that he take her to the neurologist for a real evaluation and to see that she received proper care, including speech therapy. 

Even though for the last couple of years he rails that I was unwilling to collaborate, my brother refused to take my mother to one of the top neurologists in the country.  He refused!  His excuses were 1) he would have to pay for her transportation there (not more than 5 miles one way with a nurse to accompany her), and 2) the nurse told him he would have to move her if she came off the drugs.

Not too long after this my mother was taken to the hospital for hip surgery following a fall.  The nursing director told me my mother would never fall because she had a “lap buddy”. 

A “lap buddy” can be a restrain, which requires an order, and it is to help prevent falls.  Whatever form used on my mother obviously did not protect her from falling and fracturing her hip, forcing her to be hospitalized and undergo surgery.

Now on opiates for pain, on top of her other sedating drugs (often used for staff convenience) what might be next?

The facility stopped sending me the drug data after this event.  To this day I still do not know if the Zyprexa given to my mother caused her to become diabetic.  My brother ignored the warning for suicidal ideation associated with Celexa (he believed drugs were necessary because my mother “tried to jump out a window”).  He too ignored the information I sent him stating clearly that Zyprexa is not for use with elderly patients, especially elderly women, and is a known cause of diabetes.

My little brother sees me as a trouble maker.  I see him as the thief who stole my mother’s mind.

If this is trouble making then I’m happy to continue providing Health Forensics® to all of the people who depend on me to help them understand the problems and nutritional deficiencies caused by drugs.

There is much more to this story.  I may tell it in the future.

DECEMBER 17, 2010,

What Happens When the Elderly Are Prescribed Antidepressants?

http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2010/12/17/what-happens-when-the-elderly-are-prescribed-antidepressants/

By Katherine Hobson

When you’re taking a lot of prescription medications, as many older adults do, there’s the potential for trouble.

An analysis of Medicare claims for 39,512 patients newly prescribed an antidepressant finds within a year, about a quarter filled other prescriptions for different antidepressants or other drugs that raised their risk for a major interaction. About 36% filled prescriptions for drugs that could cause moderate interactions, and about 39% filled prescriptions for drugs that risked minor or no complications.

More than 30% of those potentially major interactions involved pain meds, notably tramadol and oxycodone, according to the study, which was led by researchers from Thomson Reuters and published in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

The analysis also found that side effects can play a role in adherence; less than half of the Medicare enrollees who had documented side effects within a month of starting an antidepressant filled a second prescription for the drug. And about a fourth who had documented side effects ceased taking antidepressants altogether.

This is only a piece of the much bigger issue of how — and what — to prescribe to the elderly. A study published earlier this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine examined the safety of painkillers in older people and found that opioids raised the risk of adverse events compared to non-selective non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen. Here’s the WSJ story on the study.

In a JAMA commentary published in October, Jerry Avorn, of Harvard Medical School and Brigham & Women’s Hospital, calls medication use in older people “arguably the single most important health care intervention in the industrialized world.” He says the U.S. health-care system needs to change to address the issue, including a greater emphasis in medical education on prescribing to the elderly, better representation of older patients in clinical trials and more coordinated care.

Note:  Some years ago I had the wonderful experience of working with a chemist who had some 47 patents to his name.  I came to know him because my business had done some work at his home, and I later asked him to analyze a compound I was interested in manufacturing.  He had expressive aphasia resulting from a stroke.  With his cooperation, his wife’s help, and some ingenuity, we designed a program for him. He regained speech; something my brother never let my mother experience.


I've served in executive positions in nursing homes.  I understand the games that are played, especially when corporations look for profit over people.  I have been a whistleblower in several Federal Elder care fraud cases. A reason why I am unwilling to sell my soul for a paycheck as I felt was an issue at the Naples FL facility where my mother was sequestered for the last silenced six years of her life.


Neuroprotective Compounds