Big Pharma Disease Mongering?

Can’t say I’m surprised by this.  Related to that, if you work in an academic setting, you'll find plenty of students who suddenly are able to find a health care professional to diagnose them with a "learning disability" requiring "accommodation" (and medication - amphetamine stimulants - in many cases) once they fail some classes.  Interestingly, the same students who were straight-A students as college undergraduates mysteriously develop a "learning disability" in their early-mid 20s (or later) once they have problems with difficult courses in some sort of post-graduate education.

The pharmaceutical industry’s image has been significantly damaged in recent years as the public discovered the role its aggressive marketing played in fueling the opioid epidemic. But the American people are still largely in the dark about what may be pharma’s most effective tactic for pushing drugs — marketing diseases.

There’s a substantial body of medical literature dating back to the early ’90s about the practice known as “disease mongering.” Pharmaceutical companies regularly pathologize everyday experiences, convince doctors that they are serious problems, tell a hypochondriacal public it needs help and offers the cure: a new drug. Against the onslaught of billions of dollars in marketing campaigns each year, however, researchers’ warnings about these tactics have gone largely unheeded…

 …“Marketing for a drug can start seven to 10 years before they go on the market. Because it’s illegal to promote a drug before it goes on the market, what they’re promoting is the disease. That’s not illegal to do because there’s no regulation on creating diseases,” Fugh-Berman told Yahoo News.

Lisa Schwartz and Steven Woloshin, co-directors of the Center for Medicine and Media at Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, said disease-awareness campaigns may seem caring or educational but are often just marketing in disguise. The campaigns often follow three basic steps: lower the bar for diagnosis, raise the stakes so people want to get tested and spin the evidence about a drug’s benefits and risks. These steps were seen in campaigns on testosterone deficiency, bipolar disorder and restless leg syndrome…

…Fugh-Berman recalled taking an online test with her coworkers at PharmedOut, a group she directs at Georgetown that exposes pharmaceutical marketing and promotes evidence-based prescribing. The test on pseudobulbar affect (PBA), which manifests when specific brain damage leads to laughing or crying that is inappropriate and unconnected to a person’s emotions, suggested that normal human expressions could be signs of PBA with questions like “Do you ever find things funny that other people don’t find funny?” and “Do you cry easily?”

“Almost every woman failed. Only one woman passed. Most of the men failed, but more of them passed. I would say that anyone who passed the test I was actually worried about,” Fugh-Berman said…

… “I feel that there are people involved in creating new diseases and promoting drugs that aren’t really needed who are pretty amoral. Their measurement of success for themselves is strictly sales,” Pearson said. “There are good-spirited and good-hearted people in companies who are proud of developing something that provides help to some people — and then their marketing department gets ahold of it and turns it into something else.”

BOOST YOUR BRAIN: SKIP THE DRUGS, EXERCISE INSTEAD

He has done it again. 

The anonymous author of the YouTube channel What I've Learned has uploaded another brilliant video. This time it is on exercise and what exercise does for your brain, WHY Exercise is so Underrated (Brain Power & Movement Link).
 
I would suggest that you also check the website of the author, as the transcripts of the What I've Learned videos are posted there.

For more information on the topic, read my previous post, Jumping jacks or medications. I recently re-read it, and I realized that I was naïve when advising my readers under Actionable, “Dear doctors, instead of ADHD medications, would you please prescribe jumping jacks to our children?”

Why is this naïve? Because the frightening truth is that your doctors might be on the same medications themselves. I have had numerous conversations with medical students who have seen the inner works of clinical practices and I assure you that not only the medical students, but also some of the young MDs are “enhancing” their everyday professional performance with drugs. 

Therefore, do not expect that the doctors will help you overcome your dependence on pharmaceuticals. You have to take care of yourself. The more you know about psychotropic drugs, the better you will protect yourself.

JUST NOTHING: Mind the human limits

We all know and feel the physical limits of our bodies; however, we rarely recognize and admit to the limits of our brains. 

We, as adults, make this mistake, and what is worse, we expect that our children should do the same - they should sit in school for eight hours a day without losing their focus. At the same time, we are certain that after one to two hours of intense physical activity the same kids are tired, and need at least 20 minutes of rest. So, why cannot we apply the same logic to any intensive brain activity?  

According to this article, our brains have two modes: the “focused mode,” which we use when we learn, write, calculate, or analyze something, and the “diffuse mode,” which is relaxed, day-dreaming mode when we do not think (hard). Contrary to our expectations, it seems that our intellectual potential is not achieved without the diffuse mode. In fact, the diffuse mode correlates with increased activity in the brain, as revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging (the images show how the brain “lights up” during the diffuse mode).  

The daydreaming/diffuse mode has been utilized by scientists and artists in the past when they needed to solve  problems. For example, Thomas Edison, known for his many inventions, tried to relax to overcome a problem in his work. He would do this by switching to diffuse brain mode by getting into a state of almost falling asleep: he would doze while clutching a handful of ball-bearings. As soon as he went into too deep a sleep, his hand would relieve the grip and the noise of the falling ball-bearings would wake him up. In this relaxed state he would frequently find whatever solution he was searching for. 

Similarly, the artist Salvador Dali took a spoon in his hand when he relaxed on a chair; the moment he went napping, the spoon would fall and wake him up. This was the time when he could resume his creative work with fresh images and ideas.  Even we sometimes unintentionally benefit from the diffuse brain mode: probably all of us have had an eureka moment while relaxing under the shower or when waking up from sleep.  

There are different recommendations on how much time of diffuse mode we need per hour of focused mode, but it seems that the human brain thrives on one hour on, and 15 minutes off schedule.   Who knew that doing nothing, thinking about nothing, buying nothing, and even eating nothing is so beneficial?  

Actionable 
Allow yourself to daydream and do nothing.

Jumping jacks or medications

Have you seen the hilarious comments of sir Ken Robinson on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in America? If not, watch RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms at approximately minute 3:40.

Can you imagine the following description of the human evolution: “Our predecessors evolved by sitting for hours and listening to the speeches of their tribal leaders. In fact, our predecessors rarely engaged in any physical activity. The children and adolescents occasionally (once or twice weekly) practiced hunting for 45 minutes, but for the rest of the time they sat and listened to the adults preaching them about many unrelated to life things.” 

Wait a minute! This is not how Homo sapiens developed! However, the fact that our children sit through hours of lessons in school means that our current educational system has gone against the very evolutionary mechanisms that allowed us to become humans. My child (and I assure you, your child) sits, listens or watches something for more than 12 hours every day. Our brain did not evolve to be occupied for 12 hours with listening, reading and learning, and our body did not evolve to be unused and restrained for 12 hours every day. ADHD is the result of our crime against our bodies and brains. 

What are the results of this crime? Here are some shocking facts from the Centers of Disease Control: Recent surveys asked parents whether their child received an ADHD diagnosis from a health care provider. The results show that:

• Approximately 11% of children 4-17 years of age (6.4 million) have been diagnosed with ADHD as of 2011.

• The percentage of children with an ADHD diagnosis continues to increase, from 7.8% in 2003 to 9.5% in 2007 and to 11.0% in 2011.

• Rates of ADHD diagnosis increased an average of 3% per year from 1997 to 2006 and an average of approximately 5% per year from 2003 to 2011.

• Boys (13.2%) were more likely than girls (5.6%) to have ever been diagnosed with ADHD.

• The average age of ADHD diagnosis was 7 years of age, but children reported by their parents as having more severe ADHD were diagnosed earlier.

• Prevalence of ADHD diagnosis varied substantially by state, from a low of 5.6% in Nevada to a high of 18.7% in Kentucky.

One of the many consequences of this ADHD obsession is that in adulthood, the number of stimulant misusers addicted to ADHD medications has been increasing. The drug supply has risen sharply: about 2.6 million American adults received ADHD medication in 2012, a rise of 53% in four years. Use of ADHD medications among adults 26- to 34-year old has almost doubled.  
Actionable
Dear doctors, instead of ADHD medications, would you please prescribe jumping jacks to our children? Dear federal government, instead of being blind to the drugging of our children, would you require the school system to offer time and space for the prescribed jumping jacks? By the way, sir Ken Robinson suggested that we offer dances instead of jumping. I agree, a daily dose of dancing might be better.