By bsekula, on January 19th, 2011
Let’s get going again. First of all,
Happy New Year!
My last post, 2-week hiatus turned into a 2-month hiatus. Yeesh. There are many reasons for this (but two main ones) and I’ll touch on them below.
Server Upgrades
This was the initial reason for downtime. I had ignored repeated warnings from my host about old and out-of-date software. This came to a head when we needed to upgrade the software for the Becoming Indestructible program. Left with no other choice, the upgrade was needed.
Because the server was completely upgraded, I had to reinstall wordpress. You will likely have to update your feed settings. On a related note, many comments languished in comment purgatory. I’m pretty confident most of them were backed up and recently posted. If you made a comment that wasn’t posted, please submit your comment again. It’s gone now, sorry.
The good news is that everything . . . → Read More: Time to Reset
By bsekula, on October 12th, 2010
Last year I posted two articles on the top 10 generic and non-generic drugs of 2008. Massive cash flow through the pharmaceutical industry and most of it because the “prescriptions” were for lifestyle related behaviors was a real eye-opener. It was also shameful.
This year I’m doing follow-up posts and we’re starting with this one, the Top 10 non-generic (Branded) prescription drugs of 2009. We’ll start with a simple display, taking a look at the changes from ’08 to ’09. As you may recall, the number one selling non-generic drug in 2008 was Lipitor, with 49.0 million prescriptions and nearly $6 billion in sales. Staggering. So, did we see any changes? Let’s take a look.
Note: I changed the layout of the table. There are now 5 columns, with the two new ones being Rank and Sales. The first column, #, just lists the position of the drug. The second column, Drug Name, . . . → Read More: Top 10 Prescription Drugs of 2009: Non-generic
By bsekula, on November 21st, 2009
We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming (Top 10 non-generic and generic prescription drugs) to bring you this, what appears to be a concerted effort on the part of Big Pharma to keep their precious statins high on the list of prescribed drugs. (can you blame them? Between Lipitor and Simvistatin you’re looking at 109.2 million prescriptions and $7.4 billion in sales per year!).
In case you haven’t heard, statins and big pharma took it on the chin in a new study from the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The results showed niacin was significantly more effective at reducing carotid artery plaque than statins alone. In fact, results showed plaque continuing to grow in the statins only group while regressing in the niacin group. I’m not going to detail the study and author’s conclusions, Dr. Eades has done a wonderful job of that.
I’m not even going to get into . . . → Read More: statins and niacin … a concerted effort?
By bsekula, on November 9th, 2009
In last weeks post I detailed the Top 10 prescription drugs for the US in 2008. And since I was half-way through before realizing it was non-generic only, I decided to complete it and follow up with this one.
In a follow-up post I’m going to get into the metrics a little more, comparing generic and non-generic.
Let me preface the descriptive nature of this post by saying it’s amazing we prescribe drugs at this rate. I knew we took too many prescription drugs. I knew we were too dependent on them. But actually looking at this data and what it says sheds light on the extent of the problem, which is why I’m writing a follow-up. So on with this one…
Forty percent of non-generic drugs are related, one way or another, to hyperinsulinemia. For generic drugs, it’s 50% and for the same conditions – metabolic syndrome. Table 1 shows . . . → Read More: Top 10 Generic Drugs in 2008
By bsekula, on November 2nd, 2009
Most people I work with are significantly overweight – average weight > 300 pounds. As you might expect, all have a cluster of metabolic disorders. Coincident with their condition, they take a laundry list of prescription medications. In general the lists are nearly identical and include prescriptions for hypertension, diabetes, cholesterol and digestive disorders.
Given this, I assumed their laundry list was similar to that of the general public. So I went looking for the top 10 prescription drugs of 2008 to see if my thoughts would be confirmed.
Finding the Data. I scoured the FDA website and could find nothing (for some reason, I thought the organization in charge of controlling this industry might track this stuff – go figure). I decided to contact them by phone and the person I spoke with (after about 3 minutes of menu clicks – seriously), directed me to drugtopics.com . . . → Read More: Top Prescription Drugs in 2008
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