HealthyConcerns.com

Pharmaceutical marketing costs

So I didn't want to mix this in with my book review, but I was blown away by one sidebar in the Know Your Bones book I read this weekend. It dealt with how much pharmaceutical companies spend on advertising and marketing.

Taking her data from an IMS Health Special Report as seen in Pharmaceutical Executive magazine in 09/01, she noted that in the year 2000 the pharmaceutical industry spent $16 Billion dollars on promotion, $2.5 Billion of which was direct-to-consumer. (Which means, if you do the math, that they spent over $13 Billion dollars marketing drugs to the medical industry...you know the people who are supposed to prescribe the best drug for what ails you.) The same report indicated that the industry employed 81% more people in marketing than in research.

This blows my mind. Read on for more...I even did a little independent research!

Healthy Story: Even those with group coverage have a coverage story

People without health insurance, or with individual (and usually expensive) coverage they pay for themselves think that getting coverage through you employer is the holy grail. But even having coverage through your employer is not without its frustrations.

Take FellowAllergySufferer (I'll call him FAS.)

He's insured at a small company here in the valley. But like every other small company, this one is always looking for ways to save money on the health benefit expenditures. And for this company that has meant changing carriers twice in the last three years. Blue Cross to Blue Shield, and then back again...each time because the carrier threw in incentives to win their business.

Well, FAS has just a teeny problem with all this changing around. Can you guess...?

Book Review: Know Your Bones

Routine Disclaimer: Yes, I received a review copy of this book. No, I get nothing if you decide to buy the book.

There is a history of arthritis in my family. My grandmother spent literally the last 10 years of her life bedridden from arthritis and often in constant pain. It didn't help that her stomach was extremely sensitive to many of the prescribed pain medications, and that she also ended up with high blood pressure from some of her medications too.

So when blogging colleague Yvonne DiVita asked if I would be interested in reviewing a book about Arthritis, I figured it was probably a good idea, and something I ought to start thinking about now.

Know Your Bones: Making Sense of Arthritis Medicine by Stephanie E. Siegrist, M.D. is an exceedingly simple, clear handbook focused on osteo-arthritis (as opposed to rheumatoid) and the various methods to control and treat the symptoms. There is no actual cure for arthritis, so the book is about managing pain at all its levels, from mild to debilitating.

A quick review of the Table of Contents illustrates exactly how well this book is aimed at people like me...laypeople doing our own research. Each chapter, dedicated to a different segment of arthritis medications or treatment, is laid out in exactly the same way, answering the same questions.

This structure makes the book well-suited as a reference guide, perfect for looking up the latest medication your doctor suggested and flipping right to its chapter. It's less fascinating as a one-time, sit-down, read-it-all-through afternoon read!

I learned a lot, though, reading this book...and in fact got some new insights into the various problems my grandmother had in her last decade.

More on Know Your Bones...

You really will go blind!

Or, I'm just contributing to the general media over-reaction to this story.

What story? Come now, you must have heard that some Viagra takers are literally going blind! It's been all over the news.

I realize this is no laughing matter to the guys who have been impacted, although I'm sure that's not stopping Jay Leno and the like.

Meanwhile MedPundit steps in to take the FDA and all of us to task for jumping to the conclusions that we are.

I'm sure MedPundit realizes that we certainly wouldn't care about a side effect that occurred in 50 out of 20 million cases unless it was something so poetically full of schadenfreude as this.

I wonder if men who fear continued Viagra use will be helped by this new condom that comes with (gotta love this term) an "erectogenic compound?

Too many Claritin = heart attacks???

Last night I went to the theatre at a little place called the Bus Barn Theatre in Los Altos. It is literally a refurbished building where they used to house city buses. Midway through the second act my sinuses kicked in something fierce. I would guess that their air conditioning was on and was circulating some dust, pollen or mold that got to me.

A conversation about allergies ensued with some friends at the show who are also suffering this season, and one friend told me he had taken to taking a second Claritin later in the day.

He also told me that he told a pharmacist friend of his that he was doing that, and that she freaked out saying "What? Do you want a heart attack??? Never take more than 10 mg in a day!"

Here's what Rite-Aid's site says about Claritin, it doesn't sound quite as dramatic as Friend's Pharmacist.

Then again, the friend is an actor...so maybe he was the one being dramatic :)

I should have him ask his friend what she thinks of a Claritin in the morning and another OTC antihistamine later in the day.

Healthy Story: In the end...you have to be in charge

Recently my mom had an abnormal reading in her routine blood work. Her doctor sent her off to a hematologist, and my mom was understandably concerned.

The specialist really didn't think it was anything serious, but to be safe he ordered a new set of blood work, a new urinalysis, and he told her he was going to send her for an X-ray of her bones...just to be safe. The code on the form said METS...which meant exactly nothing to my Mom.

At the radiologist the got her all prepped...and X-rayed her hand, lying flat.

She thought it was maybe a bit odd, but after all, one's hands are chock full o' bones, so it made a certain kind of sense.

Or did it...

Healthy Story: My friend the soon-to-be starving artist

Had dinner tonight with a friend I've known for about 8 years and haven't seen in probably at least 2. He's quite a bit younger than me, almost 15 years younger, and just graduated from college last spring.

With a BFA in Theatre. (Little known fact about me...I was a theatre major too.)

Now, unlike me, ActorMan went to a teeny tiny college with only 700 students, so unlike me...he had no access to a student health center or medical services. And because he went to this BFA program after a few years of working and going to a junior college, he was already a little long in the tooth, college-age wise. After 25 you are no longer a dependent as far as his parents' carrier is concerned, so a couple of years ago he landed without any health plan, but still going to school.

And the immediate post-graduation future didn't look too promising from that perspective either, because as ActorMan put it: graduating with a theatre degree doesn't prepare you for the kind of job that gives health coverage.

The ActorMan story continues...

Not exactly "health"-related, but...

Yes, this is pure vanity, not health-related, but I have to ask people about these Crest White-Strips.

Feeling that years of coffee drinking had had an adverse effect on my once-pearly whites, I bought a $30 box of these White Strips thinking, what the heck, why not?

Yesterday I took out these flimsy, gel-covered plastic things and put them on the teeth...and after about 10 seconds felt so grossed out I had to get them out of my mouth like right that second.

Do people really sit around with their mouth full of this chemically goo for 30 minutes without feeling like they're going to hurl? I mean I realize I might be a little over-sensitive, but I found it truly nasty.

Does it work better if you only do one set at a time, rather than a whole mouthful?

What's the secret here? Because I fear I have just thrown $30 down the drain.

Wild Mood Swings

I just read a New York Times editorial by doctor/author Robin Cook and think I'm suffering from whiplash.

Apparently Cook has always been against health insurance except for "catastrophic care and the very poor", but the sequencing of the human genome has convinced Cook that we need a full-on government-run, single-payer, non-profit system that pools the whole nation.

Seriously, I am happy to find a positive justification for improving our health care system...but does anyone else get why this is it?

Note to Self: Self-medication...bad!

So I mentioned my allergies. They've been bad.

So I've been taking my Claritin every morning...then I've been taking whatever OTC allergy medication is handy when I'm feeling miserable later in the day. I freely admit I've got a little bit of this and a little bit of that lying around. I got the Benadryl upstairs, I got the Tylenol Allergy in my purse. Whatever...I've been taking it.

Two nights ago I was so miserable I barely slept, so last night despite utter exhaustion which should have, on its own, guaranteed a good night's sleep, I decided that I ought to take an Ambien just to be sure I got some sleep.

So, how did I feel today? ...