Are You Addicted to Drugs?

If you live in a developed country, you probably are addicted to drugs - prescription drugs. The average number of prescription drugs prescribed annually has almost doubled over the past ten years in the UK, US and Canada, with the elderly being responsible for much of this rise. For example, in 2007 the average Briton over 60 received 42.4 prescription items annually compared to 22.3 in 1997. The rise in North America has been similar. The use of non-prescription over-the-counter drugs will add to these numbers.

So when I suggest that you are addicted to drugs, it's not a physical addiction I am referring to, but a psychological addiction to using a pill as a response to a problem. If you have a headache, can't stay awake and alert or can't sleep, take a pill. There is a pill for everything that ails us, and if there is not one yet, there will be soon as the pharmaceutical industry strives to meet our every need.

So what is the problem with using prescription and over-the-counter drugs? There are a number of problems, not the least of which is that the leading cause of death in the US is properly prescribed medications. Death can result from unwanted effects of medication (also known as side-effects), or from an interaction between two or more medications.

Why do these happen so frequently that they kill more people than cancer or heart disease? It's because new drugs are not generally tested on large numbers of people – a few thousand at most, and sometimes less than a thousand – and are not monitored after release. National Drug Agencies rely on patients or doctors voluntarily reporting an adverse reactions to the drug. Except in very obvious cases like Thalidomide, it takes many years to gather enough information to discover harmful effects. Sometimes these are discovered only when a further study is carried out.

For example, the Women's Health Initiative tested the effects of postmenopausal hormone therapy, diet modification, and calcium and vitamin D supplements on heart disease, fractures, and breast and colorectal cancer. Contrary to their expectations, post-menopausal estrogen and progestin therapy were shown to increase the risk of heart attack, stroke, blood clots, and breast cancer. As a result of these findings, the study was stopped in July 2002; the following year breast cancer in the US dropped by 7.2 percent!

If you must take prescription drugs, you can protect yourself somewhat by asking your physician to prescribe a drug that has been on the market for five years or longer. This will have allowed enough people to have taken it to identify the more serious side-effects. But first you should ask 'What other options besides drugs  are there to deal with this problem?' Often there are things you can do that do not involve medication. For example, if your cholesterol level is high you can make dietary changes.

Whenever possible you should do all you can to break your addiction to relying on drugs to solve your problems. There will be some conditions that require you to take a prescription drug, but there are many where changing your behaviour may actually get rid of a problem. Drugs generally just mask the symptoms, leaving the problem itself untouched. More on this in the next post. 

Photo credit: Rodrigo Senna

The Importance Of Keeping Commitments

Less than three weeks ago, many people made New Year's  Resolutions - commitments to themselves to achieve one or more goals this year.  How are you doing with yours?  Are you still working on them or have you already given up?

We make commitments all the time, often without giving them much thought.  People ask us to  do something for them, go somewhere with them, adhere to a standard, or keep a secret. We say 'Yes' then don't stick to the thing we agreed to.  Maybe we forgot, or it seemed like too much work, something better came along,or we thought it was not important.

It is always important to keep commitments, not only because if we don't others stop trusting us, but also because we lose trust in ourselves.

Without trust in ourselves we lose confidence that we will be able to set goals and meet them, or face disaster and come out the other side 'bloody but unbowed.'  The courage to face major challenges in life comes from knowledge that we can be trusted, and so can trust ourselves.  With each commitment we keep or renegotiate, our trust grows.

How to do this?.  First by considering any agreement before agreeing to it.  Find out what's involved and whether you are willing and able to do it. Don't say 'yes' unthinkingly.  You can also say 'no', or 'I won't do that, but I will do this.'

If  you make a commitment and later find you cannot keep it, renegotiate as soon as possible with the person you made the promise to. 

Start your practice by committing to small things first, then once you are keeping all these small committments, agree to larger ones.   Over time you will notice your awareness, self-confidence and self-trust growing, and others will likely respond to you differently as well.

If you have already given up on your New Year's Resolutions you can look carefully at what went wrong.  What held you back from working on your resolutions?  Were the goals wrong, or was the plan ineffective?

Then renegotiate with yourself. What will you do, or what won't you do now?  How will you handle these new committments to enhance your chance of keeping them? 

How will you handle it when you fall down on your promise to yourself?  Will you just give up, or will you realise that you are human and make mistakes.  Personal change can be difficult, and you may 'fail' several  times before you get it right.  Each time you try again with the intention to succeed, you are building muscle for the future.

If you have a story about your New Year's Resolutions, I would be happy to learn about it - just leave a comment.

United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen

Delegates from 192 countries, including the leaders of Nunuvut, the Yukon and the NWT, started meeting at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen today.  They are trying to craft a new deal to manage greenhouse gas emissions when the Kyoto Accord expires in 2012.  They will also develop funding mechanisms to help the poor and developing countries most vulnerable to climate change impact  to deal with rising sea levels, floods and drought.

People worldwide are beginningto take climate change seriously. In a surprise move, 56 newspapers from around the world ran the same editorial asking leaders to  limit the rise in temperature to two degrees centigrade to stop climate change from ravaging the planet.

A recent report from British Columbia showed that global warming is moving at a faster rate than expected in Northern Canada.  Air temperatures in the Arctic are rising  faster than in the rest of the world, and the summer sea-ice is expected to disappear within a decade, rather than by the end of the century as initially predicted. 

With carbon dioxide emissions 30 per cent higher than they were 17 years ago, one-and-a-half times as high as they were before the industrial revolution, glaciers retreating at an alarming rate, and sea-levels rising by 3-3.5 mm per year, it's obvious changes are needed, even though they may have a negative economic impact.  Climate change itself has already had such an impact in British Columbia where thousands of hectares of forest have been decimated by the mountain pine beetle, rendering these areas more susceptible to fire and flood as well as severely affecting the health of the forest industry.

Human health is also at risk from global warming.  In BC these will arise from a number of pathways.  A few of these are given below.

1. Resource-dependent communities (such as those reliant on forestry or fishing) are vulnerable to environmental and economic adversity arising from changes in their resource as a result of climate change.  They are also likely to be exposed an increased incidence of fire and floods.
2. The increase in forest fires, already noted in Western Canada, together with an increase in ozone from pollution as temperatures rise will lead to more respiratory ailments.  Rising temperatures will increase heat stress for urban dwellers, particularly those who are old or who have chronic diseases.
3. As temperatures rise, insects, animals and plants that carry disease will move into new areas or increase in number.  West Nile Virus, and possibly maleria, may become established in BC, while Hanta virus (from mice and rats) and the tick-borne Lyme disease are expected to expand northwards as winters get milder. 
4. As floods become more frequent, water-borne diseases and contamination of water will also increase.

These are just a few of the ways that climate change may impact health.  For more information, read the 2008 report Climate Change and Health in British Columbia.