Medical news you can use

age related macular degeneration can be slowed by new drugs.


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heroin dealer out of town? Not enough money to get high? Your grandmother no longer is given pain pills for you to steal?

No problem: Immodium works.

Uh OH: Problems.

Loperamide's accessibility, low cost, over-the-counter legal status and lack of social stigma all contribute to its potential for abuse," said lead study author William Eggleston, PharmD, of the Upstate New York Poison Center, in Syracuse, New York. "People looking for either self-treatment of withdrawal symptoms or euphoria are overdosing on loperamide with sometimes deadly consequences. Loperamide is safe in therapeutic doses but extremely dangerous in high doses."
The paper outlines two case studies of patients with histories of substance abuse who attempted to self-treat opioid addictions with massive doses of loperamide. Both patients overdosed and emergency medical services were called

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But in the west, herbal medicines are pushed by people with magical thinking who dislike the scientific approach to disease, and claim they not only work but have no side effects.

In poor countries, people resort to herbal remedies due to poverty, and we docs knew they sometimes killed people.

and this includes herbs used by Chinese practitioners who are quite sophisticated but haven't done studies to identify problems...

The problem? They have side effects.

 Herbal remedies pose a global hazard. We encourage the global health community to take actions that will evaluate both long- and short-term safety, as well as the efficacy of botanical products in widespread use."

I am old enough to remember using dried digitalis where the gov't insisted we use this cheap herbal medicine instead of the more expensive brand name digoxin, overlooking the dried digitalis leaf varied in strength from one batch to another, and that digitalis toxicity was a common iatrogenic cause of death.

and this is not even considering that a lot of the stuff bought is fake, not really the herb you are supposed to be buying, or actually western medicines mixed with herbs and sold for a higher price.
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hmm...why is the colonorectal cancer rate going down? Especially in African Americans?