Source: NaturalNews

The breaking news is that Fosamax, the popular drug for supposed bone strength, may cause “spontaneous fractures.” That means you could end up like Sandy Potter, 59, of Queens, New York on ABC News who claims she was in excruciating pain when she broke her femur due to jumping rope. Who knew?

Well, the signs were there: hidden in plain sight. “Fractures” are listed right on the package insert as a side effect, or in Merck’s words, “Low energy femoral shaft and subtrochanteric fractures.” Yeah, we all know what that means.

“We are seeing people just walking, walking down the steps, patients who are doing low-energy exercise,” said Dr. Kenneth Egol, professor of orthopedic surgery at NYU Langone Medical Center. “Very unusual, the femur is one of the strongest bones in the body.”

Egol adds that some of his patient’s X-rays from a minimal fall look more like they came from a car accident and he’s seeing this more frequently.

In my book, Nature’s Secret Messages: Hidden in Plain Sight, I write about “prescriptions for trouble.” Here are facts that require careful consideration before or when taking medications.

1. As Fosamax shows, we don’t know the long-term effects of drugs.
It took 30 to 40 years before we could see the link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. Doctors used to endorse cigarettes, along with some “miracle” drugs that were later discovered to be dangerous and even deadly.

2. Side effects could be confused as a symptom.
An article published in April 2009 in USA Today called “Drugs Cause Confusion in Elderly” stated that medications, both prescribed and over the counter, could impair the elderly. A patient could actually be given a wrong diagnosis because doctors don’t always recognize the symptoms as a side effect of a drug.

3. Combining meds may lead to a combination of problems.
Researchers have done very little testing on the effects of combining a variety of drugs and the serious complications — even death — that may follow. You can probably name several celebrities who died as a result of combining painkillers, antidepressants, and sleeping pills. But how often do you hear about celebrities overdosing on herbs?

4. Studies can be unreliable.
The New York Timess published a lengthy feature article in 2007 about the many ways in which clinical studies can be seriously flawed. In the words of Karl Menninger, M.D.: “One of the most untruthful things possible, you know, is a collection of facts, because they can be made to appear so many different ways.”

5. What about the side effects to the planet?
The more drugs we take, the more drugs our bodies excrete in waste, and the more they make their way into sewers and eventually into the environment. Research2 suggests that some of these drugs (as well as toxic substances in cleaning materials, shampoos, cosmetics and other personal-care products) can harm fish and other animals living in our waterways, which in turn can affect us.

Too often, our default is to pop a pill instead of trying a natural remedy first — even though certain foods and herbs are quite often just as effective as drugs (if not more so) and may not have the nasty side effects.

A 50 year-old colleague took a bone scan for the last four years and her doctor was shocked to see that her bones were becoming stronger each year while she was growing older. Her secret? Was she on medications? No. Was she eating a lot of milk and cheese? No. She actually went off of all dairy products. She went on an internal cleanse, eliminated junk foods, and started eating nature’s foods. Make bones about it — when the body is nourished, active, and working well, it can have more energy to repair and rebuild itself.

I offer a bone growth supplement system on my web site because the company, Garden of Life, gives a “grow bone challenge” for stronger, healthier bones or they’ll give double your money back if you qualify! They make you this amazing offer because they’re so confident in the Grow Bone System’s ability to build bone density by using natural whole food minerals to create bone growth.3

Also consider using acupuncture, which originated in ancient China, and is now widely used in the West as well as chiropractic, massage, Qigong, Healing Touch and yoga. These all have side effects that activate the natural healing processes of the body and restore physical and emotional well-being.

Nature’s food and natural remedies can be powerful drugs — hidden in plain sight. You and your health care practitioner may want to consider nature’s four billion years of wisdom to help you in all areas of your life, and then decide if medication is truly needed.

Sources:
1. Taubes, G., “Do We Really Know What Makes Us Healthy?” The New York Times, September 16, 2007.
2. Critser, G., Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs Are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005.
3. http://www.ElaineWilkes.com

About the author:
Elaine Wilkes, Ph.D., N.C., M.A., LEED, a self-proclaimed “learning addict” who discovered that the answers to life’s questions are found in nature’s magic. You’ll ask yourself, What would Nature Do? after you read Nature’s Secret Messages: Hidden in Plain Sight. Order Elaine’s Hay House book that was awarded a rare star recommendation from Publisher’s Weekly. Now available on Amazon at: http://tiny.cc/cHzqu. Discover the finest health products available at: www.ElaineWilkes.com

In a study published in the May issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers came to a surprising conclusion: hospitalizations for poisoning by prescription medication has increased by 65 percent from 1999 to 2006.

The rates of unintentional poisoning– from prescription opioids, sedatives and tranquilizers in the U.S. has surpassed motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of unintentional injury death.

Simply put, this means that poisoning from prescription drugs is now the second leading cause of unintentional injury death in the U.S.

“Deaths and hospitalizations associated with prescription drug misuse have reached epidemic proportions,” said the study’s lead author, Jeffrey H. Coben, MD, of the West Virginia University School of Medicine. “It is essential that health care providers, pharmacists, insurance providers, state and federal agencies, and the general public all work together to address this crisis.

Prescription medications are just as powerful and dangerous as other notorious street drugs, and we need to ensure people are aware of these dangers and that treatment services are available for those with substance abuse problems.”

Read the rest of the story on Care2.com

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Many scientific “breakthroughs” widely reported in the popular press are actually false, warn researchers Marcus Munafo of the University of Bristol and Jonathan Flint of Oxford University, writing in The Guardian.

“The social environment in which research occurs places scientists under pressure to perform, measured by the amount and quality of publications, and success in attracting research funding from government and charitable agencies,” the scientists write.

This pressure encourages researchers to find some exciting conclusion to report, the authors write, even if that conclusion is probably false.

All scientific studies — such as those claiming to find a “gene for” depression, schizophrenia, obesity, or any other condition — contain a probability that their findings occurred simply by chance. Normally, this probability is less than 5 percent — making the findings “statistically significant.” Munafo and Flint note, however, that it is actually fairly easy to produce statistical significance.

“With enough data, and by running enough statistical tests, it is easy enough to find a significant effect,” they write. “And with enough people trying, this effect might even be found more than once, giving the appearance of replication. The problem is that the results almost certainly won’t be true.”

This is why further studies, particularly meta-analyses combining the results of multiple studies, consistently disprove many headline-topping “breakthroughs.” Yet these later studies rarely receive the same degree of media coverage as the originals. The authors note that although they conducted a meta-analysis finding no evidence for a connection between a certain gene variant and depression, screening for this “depression gene” is still available via the Internet.

More research being done does not necessarily mean more reliable findings, either.

“The greater the financial and other interests and prejudices in a scientific field, the less likely the research findings are to be true,” said genetic epidemiologist, John Ioannidis. “The hotter a scientific field (with more scientific teams involved), the less likely the research findings are to be true.”

Source:  Natural News

A MUST WATCH 24 minute video expose of how we make and consume STUFF, creating a global mess that will be very hard to undo.

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

www.StoryOf Stuff.com :: StoryOfStuff.org

YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/storyofstuffproject#p/u

U.S. manufacturers, including major drugmakers, have legally released at least 271 million pounds of pharmaceuticals into waterways that often provide drinking water — contamination the federal government has consistently overlooked, according to an Associated Press investigation.

Hundreds of active pharmaceutical ingredients are used in a variety of manufacturing, including drugmaking: For example, lithium is used to make ceramics and treat bipolar disorder; nitroglycerin is a heart drug and also used in explosives; copper shows up in everything from pipes to contraceptives.

Federal and industry officials say they don’t know the extent to which pharmaceuticals are released by U.S. manufacturers because no one tracks them — as drugs. But a close analysis of 20 years of federal records found that, in fact, the government unintentionally keeps data on a few, allowing a glimpse of the pharmaceuticals coming from factories.

As part of its ongoing PharmaWater investigation about trace concentrations of pharmaceuticals in drinking water, AP identified 22 compounds that show up on two lists: the EPA monitors them as industrial chemicals that are released into rivers, lakes and other bodies of water under federal pollution laws, while the Food and Drug Administration classifies them as active pharmaceutical ingredients.

Read More: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,517131,00.html