The most recent Sunday NY Times Book Review reviewed "Your Medical Mind: How to Decide What is Right for You" by Jerome Groopman and Pamela Hartzband.
I will be picking up a copy of this book and recommend you do also. It offers a lot of examples of how to take available information and make sense of it. It also may help explain why a health professional like I am is very cautious in recommending certain medications or surgery. A couple of examples from the book review:
"For example, the “number needed to treat” for a particular cholesterol-lowering drug is 300. (For every 300 people taking it, only one heart attack is prevented.) The drug has a 5 percent probability of side effects, including severe muscle and joint pain and gastrointestinal distress. Thus, for every person helped, 15 people (5 percent of 300) will experience side effects and not be cured. In other words, anyone taking the drug is 15 times more likely to experience the unwanted effects of the medication than the beneficial ones. "
"According to one 2004 study, for every 48 prostate surgeries performed, only one patient benefits — the other 47 patients would have lived just as long without surgery. (Groopman and Hartzband discuss the important epidemiological concept “number needed to treat,” which applies to surgeries, prescriptions, therapies, you name it.) Moreover, the 47 who didn’t need the surgery are often left with an array of unpleasant and irreversible side effects, including incontinence, impotence and loss of sexual desire. The likelihood of one of these side effects is over 50 percent — 24 of our 47 will have at least one. This means a patient is 24 times more likely to experience the side effect than the cure."
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I can’t believe you posted this today. I just today read an article about the over use of drugs to prevent osteoporosis. Younger women are prescribed drugs and they are not necessarily getting any benefits from them while older women who could benefit are not being prescribed the drugs. You really have to ask questions and do your homework and take responsibility for your health.
Those are a particularly nasty class of meds. Much better way to reduce bone demineralization is minimal or no meat and dairy...ditto soda... course nobody actually wants to do that....plus of course lots of good weight bearing exercise.
Hmm... hey, Janet, do you have a link as to why no meat and no dairy are better for reducing loss of bone density? Doesn't dairy have loads of calcium, which would be good for bones?
I'm becoming more and more skeptical of today's standard medical practices. I left my last doctor, because he seemed to have become an automated pill dispenser. I should have called him "Mr. Pez."
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