Pills More Lethal Than Guns – Pain Meds & Sleep Apnea

What should be of particular interest to those taking antidepressants and atypical antipsychotics with so often disease sleep apnea resulting in the explosion in sales of CPAP machines is the fact that something that predisposes someone to the repression of respiration.

“…a person who suffers from sleep apnea — a condition in which a person’s breathing is shallow or undergoes abnormally long pauses while sleeping — is known to have a greater chance for a dangerous reaction to even a prescribed dose of painkillers, he explained.

“Measured risk factors are whether a person is known to snore loudly, frequently feels tired during the day even after good sleep, has any observed pauses in breathing at night, has high blood pressure, has a body mass index of more than 35, are over 50 years old, have a large neck size (more than 17 inches around for a man or more than 16 for a woman), or are male.

“A person is considered to be at greater threat of post-surgery complications with painkillers if they can answer yes to three or more of those factors.

“In hindsight, Gardner said, she believes her son “had possible sleep apnea.” Even when he was a young boy, she said, Stewart snored loudly.”

My comment in response: “Thank you kranny!!! You took the words right out of my mouth! I head the International Coalition for Drug Awareness where we focus on this very issue. Would love to have you join us.

Interesting to note is another study done by pharmacists in 1995, due to concern that the drugs they were dispensing were killing too many, was published in “Drug Topics.” They concluded that the death toll for taking prescription meds “as prescribed” was 200,000. So according to the JAMA study you quote, over a five year period the death toll increased by 50,000. Now if the deaths continued to increase only at that rate (although I would expect it to have increased at a much higher rate over the last few years) we should now, 17 years later, have a death toll of at least 420,000 annually.

Losing 420,000 per year would be like having at least two 9/11 tragedies hit this country every week! We went to war for how many years over only one 9/11? Where is the outcry for all of these senseless pharmaceutical deaths?! And people are concerned about guns?! It appears to me that shooting pills is far more lethal!

With the information finally coming out on how very serious and very lethal these pain killers are the next move is logically to wean patients off these deadly and highly addictive drugs. But what are the new recommendations to help those with pain? What is being recommended are drugs patients who have used both types of drugs say these are FAR MORE DIFFICULT to withdraw from than these pain killers are!! Those drugs now being recommended for pain are antidepressants or Neurontin (gabapentin) or Lyrica. These patients are being led from the frying pan into a raging fire!!!