Are antidepressants over-prescibed?

"Popular antidepressants including Prozac and Paxil have little impact on most patients, according to a comprehensive review of newly released data from trials that were conducted before the drugs were approved in the U.S." reports Time Magazine. Money quote:

The researchers' paper, published this week in the journal PLoS Medicine, claims that only patients who are diagnosed "at the upper end of the very severely depressed category" get any meaningful benefit from the widely prescribed drugs. For the others, the paper says, antidepressants are barely more effective than a placebo (although patients suffering from depression, like those suffering from chronic pain, generally do see a substantial placebo benefit).

Other studies have shown that psychotherapy in combination with medication produces the best results. According to one study, "In chronic major depression, combined treatment has demonstrated significant superiority over medication or psychotherapy alone."

The US population is hugely over medicated and anti-depressants are just one of the medicines that have been over-prescribed. The long-term effects of these and many other medicines are generally unknown. Vigorous daily exercise, dietary changes, and cognitive therapy are promising alternatives to medication that patients with depression should examine.

So far, 2008 has brought mostly bad news for America's pharmaceutical industry; in weeks previous, major studies have called into question the effectiveness of the drug companies' lucrative lucrative cholesterol lowering drugs and diabetes drugs were called into question.

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Are air fresheners safe?

Rick B writes at Ten Percent blog

I’m not really asthmatic but plug in air fresheners, odour eliminating/spray cans, in general- chemical cocktail air polluting things whether fragranced or supposedly to remove odours seem to give me symptoms of asthma. I mooched around the web quickly and found I am not completely alone and mad on this (although as this is a new area of research there are not a lot of studies, but certainly something is afoot). It looks like what goes into these things has yet to be fully assessed for their combined impact on the people who willingly buy the things then slowly gas themselves in their own home-

Rick quotes some studies:

A study recently published in American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, found the regular use of sprays increased the risk of asthma by 30 to 50 percent. The study was done by the European Community Respiratory Health Survey, and followed 3,500 people in 10 European countries. . .

Rick comments, "Jeebus, I might as well have continued smoking, at least I’d look cool while I died. . . ." As a non-smoker, I much prefer breathing second smoke to chemical air freshener. Another dubious chemical people are deliberately putting into the air they breathe is mosquito coils smoke.

Photo: Shows a popular air freshener made in Thailand. I walked into a room that had been freshly sprayed with the stuff and was coughing for a month thereafter. Who knows what it contains? The bottles sure don't say! Spraying made-in-China, Made-in-Thailand, made-anywhere synthetic anything into the air these days is not such a good idea.

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Quote of the day

Do not disturb thyself by thinking of the whole of thy life. Let not thy thoughts at once embrace all the various troubles which thou mayest expect to befall thee: but on every occasion ask thyself, What is there in this which is intolerable and past bearing? For thou wilt be ashamed to confess. In the next place remember that neither the future nor the past pains thee, but only the present. But this is reduced to a very little, if thou only circumscribest it, and chidest thy mind, if it is unable to hold out against even this.

- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VIII

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Diet food causes weight gain?

Artificial sweeteners in diet foods may block the body's natural ability to know when it is full. Rats fed artificially sweetend foods gained more weight (here). It seems that the rats fed sacharin also expend fewer calories when they exercised (here).

COMMENT: A study released last week showed drinking diet sodas greatly increase your risk of getting diabetes or heart disease. Other studies have suggested a link between the chemical aspartame in Nutrasweet and neurological symptoms (here).

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Exercise equals longevity

From a study reported in the Guardian:

Yates estimates that a 70-year-old man has a 54% chance of reaching the age of 90 if he does not smoke or have diabetes, has healthy weight and blood pressure, and exercises. But cutting out exercise and becoming more sedentary reduces the chances of reaching 90 to 44%. The chances dropped further with high blood pressure (36%), obesity (26%) and smoking (22%). Any three of these cut the chances of living to 90 to 14%.

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