I have a serious medical condition, I need a pill that will surly solve all my problems

Ya know I was watching the evening news with Brian Williams last night, something I do not usually do, and I noticed something. Every commercial break has at least one advertisement for some sort of medication and one case there were two back to back. At the end I was going to use the DVR to rewind and count them and write about it. Well Bride would have no part of that since Wheel of Fortune was coming on and since that and Jeopardy are her favorites there was NO way I was doing that. Well I let it pass and thought I would take note of the rest of them for the evening and base my blog on that.

Have you noticed the rash of new maladies and the corresponding rash of medication to correct those maladies? I mean stupid, stupid things I never knew existed, restless leg syndrome for example, or as it is known in the medical community - Nocturnal myoclonus; RLS; Akathisia. What is this?? Well according to one site I found the definition is as follows: Restless leg syndrome is a disorder in which there is an urge or need to move the legs to stop unpleasant sensations. ?? So I then wanted to find the cause of this disorder, well then it got even odder. Causes: Restless leg syndrome (RLS) occurs most often in middle-aged and older adults. Stress makes it worse. The cause is not known in most patients. The cause is not known in most patients. So if the cause is not known then what is this pill treating?

So what is this pill doing I wondered? Well one of the medications they are hocking is pramipexole, that is a medication for Parkinson patients. WHAT?? I also found out there is no specific examination that will definitively say that you have restless leg syndrome. Most health care providers will not usually find any abnormalities, unless you also have peripheral nerve disease. They say that blood tests (CBC and serum ferritin) may be done to rule out iron deficiency anemia, which in rare cases can occur with restless leg syndrome. I also learned that there is no known cure for restless leg syndrome. Of course there isn’t, there isn’t even any real way to determine you have restless leg syndrome, why you might ask – BECAUSE IT IS MADE UP!! You can also be prescribed sleeping pills, tranquilizers, iron supplements and even narcotics. Keep in mind that restless leg syndrome is not dangerous or life-threatening, and it is not a sign of a serious disorder. However, it can be uncomfortable and disrupt your sleep – so we are going to give you some over the counter narcotics. What in the world is going on??

I do not mean to pick on that one, there are many, like the one for dry eyes. Again this is one that has no cure, what a surprise. There are, however, a number of steps that can be taken to treat them. As far as causes, it seems that it can be caused by situations that dry out the tear film. This can be due to dry air from air conditioning, heat, or other environmental conditions. So maybe, just maybe, we should go outside and play once in a while. Get off the PC, put down the Wii controller and turn off the TIVO and GO OUTSIDE! Other causes can be natural aging, menopause they say. I suppose that is why every commercial I have seen for dry eye has had a woman doctor and a woman patient. Dry eye can also be caused by the side effects of other medications, what you say? RESTASIS® is the medicine they are hocking for this malady, the side effects of which includes a temporary burning sensation, eye redness, yeah from the burning sensation. There can also be a discharge, watery eyes, eye pain, foreign body sensation, foreign body sensation? What the hell is that?? It can also cause itching, stinging, and blurred vision. Do you see the craziness here??

There are so many medicines I sometimes wonder, are there folks who are just dreaming up ways to make money? My favorite TV channels are the ones where the personalities are fixing or tearing apart things, seeing how dirty they are or blowing things up. Well on those channels I must be the target demographic, a middle aged man. So we have the erectile dysfunction medications, they are SO stupid. If I were trying to get with Bride we would damn sure be in the same bathtub, that is all I will say about that. There are also the male enhancement commercials, I actually think these are funny. Old Bob has so many lightly veiled comments about the size of his penis. They make me laugh because I am amazed at how many references they can get away with. Hahaha. And just for the record, if I have an erection that last four hours – I am calling all my friends to brag! Has anyone thought about the imbalance in the biological evolutionary track these medications are and will have. We got a bunch of old geezers who leave their wives and find some young thing that can keep up with his newly erect penis. What have these medications done to the divorce rate in our country? Maybe there is a reason those parts stop working, we are not living our lives right (stress) or we are just too damn old to procreate.

These out of control pharmaceutical companies have allowed the ridiculousness to spill over into the over the counter medications. I saw a commercial for the Rubitussion relief finder, yeah the Rubitussion relief finder. This is a web site that you can punch in whether you are a child or adult and then check some symptoms and it will tell you which one of the 87 million different products might help you best. Really, Really???

I was perusing Natural News and found that the amount of television advertising money that pharmaceutical companies have spent in recent years has doubled. They say that studies show that viewers often see a medicinal product and bring up what they saw to their doctors. However, the tone of the advertisements today often are misleading and exaggerate the health benefits of taking the drug, according to a recent report by the Annals of Family Medicine. TV ads engage in blatant deceptions and exaggerations that even the medical journals are starting to condemn the practice. This week, the Annals of Family Medicine published an analysis of popular drug advertisements that concluded the ads essentially lie to the public about the benefits of pharmaceuticals while utterly ignoring alternative health strategies like dietary or lifestyle changes., utterly ignoring the way we (the human race) has dealt with our medical problems throughout our time on earth.

I do not know what the answers are, hell I do not even know what the questions are but I would be willing to bet there is pill somewhere that will help you find them. I read someplace that in 2009 the profit made across the board was 315 BILLION dollars and with an average profit margin of almost 20 percent. With medications for real diseases such as Herceptin, for breast cancer costing a person $48,00 year, and many insurance companies won't cover it -- or people quickly hit their limits and must pay for it out-of-pocket or go without. 48K per year, REALLY!! They should supplement the medications for real problems with the ones they make for made up problems. Imagine a man buying Viagra and while his is boinking his 20 something girlfriend he is supplementing his wife’s breast cancer treatments. I like it!!