Natural Alternatives to the Top 10 Most Prescribed Drugs

The top ten most prescribed drugs in the U.S. have science-backed alternative .

Are we an over-medicated nation? Let’s look at the numbers: Americans spent more than $300 billion on prescription drugs last year; nearly half of all adults have taken at least one prescription drug in the last month; nearly a third regularly use two or more; and women are more likely than men to use prescription drugs, according to the CDC.

Drugs can undoubtedly save lives, but our penchant for prescriptions can sometimes mean treating or masking symptoms—without fixing the root cause of the health. Read more

Big Pharma's "Antidepressants" Don't Work

Pharmaceutical are usually expensive and often have side effects almost as bad as the condition they're supposed to treat, and to add insult to injury, they often don't even work.

When my American friend Bill, who'd been on SSRI antidepressants for 22 years (Prozac, followed by Paxil, Lexapro, then Celexa), read a two-part article by Dr Marcia Angell in The New York Review of Books recently about the crisis in psychiatry and the inefficacy of antidepressants, he stopped taking his meds (tapering off gradually, monitored by his doctor). "The article brought on enough doubt to push me over," he said. Since then, his moods have become more volatile – more anger, more emotion, such as crying at the end of the last Harry Potter film (he's in his 50s). But he's got his libido back after years of "muffled response" and that seems a worthwhile trade-off.

Instead of listening to Prozac, have we been listening to placebo all along? Read more

The Big Pharma Con Job

Drugs don't work. According to a new study, 85% of their new drugs can cause more harm than good.

Drug companies have been accused of conning the public by hyping up patented medicines with little new to offer while downplaying their potentially harmful side-effects.

A new study estimates that 85 per cent of new drugs offer few if any new benefits while having the potential to cause serious harm due to toxicity or misuse.

The author of the research delivered a damning attack on 'Big Pharma' at a meeting of sociology experts in the US. Read more

8 Invented Diseases Big Pharma Is Banking On

Sleep sweating? Here are some new ways the pharmaceutical industry plans to make money.

Since direct-to-consumer drug advertising debuted in 1997, pharma's credo has been When The Medication Is Ready, The Disease (and Patients) Will Appear. Who knew so many people suffered from restless legs?

But pharma's recent plan to move from mass-market molecules into more lucrative vaccines and biologics did not see the anti-vaxer movement coming: millions of Americans saying You Want to Vaccinate Me -- and My Child -- with WHAT?? and condemning vials of H1N1, rotavirus and MMR vaccines to sit, well, way past their expiration dates. Nor were fears of an international vaccine conspiracy helped by former CDC Director Julie Gerberding resurfacing as President of Merck Vaccines in December. (Nice revolving door if you can catch it.) Read more