General
A1 Communications
Cable Techs Trades/Construction
RANCHO RESORT
MAINTANANCE POSITION Health Care
Sierra Tucson
Eating Disorders Program Coordinator

Dr. Andrew Weil is an international expert on integrative medicine and the founder and director of the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. He lives in the Tucson area.

"Overmedication is widespread and takes many forms: seniors on a dozen or more drugs prescribed by different specialists, millions of kids on psychiatric meds, millions of adults on antidepressants and sleeping pills, millions more on acid-suppressive drugs for gastrointestinal conditions that should be managed first by lifestyle adjustment. The root problem is that most doctors and most patients cannot imagine treating disease by non-drug methods. I'm working to change that.

There's dietary change, physical activity. There's all sorts of relaxations and mind, body techniques. If you need to get substances there are natural remedies such as botanicals that are dilute forms of drugs that have a much better side effect profile. Breathing exercises, which I use a lot. A lot of these I think seem too simple to most doctors. We are just so in the habit of thinking that the only legitimate form of treatment is drugs. I think we should examine that mindset.

If you look back even 50 years ago the percentage of Americans who were taking prescribed drugs was a tiny fraction of what it is today. And I think it correlates with changes in our society, people wanting quick fixes, but especially the growth of the pharmaceutical industry. It is such a powerful and influential lobby. In recent years it's getting the right to advertise directly to consumers, which I think has been disastrous. I would call [for] the immediate repeal of that. We are the only country other then New Zealand that allows it.

I think [pharmaceuticals] should be reserved for very serious illness, critical illness or conditions that require drastic interventions. If you're dealing with more chronic conditions, milder conditions, more common conditions, I think it's better to look for other ways of changing things first before you resort to pharmaceutical drugs.

For example, very severe depression is a serious condition and I would certainly not oppose people taking anti-depressant drugs, but for the vast majority of cases of mild to moderate depression I would first recommend that people take supplements of fish oil in high dose, that they get on regular programs of physical activity, that they practice some kind of stress reduction techniques, maybe do some cognitive therapy with a trained psychotherapist. I would explore all of that before you resort to taking antidepressant drugs.

Doctors who have little time with patients, the easiest thing to do is to give drugs. Patients often go to multiple doctors who don't communicate very well and so each one, they prescribe a different medication.

[Overmedication] is everything from significant side effects that people may not even associate with the drugs they're taking to perpetuation of the disease condition. A lot of this medication suppresses symptoms; it doesn't really get to the root of the problem so people become dependent on the medication and the condition persists. Not to mention the expense that this creates. This is one of the major reasons why health care costs are so out of control these days."