Weekly Wellness Report #2 -The Prescribing Cascade

0:00Come my friends to this week's edition of the Weekly Wellness Report. I am George Batissier host and your wellness advocate. Of course on this program, I go over the latest studies on health and wellness. Try to bring them to you to keep you up to date with what's going on. And today we got a brand new study out of the British medical journal. We're going to be talking about medications. We all know that medications have side effects, obviously, right? We all know that especially older folks can be more susceptible to side effects from medications. We know the term polypharmacy and that's typically when someone is on four or more medications, which a lot of older folks are typically like 60, 65 or older on all these different types of medications. But what happens when you're not recognizing a side effect from a certain medication?

1:02And it gets mistaken for some other condition. That's what they were studying here on the British medical journal. So great piece here. This was a large study and this was done September 10th and it looked at how one medication can lead to another sometimes unnecessarily. We've heard of this, right? We didn't know, I didn't actually know there was a term for this and the term is called prescribing cascade. And typically it happens when four things are in place. It happens when a medication produces a side effect. The side effect is mistaken for a new medical condition. A second medication is prescribed to treat that condition and then that medication may also introduce additional risk or side effects. So that's the prescribing cascade, which is very, very interesting, right? So for example, if we take a look at NSAIDs or non-steeroidal anti-inflammatories, typically

2:03prescribed for pain. And so it's commonly known that those anti-inflammatories, the risk of that or the common side effect of that is a raising of blood pressure. So what happens is let's say your blood pressure gets raised after you're on an NSAID and instead of reconsidering that NSAID, the physician may just place you on a blood pressure medication. So now you're not only on the NSAID, but you're on the blood pressure medication. Well they did a big study on this and what they found was there were 24 high priority cascades that were relatively common and potentially harmful, specifically in older people. Now they did the study in geriatric folks, right? Those are again people that are 60, 65 or older that tend to be more susceptible to these cascades, more susceptible to all different types of side effects from medications, okay?

3:06So and they also looked at women, older women who tend to be more susceptible to this as well, which is very interesting. And you got to remember that a lot of older women tend to have issues with bones, right? We've talked about that on the show, whether it's thinning of bones, osteoporosis, and being on all types of medications for that as well, okay? So but this is an issue, right? So it's 24 high priority cascades that they found here. So that's something to be, you know, to really look at, especially if you're on medication. So one of the things I say, and it says here, actually one of the authors here said, and I'm quoting, it says, our concern is that so often these conversations between the healthcare provider or a prescriber and the patient are being missed. So people don't recognize the sequences of events and that they are connected to one another. So they're not recognizing that often when you are prescribed the medication that something

4:10else that happens can be tied to that medication. And again, because these, these conversations are not really happening or people are not recognizing that, they're not realizing that it's tied to that. So they think it's just some other thing that they're dealing with. So the next question is obviously, what can you do if you're prescribed the medication and you think that's, you know, maybe you're getting a side effect from it or something's happening from it and you want to make sure that it's not from that medication. So obviously you go back to your doctor and you discuss it with your doctor and you see if maybe that condition that's popping up could be tied to the obviously a medication that you're on. Okay, that's the first thing. Remember, I'm not a doctor on this. Obviously you got to do your research. But the second thing I would recommend is do your research. So if your doctor's going to put you on any kind of medication, research that medication is plenty of information from the package inserts to information online that will tell you what the possible side effects are to that medication.

5:11That's huge. That's a big one. Okay. Number three, obviously you also want to take a look at to see if that medication can cause nutrient depletion because I've talked about it on my program. I almost talked many, many times if you guys follow me for any length of time, I've done many shows on the depletion of nutrients because many of those side effects can be due to nutrient depletions, specifically magnesium, selenium, zinc, right, the trace minerals and things like that. As a matter of fact, if you go on georgiappetista.com, there's great articles on that. One of the big ones is titled Safe Guarding Your Health, Medications and Nutrient Depletion. What that article will do will go over specific things that you can take a look at. It actually goes over common medications that are prescribed and what nutrients they deplete. So definitely take a look at that.

6:11Again, it's on georgiappetista.com and you can just type it in and it'll come up and you could look at the specific medications that I go over and what nutrients they deplete. If anything, obviously, you want to make sure that you're getting those nutrients, again, those vitamins and minerals because if those are being depleted, that can be a major problem. I would always suggest, again, talking to your doctor and making sure that any supplements you're on, any protocols that you're on from a nutritionist or someone like that, make sure that it's working with obviously the medication that you're on. But at minimum, beyond a good multivitamin, multimineral vitamin, at minimum, beyond a multivitamin, multimineral supplement, just to make sure that you're getting all those nutrients and that they're not being depleted. That's a big thing. Again, talk to your doctor if stuff is popping up.

7:13Read the package inserts. Make sure you're reading all about that medication and the possible side effects and making sure that you are getting all the vitamins and minerals that you need, obviously, on a regular basis to make sure because, again, nutrient depletion is a big deal. If you're losing, for example, magnesium or selenium, you're going to end up with a lot of different types of issues that may pop up later on. So those are just some suggestions. Again, always talk to your health care practitioner. But good study on this. I'm going to make sure that I keep you up to date on all these types of studies on the weekly wellness report. So just something to keep in the back of your mind. All right, guys, thank you for joining me this week. Again, I will see you next week on the next weekly wellness report. Until then, make sure you take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. I will see you next time. Control your health. See you then.