Discover the ins and outs of nasal Narcan alongside psychiatrist Emily Watters. In this comic tutorial, she’ll walk you through the steps in her signature straightforward style, helping you grasp the essentials and empowering you to be a Narcan hero. (Click to enlarge.)
Pain is the primary reason people seek medical care. Pain is also the problem that ignited the opioid crisis and continues to supply fuel. Eighty percent of opioid misuse begins with a pill prescribed for pain. Purdue invested heavily in marketing Oxycontin to physicians, training them that home opioids are the standard of care for recovery from surgery. While addiction debunked the myth of universal safety, two fallacies embedded in …
The fentanyl crisis represents a grave and lethal epidemic, marked by the illicit consumption of powerful synthetic opioids, resulting in a staggering increase in fatal overdose cases. Physician Emily Watters offers her unique insights on this critical issue through a captivating comic format. (Click to enlarge.)
Psilocybin is a psychedelic compound produced by several species of mushrooms, which has been used for millennia across various cultures. It first gained broader awareness in the Western world during the 1960s and is now the subject of scientific inquiry due to renewed interest in the clinical applications of psychedelic medicines and psychedelic-assisted therapy.
Research into psilocybin and psilocybin-assisted therapy has found it to be effective in addressing a number of …
Between 2013 and 2016, 49.1 percent of U.S. adults surveyed had attempted to lose weight within the last 12 months. Weight loss medications have reached the public eye in popular culture and practice. To be considered effective in a clinical trial by the FDA, the drug candidate must demonstrate a statistically significant difference in mean weight loss between the active product and placebo-treated group of at least five …
At six-week intervals, I replenish my supply of omeprazole. Initially, I took it for symptomatic relief of GERD, becoming symptomatic again within a week or two during periodic self-directed suspensions. An esophagogastroduodenoscopy, done for another reason, disclosed Barrett’s esophagus, shifting that daily pill of personal comfort to a more essential intervention. It falls within several Gastroenterology Society recommendations as a component of later malignancy prevention. My weekly pill case, set …
A lot of my patients take proton pump inhibitors (PPIs). They generally work pretty well for their intended use. By limiting the secretion of gastric acid from the stomach, they can effectively blunt uncomfortable symptoms of erosive gastritis, gastroesophageal reflux disease, H. pylori infection, and peptic ulcers. However, without further evaluation, these medications are not designed to be prescribed indefinitely, or for more than a two-month period. When patients experience …
The drug representative had a smug look; she knew she had a winner. She didn’t need to sell anything—the American public had already bought the story. There are very few drugs in history where patients are excited about the conversation and want to take a new medication. I am talking about the new class of diabetic drugs called GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide) agonists. The particular drugs are Ozempic (semaglutide) and Mounjaro …
The Moscow mule, a mix of ginger beer, an ounce of vodka, and a squeeze of lemon, has become one of the favorites among cocktail aficionados across the United States. It delivers on all that it promises, namely, an easy-to-make tasty drink, except it has nothing to do with the Russian capital whose name it bears. The birthplace was New York’s Chatham Hotel in Lower Manhattan, and the year was …
You’ve recently been diagnosed with metastatic cancer. You started the recommended first-line therapy, but it isn’t cutting it. There is another available treatment, but your hopes are crushed upon learning that you will have to wait at least three months before the life-extending medication can be produced for you and reach your location. All the while, your cancer will continue to grow and spread, slowly eating your body from the …
Have you heard the news?
“Flesh-eating ‘zombie’ drug ‘kills you from the inside out,'” headlines a CNN article.
“Tacoma market busted for selling ‘zombie’ drug,” barks out a Seattle-area news affiliate.
” Zombie drugs? Florida man stabs couple, eats dead man’s face in ‘random’ attack,” shouts a Syracuse news outlet.
Surely by now, you have heard chilling stories about …
Imagine that you are suffering from chronic pain.
The pain keeps you awake at night so you don’t get much sleep. Lack of sleep most nights and the ensuing chronic fatigue causes you some anxiety during the day. Your primary care physician suggests that she is concerned with the increasing amount of aspirin and ibuprofen you are consuming to manage the pain. She can prescribe opioids to help with the pain, …
As I’m pre-charting for my primary care clinic, I see Ms. C on the schedule, whom I know well through our nearly monthly follow-up visits over the past two and a half years of residency. We talk in Spanish as it’s her preferred language. She shares her escalating distress over being an immigrant, a full-time caregiver for her dad with advancing dementia and three kids, and current marital issues while …
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Fungi have a well-deserved surge in popularity. More mushroom varieties have found their way to grocery store shelves, shopping lists, and food blogs. Mushroom foraging is a trending activity as people endeavor to connect to nature. There is a growing market of mushroom coffee shops touting health-related boosts and “medicinal fungi” being sold as herbal teas and supplements. Innovative products have hit the market, from …
In November 2022, revisions to the United States Pharmacopeia’s (USP) General Chapter <797>, a standard for sterile pharmaceutical compounding – defined as the process of “combining, admixing, diluting, pooling, reconstituting, repackaging, or otherwise altering a drug product or bulk drug substance to create a sterile medication” – were published. USP <797> plays a major role in guiding …
The timing of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration’s One Pill Can Kill campaign is crucial, considering the recent Carrollton teen tragedy in which Fentanyl-laced pills posing as oxycodone were distributed through a “juvenile dealer” to high school students who then sold the deadly drugs to high school and middle school students. Commenting on the dramatic increase in drugs laced with Fentanyl in North Texas, Nexus Recovery Center’s …
In March 2020, I was directing a federally qualified health center in rural New Mexico when the first flashover of COVID ripped through the state. In two days, the clinics transitioned from an entirely in-person model to a near-total remote model. The transformation was raw and unplanned, trialing mediocre communications platforms in real-time and stumbling through the vagaries of electronic prescribing. As we got our feet under us, unexpected upsides …
We’ve all heard about America’s so-called “opioid epidemic.” Nearly 100,000 people died in 2021 of causes that included overdose by one or more narcotic drugs and often alcohol. We also hear assertions from anti-opioid advocates that this epidemic was caused by doctors “over-prescribing” opioid pain relievers to their patients. These assertions are fundamentally wrong on fact. U.S. national health care policy and law redirections are needed to correct such distortions.
Doctors …
The genius of Henry Ford was in his perfection of mass production. Ford’s assembly lines produced oodles of Model T, with economies of scale so that the cost of each car fell to the point that even those working in those lines could afford them. His method was copied by other car manufacturers and ultimately by other industries as well.
The pharmaceutical industry was one of them. The industry mass produces …
I have a solo outpatient private practice focusing on psychiatric medication management and brief therapy for adults. Early on, I decided to accept insurance to help address the shortage of psychiatrists in this country. Because of the advances in telemedicine since the pandemic, I can see patients throughout the state where I am licensed. This should be the happiest time in my career. After several years of working as an …
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