painkillers

Frightening new warning on common pain pills

Pain doesn’t discriminate.

It doesn’t matter if you’re 90 years old – or a 35-year-old tough guy who could lift a car over his head. Chronic muscle, joint, and bone pain can knock anyone for a loop.

Unfortunately, doctors are equal opportunity, too, when it comes to doling out pain pills.

And since they’ve been showering patients with script after script for dangerous opioids, it’s practically led to an epidemic of overdoses.

I recently told you about the CDC’s response to the skyrocketing number of deaths from opioid doses, and how they've started cracking down on docs prescribing painkillers.

And now, the FDA is getting in on the action.

They’re now mandating that certain immediate-release (IR) prescription opioid painkillers – like Vicodin, Percocet, and Oxycontin – wear a label that warns doctors against the dangers of misuse.

In 2013, the FDA gave Extended Release/Long-Acting (ER/LA) products a new label that called out limited use and serious risks associated with the drugs, which are typically taken only once or twice a day.

But IR painkillers, on the other hand, are taken MULTIPLE times a day – every four to six hours – and sometimes folks aren’t getting the relief they need, so they’re taking even more than the recommended dose.

So the FDA is standing shoulder to shoulder with the CDC, advising that docs only prescribe these meds for the most severe pain or if the patient can’t tolerate other treatments.

It doesn’t surprise me that my mainstream medical colleagues would need this type of heavy-hitting notice. Earlier this year, I told you about how 91 percent of folks who had overdosed on painkillers were able to get the same exact pills again – from the same exact doctor that prescribed them in the first place!

It’s been recently reported that opioid abuse and overdoses accounts for 40 deaths a day – more deaths than by car crashes or from gun violence. The new warning label – which will remind doctors of the dangers of misuse, abuse, overdose, and death – is a start, but it’s not a quick fix.

If you’ve got chronic pain – which opioids don’t really help anyway – talk to a holistic doctor about your options to manage pain. I’ve been using acupuncture in my own practice for years to help patients get relief from everything from arthritis to migraines, but that may not be enough on its own.

But instead of reaching for prescription pills that knock you out and put you in a fog, I recommend safe and natural inflammation fighters like curcumin. The combo of glucosamine and chondroitin has also shown to be equally as effective as pain pills commonly prescribed for arthritis – without the risk of dying from an overdose.

FDA panels bought by Big Pharma

The FDA and its "experts" don't give a hoot about how well a drug works or how safe it is -- all they REALLY care about is pleasing their Big Pharma bosses so the money, booze and vacations keep flowing.

This isn't some paranoid conspiracy theory. Newly uncovered emails show once and for all that this is EXACTLY how the agency and its "expert panels" operate.

The FDA panel in charge of painkillers has been holding private -- aka SECRET -- meetings in fancy hotels at least once a year, every year, for the past decade... and they didn't meet alone, or with the best and greatest independent medical minds.

No, they partied with their drug industry pals, who PAID up to $35,000 a pop to "collaborate" with them on how to ram their drugs through the approvals process, according to the emails.

Yes, that's what the FDA actually has the nerve to call this: "collaboration."

You and I would call it PAYOLA, because that's what it is -- and the results speak for themselves: After these meetings, Big Pharma hacks were allowed to co-author papers on the "consensus" they bought in these secret meetings.

One example of that "consensus" is that the FDA now allows Big Pharma to pre-select patients for painkiller studies based on who's most likely to respond to the treatment.

The drug industry calls this "enriched enrollment," but scientists -- even objective mainstream scientists -- call this "stacking the deck" and "cheating."

And at the FDA, it's called "business as usual" -- and that's not the only example of the unholy matrimony between the agency and the industry it's supposed to regulate.

Two FDA "experts" who sat on the painkiller panels later went on to big-money jobs as Big Pharma consultants -- and if that's not a classic example of "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours," I don't know what is.

Bottom line here is that the decisions made by these bought-and-paid-for bureaucrats affect you and your family with every drug approval and every health recommendation, and that's why you can't trust a single word you hear from the alphabet soup in Washington.

But if you really want to know what's what, I've got a 100 percent objective source of science-based news for you.

It's the Douglass Report, my no-nonsense monthly newsletter packed with all the latest cutting-edge cures proven to work -- and if you're sick of being spoon-fed lies, you can sign up for the truth right here.