These 2 bad meds are worse together
Imagine slapping cheese on a slice of ground beef… claiming this is your “exclusive” blend… and then getting a patent for the cheeseburger.
Two things would happen.
First, you’d be richer than Bill Gates.
And second, you’d be in some kind of upside-down, topsy-turvy world of madness.
Well, my friend, welcome to a mad, mad, mad, mad world.
That’s pretty much EXACTLY what Big Pharma has done for patients with arthritis and high blood pressure!
It’s taken two cheap generic drugs and mixed them together… and then slapped a patent on it as its exclusive blend.
Fortunately, there’s a better way than what it calls “Consensi” – and I’ll get to it in a minute.
Medication madness
This new combo med is kind of like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, but instead of mixing delicious peanut butter with even tastier chocolate – two great tastes that taste great together! – it mixes two ugly drugs.
And one “taste” is worse than the other.
The first med in the Consensi mix is the painkiller celecoxib (a.k.a. Celebrex). Its biggest selling point is that it’s part of the same class of drug as Vioxx… but that it isn’t Vioxx.
Don’t be fooled by the marketing — it may not be as dangerous as Vioxx (then again, what is?) but it’s been linked to a long and frightening risk of side effects up to and including potential heart problems and bleeding in the gut.
And that’s just the first drug!
The peanut butter in this chocolate is the calcium channel blocker amlodipine besylate (a.k.a. Norvasc), which can give you abdominal pain, constipation and/or diarrhea (how’s that for a combination???), fatigue, heart palpitations, hot flashes, headaches, nausea, dizziness, sore throat, swelling…
Should I go on?
THAT’S what Pharma’s mixing together here. Two bad meds, even badder together.
“You’ve got your bleeding ulcer in my heart palpitations!” “NO, you’ve got YOUR heart palpitations in MY bleeding ulcer!”
There’s a commercial I bet you won’t see anytime soon… but that’s the ugly reality of combining the long list of risks of celecoxib with the awful side effects of the BP med Consensi.
Yet somehow, Pharma’s managed to overlook all that.
Nothing to see here!
It’s announced (with what I can only imagine is a totally straight face) that this is “a safe and effective combination.” That’s an actual drug company quote.
But you don’t have to “consent” to “Consensi” – and you won’t if you can “sensi” what’s good for you!
You can protest… refuse… and reject it!
If you want two things that are great on their own and even better together — and I know you do — try “safe” and “effective.”
A much better option for dealing with high blood pressure is the combo of plain ol’ calcium and magnesium (and like a peanut butter cup, you need both, not just one).
And for arthritis pain, the natural therapy chondroitin runs rings around celecoxib: In one two-year study that put chondroitin head-to-head against celecoxib, the folks who took the natural supplement lost LESS cartilage in the knee.
More cartilage means more “cushion”… and more cushion means less pain, more range, and better function.
And if you’re struggling with other kinds of pain (not just a pain-in-the-neck doc or a pain-in-the-rear neighbor), I’ll be back next week to kill the buzz of a popular back pain treatment… and share what actually works instead.
