We now have this and most other articles published in the Parkland Shopper on our Website. Please visit us at www.dcp.ca
The information in this article is intended as a helpful guide only. It is not intended to be used as a substitute for professional advice. If you have any questions about your medications and what is right for you see your doctor, pharmacist or other health care professional.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! Have you quit smoking yet? Don’t stop reading because this will be yet another preachy person sticking their nose in my business about my decision to smoke. From the pharmacy business point of view, I want you to keep smoking. Smokers spend much more money in the pharmacy than non-smokers.
Smoking is the number 1 cause of premature death in North America. Now dead people aren’t good for business, but thankfully, smokers usually get sick before they die. A heart attack which kills the smoker is bad news, but if we are lucky, maybe the smoker will get a debilitating stroke. Stroked out smokers who can’t feed themselves, use the toilet by themselves, or walk by themselves get lots of health problems that need medications.
Even before something as drastic as a stroke, smokers are good for the pocket book.. Smoking decreases the blood flow to the skin, and this leads to leathery-looking skin and increased wrinkling. So, smokers are good for cosmetic sales. The more you smoke, the more likely you are to get cataracts -an eye problem that can lead to blindness. There will be eye drop sales to smokers with cataracts. Smoking is the main reason people get cancer in the mouth. If we are lucky, a doctor, a dentist and a pharmacist should all make mula on a mouth cancer smoker. Smoking makes it harder for your saliva to remove germs in your mouth. Smokers get stains, bad breath, and a higher chance of gum disease. Again, dentists and pharmacists should make more bucks on smokers. Smokers are twice as likely as non-smokers to develop psoriasis - a disfiguring red and silver rash that can occur anywhere on your body. We can sell smokers creams for that. Smokers are more prone to stomach ulcers. Smoker’s ulcers don't heal as fast, and they're more likely to recur. We have expensive stomach pills to sell smokers for those ulcers. Finally, guys, smoking causes impotence. Viagra sales are great to smokers.
Of course I am not serious about wanting to make money off of smokers. As a health care professional, I want you to have a healthy life. Smoking reduces the chances of a healthy life.
So, you have decided to quit, but you want something to reduce your cravings. Nicotine replacement is now available as a patch, gum, or an inhaler. There is also a prescription pill called Zyban. It doesn’t have nicotine in it and works on brain chemicals that have to do with addiction. Many people have already tried the nicotine patch, the nicotine gum and the prescription pill Zyban. Maybe its time to try something different. How about a Nicotine Lollipop? Nicotine Lolli’s are items that we can customize for people under the direction of their doctor.
At the moment we make 2mg and 4mg Nicotine Lollipops in about 6 different flavors, but again we can customize the flavor or the strength under the direction of your doctor. The idea behind the Nicotine Lollipop is the same as the nicotine gum or nicotine patch, we are putting some of the nicotine back into your system that the cigarette used to provide. This will help reduce (not eliminate) the cravings for cigarettes. The added bonus is psychological. People who have used the Lollipop say they like that they are still putting something in their mouth like they used to do with cigarettes.
How do you use the Nicotine Lollipop and how long does it last? This will vary person to person, but in general one Lollipop will last about 1/2 a pack of cigarettes. During your regular cigarette break you put the Lollipop in your mouth for about 5 minutes or until the craving passes (whichever is less) and then you reseal the Lollipop in our special child proof container and put it away until your next craving. What strength of Lollipop do I need? Your doctor will help you choose when they write the prescription, but usually the 2mg Lollipop is for 1 or less packs a day, and the 4 mg is for people who smoke more than a pack a day. Finally, the Lollipop can be used with the pill Zyban if your doctor chooses.
Dauphin has many people interested in helping you to quit. The Health Dauphin Tobacco Reduction Committee (629-3001) sent all the health care professionals the following list of quit smoking resources:
Manitoba Tobacco Reduction Alliance Inc. http://www.mantrainc.ca/
Booklets
· One Step at a time (Canadian Cancer Society) 1-888-532-6982
· Get On Track (Manitoba Lung Association) 1-888-566-5864
· On the Road to Quitting (Health Canada) 1-800-O-Canada
As always if you have any questions or concerns about these or other products, ask your pharmacist.
Friday, December 31, 2004
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Insulin Basics
We now have this and most other articles published in the Parkland Shopper on our Website. Please visit us at http://www.dcp.ca
The information in this article is intended as a helpful guide only. It is not intended to be used as a substitute for professional advice. If you have any questions about your medications and what is right for you see your doctor, pharmacist or other health care professional.
What is diabetes? Well most people in Canada think of Fredrick Banting and Charles Best who found a substance called insulin inside the pancreas’s of dogs that stopped people from dying from a strange wasting disease called diabetes. (See Canadian’s can be pretty smart, eh?) If you look at the words diabetes mellitus (the full latin name), you can paraphrase it to mean “sweet tasting urine”. It was literally diagnosed by “water tasters” who drank the urine of those suspected of having diabetes; the urine of people with diabetes was thought to be sweet-tasting. The Latin word for honey (referring to its sweetness), 'mellitus', is added to the term diabetes as a result. Doctors today should be very happy they have lab tests to use. One of my favorite quotes during my readings though was by Aretaeus the Cappadocian in the second century AD when he called diabetes as “being a melting down of the flesh and limbs into urine.” It is not really accurate, but very dramatic.
Diabetes is when your body has trouble storing and using glucose. Glucose is a simple sugar that fuels many processes in the body. There are 3 types of diabetes: type 1, type 2, and gestational diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is when your pancreas doesn’t produce insulin. You must inject insulin or you will die. In Type 2 diabetes, your body may produce normal, or even above normal amounts of insulin. However, other parts of the body like your muscle and fat cells aren’t listening to the insulin signal. That means tissues like muscle and fat don’t suck the glucose out of the blood and use it. Type 2 diabetes can be treated with diet, exercise, pills or insulin, or often a combination of these. Gestational diabetes only occurs in pregnancy.
There are many types of insulin. The simplest is called R or Toronto insulin (Did I mention Banting and Best worked out of the University of Toronto?). It is produced by trained microbes and is identical to the insulin that the human body produces (and you thought trained seals were impressive). It is a short acting insulin. There are faster acting insulin in which the insulin molecule is changed a little to make it work faster. Other insulins with names like N, L and U are slow acting. They take R insulin and put it in a solution with other stuff to make the insulin release slowly. Insulin has to be injected because if it is taken orally, the stomach acid will destroy it.
Most people think of small syringes when they think of insulin. There also are insulin pens. Pens still have a needle, but many people find the fact you “dial up” the dose, instead of drawing up insulin into the syringe makes them easier to use. The pen needles also tend to be finer (in case you were interested, the finer the needle the bigger the gauge number) and shorter. Because of this, many people find the insulin pens more comfortable. The insulin pens give an audible “click” on each unit of insulin they dial up, so even those with visual impairments can use the insulin pens. Using a syringe with a visual impairment can be difficult.
There are also insulin pumps. These are expensive (in the thousands of dollars), they require a lot of training at first to learn how to use properly, but they are very interesting. Your pancreas releases a small amount of insulin into your body all the time (called basal insulin), and a pulse when you eat sugar (an insulin peak). Let’s say Jane is using an insulin pen and she uses short acting insulin at meal times (insulin peaks when they eat) and a long acting insulin at bedtime (this mimics the basal insulin). ( There are other ways of giving insulin. This was just an example. Don’t panic if you doctor has you doing something different.) So Jane’s injections are close to how a pancreas works but not exactly. With an insulin pump, the pump would release a small amount of short acting insulin all the time (basal insulin) and Jane could program the pump to release a pulse of insulin based on what she eats (an insulin peak). So insulin pumps more closely mimic what a pancreas does. They aren’t perfect, though. Jane would still have to poke her finger many times a day to check her sugar, and would have to become quite knowledgeable about how to use her pump in case of problems, clogs, etc.
As always if you have any questions or concerns about these or other products, ask your pharmacist.
The information in this article is intended as a helpful guide only. It is not intended to be used as a substitute for professional advice. If you have any questions about your medications and what is right for you see your doctor, pharmacist or other health care professional.
What is diabetes? Well most people in Canada think of Fredrick Banting and Charles Best who found a substance called insulin inside the pancreas’s of dogs that stopped people from dying from a strange wasting disease called diabetes. (See Canadian’s can be pretty smart, eh?) If you look at the words diabetes mellitus (the full latin name), you can paraphrase it to mean “sweet tasting urine”. It was literally diagnosed by “water tasters” who drank the urine of those suspected of having diabetes; the urine of people with diabetes was thought to be sweet-tasting. The Latin word for honey (referring to its sweetness), 'mellitus', is added to the term diabetes as a result. Doctors today should be very happy they have lab tests to use. One of my favorite quotes during my readings though was by Aretaeus the Cappadocian in the second century AD when he called diabetes as “being a melting down of the flesh and limbs into urine.” It is not really accurate, but very dramatic.
Diabetes is when your body has trouble storing and using glucose. Glucose is a simple sugar that fuels many processes in the body. There are 3 types of diabetes: type 1, type 2, and gestational diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is when your pancreas doesn’t produce insulin. You must inject insulin or you will die. In Type 2 diabetes, your body may produce normal, or even above normal amounts of insulin. However, other parts of the body like your muscle and fat cells aren’t listening to the insulin signal. That means tissues like muscle and fat don’t suck the glucose out of the blood and use it. Type 2 diabetes can be treated with diet, exercise, pills or insulin, or often a combination of these. Gestational diabetes only occurs in pregnancy.
There are many types of insulin. The simplest is called R or Toronto insulin (Did I mention Banting and Best worked out of the University of Toronto?). It is produced by trained microbes and is identical to the insulin that the human body produces (and you thought trained seals were impressive). It is a short acting insulin. There are faster acting insulin in which the insulin molecule is changed a little to make it work faster. Other insulins with names like N, L and U are slow acting. They take R insulin and put it in a solution with other stuff to make the insulin release slowly. Insulin has to be injected because if it is taken orally, the stomach acid will destroy it.
Most people think of small syringes when they think of insulin. There also are insulin pens. Pens still have a needle, but many people find the fact you “dial up” the dose, instead of drawing up insulin into the syringe makes them easier to use. The pen needles also tend to be finer (in case you were interested, the finer the needle the bigger the gauge number) and shorter. Because of this, many people find the insulin pens more comfortable. The insulin pens give an audible “click” on each unit of insulin they dial up, so even those with visual impairments can use the insulin pens. Using a syringe with a visual impairment can be difficult.
There are also insulin pumps. These are expensive (in the thousands of dollars), they require a lot of training at first to learn how to use properly, but they are very interesting. Your pancreas releases a small amount of insulin into your body all the time (called basal insulin), and a pulse when you eat sugar (an insulin peak). Let’s say Jane is using an insulin pen and she uses short acting insulin at meal times (insulin peaks when they eat) and a long acting insulin at bedtime (this mimics the basal insulin). ( There are other ways of giving insulin. This was just an example. Don’t panic if you doctor has you doing something different.) So Jane’s injections are close to how a pancreas works but not exactly. With an insulin pump, the pump would release a small amount of short acting insulin all the time (basal insulin) and Jane could program the pump to release a pulse of insulin based on what she eats (an insulin peak). So insulin pumps more closely mimic what a pancreas does. They aren’t perfect, though. Jane would still have to poke her finger many times a day to check her sugar, and would have to become quite knowledgeable about how to use her pump in case of problems, clogs, etc.
As always if you have any questions or concerns about these or other products, ask your pharmacist.
Thursday, December 02, 2004
Depo-Provera
We now have this and most other articles published in the Parkland Shopper on our Website. Please visit us at www.dcp.mb.ca
The information in this article is intended as a helpful guide only. It is not intended to be used as a substitute for professional advice. If you have any questions about your medications and what is right for you see your doctor, pharmacist or other health care professional.
By now everyone has probably heard about the recall of the arthritis medication Vioxx off the market. Another drug that you may not have heard of, called Depo-Provera, is also causing some concern.
Depo-Provera is an injectable medication used to prevent pregnancy and to treat a condition where the lining of the uterus grows too much called endometriosis. It has been a popular method of birth control especially in younger women and adolescence because the injection only needs to be given every 3 months. As with other methods of hormonal birth control (e.g. the birth control pill) Depo-Provera was never intended to stop sexually transmitted diseases like HIV.
On Nov 18/04 Pfizer sent a letter to Health Care Professionals stating that “…we now have clinical data regarding the use of Depo-Provera and its associated effect on bone mineral density (BMD). The data suggest that women who use Depo-Provera may lose significant BMD. Bone loss is greater with increasing duration and may not be completely reversible.” So what does that mean? Women who use Depo-Provera may get weak bones. This may be a larger concern in adolescent women because they are still growing bone, so if that is interfered with, then that might lead to osteoporosis and broken bone when they are older.
Should all women who have ever taken a Depo-Provera injection panic? No. Depo-Provera may still be a reasonable choice for birth control and the treatment of endometriosis in some women. Remember, unwanted pregnancy is a health risk to the mother, and the child and can be a financial burden on the community. If you are a woman on Depo-Provera, however, you probably should discuss the risk of bone loss with your doctor.
There is some controversy about the timing of the warning about bone loss and Depo-Provera. A women’s health group in Winnipeg called the Canadian Women’s Health Network and another called the Canadian Coalition on Depo-Provera (both of which have the same spokesperson Madeline Boscoe out of the Women’s Health Clinic at the Health Sciences Center in Winnipeg) sent a letter to Health Canada in before Depo-Provera was approved in April 1997. Madeline Boscoe and others did not want Depo-Provera to be approved for birth control. They pointed to a 1991 study in New Zealand that was published in the British Medical Journal that said Depo-Provera increased risk of bone loss. Ms. Boscoe believes if Health Canada took their concerns seriously Depo-Provera would never have been given to Canadian women.
If you would like more information on the Canadian Coalition on Depo-Provera:
Contact Madeline Boscoe, Executive Director, Canadian Women’s Health Network and co-founder Canadian Coalition on Depo-Provera. Cell 204-295-2946
The Canadain Coalition on Depo-Provera c/o Women’s Health Clinic, 3rd Floor, 419 Graham Ave, Winnipeg, MB, R3C O3M
As always if you have any questions or concerns about these or other products, ask your pharmacist.
The information in this article is intended as a helpful guide only. It is not intended to be used as a substitute for professional advice. If you have any questions about your medications and what is right for you see your doctor, pharmacist or other health care professional.
By now everyone has probably heard about the recall of the arthritis medication Vioxx off the market. Another drug that you may not have heard of, called Depo-Provera, is also causing some concern.
Depo-Provera is an injectable medication used to prevent pregnancy and to treat a condition where the lining of the uterus grows too much called endometriosis. It has been a popular method of birth control especially in younger women and adolescence because the injection only needs to be given every 3 months. As with other methods of hormonal birth control (e.g. the birth control pill) Depo-Provera was never intended to stop sexually transmitted diseases like HIV.
On Nov 18/04 Pfizer sent a letter to Health Care Professionals stating that “…we now have clinical data regarding the use of Depo-Provera and its associated effect on bone mineral density (BMD). The data suggest that women who use Depo-Provera may lose significant BMD. Bone loss is greater with increasing duration and may not be completely reversible.” So what does that mean? Women who use Depo-Provera may get weak bones. This may be a larger concern in adolescent women because they are still growing bone, so if that is interfered with, then that might lead to osteoporosis and broken bone when they are older.
Should all women who have ever taken a Depo-Provera injection panic? No. Depo-Provera may still be a reasonable choice for birth control and the treatment of endometriosis in some women. Remember, unwanted pregnancy is a health risk to the mother, and the child and can be a financial burden on the community. If you are a woman on Depo-Provera, however, you probably should discuss the risk of bone loss with your doctor.
There is some controversy about the timing of the warning about bone loss and Depo-Provera. A women’s health group in Winnipeg called the Canadian Women’s Health Network and another called the Canadian Coalition on Depo-Provera (both of which have the same spokesperson Madeline Boscoe out of the Women’s Health Clinic at the Health Sciences Center in Winnipeg) sent a letter to Health Canada in before Depo-Provera was approved in April 1997. Madeline Boscoe and others did not want Depo-Provera to be approved for birth control. They pointed to a 1991 study in New Zealand that was published in the British Medical Journal that said Depo-Provera increased risk of bone loss. Ms. Boscoe believes if Health Canada took their concerns seriously Depo-Provera would never have been given to Canadian women.
If you would like more information on the Canadian Coalition on Depo-Provera:
Contact Madeline Boscoe, Executive Director, Canadian Women’s Health Network and co-founder Canadian Coalition on Depo-Provera. Cell 204-295-2946
The Canadain Coalition on Depo-Provera c/o Women’s Health Clinic, 3rd Floor, 419 Graham Ave, Winnipeg, MB, R3C O3M
As always if you have any questions or concerns about these or other products, ask your pharmacist.
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