An American born in 2019 will spend a larger share of their lifetime taking prescription drugs than being married or receiving an education, according to new research by Jessica Ho, associate professor of sociology and demography at Penn State. She reported the findings this week (article date: Oct 6) in the journal Demography.
This title makes it sound like a bad thing. Keep in mind that before the past century, most didn’t live much past 60, and when older, you had a lot more health problems.
Some long term drugs are quite useful and shouldn’t be considered at all as unnecessary or detrimental. This includes things like insulin or blood pressure medicine.
Pricing of some meds is a whole other story…
I have a rare nerve disorder, bipolar disorder and high blood pressure. Pharmaceuticals are keeping me alive. Like you said, the prices are ridiculous, but the actual science is usually sound.
People say pharmaceutical companies aren’t interested in keeping you alive. Fine. Doctors usually are and they generally want to write prescriptions that help you.
Yeah I needed certain drugs from a young age. Does it suck? Sure. Are the anxiety meds needed in part due to environmental factors? Probably but also genes say I’d still need them. Would I much rather live now than a hundred years ago when one of these drugs I need was available and the condition it treats was treated with hitting children until they were too traumatized to disobey authority? No no I wouldn’t.
Turns out evolution isn’t goal oriented, and we’re just a mass of questionable genetic material with precarious chemical balances.
Thank you, modern medicine, I would literally be dead without you
Wow, it only takes me about 30 seconds every morning. I’m way ahead of the game here.
I’m grateful for the meds that are there. Considering both my parents are on a cocktail of drugs treating symptoms of other problems, I just don’t know if they’d have the will to tackle these systemic problems.
That being said, this saddens me because much of this need for meds boils down not to genetics but of societal lifestyle (average stress, sedentary lifestyle, misinformation on healthy diets (e.g., carnivore diet), and generally things within our control.)
It’s my personal goal to fight the old for as long as I can and reasonably do that which is best for my body. So I may spend more time with my kids and do more things with them, and generally just enjoy life longer. So in that sense, I want to prevent the need for taking meds as long as I can and focus on prevention and root cause.
Yep, my parents are also sadly in the school of “just take a pill for it,” which then turns into taking more pills for the side effects of the pills they’re taking, and on and on.
While I’m in the “make healthy lifestyle changes” camp and have, so far in my early 40s, never been on long term medication and hopefully never will. It’s so frustrating watching my parents deteriorate while still paying for so many meds.
Wow. Americans take a long time to swallow.
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Agreed. Before I found medication that worked, I basically sat around all day miserable. I was just sitting around in pain, doing nothing. No work, no hobbies, nothing. Because it was too much to handle along with pain that would make me scream if it got too bad. So thank whatever gods you feel like believing in for the pharmaceuticals that made the pain mostly go away.
Aw, just half? Don’t know about y’all but I’m going on…80% so far.
Many of the drugs that individuals are on for 40 or 50 years have only been on the market for the past five decades, so their long-term effects on the body are still unknown
Is that a typo? Because it sounds like we do have 50 years of data.
I hate when the way numbers are represented changes in an article. It feels slightly dishonest to say “50 years” in one sentence and then “five decades” in the next.
If I’m lucky, it’ll be more than half my life!
Is it bad?
Sounds about right. People live about 80 years so that would mean from age 40.
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