I’ll be 50 this year.
The only prescription drug I can ever remember taking is some form of mega-Tylenol when I cracked my melon about 30 years ago.
I honestly have never been subscribed a drug since then.
Am I an anomaly?
I’ll be 50 this year.
The only prescription drug I can ever remember taking is some form of mega-Tylenol when I cracked my melon about 30 years ago.
I honestly have never been subscribed a drug since then.
Am I an anomaly?
You mean you don’t suffer from overactive bladder, balding eyelashes, chronic fatigue syndrome and irritable bowel syndrome? :eek: Yes; yes you are an anomaly.
I think OP is braggin.
I am on two prescriptions right now that I will have to probably take for the rest of my life.
Now this is just anecdotal but I used to go to my local CVS to get my scripts.
when I first started going there, they had the usual 1 shelf of meds waiting. I now get my meds thru the mail (cost about 1/3 as much as before) and the last time I looked the local CVSs all had about 3x the amount of scripts that they had before.
I would say yes they are very prevalent.
I personally know about 4 families who have children on ADHD drugs. My own brother just got prescribed some and he is 51 years old!
the OP should be happy he doesn’t have to have them.
Not my intention.
I just want to know if everyone on the planet is on prescription drugs, as commercials on CNN would make me believe.
I take two prescriptions every day right now. One of them is a life sentence, the other I may eventually be able to discontinue, after a lot of years.
My husband used to be on cholesterol and blood pressure medications. Then he began to run and lost fifty pounds. Now he just takes a low grade antibiotic for rosacea.
But yes, you are an anomaly. Never needed antibiotics, huh?
I think you probably *are *an anomaly, assuming you’re a US citizen.
But then again, I’m a nurse, so pretty much everyone I see professionally is on multiple prescribed drugs. A 50 year old man, if I were going to see him with no information, I’d be shocked if he wasn’t on at least two. I mean, not even a statin for cholesterol? Unheard of!
Now me, I’m on none. (37, female) but not without effort. They’ve wanted to put me on a statin for years, and I’ve refused.
My SO (58, male) is on 10: aspirin and coumadin to prevent blood clots, lisinopril and metoprolol to reduce blood pressure and heart rate, rosouvatstatin for cholesterol, omeprazole and ranitidine for heartburn/GERD (caused, ironically enough, by the blood pressure meds), albuterol for COPD and tight cough (again, caused - or at least exacerbated by the blood pressure meds), tramadol for hernia pain and high dose magnesium supplements for low magnesium levels. Just yesterday, doctors reversed his ileostomy which means he can stop the loperimide, psyllium and dilaudid to keep his gut motility slowed, but he’ll be on some other pain medicine and probably Colace to soften stools for a bit. Now, aspirin, omeprazole, loperimide and psyllium are all available OTC, but he has prescriptions for them so the VA will pay for them.
I take two prescription drugs a day, and a handful of supplements that my doctor recommends.
I’ll probably be on one or both of them for a long time…a statin for cholesterol, and an anti-inflammatory for joint pain.
Or I could stop exercising, stop the anti-inflammatory, and probably pick up a bunch of others to deal with blood sugar issues…
-D/a
When I was 50 I wasn’t taking any either. A few years ago, my personal care physician remarked on me not taking any medicine. He sent me to a wallet surgeon. Now my pilltaner runneth over. I am 68 now and my last routine blood work showed I am in the bottom 25% on risk of a heart attack.
This pill treats the red spots, but causes dizziness, so take this pill for the dizziness, but you’ll need another to manage the nausea caused by the anti-dizzy pills…
Has your SO looked into replacing the lisinopril, rather than endlessly trying to treat the tracheitis it has a way of causing?
As for myself, I’m 43 and on two “life sentence” meds. Levoxyl to replace an inactive thyroid, and OTC naproxen to discourage my c-spine from self-fusing around an artificial disc implant.
I’d just like to point out that a lot of women are on prescription birth control pills.
When I was 50, I didn’t have any prescriptions, either.
But my blood pressure crept up and my triglicerides got too high and I started showing pre-glaucoma symptoms. Doctors prescribe as a preventive.
If you’re male and you don’t have a chronic illness, there’s probably no reason you’d be on prescription medication.
Canadian. But why should that matter?
No kidding! It’s so frustrating.
[hijack]
Well, I recently talked his docs into reducing it from 40mg/day to 2.5 mg/day. Yeah, that decimal point is in the right place. At this dose, his cough is WAY better (of course, quitting smoking after 125 pack years might have had something to do with it, too!) but his cardiologist is loath to stop the ACE inhibitor completely, for cardiologisty reasons I don’t quite grok.
I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that his list of meds is average, by the way. It isn’t, it’s quite high for a man of his age.
[/hijack]
I’m guessing the people of, say, Somalia, probably don’t take as many prescription medicines per capita as we do. But I’d WAG that Canada’s populace is probably equivalently medicated when compared to the US. Not entirely sure.
Ah. Gotcha.
I’m in my fifties also and don’t take any prescriptions either. I’m quite surprised at the number of people who appear to be younger and healthier than me, that take prescription medication, especially the number of people that take anti-depressants.
I think a difference needs to be made between the class of limited-use meds (like the aforementioned antibiotics) and the class of maintenance drugs (which assume long-term or even lifelong use) like birth control, antidepressant, palliative pain care, blood pressure meds. The commercials you’re seeing are targeting the second class, not the first (well, I guess there’s a third class they target, the meds like Viagra which could be occasional-use), while you’re asking not only about the latter two, but the first as well.
I think it’s an anomaly that you’ve only experienced the first class once. As Sattua asks: no antibiotics? Ever? Not even as a child, when it was common for a doctor to prescribe antibiotics for pretty much any childhood ailment? Ear ache? Here’s some nasty pink liquid. Cough? Nasty pink liquid. Never needed some common OTC meds like Benadryl, Neosporin, Sudafed, Advil, Imodium, etc., before they had hit OTC? Never got your wisdom teeth removed and have the dentist prescribe anything? Or have your dentist decide you needed a higher-fluoride paste or rinse than you could get OTC?
I’m 35, in relatively good health, and I’ve probably had 25 prescriptions in my life. Kids used to get a lot of prescriptions… a lot of stuff has now switched OTC, and in other cases pediatricians no longer give antibiotics for every little sniffle. I got pink liquid for virtually everything as a kid, including things like having cuts after a camping trip (plus some pre-OTC Neosporin), got oral steroids and pre-OTC Benadryl for a couple of extremely bad cases of poison ivy, some kind of antifungal spray for when my school did a bad job of cleaning the locker room floor. A few (including pre-OTC Aleve) from my dentist for “use as needed” after wisdom tooth extraction. I don’t think that’s too unusual.
Now, on maintenance drugs. Recently 17% of women in the US used oral contraception, so ~8.5% of the population are using that single type of medication. Add in the fact that 89 percent of people with arthritis and 98 percent of people with diabetes use prescription drugs and the percentage shoots up. That link has a lot of interesting info, including that of the healthiest age group in the survey, the 18-34 group, apparently 53% use prescription drugs annually, with an average of 3 prescriptions filled per year.
Found this interesting chart in a medical journal article comparing Canadian and US healthcare use. The methods were obtained by a separate survey than the ones linked to before, though the numbers for the US are roughly similar. This chart claims ~55.5% of all Canadians used prescription medication in the prior 12 months, with the healthiest group of those aged 18-44 hit 42.2%, and so on. So it looks like a lot of Canadians, and probably the majority, use prescription meds each year.
ETA: I screwed up my own age in the last post… good grief. I’m 37.
Student Driver makes an excellent point.
Most humans in what we used to call ‘First World Nations’ are regularly prescribed medicines when they are ill. I don’t think that is what you asking about though.
Might you elucidate?
Do you mean long-term meds?