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Medications

Health

Very Common Drugs That Rob Your Body of Nutrients

You can’t stop taking these drugs—so here are the nutritional supplements you need if you’re taking a drug for diabetes, cholesterol, blood pressure & more.

Health

Surprising Deadly Danger from Cipro Antibiotics

FDA warns that fluoroquinolone antibiotics (Cipro, Avelox, Floxin, Levaquin) may increase likelihood of aortic aneurysm in people at risk.

Drug Interactions

A New Tool to Prevent Drug Interactions: Artificial Intelligence

Drug interactions can be life-threatening, yet typically are found after many people are affected, not during testing. New technology may change that.

Health

Lithium: Not Just for Bipolar Disorder

In Rx doses, this drug can have sizable side effects. But as a nutritional supplement, its brain benefits can be life-changing without a downside.

Health

Drug Recall Alert: How to Protect Yourself from Harmful Medications

Prescription medications can play a vital role in keeping you healthy. But when a drug recall occurs, you need to take quick action. How to stay safe…

Health

Getting Rid of Leftover Medicine

Don’t keep those half-empty bottles or expired meds hanging around. How to get rid of them the right way.

Health

Drugs That Can Damage Tendons

Common medications for infections, high cholesterol and asthma can lead to painful soft tissue injuries

Health

Certain Statins Are Linked to Diabetes. Is Yours?

Has your doctor put you on cholesterol-lowering statin medication or suggested that it’s time to…

Health

Skin Cancer from Your Blood Pressure Med? Yes, It’s Possible.

There’s new evidence that the drug hydrochlorothiazide (HCTZ) raises risk for melanoma, a deadly skin cancer.

Health

The Life-Threatening Drug Reaction You’ve Never Heard Of

Epidermal necrolysis is a rare condition caused by medications. Learn how to recognize it and what to do about it.

Health

How to Tell if You’re Hooked on Antibiotics

One-third of antibiotic prescriptions are unnecessary…and if you take too many now, they may not work when you really need them.

Health

Taking Steroids? Do This to Prevent Deadly Pneumonia

Steroids can be helpful, but also dangerous. Here’s what to do to keep steroids from leading to pneumonia.

Health

Meds That Mess with Your Gut

You know the warnings about antibiotics, but they’re not the only drugs to upset the balance in your gut, creating problems with digestion and worse.

Drug Interactions

Are Your Medications Making Your Life Worse?

Polypharmacy means taking drugs or combinations of drugs that do more harm than good. Millions of us do. Here’s how to stop.

Health

What TV Drug Ads Aren’t Telling You

TV drug ads give the impression that a pill can cure what ails you—and perhaps even give you a better life overall. Here’s how to not get duped…

Health

When You’re Out of Treatments, “Right to Try” Isn’t Your Only Hope

When a pwerson is terminally ill and has exhausted al lthe FDA-approved treatments, “Right to Try” laws aren’t the only option…

Health

When Your Medication Makes You Gain Weight

Medications cn help us fight diabetes, depression and other chronic conditions. But weight gain can be a troublesome side effect. The ones to watch…

Health

Don’t Get Addicted to Xanax, Ativan, Ambien or Some Other Sedative

Benzodiazepines, such as Xanax and Ativan, may help your insomnia or anxiety in the short term…but you can quickly get addicted. How to not get hooked…

Health

Is Your Medication Making You Suicidal?

The use of certain common medications is linked to suicidal thinking. Find out which ones you need to beware of…

Health

New MRI Danger

With some MRIs you get an injection of the contrast agent gadolinium but gadolinium can be toxic.

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New MRI Danger

Actor Chuck Norris says that his wife, Gena, is enduring ongoing weakness and bouts of pain due to an injection she received as part of an MRI scan—is he right?

If you have an MRI, you might first be given an injection of gadolinium, a metal element that serves as a component of a “contrast agent” that makes tumors and inflammation easier to spot. But gadolinium can be toxic, and recent studies have found that traces of gadolinium can linger in patients’ brains, bones or other tissues for years, rather than be flushed away by the kidneys in a few hours as previously believed.

Medical science cannot yet say even if gadolinium is responsible for Gena Norris’s symptoms or whether it is dangerous in the small concentrations that linger after an MRI—research is ongoing. But it is reasonable to not want even a tiny amount of an unneeded and potentially harmful metal in your body.

What to do: If your physician recommends that you get an MRI, ask whether he/she requested that a contrast agent be used. If the answer is yes, ask your doctor to speak with the radiologist to confirm that using the contrast agent is necessary with your specific MRI. In many MRIs where the referring physician requests a contrast agent, it may not actually be needed. Only digital radiologists are trained in the complex subject.

If you do not have kidney disease and if the radiologist confirms that using a contrast agent is crucial to your MRI, the benefits of undergoing an MRI examination in which a contrast agent is used likely dwarfs any potential risk from the gadolinium itself.

Source: Emanuel Kanal, MD, professor of radiology and neuroradiology and director of magnetic resonance services at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. He serves as a consultant to the FDA on magnetic resonance safety issues and is lead author of the American College of Radiology’s Guidance Document on Magnetic Resonance Safe Practices. Date: January 15, 2018