Do Polypills Mean Perkier Parrots? By Michael Challiner At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

Recent reports report evidence of a worldwide epidemic of cardiovascular disease which is obviously serious enough to cause concern with medical authorities. At the present time doctors aim to assess the patients who they consider to be at risk and offer preventative treatment. However there is concern that this doesn't take account of everyone and now there's the possibility of a plan to issue a mass prescription for all men over 50 and women over 60. One size fits all, you may say.

So, what exactly is this prescription? The wonder drug is called the Polypill: Basically it's a mixture of five different drugs, which include aspirin, which is used to thin the blood, a statin to reduce cholesterol levels and a combination of medications to lower blood pressure - a beta blocker, an ACE inhibitor and a diuretic. There's also folic acid, which reduces homocysteine levels in the blood - another risk factor when it comes to heart disease. By combining these drugs into one simple tablet, it should make it easy for people to comply with all these requirements.
By prescribing this pill to everyone over the age limit and not restricting it to people with pre-existing conditions of cardiovascular disease, experts believe that tens of millions of lives could be saved, world wide. That'll please the life insurance companies!

Although not available yet, trials have showed lots of promise. The treatment was really well tolerated and side effect or problems were minimal. The plan is now to carry on with tests to discover whether disease and deaths are reduced by as much as hoped.

It has to be admitted that not everyone is convinced that this mass preventative approach is the correct way to tackle the cardiovascular problem. Critics make the point that there are some people that will think of the Polypill as a wonderful excuse for not addressing their lifestyle - a lifestyle which makes them a candidate for heart disease in future years.

Although the cocktail of drugs are ones which are in common use and are relatively cheap and easily available, any drug has risks of side effects and combining them into one tablet does not mean that these will disappear.

A representative of the British Heart Foundation was quoted as saying "If money was no issue I would want to know exactly what my cardiovascular risk is and I would want my doctor to treat each of those risk factors optimally rather than the fire and forget approach that the Polypill will produce."

We all know of people who are living healthily into a ripe old age, who rarely take pills and whose recipe for a long and happy life is a little tipple on a regular basis. This mass medication would mean a healthy eighty year old man would have been on these drugs for twenty years. Whether or not there was any indication of problems.

Not everyone would feel comfortable about this. Another point worth thinking about is what if the day comes when insurance companies decline to offer life insurance to those who choose not to take the drugs. At one time it seemed unbelievable that an insurance company wouldn't pay out on car insurance unless everyone was wearing seat belts - I can still remember the time when seat belts were an optional extra on a car.

People were divided on the need for seat belts - some thought they were an excellent idea, whilst others argued that in the event of an accident you could be trapped by them. They're now the norm and something that's perfectly acceptable, despite the "Big Brother" publicity the legislation caused.

Seat belts are one thing and maybe taking (possibly) unnecessary drugs is another. What do you think?

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