Actress and Mom Lori Loughlin Raises Awareness About the Potential Dangers of Drowsy Driving During Allergy Season

KENILWORTH, N.J., -- Summer is fast approaching, bringing sunshine, vacation days, and trips to the beach. But the warmer weather also marks a peak in seasonal allergies and the beginning of a busy driving season. According to a recent survey, seven out of ten Americans believe they will spend some time driving this Memorial Day weekend.

This year, the makers of the non-drowsy allergy medication CLARITIN(R) are partnering with Lori Loughlin, a popular actress, mom and allergy sufferer, best known for her role as Rebecca Donaldson on the hit sitcom Full House. The campaign aims to raise awareness about the importance of reading medicine labels, including allergy medicines, for warnings about drowsiness before they get behind the wheel.

Like many working moms, Lori spends hours each day shuttling her children to school, activities, and play-dates in the high-traffic Los Angeles area. It's especially important to Lori that she's focused behind the wheel with her most precious cargo in the back seat.

"As an allergy sufferer, I was surprised to learn that some over-the- counter medicines may cause drowsiness. In fact, the allergy medicine I used to take made me drowsy. I thought there was something wrong with me because I was so sleepy -- which was pretty dangerous considering all the driving I do with my kids," said Lori. "Then I discovered CLARITIN, which relieves my worst allergy symptoms for 24 hours without making me drowsy. When you spend as much time driving as I do, you need to be focused."

Lori is not alone -- in fact many drivers don't realize that some common over-the-counter medicines could cause drowsiness. According to a recent survey, four in 10 Americans (38%) report that there have been times when they were driving and realized that the medicine they had taken was making them drowsy.

"We're thrilled that Lori, a well-known actress and mom, recognizes the importance of reading medicine labels for warnings about drowsiness before she gets behind the wheel," said TJ Higgins, Group Vice President, Marketing, Schering-Plough Consumer Healthcare. "Lori is participating in the "Clear to Drive" campaign to help share her story with millions of Americans who might not know that their medicines may cause drowsiness."

For tips on safe driving and to learn more about treating allergies, visit www.cleartodrive.com.


SOURCE: PR Newswire, May 6, 2008

Teen trend: Steal meds

Study says one in five teenagers abuses prescription medication
BY HALLIE WOODS

For Lupe Vasquez getting high was as easy as sneaking into her parents' medicine cabinet or asking her friends to pass the pills.

She couldn't tell you if she was taking Percocet, Vicodin or Oxycontin, but she knew popping a couple pills always gave her a good feeling.

"It makes you feel numb," said Vasquez, a 15-year-old sophomore at Poudre High School. "It would take away all the pain from things around me."

Vasquez is among a growing number of teens and young adults who participate in a phenomenon called "pharming," or using prescription drugs for recreational use.

According to the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, one in five teens abuses a prescription pain medication, while one in 10 reports abusing cough medicine.
Easy access

Dr. Hermann Moreno, a staff psychiatrist at Mountain Crest Mental Health Services, said that because prescription drugs are technically legal, it is much easier for teens and adults to take the pills without thinking they are doing anything wrong.

"A lot of (drug) stealing is because there is some sort of unconscious message in the family that some degree of substance abuse is OK," Moreno said. "Society in general sometimes gives that same message."

Prescription drugs are legal for those to whom they are prescribed, but it is illegal for anyone else to use those drugs, even within a family, Moreno said.

In 2006, abuse of prescription painkillers was second only to marijuana as the nation's most prevalent illegal drug problem, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Pharm parties

Even more nerve-wracking for parents, some teens talk of participating in "pharm parties" where kids mix pills together like a Chex mix and wash them down with alcohol.

"If you mix them, it gives you a better high," Vasquez said.

Kids don't know what they're taking, or how much they are taking, a dangerous, even deadly, combination.

According to a Larimer County Sheriff's Office report, a Fort Collins mother reported missing seven bottles of prescription medication after her two teenage sons threw a party when she was not home.

The mother reported missing at least 45 pills of Concerta, two bottles of Percocet and four bottles of Vicodin after her sons threw the party.

Some rehabilitation professionals said illegal use of pharmaceutical drugs is increasing because they're increasingly more available.

"People use them because they are easy to get," said Shelby Romero, a 16-year-old sophomore at Poudre High School.

Most commonly, teens are taking painkillers such as morphine, Percocet and Oxycodone, antidepressants such as Valium or Xanax, or stimulants like Ritalin.

"As parents and teachers, we need to be concerned about living in a culture that is stuck with their hand on the happy button," said Johnny Mason, a substance abuse counselor at Rocky Mountain High School.

Vasquez said she stopped using prescription drugs when her cousin, another Poudre High School student, committed suicide in May 2006, just shy of her 16th birthday.

Vasquez said her cousin was unhappy and used prescription drugs to numb her pain.

"I had been close to overdosing," she said. "It was just stupid."

Suicide can be linked to substance abuse, Moreno said.

"If a parent becomes aware that this is going on, they should seek help," he said.

SOURCE: Coloradoan, May 5, 2008

Save Big $$$ on Your Prescription Drugs

A new report finds you may be drastically overpaying for prescription drugs if you don't shop around. Consumer Reports called 163 pharmacies nationwide to compare the price of a three-month supply of various drugs and found "a wide variation in prices depending on where you shop," said Tod Marks, the magazine's senior editor.

The magazine found that prices could vary by as much as $100. For example, the anti-clotting drug Plavix varied from $382 to $541, depending on the store.

The survey also showed that where you live matters, too. The same exact medication cost $160 in Omaha, Neb., but $257 in Billings, Mont., even though it came from the same pharmacy chain.

"It depends on competition in any given area," Marks said.

Overall, Consumer Reports found Costco had the lowest costs and Rite Aid was the most expensive. Rite Aid told ABC News that it prices competitively with other chain drugstores, not warehouse stores, but that it will look at these results and consider changing prices accordingly.

How to Save on Your Prescriptions

Call around to different pharmacies to compare prices.
Choose generic alternatives over name-brand drugs.
Consider an independent pharmacy. It's not the very cheapest, but it is highly competitive.
Ask whether your pharmacy has a discount program.
If you're truly struggling financially, you may even be able to get "free" medicines from the pharmaceutical industry's patient assistance program. Contact the makers of medications you use.

SOURCE: ABC News, May 6, 2008

Stores take steps to curb cold medicine abuse

With pseudoephedrine off the shelves, placed behind counters to curtail abuse, drug abusers seem to be looking toward other over-the-counter remedies.

Area pharmacists are watching the trend, and in some case, are taking steps to head them off.

Those medicines include Coricidin Cough and Cold, Robitussin, and Dimetapp DM and Vicks NyQuil LiquiCaps, which all contain the drug dextromethorphan. And when abused, they can result in a high.

Many Walgreens locations across the country have voluntarily placed Coricidin behind the pharmacy counter, Walgreens corporate spokeswoman Carol Hively said.

Other medicines were not removed because the company found they were not being abused like Coricidin, she said.

So now the medicine has been disappearing from store shelves accessible to shoppers and reappearing behind counters or glass containers manned by store employees.

Hively said people, many of them teenagers, would enter stores and purchase packages of the medicine and swallow most or all of its red tablets. The high is called “Skittling” after the tablets’ close resemblance to the candy Skittles. The product was moved behind the counter if local law enforcement felt it was a problem.

And at all Walgreens locations, no one younger than 18 can purchase the medicine.

Children as young at 14 have been taken to emergency rooms after overdosing on the medicine, Hively said.

In October, two 16-year-old girls were detained at the Brazoria County Juvenile Detention Center after one of them overdosed on the cold medicine.

One of the girls brought 16 pills into the detention center, which the other took. She was taken to Angleton Danbury Medical Center, where she was treated and released.

Brazoria County Sheriff Charles Wagner said the abuse of other over-the-counter drugs such as Coricidin is rising because of the tracking of pseudoephedrine. But the abuse is not an epidemic, he said.

“It’s nothing like the abuse of hard drugs,” he said. “But we are seeing more of it.”

Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office narcotics investigators are working with local law enforcement to curb over-the-counter drug abuse by trying to track who buys certain over-the-counter drugs — mostly pseudoephedrine — using log books kept at pharmacy counters, Wagner said.

“Everybody’s working on it,” he said.

In 2006, a federal law was passed requiring customers purchasing pseudoephedrine, which can be used to make methamphetamine, to sign a log book so retailers can track who is buying it, how much is being bought and how many times.

For Coricidin, Hively said it’s a store-by-store preference depending on local law enforcement.

“Some stores take it off the shelves and some don’t,” she said. “It depends on the area — if there are trends. It seems isolated, so I can’t say it’s a big problem. It’s sporadic.”

Locally at the Clute Walgreens, Coricidin can be found inside a locked glass case, a store employee said.

J.C. Jackson, a pharmacist who has been running the Alvin Medicine Man pharmacy for two years, said abuse of over-the-counter medicines purchased at his clinic is not common because they have been implementing a system much like Walgreens.

“There was a time when you could buy everything on the shelf,” said Jackson, a Seabrook resident. “But it has curtailed a whole lot.”

Jackson has implemented a log book customers must sign and provide their driver’s license number so the pharmacy can track purchases of items containing pseudoephedrine. And if anything strange arises, they offer the information in the log book to police. They do not track medicines with dextromethorphan.

Meghan Glynn, a spokeswoman for Kroger, said any decisions about product placement or removal are decided depending on the situation at hand. And the supermarket chain removes items following legal guidelines.

“It depends on a lot of factors,” she said of having items protected behind counters or glass. “It depends on the issue.”

Spokesmen at Wal-Mart and Target also said they only remove what federal guidelines say to remove.

Source: The Facts, 11/27/07

Targeting black Friday shoppers

Convenience is driving shoppers to online merchandisers and retailers that are typically located outside the mall.

"You drive up to a Kohl's, you do your shopping, you get back in your car and you're done," Davidowitz said. "You go to a mall and it's a huge pain in the a-- with the parking and everything. You can drive right up to Wal-Mart and do your shopping and leave. Drug stores are performing best in recent years. Who's more convenient than the drug store?"

Malls like Muncie's -- which is a regional center that draws shoppers from several counties -- are strong enough to attract other retailers. When Target relocated its Muncie store in 2003, it chose a spot across the parking lot from Muncie Mall. An out-of-town developer who recently built a strip center, including a Qdoba, near the mall told The Star Press that proximity to the mall was desirable.

Nance said the relative strength of Muncie Mall doesn't make Simon Property Group complacent, however. Mall stores will compete with big box stores by opening as early as 4 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving. For the first time, the mall will coordinate specials and coupons with mall tenants.

"We want to drive traffic in here early," Nance said. "Last year [opening early] was successful and this year we have more partners on board.

"We know people will be going to the Best Buys and Targets and Wal-Marts, and we're letting them know we have specials here."

Source: The Star Press, 11/18/07

The Claim: Zinc Can Help You Beat a Cold

As cold season gets under way, countless sneezing and sniffling Americans will turn to zinc as their treatment of choice.

But does it actually work?

More than 100 studies in the past two decades have examined the question. Some have found zinc to be effective, and have proposed various reasons. But many more have found little or no evidence that it works.

One of the most extensive studies appeared in the journal Clinical and Infectious Diseases in 2000. In it, scientists randomly assigned more than 500 people — about half with natural colds, and the other half deliberately infected — to receive placebo or zinc lozenges in various doses. After secluding the subjects in hotel rooms and examining them for five days, the researchers concluded that zinc gluconate lozenges produced “modest” benefit, while zinc acetate lozenges did nothing.

Another study, published this year by researchers at Stanford Medical School, collected and analyzed data from 14 previous placebo-controlled studies of zinc. Over all, the scientists determined, the effectiveness of zinc lozenges “has yet to be established,” while there was some slight evidence for zinc nasal gels.

For those who do insist on zinc, it is worth knowing that the studies that endorse it have found that it should be taken within 24 hours of the onset of symptoms to be most effective.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The research on zinc as a cold fighter is mixed.

Source: New York Times, 11/06/07

Natural, organic beauty

For Flavia Kawaja, an interior designer in Manhattan, a trip to the beauty department at Whole Foods Market comes not with a shopping list but with a mental list of what synthetic ingredients to avoid.

Ms. Kawaja won’t use antiperspirant made with aluminum derivatives, in case the urban legend that they could cause diseases like Alzheimer’s turns out to be true. She also steers clear of skin-care products with parabens, common antibacterial agents used as preservatives in some cosmetics, drugs and foods.

Although there have been no rigorous large-scale prospective clinical trials to show that parabens in cosmetics represent a risk to beauty consumers, a few studies have shown that exposure to parabens can cause reproductive changes in lab rodents.

By choosing cosmetics marketed as natural or organic, Ms. Kawaja errs on the side of caution. Even so, she admits that she’s unsure whether her careful choice of natural shampoos and sunscreens translates into health benefits.

“I don’t assume that organic automatically means good for you,” she said. “I mean, if you fry an organic potato, it’s still a French fry.”

Organic connoisseurs have long made a practice of reading food labels to weed out those grown with pesticides or that contain synthetic colors, flavors or preservatives. Now, in the wake of recent health scares over tainted pet food and toothpaste, some beauty mavens are seeking synthetic-free cosmetics in the belief that products made without industrial ingredients like petrochemicals ought to be healthier for you.

These newly minted label inspectors are fueling a boom in so-called natural and organic personal care products. Natural cosmetics market themselves as containing plant or mineral ingredients; organic products say they are made with agricultural ingredients grown without pesticides.

During the 12 months through Sept. 9, Americans spent $150 million on the top three mass-market natural personal care brands, including Burt’s Bees, Jason Natural Cosmetics and Tom’s of Maine, an increase of $51 million over the year before, according to Information Resources Inc., a market research firm. Meanwhile, sales of organic personal care items reached $350 million last year, an increase of $68 million over 2005, according to manufacturers’ data compiled by the Organic Trade Association, an industry group.

“We’re seeing an increased consciousness that what you put on your body is as important as what goes in your body,” said Jeremiah McElwee, the senior coordinator in charge of personal care at Whole Foods, which is the company’s fastest-growing department. “The biggest impetus for buying natural or organic body care is the perceived health benefit.”

It would seem logical to assume that common ingestible ingredients like olives or soy would naturally be healthier for the skin and body than hard-to-pronounce, multisyllabic industrial cosmetic ingredients like the preservative methylchloroisothiazolinone. But representatives for the government and the beauty industry, as well as some environmental activists, acknowledge that there is no published scientific proof to support the notion that plant-based cosmetics are safer, healthier or more effective for people.

“Consumers should not necessarily assume that an ‘organic’ or ‘natural’ ingredient or product would possess greater inherent safety than another chemically identical version of the same ingredient,” Dr. Linda M. Katz, the director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Cosmetics and Colors, wrote in an e-mail message to this reporter. “In fact, ‘natural’ ingredients may be harder to preserve against microbial contamination and growth than synthetic raw materials.”

The confusion over the “truthiness” of the natural personal care market also stems from the lack of national standards.

The F.D.A., which regulates cosmetics, has never imposed standard definitions for marketing terms like natural and organic as they apply to grooming products, Dr. Katz said via e-mail. So manufacturers are free to use such terms on everything from a synthetic-based shampoo with one plant derivative to a synthetic-free face powder formulated with only minerals.

The agency requires manufacturers to ensure that cosmetics are safe for their intended use. But the agency leaves it up to manufacturers to decide which safety and efficacy tests to perform on ingredients and finished products.

John Bailey, the executive vice president for science of the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association, a trade group in Washington, said cosmetics are safe, whether their formulas contain synthetics or plants.

“On the most fundamental level, they are held to the same legal and regulatory standards,” said Dr. Bailey, who has a Ph.D. in chemistry.

But Jane Houlihan, the vice president for research of the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit group in Washington, said the lack of established federal standards is responsible for consumer confusion over whether natural products provide tangible advantages or are simply a sop to green mind-sets.

“Even if a beauty product claims it is purely from the earth, you need to read the ingredient label,” Ms. Houlihan said.

Ms. Houlihan said increased consumer interest in natural products is driving a few manufacturers to include exotic plants in formulas that lack an established track record in the beauty industry. For example, she said, her group could not find published safety data on newer cosmetic ingredients like West Indian rosewood bark oil and white peony flower extract.

“Just because an ingredient comes from a plant does not necessarily make it safe to use in a cosmetic,” Ms. Houlihan said. “Tobacco, hemlock and poison ivy are all examples of plants that can be hazardous.”

Indeed, some dermatologists said that even natural ingredients that seem benign can cause skin allergies. For example, Dr. David A. Kiken, a chief dermatology resident at the school of medicine at the University of California, San Diego, said he had seen skin irritation caused by tea tree oil, chamomile and green tea in cosmetics.

“Although the term natural botanical extracts inherently purports to have beneficial and benign properties, these extracts can cause adverse reactions in individuals,” Dr. Kiken wrote in a paper published in the American Journal of Contact Dermatitis.

In the absence of F.D.A. standards, dozens of beauty companies and stores are using words like botanical, herbal, natural, pure and organic to market brands, each using its own in-house definition.

For example, on www.sephora.com, the company distinguishes between botanical brands that use some plant ingredients; natural brands that eschew synthetic preservatives, colors and fragrances; and organic brands that employ some plant ingredients grown without pesticides.

Other brands style themselves as organic to signal ultimate wholesomeness. Even then, definitions vary widely. Some beauty companies simply employ organic in their brand names. Others promote certain ingredients that have been vetted by private companies that inspect organic foods.

A few brands — including Origins and Nature’s Gate — have even received certification for some products from the National Organic Program, the division of the Department of Agriculture whose logo appears on certified organic food products. Cosmetics are eligible to use such food seals if they contain at least 95 percent of certified organic ingredients that are agricultural products made from livestock or crops, grown and processed without chemical fertilizers, pesticides, growth hormones and antibiotics.

But people should not interpret even the U.S.D.A. Organic seal — www.ams.usda.gov/nop/FactSheets/Backgrounder.html — on cosmetics as proof of health benefits or of efficacy, said Joan Shaffer, a department spokeswoman. Government-accredited certifiers simply vet the manner in which these food ingredients are grown and processed, just as they would for a jar of organic tomato sauce, she said.

“The National Organic Program is a marketing program, not a safety program,” Ms. Shaffer said, likening the department’s organic seal to its grading system for beef. “Steak may be graded prime, but that has no bearing on whether it is safe or nutritious to eat.”

Source: New York Times, 11/1/07