Author: Debra Witt

Pros & Cons of Antibiotics: Can antibiotics cure the coronavirus? No. What about from the regular flu? No. But antibiotics can save your life if you have an infection like strep throat, MRSA or a wound.  Antibiotics are used for STDs, whooping cough, acne and staph infections. Antibiotics are one of the most overused and inappropriately used drugs. Overprescribing of antibiotics is a serious problem worldwide as it leads to antibiotic resistance, when certain bacteria become immune to the effects of antibiotics. This can lead to infections that are very difficult for doctors to treat. According to the CDC’s 2019…

Prescription heart medications are so common — millions of Americans currently take at least one to treat everything from high blood pressure and high cholesterol to heart failure and stroke — that it’s easy to assume that they are easy on your system, that the side effects must be minor because so many people take them. Not so. One of the two top reasons patients give for not taking heart drugs as prescribed is “fear of side effects.”

If you spend any time talking about health with older Americans, the topic of beta blockers will inevitably come up. But what are they, and how dangerous is it to take them? And why do so many people seem to need them? “The number one use of beta blockers in the country is to treat hypertension, that’s because of the sheer numbers of people with hypertension,” says Raymond Bietry, MD, a specialist in advanced heart failure at Ascension Seton Medical Center in Austin, Texas. “But their chief benefit is for those with heart failure.” Beta blockers are considered a “first…