Author: Suzanne B. Robotti

Suzanne B. Robotti

Suzanne is the President and Founder of MedShadow, and the Executive Director of DES Action USA.  MedShadow’s mission is to preserve quality of life by ensuring everyone has access to the risks, benefits and alternates to using drugs to manage healthcare. Read More

You may have heard of a new study that concluded that people diagnosed with adult ADHD were more likely to end up with dementia, especially if they choose not to treat it with medications. The headlines in the popular press were scary: “Adult ADHD may take a toll on the brain,” and so forth. Worse, some health sites have already embedded this possibly untrue information in articles. But don’t panic because there are good reasons to question the research. The study claimed that having a diagnosis of adult ADHD and not using medicines like Ritalin more than doubled the risk…

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Book: Sugar Less Author: Nicole M. Avena, PhD Publisher: Union Square & Co., Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. Years ago, I’d heard about an experiment where they took rats and got them addicted to sugar and cocaine. Then they made the rats choose: sugar or cocaine? The rats overwhelmingly chose sugar.  I always suspected that it was an urban legend or an allegory to make the point that sugar is hard to stop eating. But, turns out it was true! Nicole M. Avena, PhD, created and conducted that experiment about 20 years ago as part of earning her PhD. At the…

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When Sidney Wolfe died on New Years Day, I lost a friend, DES Action lost a hero, and health advocacy lost a lion. When I was appointed to the Consumer Rep position on the FDA’s Drugs Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee in 2017, I reached out to the two previous consumer reps (MDs both) who had held the position before me, asking for their advice. Of the two, Sidney Wolfe called me. Sid was trained and licensed as an MD, but pivoted to drug safety advocacy work early in his career. He was the face and energy of the…

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ired of promising yourself that, this year, you’ll really go to the gym? Or stop eating desserts? Or any of the other actions you should do or not do? Here’s a new one for you — you’ll feel better, and it’s easy!! Clean out your medicine cabinet! Really. Right now. Pull out those “nearly finished” prescriptions, that partially-unwrapped roll of Tums, those multi-symptom cold and flu meds, an almost-empty bottle of Pepto-Bismol, and the multiple boxes of Lactaid. Consider these your ghosts of Christmas Past. These are the indicators of how well you are taking care of yourself and your…

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If you are using cough drops to soothe a nagging cough, stop right now! They are doing you more harm than good. The more lozenges you take, the longer your cough will last. Cough drops just beget more coughing.Is your cough lingering for days, even weeks, after the congestion and exhaustion of a cold or flu is gone? If you are using cough drops to soothe and calm the coughing, you may have found the culprit of the long-lasting cough.Dr. Bob Mead noticed that patients who came to his office to address a lingering cough most often told him they…

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Every fall I remember my son’s middle school experience of nearly being bullied by the principal and the teaching staff into taking Ritalin. When my son was 12, my husband and I arrived for the normal teacher conference a few weeks after he started at a new school. Two teachers told us flat out that he had ADHD. All his other teachers complained of his inability to sit quietly through a lesson and that his homework was incomplete. We explained that there had recently been seismic disruptions in his life and asked that he be given time to settle in.…

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At MedShadow, we love pharmacists. That’s because our mission is to protect you from the side effects of drugs. Doctors are great; they are disease and health specialists. Pharmacists are medication managers. We consider pharmacists to be your last line of defense before a medical prescription error reaches you. Your pharmacist makes sure you get the medicine your doctor ordered, in the amount specified, and clearly explains to you how to take it (with food? In the morning? etc.). If the prescription is unclear or if the doctor ordered a drug that will conflict with your other medicines or supplements,…

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OTC

The world has gone crazy, or maybe it’s just the doctors. Every doctor knows that every medicine has side effects. A core ethic of the profession requires doctors to balance the expected benefits of the medicine against the risk of side effects. The simple question is: is this drug likely to do more good than harm? If yes, alert the patient to the risks and then prescribe. If the answer is no, look for another way to treat the patient. What is the result when research finds that a medicine doesn’t have the beneficial effect earlier studies indicated? Simple: a…

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Every drug has side effects, so it’s important to ask a few questions before taking it. The side effects can be mild (nausea, headache) or life threatening. You want to know what the known side effects are of a drug so you can prepare for it, even if only to not be surprised.  Use medicines wisely — for the shortest duration and at the lowest dosage that’s effective. Clinical trials done prior to market release can identify many common, and even some not-so-common, side effects of drugs, but many more are discovered years after a drug makes it to market.…

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A week or two ago my adult niece, an Ivy League graduate and generally all-around smart person, said she didn’t know what to believe about vaccinations, and she’s completely given up on trying to understand it at all. She talked about the avalanche of conflicting  information  at health website during the COVID pandemic and the continuing controversies (mask or no mask? Kids in school or out?) that have never cleared up.  She felt she didn’t have the medical education or the stamina to plow through it all herself. So she stopped. And that has led her to question a lot…

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