Posts by Nicky Milligan
Urgent request for Absent Healing
Please would as many of you as possible sent Absent Healing and Prayers to Mike and his family from Cheltenham.Mike has had a major stroke and the outlook is poor right now.Every ounce of help is needed .
Read MoreWHAT DOES EXPIRATION DATE ON A BOTTLE OF MEDICATION MEAN TO YOU? A very interesting read: Does the expiration date on a bottle of a medication mean anything? If a bottle of Tylenol, for example, says something like “Do not use after June 1998,” and it is August 2002, should you take the Tylenol? Should you discard it? Can you get hurt if you take it? Will it simply have lost its potency and do you no good? In other words, are drug manufacturers being honest with us when they put an expiration date on their medications, or is the practice of dating just another drug industry scam, to get us to buy new medications when the old ones that purportedly have “expired” are still perfectly good? These are the pressing questions I investigated after my mother-in-law recently said to me, “It doesn’t mean anything,” when I pointed out that the Tylenol she was about to take had “expired” 4 years and a few months ago. I was a bit mocking in my pronouncement — feeling superior that I had noticed the chemical corpse in her cabinet — but she was equally adamant in her reply, and is generally very sage about medical issues. So I gave her a glass of water with the purportedly “dead” drug, of which she took 2 capsules for a pain in the upper back. About a half hour later she reported the pain seemed to have eased up a bit. I said, “You could be having a placebo effect,” not wanting to simply concede she was right about the drug, and also not actually knowing what I was talking about. I was just happy to hear that her pain had eased, even before we had our evening cocktails and hot tub dip (we were in “Leisure World,” near Laguna Beach , California , where the hot tub is bigger than most Manhattan apartments, and “Heaven,” as generally portrayed, would be raucous by comparison). Upon my return to NYC and high-speed connection, I immediately scoured the medical data bases and general literature for the answer to my question about drug expiration labeling. And voila, no sooner than I could say “Screwed again by the pharmaceutical industry,” I had my answer. Here are the simple facts: First, the expiration date, required by law in the United States, beginning in 1979, specifies only the date the manufacturer guarantees the full potency and safety of the drug — it does not mean how long the drug is actually “good” or safe to use. Second, medical authorities uniformly say it is safe to take drugs past their expiration date –no matter how “expired” the drugs purportedly are. Except for possibly the rarest of exceptions, you won’t get hurt and you certainly won’t get killed. Studies show that expired drugs may lose some of their potency over time, from as little as 5% or less to 50% or more (though usually much less than the latter). Even 10 years after the “expiration date,” most drugs have a good deal of their original potency. One of the largest studies ever conducted that supports the above points about “expired drug” labeling was done by the US military 15 years ago, according to a feature story in the Wall Street Journal (March 29, 2000), reported by Laurie P. Cohen. The military was sitting on a $1 billion stockpile of drugs and facing the daunting process of destroying and replacing its supply every 2 to 3 years, so it began a testing program to see if it could extend the life of its inventory. The testing, conducted by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), ultimately covered more than 100 drugs, prescription and over-the-counter. The results showed, about 90% of them were safe and effective as long as 15 years past their expiration date. In light of these results, a former director of the testing program, Francis Flaherty, said he concluded that expiration dates put on by manufacturers typically have no bearing on whether a drug is usable for longer. Mr. Flaherty noted that a drug maker is required to prove only that a drug is still good on whatever expiration date the company chooses to set. The expiration date doesn’t mean, or even suggest, that the drug will stop being effective after that, nor that it will become harmful. “Manufacturers put expiration dates on for marketing, rather than scientific, reasons, ” said Mr. Flaherty, a pharmacist at the FDA until his retirement in 1999. ” It’s not profitable for them to have products on a shelf for 10 years. They want turnover.” The FDA cautioned there isn’t enough evidence from the program, which is weighted toward drugs used during combat, to conclude most drugs in consumers’ medicine cabinets are potent beyond the expiration date. Joel Davis, however, a former FDA expiration-date compliance chief, said that with a handful of exceptions — notably nitroglycerin, insulin, and some antibiotics — most drugs are probably as durable as those the agency has tested for the military. “Most drugs degrade very slowly,” he said. “In all likelihood, you can take a product you have at home and keep it for many years.” Consider aspirin. Bayer AG puts 2-year or 3-year expiration dates on aspirin and says that it should be discarded after that. However, Chris Allen, a vice president at the Bayer unit that makes aspirin, said the dating is “pretty conservative”; when Bayer tested 4-year-old aspirin, it remained 100% effective, he said. So why doesn’t Bayer set a 4-year expiration date? Because the company often changes packaging, and it undertakes “continuous improvement programs,” Mr. Allen said. Each change triggers a need for more expiration-date testing, and testing each time for a 4-year life would be impractical. Bayer has never tested aspirin beyond 4 years, Mr. Allen said. But Jens Carstensen has. Dr. Carstensen, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin’s pharmacy school, who wrote what is considered the main text on drug stability, said, “I did a study of different aspirins, and after 5 years, Bayer was still excellent”. Aspirin, if made correctly, is very stable. Okay, I concede. My mother-in-law was right, once again. And I was wrong, once again, and with a wiseacre attitude to boot. Sorry mom. Now I think I’ll take a swig of the 10-year old, dead package of Alka Seltzer in my medicine chest to ease the nausea I’m feeling from calculating how many billions of dollars the pharmaceutical industry bilks out of unknowing consumers every year who discard perfectly good drugs and buy new ones because they trust the industry’s “expiration date labeling”. Avast logo This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. www.avast.com
FORTHCOMING WORKSHOP
We are very lucky in Gloucester to be able to offer a workshop by Madison King about Donna Edens Energy Medicine……This outstanding teacher will be here on November 1st…and there is one place left.For details contact me via my website,or at nicky.milligan.healing@gmail.com This opportunity is too good to miss ! !
Read MoreSent from my iPad Subject: Anthropomorphic collective nouns The English language has some wonderfully anthropomorphic collective nouns for the various groups of animals. We are all familiar with a Herd of cows, Flock of chickens, School of fish And a Gaggle of geese, and A Pride of lions. However, less widely known is: A Murder of crows (as well as their cousins the rooks and ravens), An Exaltation of doves And, presumably because they look so wise: A Congress of owls Now consider a group of Baboons. They are the loudest, most dangerous, most obnoxious, most viciously aggressive and least intelligent of all primates … And what is the proper collective noun for a group of baboons? Believe it or not … A Parliament ! YEP… A PARLIAMENT OF BABOONS! Pretty much explains everything doesn’t it? … You just can’t make this up. —
A beautiful thought !
In the heaven of India,there is said to be a network of pearls,so arranged that if you look you see all the others reflected in it. (a Hindu Sutra)
Read MoreHullo!
My blog has been rather quiet for several weeks…..and this is because I have been in hospital acquiring a new hip.It has not been a fun ride but the original pain has gone,and I can’t tell you how marvellous that is ! The post operative discomfort is slowly vanishing and I can’t thank the surgeon,nursing…
Read MoreFountain International Magazine and Newsletter. A spiritually born enterprise, that is a spiritually led project. Both of the publications are free, (although donations are gratefully received for running costs.) Our remit covers such things as Earth Energies, Sacred Sites, Various forms of Healing and Spiritual Matters, and much more. Take a peek, we are not the norm of spiritual magazines, and hopefully you will be pleasantly surprised. For me as the Producer/Editor, it’s not so much about the topic, but more about the intuition of the authors and the energy that comes through them and placed in the Magazine. In a sense I just provide a platform, and I am happy to receive a submissions from anyone, so long as it fits our criteria. Whether it be an article, picture, photo, poem, observation or experience, etc, etc. If you feel drawn, why not get involved! suzanne@eaglebear.fsworld.co.uk At present the Magazine comes our four times a year. 21st March, June, September and December. Normally around 40 pages. Obtainable from the website http://fountaininternationalmagazine.com Back issues are available on sit
FULL MOON TIME AGAIN.
Another word for the forthcoming August full moon is the Full Sturgeon Moon.Some Native American tribes knew that the sturgeon in the Great Lakes were more easily caught at this time.Others called it the Green Corn Moon.
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