Brittany Murphy, Heath Ledger and You

I’ve pointed out during this series on drugs that the U.S. is a Drugged-Out Nation, a nation where on average, every man, woman and child takes 12 pharmaceutical drugs.

As I’ve pointed out, we can thank the intense marketing and promotion of drugs for the insane amounts of drugs consumed in the U.S. And as I’ve also pointed out, 40% of all drugs produced in the world are consumed in the U.S.

One downside, among many, of taking so many medications is something called Acute Pharmaceutical Toxicity, or APT.

APT is what killed the actor Heath Ledger, who died at the age of 28 on Jan. 22, 2008; and the actress Brittany Murphy, who died at the age of 32 on Dec. 20, 2009.

APT is what can potentially happen to anyone who takes a number of medications. Heath Ledger was taking six drugs, while Brittany Murphy was taking 10.

Here’s the problem: no one knows what happens when you take a number of drugs together, because pharmaceuticals have never been tested in combination with other drugs. In other words, when you are combining a number of medications, it is hard to predict what might happen.

Despite the fact that no combination testing has ever been done on pharmaceuticals, they are regularly prescribed in combination. Obviously, this creates a whole new realm of unknown risk based on the way multiple drugs might chemically interact in the human body.

The more pharmaceuticals you take, the more dangerous they become. While one pharmaceutical chemical may at first seem harmless (even though just one drug can actually kill you), when you start adding a second, third, fourth and fifth prescription on top of that, you’re dealing with Acute Pharmaceutical Toxicity.

Pharmacists are trained to help people avoid the most toxic two-drug combinations, but they rarely have any real knowledge about what happens when you combine three, four, five or more drugs. No one does. The science has simply never been done on that question. It’s no wonder: With all the possible combinations and permutations of pharmaceutical toxicity, it would take literally trillions of clinical trials to test them all.

So this whole idea that you can take a drug to treat one problem, then take a second drug to treat a second problem, and a third to treat a third problem… this entire approach to health care, upon which modern medicine is largely based, is flawed from the start. In clinical trials, patients are tested for one drug at a time. Never five or six (or ten).

So all the clinical trials that have ever been conducted by the pharmaceutical industry need to be thrown out the window for patients who take more than one drug. And that’s just about everybody!

Ask any senior citizen which prescription drugs they take, and most of them (the ones who can still remember, anyway) will rattle off a shockingly long list of toxic chemicals that have never been tested in combination. Just because one drug in isolation seems “safe” in one trial in no way means it’s going to be safe when combined with half a dozen other toxic chemicals taken by the patient at the same time.

But the problem is this: if you have a number of health issues, you will end up seeing different specialists, who each will most probably prescribe medications. So then you’re on a number of drugs, and you have no one keeping track of all the drugs you’re taking.

And of course, there’s also no one who knows exactly how these drugs will interact with one another.

So don’t become a victim of APT – Acute Pharmaceutical Toxicity. If you take multiple medications, start formulating a game plan for how you can reduce or eliminate the drugs you take.

Or else, you may wind up like Heath Ledger or Brittany Murphy.

Heath Ledger – Rest in Peace

The late Heath Ledger won the Academy Award on Feb. 22, 2009 for his role as the Joker in the film The Dark Knight.

Heath Ledger, as we all know only too well, died on January 22, 2008, at the much too-young age of 28.  I wish him a peaceful sleep with the angels.

Unfortunately for Heath, his untimely death came as a result of getting caught up in a High Density Lifestyle.  How a High Density Lifestyle manifested for Heath Ledger was in the large number of prescription medications he was taking.

Drugs can never help you become truly healthy and they will stop you from finding your way to a Low Density Lifestyle.

In today and tomorrow’s articles, I will talk about the tragic cases of two celebrities who both were caught in the crossroads of a High Density Lifestyle by virtue of their being a victim of taking medications.

The Australian-born Heath Ledger had been in 18 movies, many of them critical and box-office successes. He received an Academy Award nomination in 2005 for his role as Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain.

His last completed role (he was acting in The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus when he died, and filming was suspended) was for the film The Dark Knight, in which he plays Batman’s nemesis, The Joker.

In a November 2007 New York Times interview, Ledger had stated that his recently-completed role in The Dark Knight had taken a toll on his ability to sleep: “Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night. … I couldn’t stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going.” At that time, he said that he had taken two sleeping pills, after taking just one had not sufficed, and those left him in a stupor, and gave him an hour of sleep at best. In January 2008 he also came down with an upper respiratory illness.

When he was found dead in his Manhattan apartment on January 22, sleeping pills were found by his bedside, but an autopsy was inconclusive as to whether sleeping pills played a role in his death. Ten days later, on February 6, toxicology reports allowed the New York City medical examiner to state that Heath Ledger died accidentally from being overmedicated. It was found that he was taking six different medications—two pain medications, three anti-anxiety medications, and a cold medication.

Too many people in the U. S. are extremely over-medicated. It is not uncommon for people to be taking four, six, ten or more drugs at any one time. The interaction of various drugs in the body is always a cause for concern—there can be volatile and unpredictable reactions in the body from the many drugs, and it is one that can have potentially lethal complications, as we tragically saw with Heath Ledger.

Sadly, if only Heath Ledger knew better—then he wouldn’t have gotten sucked into the vortex of drugs and trapped in a High Density Lifestyle.

Heath Ledger, you were a gentle soul.  May you rest in peace.

Video of Heath Ledger’s Win at the Academy Awards