By Dr. Mercola
If you’re a U.S. adult and don’t regularly take a prescription drug, you’re now in the minority, according to a survey of nearly 2,000 U.S. adults by Consumer Reports.1 The revealing sample found that more than half of U.S. adults regularly take prescription medications, and the average adult takes four. If it seems like your friends and family are taking more drugs than they did in the past — or if adults use more meds than they did when you were a kid — it’s not in your imagination, either.
Consumer Reports found that the total number of prescriptions filled by Americans (including children) increased by 85 percent from 1997 to 2016 — but the total U.S. population increased by only 21 percent during that time.
$200 Billion a Year Spent on Improper Use of Prescription Drugs
In some cases, prescription drugs are necessary, but in many they are not. In fact, a report by QuintilesIMS, formerly known as IMS Health, Institute for Healthcare Informatics revealed that $200 billion a year, or 8 percent of U.S. health care spending, is spent on medical care resulting from improper or unnecessary use of prescription drugs.2
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Medication errors and problems that arise from taking multiple medications are key problems, as is the misuse of antibiotics and inappropriate prescribing. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), meanwhile, more than 2 million serious adverse drug reactions (ADRs) occur every year in the U.S, leading to 100,000 deaths. ADRs are actually the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S., causing more deaths than pulmonary disease, diabetes, AIDS, pneumonia and accidents, including car accidents.3
What’s more, these ADR statistics do not…