Are Australians popping too many pills?

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDApr 5 2010

Consider this

• 40 million pills are taken by Australians each day
• Around 2 pills are taken per person (Men, women and even children) per day
• Are children also given too many pills? 10,000 children are prescribed antipsychotics in 2007-08.
• Prescription and use of drugs has gone up by 37% in the past 17 years
• $14.2 billion a year are spent each year on medicines
• $6.5 billion are spent each year on medicines from people’s pockets!
• 196 million prescriptions for subsidised medicines filled each year
• 300 million packs of vitamins, fish oils, headache and pain pills are purchased by Australians each year

Are Australians becoming more pill-dependent rather than focussing on a healthier lifestyle?

These reports have emerged from a Daily Telegraph investigation. Australian Medical Association vice president, GP and former Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee member Dr Steve Hambleton said the resons for these trends may include the increasing population of the aged, newer medicines as well as a rise in chronic lifestyle ailments like diabetes and high blood pressure. According to him, “There has been an explosion in the number of people who are diabetic and when you're diagnosed as diabetic you go from no pills to four pills overnight."

Some responsibility of this trend is also on the pharmaceutical companies that push pills of diseases earlier not treated with drugs. These include pills for smoking cessation, obesity etc. He said, "There is pressure on doctors to prescribe something. An obese lady came in today and said she wanted the latest obesity drug Duromine, which would have increased her hypertension…I think we have to go back to good old-fashioned focus on lifestyle."

Some of these self prescribed drugs like vitamins, fish oils and glucosamine may bring more harm than good. According to the National Prescribing Service chief Lyn Weekes these drugs in combination with prescription medications may reduce the latter’s efficacy and even causes more side effects. However she says that some of these complementary medicines like fish oils can also benefit the heart patients and diabetics in the long run. But she says more emphasis needs to be placed on a healthy lifestyle rather than medicines. "Many people will think: I will eat that extra dessert but just make sure I take my statin and that's not what we encourage people to do…You need a good lifestyle as well as the medicine, it's about the two working together,' she said.