Online Pharmacy Medicine Blog

It hasn’t quite gotten to that point yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if dietary substances start being recommend to children. It seems far fetched, but who knows now a days?

I feel parents must step up to the plate and take responsibility for their child’s health. Instead of trying to find a quick fix in the form of a diet pill, they must teach them how to lead a healthier lifestyle.

The prevalence of childhood obesity is now at an all-time, but researchers are now finding out that the problem may be starting at an even earlier age than previously thought. Evidence shown in a report posted by the NY showed “pivotal events very early in life — during the toddler years, infancy and even before birth, in the womb — that can set young children on an obesity trajectory that is hard to alter by the time they’re in kindergarten.”

Some of the findings in the study:

The chubby cherub-like baby who is growing so nicely may be growing too much for his or her own good, research suggests.

Babies whose mothers smoked during pregnancy are at risk of becoming obese, even though the babies are usually small at birth.

Babies who sleep less than 12 hours are at increased risk for obesity later. If they don’t sleep enough and also watch two hours or more of TV a day, they are at even greater risk.

While prescription diet medications such as Alli and Xenical are not the way to get the childhood obesity problem under control, parents must step up and take responsibility for their child’s health before the problem spirals further out of control.

The Food and Drug Administration decided today to change the name of Kapidex in order to avoid confusion of the drug with several other drugs that have simular names.

Kapidex, a heartburn drug, has a similar name to the prostate cancer drug Casodex and the pain medication Kadian. The FDA said the confusion has resulted in multiple “dispensing errors” since the drug was approved early 2009.

The FDA Director of Surveillance and Epidemiology Dr. Gerald Dal Pan said, “Today’s near miss, today’s medication error that doesn’t cause harm to somebody could cause harm to someone tomorrow.”

The new name for Kapidex will be Dexilant, and is the first in a list of drugs the FDA plans to rename in order to remove any confusion and remedy dispensing errors.

A report from ABC.com talked about a woman from Canton, NC who had experienced a similar problem first hand. She was supposed to get a prescription of a anti-depressant prescribed as a sleeping aid, Trazodone, for her foster daughter. Instead, the pharmacy gave her something with the same first three letters – Tramadol, a pain killer.

Hopefully the renaming will cut down on the amount of prescribing errors. Remember to always double check your prescriptions to make sure that you are taking the correct medication and avoid a potential disaster.