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For both men and women, it takes a complicated chain of events to move from arousal to a satisfying orgasm. The mind has to stay focused, nerves have to stay sensitive, and blood has to flow to all the right places. Unfortunately, many things can break the chain -- including, perhaps, the pills in your medicine cabinet. Medicines often work by altering blood flow and brain chemistry, so its no...

How do you tell whether an online pharmacy is legitimate? Armed with the information below, you can easily weed out unscrupulous sellers and take advantage of the convenience of buying prescription drugs online. How do I know if a pharmacy is legitimate? The National Association of Boards of Pharmacies has an excellent screening tool: It issues a seal of approval, called VIPPS, which is short for ...

Anyone can make mistakes taking medication, but kids are especially vulnerable. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, half of all kids don't take their medicines properly. Of course, no one should expect a 6-year-old to read and follow the instructions on a box of cough syrup or pain reliever. It's up to parents and other caregivers to make sure kids take the right medicines in the rig...

Remember those high school chemistry experiments in which you mixed two harmless chemicals and got a bizarre reaction? You may be performing a similar experiment on yourself every time you take two medications at the same time. Certain drugs react strongly when taken with others, often causing serious side effects. In rare cases, drug interactions can even be deadly. Drugs can affect each other i...

Generic drugs are nothing new. Back in the 1920s, the company that made Bayer aspirin fought vigorously to keep generic versions off the shelves. The company lost in court, and consumers suddenly had an array of choices in generic aspirin. Today, generic drugs are both widely available and carefully regulated. This wasn't always the case. As recently as 40 years ago, drug companies could release ...

Are generic drugs safe? According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), generic drugs are just as safe and effective as their brand name counterparts. In fact, the law requires it. By FDA regulations, any generic drug has to have the same active ingredients in the same amounts as its brand name counterpart. Generic drugs must also be bioequivalent to brand name drugs, meaning that the drug h...

Why would you ever take a generic drug when you could stick with a trusted brand name? In a word: price. Generic drugs contain the same active ingredients at the same strength and purity as their brand-name counterparts, but they come at a fraction of the cost. According to the Congressional Budget Office, generic drugs save consumers an estimated $8 billion to $10 billion a year. How much you sa...

Whether you're shopping for soda or blue jeans, chances are you'll recognize a brand name. Companies like Coca-Cola and Levi Strauss Co. have spent billions trying to win our loyalty, and in recent years, changes in federal law have allowed drug manufacturers to advertise directly to consumers, too. Watch the nightly news or read a magazine, and you'll see ads for brand name medications. These ad...

Whether you're shopping for blue jeans or CD players, chances are you'll end up buying a known brand. As consumers, we tend to trust the familiar names. But when it comes to medications, brand names aren't necessarily the best choice. Hundreds of medications now have generic alternatives, drugs that contain the same active ingredients -- often at a fraction of the cost. An example: The antidepres...

What herb-drug combinations should I avoid? Herbal supplements are popular these days, but very few people have given up on mainstream medicine. Most of us still pop aspirin, see our physicians regularly, and pick up prescriptions from the pharmacy. Mixing herbs with traditional medicines can be the best of two worlds -- as long as you mix wisely. Many popular natural remedies can clash with pres...

Medicines don't do much good when they never leave the bottle. And yet the American Heart Association estimates that 12 percent of all Americans don't take their medications after getting a prescription. Another 12 percent don't fill their prescriptions in the first place. When patients do try to follow their doctor's instructions, they often miss a dose or take less than their doctors recommend. ...

Medicines don't always work the way they should. Even treatments that have helped you for years can suddenly lose their punch. You may need a slightly higher dose, or you may need a different medication entirely. But first things first: Your doctor is unlikely to change your prescription unless there's a clear sign of a problem. How can you tell if your medicine is working the way it should? It t...

In an ideal world, doctors would always prescribe the right drugs, pharmacists would never mess up orders, and patients would always carefully follow the instructions on their medicine bottles. In the real world, people sometimes make mistakes. And when it comes to medicine, mistakes can be dangerous. According to a 2006 report from the Institute of Medicine, 1.5 million preventable medication er...

Triax Metabolic Accelerator is a hazardous supplement that attempts to stimulate weight loss by capturing hyperthyroidism (overactive thyroid) in a bottle. It contains a natural compound used in some prescription medicines, triiodothyroacetic acid (triac), which supposedly increases the activity of the thyroid gland. The gland controls your metabolism like a thermostat, and cranking it up can help...

In an ideal world, doctors would always prescribe the right drugs, pharmacists would never mess up orders, and patients would always carefully follow the instructions on their medicine bottles. In the real world, people sometimes make mistakes. And when it comes to medicine, mistakes can be dangerous. According to a 2006 report from the Institute of Medicine, 1.5 million preventable medication er...

What are ADHD drugs? Used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), these medications are all drugs that stimulate the central nervous system. Ritalin (methylphenidate) has long been the leading treatment for ADHD. The drug helps people stay alert and focus on complex tasks, and is also considered to have a calming effect on hyperactive children. (It has also been used to treat na...

Ever since aspirin hit the market in the late 1800s, it has been a fixture in medicine cabinets everywhere -- and for good reason. It erases headaches, soothes arthritis, lowers fevers, helps prevent heart disease, and may even ward off some types of cancer. If it were discovered today, doctors would hail it as a medical breakthrough. But for some people, aspirin has a serious downside -- especial...

Whether it's smoked, snorted, or injected, cocaine is a powerfully addictive drug. The first rush is so intense that many users come back for more. As the brain grows accustomed to the drug, it takes more and more hits to reach anything close to those early highs. People who think they can use cocaine once in a while or "recreationally" may find that eventually their entire lives center around the...

When Len Bias, a 22-year-old University of Maryland basketball star, died of cardiac arrest after a cocaine overdose in 1986, some observers felt the tragedy might warn other youth off this stimulant. Whether that happened is unclear. Soon after the basketball player's death, there was demand for a type of cocaine known on the street as "Len Bias." And cocaine was involved in 448,481 emergency roo...

How can I save money on drugs? Following your doctor's orders is getting more expensive all the time. From 1997 to 2004, what Americans spent on prescription drugs more than doubled, from $429 to $1,037 per person. If your medicine is having a less-than-healing effect on your wallet, it's only natural to search for a way to cut costs. Fortunately, there are several ways to save money on medicine ...

When pharmacists are asked to work long hours under grueling pressure, mistakes happen. And although many errors are minor, some of them can be extremely grave. It was Monday, one of the busiest days of the week, and the pharmacy in South Carolina was understaffed. A pharmacist handed a mother a bottle of pills that was supposed to contain Ritalin, a medication to control her 8-year-old daughter's...

"I used to stockpile antibiotics," admits Ann Pascual, an editor for an Internet-based company in northern California. "I'd get a prescription, take half of it, and keep the rest. Sometimes I'd give a handful to friends who were sick. Instructions on the label? I don't think I ever really even read them." Fortunately, Pascual suffered no ill consequences from taking antibiotics haphazardly. Barbar...

Oxygen, light, and water are among the substances that humans need to survive. However, those same life-affirming elements can be destructive if they're present where many people keep their medications, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Take a look in your medicine chest. What's there may trigger a nostalgic swing down memory lane: the cough syrup you used to give your toddler -...

What does Viagra do? As you've no doubt gathered from the TV commercials, Viagra (sildenafil) is a drug used to treat erectile dysfunction (commonly called ED or "impotence") in men who either can't have or can't maintain erections. On the market since March 1998, it is now available in generic form. It is one of the most commercially successful drugs ever launched, with millions of prescriptions ...

Is substance abuse a problem among seniors? While the nation wages war on marijuana, cocaine, and other street drugs, roughly one out of five seniors struggles with a different kind of substance abuse. The drugs that have them in their grip -- prescription medications and alcohol -- are perfectly legal, but that doesn't make the addictions any less devastating to older people and their families. ...

What is AIDS? It's a relatively new disease that first surfaced in 1981, when scientists discovered a previously unknown human retrovirus linked to the outbreak of a rare skin cancer among gay men. Researchers named the virus the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and called the disease it caused AIDS -- short for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. Today AIDS is the fifth leading cause of death ...

What are cold sores? Cold sores, also known as fever blisters, are small red sores that occur occasionally on or near your lips or in your mouth. They actually have nothing to do with colds or with fevers; they're caused by a virus called herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1). How do you get cold sores? Nearly nine out of 10 Americans are infected with the cold sore virus at some point in their liv...

Your liver keeps you alive by filtering dangerous toxins from your blood. So what are you doing to return the favor? It's up to you to protect your liver from viruses, poisons, and other serious threats. Take this short quiz to find out how much you know about keeping your liver healthy. 1. It won't hurt my liver to take more than the recommended amount of Tylenol if I have a really bad headach...

If you've attended a large family reunion lately, it may come as no surprise that women tend to outlive men. In the United States, the life expectancy of men is about five years less than women, according to the American Journal of Public Health. For African American men, it's still worse: They tend to live about six years less than white men. Nearly all of the biggest killers in America -- inclu...

Metered-dose inhalers: Inhalers sold since January 1, 2009 feature a new design. The medicine in them remains the same, but the propellant that forces the medicine from the inhaler canister into your mouth is different. The new propellant, hydrofluoroalkane, or HFA for short, won't deplete the earth's ozone layer the way the old propellant did. While that's good news for the planet, it means you ...

For all of the good they do in the world, medications can also be extremely risky. Even if you take your medication exactly as you're supposed to, you could still suffer side effects. Taking the wrong pill at the wrong time in the wrong way will only increase the danger. If your doctor recommends a prescription drug, you need to become an expert in your own treatment. Your doctor needs to be info...

Every day, millions of people with chronic diseases miss their best chance to control their conditions and improve their health. They may see their doctor regularly, eat right, and exercise, but they skip one of the most important parts of their health plan: their medicine. Overall, 30 to 50 percent of all people with chronic diseases fail to take their medicines as prescribed -- and they can't al...

At a time when millions of Americans are making dangerous mistakes with their medications, experts are taking a hard look at the labels on prescription drugs. Are the labels really as clear and informative as they could be? The instructions on labels are often complicated and hard to understand -- if you can read the small type in the first place. But the most baffling items on labels may be the ...

Ever since the arrival of penicillin in the early 1940s, bacteria have been evolving defenses against some of our strongest medicines. As bacteria become increasingly resistant to antibiotic drugs, some experts worry that we could once again find ourselves in the dark ages where common infections are difficult, if not impossible, to treat. Experts say we can regain the upper hand over dangerous ge...

High blood pressure is always worrisome, but it's especially dangerous in the lungs. Primary pulmonary hypertension (PPH) can hamper breathing, damage the heart, and even threaten a person's life. While modern treatments can often relieve symptoms, patients have to do their part to control the disease. Do you know how to stay on top of PPH? Take this short quiz to find out. 1. People with PPH ...

As the epidemic of meth use spreads across the country, two lessons have been learned countless times: Meth ruins lives. Treatment works. Users who seek treatment and commit themselves to recovery have an excellent chance at success. The challenge of withdrawal Meth is a stimulant that hooks users with feelings of euphoria and bursts of energy. It can also cause extreme agitation, hallucinations, ...

What image comes to mind when you think of a drug addict? Do you picture someone smoking crack or shooting heroin? You'd be wrong. A typical drug abuser could easily be your next-door neighbor, the teen who babysits your kids, or the grandmother you chat with at the grocery store. That's because drug abusers could be abusing the medication they bought at the local pharmacy. About 7 million Americ...

Thanks to the tribulations of Rush Limbaugh and a cover story in The New York Times Magazine, just about everyone has heard of OxyContin addiction. Naturally, some patients with prescriptions for the pain reliever are worried that they, too, will get hooked. OxyContin is one of many opioids that are used for chronic pain management. When taken properly, these opioids are very effective and very s...

The cartoonish voice of someone who's just sucked helium from a party balloon, or the giggly feeling you get after the dentist gives you "laughing gas" (nitrous oxide) may be amusing, but recreational use of inhalants is far from harmless. Sniffing glue, "huffing" gasoline, and "bagging" gasoline octane booster are just some of the creative methods kids are using to get a quick high. In a 2008 sur...

"One pill makes you larger/and one pill makes you small But the ones that mother gives you/don't do anything at all Go ask Alice/when she's ten feet tall" --from "White Rabbit," as sung by Jefferson Airplane People who abuse drugs such as alcohol or narcotics are often trying to escape reality, but those who take hallucinogens sometimes do it to distort their ordinary reality and transcen...

What is DHEA? DHEA is the most abundant steroid hormone in our bodies. (Hormones in this category include estrogen, testosterone, and cortisone.) DHEA, short for dehydroepiandrosterone, can convert to either testosterone or estrogen; it reaches its peak when we're in our 20's and then performs a dramatic disappearing act as we age. After we hit 30, our DHEA levels drop about 10 percent every 10 ye...

What is 5-HTP? Short for 5-hydroxy-L-tryptophan, 5-HTP is a natural stepping-stone between a nutrient in our food and a crucial compound in our brains. Specifically, it's a substance that links the amino acid tryptophan to the chemical messenger serotonin. Tryptophan, which our bodies can't make but we do get from many foods, quickly turns to 5-HTP in the brain. 5-HTP, in turn, rapidly becomes ser...

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