Top 10 Overused and Fake Medical Treatments
Medicine has come a long way since history was first recorded, and even further in the past hundred years. People are living longer than ever, medicine is constantly breaking new ground and technology is gaining ground even now. More and more new medical treatments are being experimented with, and many old ones are being upgraded as we get better at keeping people healthy and strong. Although we have come a long way, medicine still has some areas that need improvement, and some medical treatments are overused or downright bogus – some of which are still in use today.
Related: Top 10 Horrible Ancient Medical Practices. . . We still practice
10 CT scans are exaggerated for profit
First, we need to be clear about what a CT scan is for those who are not very familiar with it. A CT scan basically uses ionizing radiation to create an image of the inside of a part of the body that doctors need to look at more closely. While the device may not be able to tell you what’s going on if you just have a muscle strain or something similar, it can give doctors critical details in more serious cases. If you get one in the hospital, you probably think it’s very important and accept the small amount of radiation exposure.
However, you may be alarmed to know that research has shown that hospitals are overusing CT scans and billing you, the state, or your insurance for a procedure you don’t need. This is especially problematic because it’s not just low-level insurance fraud; it is harmful to others. CT scans expose people to radiation and should therefore only be used in high-risk patients. Yet research shows the opposite. Even worse, for those who think their part of the world may be exempt, studies have shown it is a global problem.[1]
9 Smoking cigarettes to improve your health
Today we know that smoking cigarettes is very bad for your health and often leads to lung cancer and other health complications. They have become less and less culturally acceptable, increasingly taxed, and many believe they should simply be banned altogether. Even those who smoke them regularly and make no excuse for it are under no illusion about the unhealthiness of their chosen habit.
However, it wasn’t that long ago that things were very different. In the early 20th century, people in the United States did not yet know that cigarettes were so unhealthy, and cigarette companies advertised directly to doctors. And they weren’t just trying to be sneaky about it either, they were advertising directly to consumers and stating that their brand was the best for treating conditions like sore throats. This may seem outrageous to us today, but at the time, the health information we have today simply wasn’t common knowledge.[2]
8 Children were once given liquid heroin for coughs
While the current opioid crisis is quite serious and is currently affecting many parts of the world, the world is at least taking it seriously at the moment. Everyone agrees that opioids are a problem and that we should try to limit their use to only the most important medical uses for pain that cannot be treated otherwise. However, it wasn’t that long ago that heroin was sold as an over-the-counter cough remedy, and no one cared.
Although it is actually an effective medical treatment for coughs, it is not recommended for most coughs these days as it is incredibly addictive. For this reason, most doctors, especially for children, recommend dextromethorphan instead. However, by the early 20th century, Bayer was openly selling liquid heroin for adults and children as a cough suppressant. Today we would never imagine giving liquid heroin to a child. Yet in the early 20th century it was as normal as handing out children’s cough syrup, because that was children’s cough syrup.[3]
7 Tonsillectomies: Overused and unnecessary in most cases
If you lived a few decades ago, there’s a pretty good chance you had your tonsils removed. Not long ago, at least in the United States, it was an extremely common procedure performed routinely on children. Parents had the surgery performed on their children because of issues such as frequent sore throats – which was supposed to help the procedure – and sometimes used as a matter of standard medical procedure.
Today, the tonsillectomy rate has dropped sharply, but it is still far too high. Research showed that nine out of ten tonsillectomies are actually not necessary at all. Many people still do it because of things like frequent sore throats, but doctors say your children will grow out of this and the risks of the surgery often outweigh the benefits unless it’s an extreme situation. This overuse is a problem because the complications can be a problem. Some are the normal ones, such as the risks of absconding, bleeding and swelling, but infections are also common.[4]
6 Phenylephrine has proven to be an ineffective decongestant
Even those who claim they “never get sick” get at least a mild cold every now and then, and we all find ourselves in a situation where we may need to buy some anti-congestion medicine. If nothing else, even if you don’t get sick much, most people have seasonal allergies occasionally and need a decongestant for that reason.
With the old stuff falling out of favor because you don’t want people to think you’re making meth, most people are now buying over-the-counter products with phenylephrine. Unfortunately, this is a problem because an FDA advisory panel recently concluded that phenylephrine is not actually an effective decongestant. Now you might imagine that it still works a little, but it’s just not enough to be legally effective, otherwise they wouldn’t have sold it all these years. To make matters worse, however, the board also unanimously concluded that it was no better than a placebo.[5]
5 Hydrogen peroxide causes more harm than good to wounds
Although it is now falling out of favor due to more knowledge about the practice, just a few years ago it was quite common in many parts of the world to use hydrogen peroxide on wounds that needed cleaning. The bubbling and stinging is something that most of us thought does a really good job of killing the germs, and the visible sign of a product that works has a powerful psychological impact on most people.
Now you should not blame those who recently adopted this practice, as this knowledge only came to light in 2010. Like rubbing alcohol, which you shouldn’t use on wounds, it takes a few minutes to really kill the germs effectively. Hydrogen peroxide is corrosive and damages the skin, delaying healing rather than promoting it. To disinfect a wound, you should first use soap and water, followed by a safer disinfectant such as Neosporin.[6]
4 Vitamin C is good for you, but not as a medicine for colds
Vitamin C is one of the favorite cold remedies of many people around the world. There are countless products designed to give you a big dose of vitamin C all at once, often marketed as a catch-all cold medicine. Some people wait until they have a cold and then start freebasing orange juice as if it is their drug of choice and they haven’t had it in a week. Others will drink orange juice all the time, take supplements, and claim that doing so helps them avoid the pain of a cold altogether.
Now, like most things that people misunderstand, there is some truth behind it. Research has shown that if you regularly take vitamin C, you can shorten the duration of colds in adults by 8% and in children by 14%. However, the rest of the claims people make about vitamin C are completely false. If you wait until you already have a cold to take it, there is no evidence that it will have any effect. Even though taking it regularly can shorten the duration of colds, there is no evidence that those who take it often suffer less from colds.[7]
3 Loose stools? Reach for the opioids
Today we think of heroin and other opioids as one of the worst things on earth and something that should only be used in extremely important medical situations where no other painkiller will work. But as we mentioned earlier, it was once treated in a more cavalier manner by most of the world, to the point where people gave it to children for coughs or to help them sleep. Today we would consider any use of it for minor ailments as a gross abuse.
But back in the day, starting with ancient Arab physicians in early Iraq, opium was once used as a treatment for loose stools. This may sound strange, but remember that many people who use heroin or other similar drugs complain of constipation. So this is where the idea came from: to use it as a remedy for diarrhea. While this does provide a rationale for heroin treatment for loose stools, it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. With what we know about addiction today, it’s like cutting off your leg to clip your toenail.[8]
2 Mercury as a medical treatment?
Today we know that mercury is not at all safe for human consumption and should be avoided by all means – from touch to inhalation and everything in between. We are so concerned about mercury these days that countries have health advisories to avoid eating too much fish, especially the larger ones, to avoid ingesting too much mercury as a byproduct. The truth is, knowledge of the dangers of metals and heavy metals is actually more recent, as leaded gasoline and paint only fell out of favor in the 1970s.
Although it took the world a little less time to understand the dangers of mercury than it did to figure out the problems with lead, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a scourge on civilization for a long time. The use of mercury as medicine began to fall out of popular use in the mid-twentieth century. Yet its use dates back to the earliest days of recorded history. And its history involves a drug that people thought cured virtually everything. It has been used against syphilis, as an anti-parasitic, and as an anti-inflammatory, and has even been considered by some people as an anti-aging agent.[9]
1 A large proportion of antibiotics are prescribed incorrectly
Antibiotics are an important part of medicine, and although they have only been discovered as a fully understood and synthesized product in the past few hundred years, that doesn’t mean they didn’t exist before then. People have been using products like honey and oregano as natural antibiotics for years, even though they didn’t understand exactly what they were doing. This means that many people have a cultural idea of antibiotic medications that often leads them to think that they work against colds in general, because it was common in human evolution to use them on an almost intuitive basis when needed.
Unfortunately, this misunderstanding leads to people requesting antibiotics from their doctor much more often than necessary. It also causes doctors to overprescribe them. The data on excessive antibiotic use shows that approximately one in three prescriptions is not necessary at all. The problem here is that antibiotics are really only intended for serious bacterial infections, and not for viruses or minor bacterial infections like the common cold. Excessive use makes bacteria more resistant and creates superbugs that are much harder to kill.[10]