It’s ladies’ night for Big Pharma, but they’re not out to buy you a drink.
They want you to do the buying, gals — and the bottle they’re offering is filled with meds they hope you’ll take at a certain time of the month.
Vantia, a British drug maker, says it’s testing a new hormone-blocking med that could help women beat a condition called dysmenorrhea, which is an awfully fancy way of saying "cramps." And they hope to sell it to up to 90 percent of all women of child-bearing age.
But anyone who deliberately messes with her hormone levels is just begging for trouble — and risking agony far worse than the cramps.
In this case, the hormone in question is vasopressin, which has been linked to menstrual cramps. But this hormone also regulates the water in your body — it basically makes sure you don’t dehydrate yourself every time you pee.
The new drug, which doesn’t have a name yet, suppresses this hormone — and it doesn’t take much imagination to see how this one can go tragically wrong.
And since the company is conducting its own experiments on this med, I don’t trust anything I read about it.
I’ve been around a long time — and I’ve seen a lot of PMS treatments come and go. The fact that we’re still talking about this today should tell you how most of them have turned out.
The last cramp-busting drug OK’d by the feds was a little monster called Bextra, which was pulled from the market after being linked to heart attack and stroke, and not just in women. Docs were giving these dangerous pills to everyone with any kind of ache.
I hate to say it ladies, but a certain amount of pain comes with the calendar. For some immediate relief, do what grandma did and get cozy with a heating pad. But if you’re suffering from severe life-altering, work-missing cramps month after month, look to your diet before you start gobbling down pain pills.
Many women just need more of the omega-3 fatty acids — if you’re not eating enough fish, get yourself a bottle of cod liver oil and go to town.
It beats whatever’s in that bottle Big Pharma wants to sell you.
William Campbell Douglass II, M.D.