Month: April 2023

• The World Health Organization is seeking to cement its control over global health through amendments to the international health regulations (IHR) and its pandemic treaty

• The pandemic treaty will grant the WHO power over far more than pandemic responses. It emphasizes the “One Health” agenda, which combines human health, animal health and environmental concerns into one

• Under the One Health agenda, the WHO would have power to make decisions relating to diet, agriculture and livestock farming, environmental pollution, movement of populations and much more

• Private interests wield immense power over the WHO, and a majority of the funding is “specified,” meaning it’s earmarked for particular programs. The WHO cannot allocate those funds wherever they’re needed most. This too massively influences what the WHO does and how it does it. So, the WHO is an organization that does whatever its funders tell it to do

• The globalist takeover hinges on the successful creation of a feedback loop of surveillance for virus variants, declaration of potential risk followed by lockdowns and restrictions, followed by mass vaccinating populations to “end” the pandemic restrictions, followed by more surveillance and so on. The funding for this scheme comes primarily from taxpayers, while the profits go to corporations and their investors

In the March 22, 2023, video above, Dr. David Bell, Ph.D., a PANDA Science Sense Society

executive committee member,

reviews the new international pandemic treaty proposed by the World Health Organization — what it is and the impact it will have on democracy and freedom across the world — and the proposed amendments to the WHO’s international health regulations (IHR).

As noted by PANDA:

“The COVID event has revealed that it was about more than just public health and the political, economic and societal aspects of the response are of far greater significance than the virus itself. There remains a continued drive toward the transformation of our societies in ways that threaten democracy and our existing ways of life.”

The WHO’s pandemic treaty and the IHR amendments are two of the strategies that are driving us “toward transformation of society that threaten democracy and our existing ways of life.” Both are aimed at achieving the same thing, namely centralizing power over nations with the WHO.

As noted by Bell, the WHO is no longer what it used to be. For starters, private interests now wield immense power over the organization. Bill Gates is the largest funder of the WHO when you add together the donations from the Gates Foundation and his other organizations, such as GAVI the Vaccine Alliance.

“The WHO is very much an organization that does whatever its funders tell it to do.” ~ Dr. David Bell

Another major change is that most of the funding is “specified,” meaning it’s earmarked for specific programs. The WHO cannot allocate those funds wherever they’re needed most. This too massively influences what the WHO does and how it does it. As noted by Bell, “The WHO is very much an organization that does whatever its funders tell it to do.”

As just mentioned, Gates wields the greatest financial influence, and he never seems to fund anything that he can’t profit from at the backend. For example, he funds a “green revolution” in Africa that promotes genetically engineered (GE) crops because he’s invested in the companies that supply GMO seeds. The end result is greater famine and poverty, but Gates laughs all the way to the bank.

He also funds vaccination campaigns for the very vaccines he’s invested in. It’s not about charity or doing good for the world. He simply creates markets for his investments.

Bell points out that the COVID lockdown strategy clearly did not come from the WHO itself, but rather from some outside source. How do we know this? Because its pandemic guidelines up until the COVID outbreak called for isolating infected patients only, for seven to 10 days.

Then, when COVID came about, that guidance was completely turned on its head, and the entire world, sick and healthy alike, were told to self-isolate for weeks and months at a time. Someone made the WHO issue this irrational and unscientific recommendation.

As a result of lockdowns, several of the WHO’s supposed goals for global health and well-being, especially for children, suffered dramatic setbacks, yet they didn’t seem to care.

On top of that, the WHO pushed for mass vaccination of populations they clearly knew had extremely low risk for COVID — children and young adults in terms of age groups, and Africa in terms of geographic location. Not surprisingly, Gates vaccine-related organizations (GAVI and CEPI) led that charge.

Bell also highlights how idiotic the vaccination narrative was. “With a fast-moving pandemic, no one is safe unless everyone is safe.” That motto was reiterated everywhere to promote the COVID jab, yet it’s completely irrational, because people who recover from the infection have natural immunity.

They are extremely safe, regardless of others’ vulnerability. We don’t need the whole world to be immune. We just need to meet the threshold for herd immunity and the vulnerable are automatically protected by those with natural immunity.

“What this is telling you is that the people running this are not interested in evidence, in truth, or even in being logical,” Bell says. “They’re interested in sound bytes, and this has nothing to do with health care. Nothing.”

If not about health, what was the pandemic response about? In short, it was about money, and more specifically, wealth transfer. Forty new billionaires were created while some 200,000 small businesses were destroyed in the U.S. in 2020 alone.

Vaccine makers also made hundreds of billions of dollars on “vaccines” that provided virtually no protection while killing an unprecedented number of working age adults and decimating birth rates.

Bell goes on to review how the pandemic industry is putting on “the greatest show on earth.” According to the pandemic industry, pandemics are becoming more frequent. This is false, Bell says.

They also claim there’s “increasing interaction between humans and wildlife or livestock,” the insinuation being that lethal viruses regularly jump species. This notion, Bell says, is just “plain silly.”

Still, these are the narratives they’re going with to create a feedback loop of surveillance for variants, declaration of potential risk, followed by lockdowns and restrictions, followed by mass vaccinating populations to “end” the pandemic restrictions, followed by more surveillance and so on. The funding for this scheme comes primarily from taxpayers, while the profits go to corporations and their investors.

As explained by Bell, the two primary instruments that will turn the WHO into a central health police are the IHR amendments and the WHO’s pandemic treaty.

The IHR amendments (which have force under international law) will provide “teeth” to the WHO’s goal of increased control over health emergencies, while the treaty will provide financing, governance and supply networks.

The IHR amendments,

as currently drafted:

• Expand the definitions of pandemics and health emergencies. Specifically, it introduces “potential for harm” rather than actual harm. So, the WHO can mandate lockdowns or medical interventions based on the mere suspicion that a virus might cause public harm.

• Change the recommendations of the IHR from nonbinding to mandatory, so member states MUST follow and implement the WHO’s recommendations.

• Solidify the director-general’s ability to independently and single-handedly declare health emergencies.

• Set up an extensive surveillance apparatus in all member states.

• Enable the WHO to share country data without consent.

• Give the WHO control over certain resources within member countries, including intellectual property rights.

• Force national support for censorship activities directed by the WHO.

• Change existing IHR provisions that affect individuals from nonbinding to binding, including provisions relating to border closures, travel restrictions, quarantines, medical examinations and the medication and vaccination of individuals.

Meanwhile, the pandemic treaty will:

• Set up an international supply network overseen by the WHO.

• Fund the WHO’s health emergency structures and processes by requiring at least 5% of national health budgets to be dedicated to health emergencies.

• Set up a governing body under the auspice of the WHO to oversee the entire health emergency process.

• Expand scope of the WHO’s power by emphasizing the “One Health”

  agenda, which recognizes that a very broad range of aspects of life and the environment can impact health and therefore fall under the “potential” to cause harm. This is how the WHO will be able to declare climate change as a health emergency and subsequently require climate lockdowns, for example.

  The graphic

  below illustrates how the WHO’s scope of control is expanded under the One Health agenda to cover vast aspects of everyday life. Under the new treaty, the WHO will have unilateral power to make decisions about any of these areas, and its dictates will supersede and overrule any and all local, state and federal laws.

  Interestingly, the term “One Health,” which was formally adopted by the WHO and the G20 health ministers in 2017, was first coined by the executive vice president of the EcoHealth Alliance, the same firm that appears to have had a hand in the creation of SARS-CoV-2, William Karesh, DVM, in a 2003 article on Ebola.

As noted by Bell, it’s not just the WHO that is pushing this agenda. It’s financed and promoted by a long list of organizations, including the United Nations, the European Union, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, GAVI, the Wellcome Trust, UNICEF, CEPI, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the World Bank.

But while these entities are officially funding the pandemic industry, what’s really happening is they’re “using taxes to fund wealthy people to exploit poor populations elsewhere,” Bell says. We’re also funding our own exploitation and demise. It’s not just the poor that will suffer under a globalist totalitarian regime, but everyone who is not part of the globalists’ top echelon.

Taxpayers are providing the money while private profiteers are deciding how that money is spent, and it’s being spent in ways that will benefit themselves. So, it’s a private-public “partnership” where the public is being robbed and all the benefits go to the private sector.

As it currently stands, the IHR amendments will be voted on in the World Health Assembly (WHA) in May 2024, about a year from now. They only need a majority vote to pass. If that vote happens as planned, then the 10-month deadline for member states to reject the amendments will expire in March 2025, and the amendments will come into force in May 2025. If a member state opts out, then the current 2005 IHR version will apply to that state.

The WHO pandemic treaty will also be voted on by the WHA in May 2024. It requires a two-thirds majority vote to pass, and 30 member countries to ratify it. Thirty days after ratification, the treaty will take force for the countries that signed it.

The globalists don’t want to wait three years, however, so in the meantime, they’re working on a third avenue, which involves the creation of a “medical countermeasures platform for pandemics” under the WHO. And this platform will be implemented by September 2023. Many aspects of this platform will then simply morph right into the IHR amendments and the treaty.

“We need to understand that this whole thing is based on complete nonsense,” Bell says. “But it’s working.”

In an April 16, 2023, Substack article,

Jessica Rose, a postdoctoral researcher in biology, tries to make sense of the last three years. Starting at the end, she believes the endgame is the “conversion of the majority of human beings into workers … like ants.”

To get there, the globalists must dehumanize us, systematically chip away at the human spirit, render us infertile and destroy all notions of bodily autonomy and national sovereignty. And, like Bell says, the plan has worked quite well so far. But cracks are beginning to show. More and more people are starting to put the puzzle pieces together, as Rose attempts to do in her article.

The COVID pandemic was the set-up, Rose suggests. It was geared to “test compliance levels” and set the scene for the next act, which was to normalize all things abnormal. The trans movement, which completely overwhelmed the social consciousness in a single year, is a continuation and expansion of that “normalization of the abnormal” phase.

It’s also a major component of the agenda to dehumanize and sterilize the population. After all, trans youth — which are also among the most brainwashed individuals in society right now — are the future of humanity. A brand-new report by legal experts backed by the United Nations is also seeking to normalize pedophilia,

which would further dehumanize and de-spirit our youth for generations to come.

Adding insult to injury, the report was published March 8, 2023, “in recognition” of International Women’s Day. Never mind the fact that young girls and women are the primary victims of this sick mindset.

The “manmade climate change” hysteria and subsequent war on carbon is another fabricated “emergency” that is unhinged from science and reality. And, like the global COVID response, the UN’s Sustainable Development goals are perfectly tailored to enable the endgame. Under these goals, human freedom, human health and quality of life are sacrificed to “protect the environment and save the planet.”

As Rose notes, if the WHO pandemic treaty goes through, we can expect to be locked down indefinitely under the guise of “some climate catastrophe, likely linked to some ‘deadly pathogen’ passed to humans via some insect vector like mosquitoes.”

By then, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) will also be in place, which will enable the unelected totalitarian regime to enforce whatever restrictions the WHO and its funders dream up, be it related to the food you’re allowed to eat based on your carbon footprint, the drugs you’re forced to take, what causes you’re allowed to fund, what businesses you’re allowed to buy from, when and how far you’re allowed to travel or anything else.

“A practical way I can think of to stop the endgame from being realized is to stop the CBDC,” Rose writes. “Use cash. Insist upon it. Do not give business to stores that only use cashless systems. Supply equals demand, so demand the use of CASH. Use bitcoin. It’s the antithesis of CBDCs.”

At the end of his video, Bell also reviews some of the possible ways in which we can respond to the threats to our national sovereignty and personal freedom, and the challenges involved.

• Reform the WHO — The question is how? Can it be reformed?

• Exit and defund the WHO — Drawbacks of this strategy include the fact that countries that exit the WHO lose direct influence over its direction, and the pandemic industry will still exist and exert immense influence worldwide.

• Ignore the amendments and the treaty — Few countries will be able to afford this, as noncooperative member states will be sanctioned by the rest. Malfeasant rulers will also still be enabled.

• Educate the populace and politicians and “encourage noncompliance with stupidity” — This is “a hard road,” Bell says, “but [it] gives the people a voice.”

Educating the populace, politicians in particular, may ultimately be the best approach. As noted by Bell in an April 2, 2023, article in The Daily Sceptic:

“The international community can benefit from coordination over public health. But that is not what CA+ [the pandemic treaty] proposes. This is a draconian measure aimed at taking away national sovereignty.

It gives vast powers to a single organization with troubling funding arrangements and a track record for causing terrible damage. Legislators should reject these proposals, refuse to send taxpayer money to the WHO and reject the notion of public health by dictate.”

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Disclaimer: The entire contents of this website are based upon the opinions of Dr. Mercola, unless otherwise noted. Individual articles are based upon the opinions of the respective author, who retains copyright as marked.

The information on this website is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. It is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information from the research and experience of Dr. Mercola and his community. Dr. Mercola encourages you to make your own health care decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified health care professional. The subscription fee being requested is for access to the articles and information posted on this site, and is not being paid for any individual medical advice.

If you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or have a medical condition, consult your health care professional before using products based on this content.

• Lockdowns during the pandemic confined people in their homes for extended periods of time, making it more difficult to get regular sun exposure — the best source of vitamin D

• Strict lockdowns increased the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in pregnant women as a result

• Overall, 55.5% of pregnant women in the region studied were vitamin D deficient, but among those on strict lockdown the prevalence was significantly higher at 77.8%

• Research has linked vitamin D deficiency with adverse effects in pregnancy, including preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, preterm birth and caesarean delivery

• Other studies also suggest that lockdowns negatively affected pregnant women; in China, pregnant women who experienced a Level I lockdown had shorter gestational length and a higher risk of preterm birth than women who did not

Vitamin D is a critical nutrient for optimal health at all life stages, including during pregnancy. Exposure to sunlight is the ideal source of vitamin D. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, mandatory lockdowns interfered with many people’s ability to get outdoors regularly.

The consequences of this among pregnant women are beginning to be realized, with research suggesting strict lockdowns led to vitamin D deficiency in this population.

Adverse effects on pregnancy and birth outcomes likely occurred as a result.

In Spain, lockdowns during the pandemic confined people in their homes for extended periods of time. This led to a number of adverse effects, including alterations in physical activity and eating. During home lockdowns, for instance, one study found daily sitting time increased from five to eight hours per day, while meal patterns were less healthy.

A team of Spanish researchers also looked into the effects of strict lockdowns on the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in pregnant women, noting, “In Spain, a strict lockdown (SL) was declared, with the population being confined at home, therefore influencing their exposition to sunlight.”

For the study, vitamin D deficiency (VDD) is defined as a vitamin D level below 20 ng/mL, and vitamin D insufficiency defined as a level between 20 and 30 ng/mL. This is notable, since it represents an extremely low level of vitamin D. I’ve long recommended a vitamin D level of 40 to 60 ng/ml for optimal health and disease prevention.

However, higher levels of 60 to 80 ng/ml may be even better, while a level upward of 100 ng/mL appears safe and beneficial for certain conditions, especially cancer. If higher levels were used to define vitamin D deficiency in the study, even more women would have been deemed deficient.

Still, even using 20 ng/mL as the deficiency cutoff, 55.5% of pregnant women in the region were vitamin D deficient. Among those on strict lockdown (SL), however, the prevalence was significantly higher at 77.8%.

According to the researchers:

“This VDD prevalence was greatly influenced by the quarantine, with a significant increase in the SL group (77.8%), as a consequence of the decreased exposure to sunlight due to the in-house confinement in this cohort of participants … Our data describe a concerning reality that should be addressed.”

While the study stopped short of examining the pregnancy outcomes of lockdown-driven vitamin D deficiency, past research has linked VDD with adverse effects in pregnancy, including preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, preterm birth and caesarean delivery.

In fact, when pregnant women in another study were screened for vitamin D deficiency and given supplements to increase their levels if needed, preeclampsia decreased by 60%, gestational diabetes decreased by 50% and preterm delivery decreased by 40%.

Vitamin D insufficiency during pregnancy also affects neurocognitive development and led to language impairment in children.

Other studies also suggest that lockdowns negatively affected pregnant women. In a study comparing women who experienced a Level I lockdown in China during the pandemic with women who did not, the lockdown group had shorter gestational length and a higher risk of preterm birth.

COVID-19 lockdown was also associated with an increased risk of gestational diabetes, with risk increasing the longer the lockdown continued,

as well as an increased risk of preterm birth.

Meanwhile, while staying in lockdown under the false premise of reducing COVID-19 risk, declining vitamin D levels had the opposite effect of raising risk and worsening COVID-19 outcomes.

For instance, COVID-19 infection may increase the risk of pre-eclampsia during pregnancy, but vitamin D not only reduces the risk of preeclampsia but also helps ward off COVID-19:

“Vit.D could have some protective properties against COVID-19 infection by enhancing cellular innate immunity through inducing the production of antimicrobial peptides, including defensins and cathelicidin, which reduce the survival and replication of viruses,” explained researchers in the journal Medical Hypotheses.

Pregnant women who developed severe or moderate cases of COVID-19 were also found to have significantly lower vitamin D levels than women who developed mild cases.

A 2022 study published in Nutrients also highlighted the importance of vitamin D during pregnancy “during the COVID-19 era,” noting:

“Our findings could be important to improve the management of the pregnant population: early pharmacogenetic analyses combined with vitamin D monitoring might in fact allow the identification of patients at risk of pregnancy-related complications that may benefit from personalized vitamin D supplementation.”

The finding that lockdowns were associated with vitamin D deficiency in pregnant women is especially egregious in light of the importance of vitamin D for healthy pregnancy and birth — and its role in protecting against COVID-19.

I launched an information campaign to raise awareness about the use of vitamin D for COVID-19 back in June 2020. My own vitamin D review was published October 31, 2020, in the high-impact, peer-reviewed journal Nutrients.

At the time, 14 observational studies suggested vitamin D levels are inversely linked with the incidence or severity of COVID-19, and my paper concluded, “The evidence seems strong enough that people and physicians can use or recommend vitamin D supplements to prevent or treat COVID-19.”

I was widely vilified and discredited in the media for bringing attention to vitamin D’s potential for COVID-19,

but the truth is now coming out. Giving vitamin D to people with COVID-19 cut risk of death from SARS-CoV-2 by 51% and reduced risk of admission to the intensive care unit (ICU) by 72%.

This was the finding of a meta-analysis and trial sequential analysis (TSA), the latter of which weighs errors in order to assess if further studies are needed

— or the results are so solid they’re unlikely to be affected by other studies.

The TSA revealed “the protective role of vitamin D and ICU admission showed that, since the pooling of the studies reached a definite sample size, the positive association is conclusive.”

To put it another way, the results suggest “a definitive association between the protective role of vitamin D and ICU hospitalization.”

Words like “conclusive” and “definitive” aren’t typically used lightly in scientific research. So, this finding is indeed impressive — although not altogether surprising, since a wealth of other data also shows vitamin D’s protective effect against COVID-19.

Not only did COVID-19 patients supplemented with vitamin D have lower rates of ICU admission and fewer mortality events, but they also had lower rates of COVID-19 infection, by 54%.

Another study involved a large population of veterans, including 220,265 patients supplemented with vitamin D3 before and during the pandemic, 34,710 supplemented with vitamin D2 and 407,860 untreated patients.

Those who took vitamin D2 supplements had a 28% lower risk of COVID-19 infection, while those taking vitamin D3 had a 20% lower risk. Death from COVID-19 was also lower among those taking vitamin D — 33% lower among those taking vitamin D3 and 25% lower among those taking vitamin D2.

“In response to these findings, physicians might consider regularly prescribing vitamin D3 to patients with deficient levels to protect them against COVID-19 infection and related mortality. The 50,000 IU dosage may be especially beneficial,” according to the study.

When the results were extrapolated to the entire U.S. population in 2020, the researchers found supplementation with vitamin D3 would have prevented 4 million COVID-19 cases and 116,000 deaths.

It’s not only vitamin D that people miss out on when they don’t get sun exposure. This means that when lockdowns forced people to stay indoors, they missed out on the full spectrum of benefits from sun exposure, many of which are only beginning to be understood.

During the day, near-infrared rays from the sun penetrate deep into your body and activate cytochrome c oxidase, which in turn stimulates the production of melatonin inside your mitochondria. While melatonin is best known for its role in sleep, it also mops up reactive oxidative species that damage your mitochondria.

Provided you get good sleep and plenty of sun exposure during the day, your mitochondria will be bathed in melatonin, thereby reducing oxidative stress. It’s likely, in fact, that vitamin D serves as a marker for sun exposure, with many of the benefits due to factors other than vitamin D itself.

Confining people indoors deprives them of basic needs, like access to sun exposure and an opportunity for outdoor physical activity. There’s little doubt that lockdowns negatively affected physical and mental health. Adding insult to injury, the Brownstone Institute actually compiled more than 400 studies showing that lockdowns, restrictions and closures failed to do what was promised.

Meanwhile, about half of the U.S. population has insufficient or deficient levels of vitamin D, and rates of vitamin D deficiency are even higher in people with darker skin, those living in higher latitudes in the winter, nursing home residents and people with reduced sun exposure. Among groups with low levels of vitamin D, rates of COVID-19 are higher.

The only way to be certain you need a vitamin D supplement and know how much to take is to measure your vitamin D level, ideally twice a year — and this is especially important during pregnancy.

Once you’ve confirmed your vitamin D levels via testing, adjust your sun exposure and/or vitamin D3 supplementation accordingly. Then, remember to retest in three to four months to make sure you’ve reached your target level.

I strongly recommend getting your vitamin D from proper sun exposure if at all possible. However, if supplementing, remember vitamins D and K2, calcium and magnesium all work together and must be properly balanced for optimal health.

Subscribe to Mercola Newsletter

Disclaimer: The entire contents of this website are based upon the opinions of Dr. Mercola, unless otherwise noted. Individual articles are based upon the opinions of the respective author, who retains copyright as marked.

The information on this website is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. It is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information from the research and experience of Dr. Mercola and his community. Dr. Mercola encourages you to make your own health care decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified health care professional. The subscription fee being requested is for access to the articles and information posted on this site, and is not being paid for any individual medical advice.

If you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or have a medical condition, consult your health care professional before using products based on this content.

• Drug overdoses are the leading cause of death among Americans. Opioids are responsible for nearly two-thirds of these deaths, but benzodiazepine (“benzos”) overdoses are also on the rise

• Benzo prescriptions tripled from 1996 to 2013, but this doesn’t fully account for the uptick in overdoses, which quadrupled during that time

• A number of studies have highlighted the deadly risks you take when combining opioids with benzos. During the first 90 days of concurrent use, your risk of a deadly overdose rises fivefold, compared to taking an opioid alone

• The combination of opioids and benzos is the most common drug combination in cases where an overdose death involved two or more drugs; more than 30% of opioid overdoses also involve benzos

• The ratio of patients using opioids and benzos concurrently rose from 9% in 2001 to 17% in 2013; concurrent use for at least one day doubled the odds of an opioid overdose compared to taking opioids alone

Editor’s Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published July 19, 2018.

Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of death among Americans.

Preliminary data for 2016 reveals the death toll may be as high as 65,000

— a 19% increase in a single year. Opioids, narcotic pain killers, are responsible for nearly two-thirds, about 42,000, of these deaths.

Between 2002 and 2015, more than 202,600 Americans died from opioid overdoses.

While such statistics are sobering enough, recent research

suggests the death toll may still be underestimated due to incomplete drug reporting of overdose deaths.

The researchers believe upward of 70,000 opioid overdose deaths were excluded from national estimates between 1999 and 2015, for the simple reasons that coroners routinely fail to specify opioid use as a contributing cause of death. According to lead author Jeanine Buchanich, research associate professor at University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health:

“Proper allocation of resources for the opioid epidemic depends on understanding the magnitude of the problem. Incomplete death certificate reporting hampers the efforts of lawmakers, treatment specialists and public health officials. And the large differences we found between states in the completeness of opioid-related overdose mortality reporting makes it more difficult to identify geographic regions most at risk.”

The most common drugs involved in prescription opioid overdose deaths include

methadone, oxycodone (such as OxyContin®) and hydrocodone (such as Vicodin®). Extremely potent synthetic opioids like fentanyl are also being abused by a rising number of people. Now, researchers warn a particularly powerful combination of commonly prescribed drugs significantly raises your risk of death.

While opioids make the most frequent headlines, another class of drugs — benzodiazepines

or “benzos,” widely prescribed for anxiety and insomnia — also claims its share of lives. Prescriptions for these drugs, which include Valium, Ativan, Klonopin and Xanax, tripled from 1996 to 2013, but this doesn’t fully account for the uptick in overdoses, which quadrupled during that time.

As for why the rate of overdose deaths rose faster than the rate of prescriptions, Dr. Chinazo Cunningham, one of the study’s authors, told STAT News,

“Our guess is that people are using these prescriptions in a riskier way.” The number of pills prescribed to each adult increased over the study period, for instance, which suggests Americans may be taking higher doses or taking the drugs for longer periods, both of which increase the risk of overdose.

Combining the drugs — which act as sedatives — with alcohol is also risky, as is using the drugs along with opioids. Prescription records also show the use of benzos has risen alongside the use of opioids, and that the sedatives are often used alongside the painkillers to enhance the high.

According to Dr. David Juurlink, head of clinical pharmacology and toxicology at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto,

“Prescribing opioids and benzodiazepines together is like putting gasoline on a fire,” adding that “Benzodiazepines are grossly overprescribed … and many people don’t necessarily benefit from them.”

Estimates suggest more than 4 in 10 seniors use benzos for anxiety or insomnia, even though their long-term effectiveness and safety remain unproven, and their use has been linked to a higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

Older adults who used benzodiazepines for three months or more had a 51% greater risk of Alzheimer’s disease than those who did not, and the risk increased the longer the drugs were used. According to the authors, “The stronger association observed for long term exposures reinforces the suspicion of a possible direct association …”

A number of studies have already highlighted the deadly risk you take when combining opioids with benzos. Most recently, research

published in JAMA looked at how the risk of overdose changes when you combine the two drugs for a number of days in a row.

As it turns out, during the first 90 days of concurrent use, your risk of a deadly overdose rises fivefold, compared to taking an opioid alone. Between days 91 and 180, the risk remains nearly doubled, after which the risk tapers off, becoming roughly equal to taking an opioid alone. According to the authors:

“Policy interventions should focus on preventing concurrent opioid and benzodiazepine use in the first place instead of reducing the length of concurrent use. Patients using both medications should be closely monitored, particularly during the first days of concurrent use.”

The study also found that the greater number of clinicians were involved in a patient’s care, the greater the risk of overdose — a finding that highlights the lack of communication between doctors prescribing medication to the same patient, and the clear danger thereof. As noted by senior study author Yuting Zhang, Ph.D., of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, “These findings demonstrate that fragmented care plays a role in the inappropriate use of opioids.”

Other studies have come to similar conclusions. A 2013 study found the combination of opioids and benzos was the most common drug combination in cases where an overdose death involved two or more drugs.

According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse, more than 30% of opioid overdoses involve concurrent use of benzos.

Remarkably, another 2013 study

discovered “substantial co-use” of opioids and benzos among pregnant women that led to death, which is doubly tragic. As reported in a third study that year, which stressed the importance of urine drug testing whenever patients are prescribed an opioid, to ensure their safety:

“[C]oadministration of [opioids and benzodiazepines] produces a defined increase in rates of adverse events, overdose and death, warranting close monitoring and consideration when treating patients with pain. To improve patient outcomes, ongoing screening for aberrant behavior, monitoring of treatment compliance, documentation of medical necessity, and the adjustment of treatment to clinical changes are essential.”

A study

published in 2017 found the ratio of patients, aged 18 to 64, who used opioids and benzos concurrently rose from 9% in 2001 to 17% in 2013, a relative increase of 80%. Not surprisingly, concurrent use of opioids and benzos for at least one day doubled the odds of an opioid overdose compared to taking just opioids.

In 2014, Ohio ended up using an opioid/benzo mix in a death row execution when the conventionally used drugs were unobtainable.

That just goes to show this drug combination has an assured lethality at the “right” dosage. The reason these two drugs are so hazardous in combination is because both are potent central nervous system (CNS) depressants.

Your CNS, which includes your brain and spinal cord, coordinates and regulates the activity of automatic functions such as breathing. Respiratory depression, meaning slow and erratic breathing, can occur on both drugs, which leads to a buildup of carbon dioxide. In a sufficiently large dose, breathing can cease altogether, leading to death.

Like opioids, benzodiazepines are not intended for long-term use, yet many chronic pain patients end up staying on them for years, and may even take them with opioids for long periods of time. As noted by Dr. Len Paulozzi, medical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, benzos “are prominent fellow travelers with opioids. The problem is, people get on them and they stay on them …”

In related news, the 2018 World Drug Report

reveals pharmaceutically produced opioids now account for more than three-quarters of all drug overdose deaths worldwide. Fentanyl abuse is rising in the U.S., while Africa and Asia are struggling with rising overdose deaths from Tramadol. While doctors are still a primary source of opioids, illegal drug traffickers have started cashing in on the opioid abuse trend, manufacturing and selling them illegally.

According to Yury Fedotov, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “We are facing a potential supply-driven expansion of drug markets, with production of opium and manufacture of cocaine at the highest levels ever recorded.” Between 2016 and 2017 alone, the global opium production rose by 65%.

In a June 26 address to observe International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, United Nations secretary-general António Guterres said,

“I urge countries to advance prevention, treatment, rehabilitation and reintegration services; ensure access to controlled medicines while preventing diversion and abuse; promote alternatives to illicit drug cultivation; and stop trafficking and organized crime.”

One of the factors suspected of contributing to the burgeoning opioid epidemic is kickbacks to the doctors who prescribe them. According to a 2017 study,

more than 68,000 physicians received drug company payments totaling more than $46 million between August 2013 and December 2015. This means 1 in 12 U.S. physicians collected kickbacks from drug companies producing prescription opioids.

The top 1% of physicians received nearly 83% of the payments, and fentanyl prescriptions was associated with the highest payments. Many of the states struggling with the highest rates of overdose deaths, such as Indiana, Ohio and New Jersey, were also those showing the most opioid-related payments to physicians, clearly demonstrating a direct link between doctors’ kickbacks and patient addiction rates and deaths.

Increasing pressure on drug companies — in large part brought to bear by lawsuits over deceptive marketing and charges being filed against executives and sales reps for their role in manufacturing demand — now appears to be paying off. According to a recent ProPublica analysis,

drug company payments to doctors related to opioids decreased 33% between 2015 and 2016, from $23.7 million to $15.8 million.

The most significant decrease was related to Subsys, a fentanyl spray made by Insys. The company’s founder, John Kapoor, was arrested in October 2017, charged with bribing doctors to overprescribe the drug. Other Insys executives and sales reps were arrested on conspiracy and racketeering charges.

In 2015, the company doled out more than $6 million in Subsys-related payments. In 2016, that amount shrunk to less than $2.4 million.

Purdue Pharma, heavily criticized for its deceptive marketing of OxyContin, no longer pays doctors to speak about the drug, and laid off its last opioid sales reps in June 2018.

While the cutbacks in payments are a step in the right direction, research shows it doesn’t take huge sums of money to influence a doctor’s prescribing habits. A single free meal received in relation to marketing of an opioid has been shown to result in a greater number of prescriptions for the drug in the following year.

Getting back to the issue of benzodiazepines, it’s important to realize these drugs are every bit as addictive and dangerous as opioids, and when taken together, the risk of death is magnified fivefold. Benzos exert a calming effect by boosting the action of the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), which in turn activates the gratification hormone, dopamine, in your brain.

Side effects include memory loss, hip fractures, impaired thinking and dizziness. Ironically, symptoms of withdrawal include extreme anxiety — in many cases worse than the original symptoms that justified the treatment in the first place. Other side effects of withdrawal include hallucinations, depersonalization and derealization, formication (skin crawling) and sensory hypersensitivity, perceptual distortions, convulsions, and psychosis.

There are far safer ways to address anxiety and insomnia, starting with exercise, optimizing your gut microbiome and omega-3 level. The Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) is another effective tool that can help reprogram your body’s reactions to the unavoidable stressors of everyday life. This includes both real and imagined stressors, both of which can be significant sources of anxiety. It can also help reduce pain.

In the following video, EFT therapist Julie Schiffman discusses EFT for stress and anxiety relief. Please keep in mind that while anyone can learn to do EFT at home, for serious issues like persistent or severe anxiety you should consult with an EFT professional to get the relief you need. Pain can also be safely addressed without opioids.

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