Prenatal Vitamins & Bat Shit Crazyness
There is one prescription that I know makes every pharmacist get a little bout of acid reflux in their lives:
An Rx for some new funky-sounding prenatal vitamin with the big DAW-1 box checked. You know their insurance company isnt going to pay for it. Plus if they do, the'll only cover a month supply so you'll be stuck with the other 70 tablets making your prenatal section look like the warfarin /levoxyl sections (tons of bottles, all different strengths/colors).
Are OB-Gyn's retarded? Does sticking your fingers into vaginas for a living rot your brain? Do they realize that there is NO significant difference between the bazillion of prenatal vitamins out there, and the drug companies are just exploiting pregant womens drive to have a healthy baby? With the exception of Folic Acid, there is really no research showing that one brand of prenatal vitamin is better than any other one. Its such an inexact science (since women can take nothing and 99.9% of the time have a healthy baby) that it boarderlines voodoo!
However to the uninformed: most prenatal vitamins have one of the following that make them "special".
One woman claimed that she tried out 20 different brands of prenatal vitamins before she found one that "worked". Now what the fuck is that supposed to mean? They all have the same shit in them! How can a prenatal vitamin "work" and more importantly, how can you tell its "working?" Does the fetus say "Yup, i feel it working better! Thanks mom! *thumbs up*".
Now dont make a mistake and bring up logic and reasoning in front of the poor pregnant gal. She'll give you both barrels of hormone induced insanity all over your front counter in front of your entire staff (because its HER body and she knows exactly what the baby needs). Heaven forbid you're a male, because you "dont know how it feels to be pregnant and taking inferior prenatal vitamins". Reasoning with a pregnant woman is like reasoning with a turd, it just makes you feel stupid for wasting the time. Bad turd!
OB-Gyn's are partially to blame. The'll write for whatever hot blonde walks in the front door with a low cut blouse and a bag full of samples. I can just see their fingers twiching wanting to give her a pelvic exam. They have been so brainwashed that they dont realize that an Rx for Folic Acid 1mg plus a super econo-size barrel of cheap generic centrum will do the exact same thing than StuartNatal.
Just thinking about it gives me heartburn, must be those generic prenatal vitamins I take. :)
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I have not laugh like that in a decade!!!
Bravo..continue the nice work.
I totally agree with this...when my wife was just pregnant with our second...her midwife...because the ob/gyn never sees patients..only does surgery (chaching)...wanted to give her some chromagen because she had low iron. Since i am a pharmacist, i said...lets try plain ol' iron tabs first...since it is my money we're spending here. Low and behold...it worked...and no constipation....MIRACLE do happen!!!
Um... Perhaps the woman is allergic to a filler in the generics? There are differences in manufacturing - if you can get the info - and for that small percentage of us with very real IgE mediated allergies it is a constant concern.
Pax,
MLO
When I was pregnant with my first child I saw and OBGYN and he prescribed me a pre-natal. Being the good patient of course I began taking it. The pharmacy switched me to a generic though and it tasted horrible. I had a bad taste in my mouth all the time after taking it. I insisted that the pharmacy give me the name brand which didn't give me those problems. With my second child I saw a midwife. She did not prescribe any type of pre-natal and said that as long as I was taking a quality multi then I was fine. I did the research and found out that my multivitamin met the minimums and did not exceed the maximums on what a pregnant women needed. I compared that to the prescribed prenatal and found that my vitamin was better.
So much for the idea that because it comes with a prescription then it is better.
i work for an ob/gyn office and we do give ob patients a prescription for folic acid and tell her to pick up an otc multivitamin. we hand out the samples like candy and the reps keep bringing them even though we hardly ever write prescriptions for them. the only time we will give a scrip for prenatal vitamins is for a patient with sever nausea . . . it helps.
Veering OT: One of my technicians, who is in her late 40s, told me that when she was in high school, some girls were taking OTC prenatal vitamins for their nails, and their parents were finding them and totally freaking out.
I once found an old stock bottle of prenatal vitamins, probably from the 1960s, at a flea market, and folic acid was conspicuously missing! WEIRD.
I don't understand why you're so riled up in this post. Aren't you getting paid a load of money to give people medications they don't need?
Furthermore, the way you feel about prenatals is the way I feel about beer... dark beer, non-alcoholic beer, domestic beer, Light beer...it's all the same and normally has the same alcohol content in it so by your standards they're all practically the same. The only difference is it's a matter of preference.
So women like the prenatals with the little hearts on them, so what? If it makes them feel good and offers them any benefit at all why worry yourself about it?
Unless you intend to do something about all these things that piss you off quiet bitching.