Do topical drugs really work?

It's bad enough that people are ingesting needless pharmaceuticals into their bodies willy nilly. Now the habit of using useless - and potentially dangerous - topical drugs to treat all manner of muscle and joint pain is gaining even more popularity. But unlike most pharmaceuticals, it's an almost universally accepted truth among the medical community that most of these creams and ointments don't do anything.

Well, they might kill you. But other than that, they're fine.

The sports cream industry is a $275 million per year behemoth - and that doesn't even count sales at Wal-Mart. That's a lot of money to spend on something that has essentially zero evidence to back it up.

And I'm not the only one who says so, either. Dr. Robert Sallis - a past president of the American College of Sports Medicine - said, "Do topical analgesics help heal the injury or get an athlete back to activity any quicker? The answer is no … there's no evidence to support that topical analgesics actually work."

Then why are they so popular? It's because of a simple tick your mind plays on you, called the placebo effect. Based on their popularity, it must be quite a strong effect indeed. And if that were the end of the story, it might not be a big deal.

But it's not the end of the story. The problem is, many of these analgesics contain harmful chemicals. Not long ago, I wrote to you about the story of 17-year-old cross- country runner from New York who died because of methyl salicylate poisoning. Methyl salicylate is the key ingredient in many of the most popular sports creams such as Icy Hot, Ben Gay, ThermaCare, and others.

Experts cautioned that the young girl's death was caused by excessive exertion and bodily heat that contributed to her body's absorption of the chemical. Is that supposed to make anyone feel any better? These are sports creams, after all, so most people apply them before or after spates of intense exertion, which can cause a spike in body heat.

I'll grant you that the young girl's death was out of the ordinary. But I still find it aggravating that there is an entire family of purportedly "medicinal" products out there that have zero clinical evidence or research studies back up their product claims - and have killed at least one person who used them as directed - and yet, the FDA sits idly by, doing nothing. Except, that is, denouncing natural cures and remedies.

Virus may cause high blood pressure

Researchers think they've found another potential cause of high blood pressure, but don't get too excited just yet.

This new study claims that high blood pressure could be the result of a virus. Dr. Clyde Crumpacker of the Harvard University Medical School examined the herpes virus known as cytomegalovirus in mice and found that it can cause the inflammation of blood vessels, which can prompt high blood pressure. Apparently CMV affects between 60 and 99 percent of the adults on the planet.

The discovery could have far-reaching implications. The good part is that it could make the use of the typical high blood pressure drugs obsolete. But here's the downside: Crumpacker's study suggests that the best way to treat the virus is with vaccines. Right now, there is no vaccine for this virus. But you won't have to wait very long. Sanofi- Aventis, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKine and Vical are all vying for the money… er, cure.

To me, this looks like nothing more than another thinly veiled attempt to get you taking even more drugs to battle a non-existent disease.

Yes, you read that right. For more than three decades now, I've been telling anyone who'll listen that high blood pressure DOESN'T CAUSE HEART DISEASE. The data from most studies on the subject suggest that hypertension is a symptom of cardiovascular disease, not its cause.

But you know as well as I do that mainstream medicine lines its pockets with "cures" that are aimed at eliminating the symptoms, not fixing the problem. Blood pressure is no different.