The Minneapolis-St. Paul based Star Tribune recently ran a story profiling a doctor who had just about had enough of the over prescribing of proton pump inhibitors, more commonly advertised by their pharmaceutical names such as Prevacid, Prilosec, and Nexium. Proton pump inhibitors help to drastically reduce and counteract the effects of ailments such as gastric reflux and GERD, which lead to severe and quite uncomfortable heartburn, by lowering the body’s ability to pump acid into the stomach. Despite the great benefit offered by a prescription to proton pump inhibitors, the amount of prescriptions granted – 119 million were written last year – has gotten a bit out of hand.
