How many possible side effects would it take to get you to think twice before swallowing a pill?

Would 10 do the trick? Maybe 25? How about 50?

Researchers looked at more than 500,000 potential side effects listed on some 5,600 drug labels, and found that the average medication lists at least 70.

Seventy potential side effects from a single drug!

But that’s just the overall average — the researchers wrote in the Archives of Internal Medicine that our most commonly used meds average around 100 potential side effects each.

And some drugs had up to 525 possible side effects and reactions.

At that point, it’s not a warning anymore — it’s practically a promise… but the researchers behind this study don’t quite see it that way.

They seem to think that the real problem isn’t the drug or even the side effects — it’s the warning labels!

“Having a high number of side effects on a drug’s label should not suggest that the drug is unsafe,” Dr. Jon Duke, lead author of the study, said in a news release. “In fact, much of this labeling has less to do with true toxicity than with protecting manufacturers from potential lawsuits.”

The researchers claim all those side effects might overwhelm your poor doctor, leaving him unable to figure out which meds might be best for you.

So instead of relying on the standard labels, the researchers proposed creating a computer database that could analyze a patient’s history and warn doctors of the side effects they should be most worried about for each patient.

But really, why stop there? Why use a computer when you can get a roulette wheel with side effects instead of numbers?

When docs write a prescription, patients get to give it a spin and see what they should worry about.

I’ve got $20 on nausea!

It’s interactive, fun, and gets patients involved in their health care choices like never before.

More importantly, I bet it would be about as accurate as a computerized warning system too.

All kidding aside, here’s the safest bet of all: Just skip the drugs whenever you can… and you won’t have to worry about side effects.

There’s no doubt about it: If you’re a smoker, the best thing you can do for yourself, your family, and your body is to quit — and quit right now.

But if you turn to meds for help, you might get the wrong kind of quit: Pfizer’s notoriously risky anti-smoking drug Chantix has been linked to a disturbing number of suicides.

And now, researchers say the 122 suicides tied to this med so far tell only part of the story — less than half the story, in fact. Because their analysis of misfiled Pfizer reports found 150 additional Chantix-related suicides.

In addition to the suicides, researchers from the Institute for Safe Medication Practices found 102 cases of possible hostility and aggression, 156 depressed patients, and 56 patients who may have battled psychosis — all after taking the drug, and all “misfiled” in Pfizer’s adverse event reports to the FDA.

Now, you’re probably wondering how it’s even possible to “misfile” all those reports — and that’s where this gets extra shady.

Instead of filing these reports individually and within 15 days as required by the FDA for serious and unexpected side effects, Pfizer filed them in the quarterly “periodic reports” reserved for expected side effects.

But let’s look at this from a different point of view — maybe this is just Pfizer being more honest than we’ve come to expect. Maybe it’s just the company’s way of saying it expects suicides, aggression, and depression among Chantix users.

Whatever the reason, the Institute for Safe Medication Practices senior scientist who looked at the Chantix data says Chantix is the riskiest drug they analyzed in their review of FDA reports — in the third quarter of 2010 it was linked to twice as many deaths as any other medication.

And that’s just another piece of bad news for a drug that’s made quite a few headlines, and not in a good way. As I told you a couple months back, Chantix actually finished first on a list of drugs most likely to be linked to violence. (Read about that here.)

The new report finds more evidence of that, too — like the 24-year-old woman who suddenly began beating her boyfriend as he slept because he “looked so peaceful.”

That woman almost won a spot on another Chantix list as well: She later tried to kill herself.

Despite these and other well-known risks, Chantix isn’t even very good at helping smokers to quit. Studies have shown that 80 percent of all patients who try it are back to smoking — or still smoking — a year later.

That’s if they survive taking Chantix.

I know a nice, big comfy chair parked at your desk is as much of an office status symbol as a Mercedes parked in your very own spot.

But maybe it’s time to do away with chairs completely — before they kill us.

A new study finds that we’re spending more time in office chairs than ever before, with 80 percent of us now working at jobs that involve little to no actual movement throughout the day.

Just 50 years ago, by comparison, half of all Americans worked at jobs that involved at least moderate movement — including jobs in mining, farming, construction, and manufacturing.

What’s that got to do with your office chair killing you? Everything. Because the researchers say all that extra sitting means men now burn 142 fewer calories each day, on average, than they did back in 1960.

For women, that tragic number is 124.

That adds up fast. The researchers even speculate in PLoS One that just 100 extra calories a day would be enough to cause the weight gain we’ve seen over the past half century.

Now, it would be easy to respond to this study by running to the treadmill and burning 100 calories a day… and that seems to be what the authors are getting at when they suggest that office workers strive to meet the government-recommended goal of 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week.

But that’s not the answer either.

Studies have shown time and again that exercise alone won’t make you thin… and it won’t even cut your risk of an early death.

You can do that by eating better and getting more moderate activity spaced throughout your day –- and it’s easy enough to do without joining a gym or buying expensive exercise equipment.

Park further. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Walk across the room instead of picking up the phone and dialing a co-worker’s extension.

And try to get out of the office for a walk each day -– just make sure that walk doesn’t end at someplace that serves milkshakes.

In the long and colorful history of government waste, $2 million may not sound like much.

But wait until you see what Uncle Sam bought for that money.

It’s a new “food plate,” designed to replace the awful “food pyramid” that’s been around for the past two decades.

This new symbol is supposed to offer a clearer picture of what should be on your own plate every day -– but it’s really some of the worst eating advice ever dished out by the U.S. government.

And that’s saying a lot.

First, there’s no specific mention at all of meat –- no beef, pork, chicken or even fish.

All you get there is a little TV-dinner-sized pocket labeled “protein,” as if you could drink a protein shake or eat some beans at the end of the day and get everything you need.

Even more bizarre, two other common sources of protein have their own spots: grains, which take up about a third of the plate, and dairy, which is stuck off on the side.

I suppose it’s meant to represent a cup of milk, but it’s blue — and not like the cheese, either.

Maybe it’s artificially colored blue ice cream –- would that really be a surprise at this point?

The rest of the plate –- half of it, in fact -– is made up of fruits and vegetables. I don’t know anyone who’d argue against eating fruits and vegetables… but dig a little deeper see how they even manage to get that wrong.

According to the feds, you don’t really need to eat fresh fruit –- 100 percent fruit juice will do just fine.

Do these guys even know how much fruit is in fruit juice? A glass of pure apple juice, for example, can have up to 10 apples in it -– leading to excess calories and a sugar spike that can match what you’ll find in a can of soda.

But Uncle Sam says drink up!

You can see the whole plate –- and get the rest of the awful details –- right here, on the new Web site paid for out of that $2 million “food plate” fund.

That’s not all we got for that $2 million, either — the feds say they’re planning to invest big in a new campaign to publicize their plate… and revealing it to the masses was just the first step.

The government is reportedly planning a phase two that would, according to the New York Times, “instruct consumers to avoid oversize portions, enjoy their food but eat less of it, and to drink water instead of sugary drinks.”

Now that’s cutting-edge stuff, isn’t it?