Adrift a sea of chatty drug reps, complementary lunches, and free medication samples, there floats a girl who believes that 80% of all these colorful pills are completely unnecessary. That girl happens to be me.
Is it a conflict of interest that a medical professional is essentially against medicine? I don’t think so. Drugs have their place, but lately it seems they have been encroaching on the territory of the tried-and-true lifestyle modifications.
Have high blood pressure, do you? Let’s forget about the fact that you’re 50 pounds overweight, overworked by 20 hours a week, and consume 300% of your daily sodium allowance. Let’s just prescribe a nice antihypertensive pill and all will be well.
High cholesterol? Nevermind diet changes and exercise. Your choices include, but are not limited to: Lipitor, Zetia, Vytorin.
And the result of this prescription craze? Dependency. Rapidly deteriorating health. Less money in your already feeble pocket.
The body is extremely adaptable. It responds to simple tweaks. And typically, it doesn’t enjoy being introduced to chemically-altered substances, even if those substances have good intentions.
The problem is this: Let’s say your blood pressure pill is temporarily effective in lowering your crazy high 170/90. The underlying issues are still there, still putting undue stress on the body. Obesity, poor food choices, sedentary lifestyle. Let’s face the facts. You’re continuing to capsize, and your heart will probably be the first to jump ship.
Even further, your body will begin to get used to the medication and become less responsive to it shortly. What happens next? Well, your physician is either increasing your dose or adding a new drug to the growing regime. More money, angrier body. Shame on you.
This is not to say that all doctors are prescription pads. Some do promote healthy lifestyle measures to fix physical problems. But in a world where so many patients want the easy way out, these doctors often succumb to jotting down a med for the local pharmacist.
Medicine is a money-maker, too. But getting into that is another dissertation in itself.
A perfect example of the unimportance of drugs is seen in my own 85 year-old grandfather, who has been hospitalized a whopping 2 times in his adult life. Once for a separated shoulder, once for a kidney stone. How many medications does he take? Zero. Be smart about the way you live, and your body will take care of itself.
Of course, failing to acknowledge the other side of the argument would be foolish. Some medications can save lives. People with life-threatening infections, cancers, dangerous heart rhythms… they can all benefit from the right drug at the right time. No amount of natural immunity can help.
But that’s the key to medicine: appropriate, timely use.
This country especially has become a drug-dependent population, unaware that it’s masking the true problems and actually allowing the state of unwell to linger and, sometimes, worsen.
