If prescription drugs are so good,
where are all the healthy drug takers?
When observing the state of modern medicine and the unprecedented influence
of pharmaceuticals, an interesting paradox arises. The drug companies claim
that pharmaceuticals can do wonders for people: lower their cholesterol, end
clinical depression, reverse osteoporosis, eliminate allergies, calm your children
and many other similar promises. But if prescription drugs are so good for people,
where are all the healthy medicated customers?
There aren't any to speak of. There's nobody taking twelve prescriptions who
has a clean bill of health. In fact, the more prescriptions a person takes,
the worse their overall health. If you approach the healthiest people you can
find in a local fitness center and ask what prescription drugs they're taking
in order to be so healthy, they'll give you a rather confused look: they don't
take prescription drugs!
So how is it that the pharmaceutical industry can be claiming to make people
healthier in the first place? And what happened to common sense here? A rigorous
scientific view of the whole situation can only conclude that prescription drugs
are, in fact, making people sicker. It's like a massive clinical trial, and
the results of the trial are rather obvious: we're swallowing more drugs than
ever, and we're getting sicker. In fact, the more drugs a person takes, and
the longer they take them, the more rapidly their overall health deteriorates.
So why are drugs approved in the first place?
During development, prescription drugs are designed to target a single measurable
marker, such as cholesterol levels or bone density. There are thousands of such
markers to target in the world of modern medicine, and if a specific drug can
alter any measurable marker in a positive direction -- without killing too many
people during the clinical trials -- the FDA eventually declares it to be "safe
and effective" and the drug is unleashed for public consumption.
Indeed,
the drug may effectively impact that one marker. But here's where the
problem starts: every drug has a systemic effect, and these systemic effects
are not accurately measured (or admitted) in clinical trials. For example,
statin drugs do, in fact, lower bad cholesterol levels. But they do this
by compromising the ability of the liver to create all types of cholesterol,
including the "good" cholesterol and important hormones that
the body manufactures from cholesterol. Statins may have one measurable,
positive effect according to the medical charts, but they simultaneously
throw off the body's healthy physiology in a hundred other ways such as
blocking your sex drive.
Clinical trials don't pay much attention to these other effects; they're just
looking to prove one particular thing and get FDA approval to market the drug
as a miracle cholesterol fighter. What other effects the drug has on the human
body are largely ignored. And when clinical trial participants start showing
these severe effects, they are typically "dismissed" from the trial
in order to ensure that trial results look positive. In this way, extremely
toxic drugs are actually approved by the FDA as "safe."
Prescription drugs represent a war on the American people
Parmaceuticals
continue to be marketed as miracle drugs that can help people be
healthy. But as I've mentioned, there are no extremely healthy people
taking lots of prescription drugs!
This situation means that, right now, prescription drugs are killing
100,000 Americans each year and injuring more than two million. Those
are the statistics from the Journal of the American Medical Association,
and that figure doesn't include the 40,000 or so who are killed each
year by over-the-counter pain medications. These are staggering figures:
it's like having twenty-five 9/11 attacks each year, but instead of
terrorists flying the airplanes, it's pharmaceutical company CEOs.
There are more deaths and injuries caused each year by pharmaceuticals
than in any U.S. war or conflict since World War II.
The counter argument
The obvious counter to this argument is that people only start taking prescription
drugs after they're already sick. But that's not true: statins are now being
pushed onto perfectly healthy people who have cholesterol levels of 115, for
example. They're supposed to start taking statins as a preventative measure,
even though there's nothing wrong with them. With a similar lack of wisdom,
the American Diabetes Association has recommended that all diabetics start taking
statin drugs even though there is no scientifically proven benefit to doing
so just in case some benefits are someday discovered!
And statin drugs are already known to cause an alarming number of dangerous
side effects. After being consumed for just a few days, statin drugs start interfering
with normal liver function. Within a matter of weeks or months, the patient
often shows new symptoms or disorders. Upon visiting a western medical doctor,
they are diagnosed with another disease or condition and -- guess what? -- given
another prescription drug to take in combination with the statins. In the business
world, this is called "upselling the customer" -- getting the same
customers to buy more stuff, thereby greatly increasing your profit margin.
And so it goes: one prescription after another, like boxcars on a train,
until the patient is: 1) financially depleted, and 2) suffering the ravages
of extreme chemical toxicity from prescription drugs. By the time a typical
patient finally dies from complications caused by the prescription drugs,
they may have spent $10,000 or more on drugs alone. And that number can
be multiplied even further if "heroic drugs" are prescribed
during the patient's last surviving days.
Dangerous drug interactions are rarely tested
There's another factor to consider here, too: prescription drugs are rarely
tested for dangerous interactions with other drugs. In other words, even though
the FDA might have approved drug A for one thing, and drug B for another, nobody
ever tested what happens in human beings when both drug A and drug B are taken
together. Far too often, the combination is toxic, and many prescription drug
combinations are fatal. Those that are not fatal may cause other injuries, meaning
they will destroy the patient's liver or pancreas, which will of course create
demand for even more prescription drugs to deal with those issues.
In this way, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you visit a western medical
doctor and take even a single prescription, you're caught in the spiral of pharmaceutical
dependence. The only way to escape this trap and actually restore your health
is to give up all prescription drugs and, instead, make radical changes to your
diet and lifestyle -- and seek our naturopathic or holistic treatments -- to
restore your health. This is the only way to create lasting health.
Where are all the healthy, happy, athletic prescription drug takers?
Getting back to the main point here, doesn't it make sense that if prescription
drugs made people healthy, there would be all sorts of healthy, happy,
athletic people walking around touting the benefits of all the drugs they're
taking? If drugs were good for you, there should be hundreds of thousands
of such people right now. They should be mentally sharp, have low body
fat, high bone density, healthy digestive tracts, healthy blood chemistry,
vibrant skin, high energy, excellent moods, and so on. And yet this is
not at all the case.
Typically, when you meet a person who is taking multiple prescription
drugs, they are overweight or obese, chronically fatigued, mentally depressed,
sickly in appearance, mentally clouded, suffering from several blood chemistry
problems, burdened with weak immune systems, suffering from low bone density,
and emotionally unstable.
Given this reality, it takes a great leap of imagination to believe that prescription
drugs are somehow good for you.
The promise of drugs is seductive
It's seductive, of course, to imagine that perhaps your state of mental
anguish is simply a "brain chemistry imbalance" that can be
corrected with antidepressant drugs. It's tempting to treat your osteoporosis
with a doctor-recommend pill rather than getting into the habit of daily
walking. It's convenient to live on heartburn medications instead of having
to make healthy food choices for a change. Popping pills is always easier
than changing your life, but popping pills is like making a deal with
the Devil: you always end up losing.
Thanks to the culture of greed and widespread lack of ethics at pharmaceutical
companies, statins and other drugs are being pushed as lifetime medications
while any mention of diet, nutrition or exercise is either completely
avoided or, at best, glossed over. The result is that patients are told
drugs are the only answer.
Doctors are culpable in this as well; most don't even understand nutrition
101, and few bother to take the time to work with patients on lifestyle
changes in the first place. Of course, most doctors would say that it's
the patients who aren't interested in making changes, and they're right
about that, but there's also something rather negligent about the fact
that the vast majority of doctor visits result in a 90-second conversation
and a prescription for the latest brand-name drug. (If you're a doctor
and don't fit this description, good for you! But make no mistake: your
colleagues are miserable healers.)
So why are prescription drugs so popular?
The only reason prescription drugs are so popular today is not because
they work, but because they are extremely profitable. It's profitable
for the drug companies who mark them up as much as 500,000% over the cost
of the raw ingredients, it's profitable for retailers like Walgreens who
mark them up even further (and whose business relies primarily on drug
profits), it's profitable for newspapers and magazines who gladly cash
checks for millions of dollars in drug advertising, and it's even profitable
for doctors who receive all sorts of free vacations, "consulting
fees," and other not-so-subtle bribes in exchange for writing prescriptions
for brand-name drugs.
The system is extremely
profitable to everyone...everyone except you, that is. You suffer devastating
health consequences when you participate. You get stuck with the medical
debt. Your insurance rates go sky-high. And to add insult to injury, you're
sicker now than before you started taking the drugs!
Our system of modern medicine is a sham. It's primarily a drug racket
that's dominated by Big Pharma. The science is largely distorted (and
often outright fraudulent), the ethics have all but disappeared, and the
long-term price of all this is going to be enormous. We have an unprecedented
problem on our hands that's sickening an entire generation and creating
stratospheric long-term health care costs for the next round of working
taxpayers unlucky enough to stumble onto all this.
The choice is yours
Nobel Prize winning chemist Linus Pauling predicted that the use of toxic chemicals
to suppress disease symptoms, which he called a toximolecular approach, was
a blind alley that would lead nowhere. Where it has lead is to a catastrophically
expensive and ineffective disease-care system, where people are killed and injured
daily, where they remain chronically ill, and where the costs are projected
to double in the next ten years. When someone is sick, they are already in toxic
overload. Why compound their problems by giving them more toxins? Pauling proposed
an orthomolecular approach where one provides molecules that are natural and
helpful in supporting and restoring normal cell functions, allowing the body
to heal and restore itself to health.
If you are now on prescription drugs, recognize that you are choosing
to take them, and that there are safer, more natural, and more effective
alternatives. You may want to find yourself
another doctor, one practicing orthomolecular medicine, which will
address the causes of your problem and help you get well, rather than
prescribing poison to suppress your symptoms.
To make a sick person well, you have to give their cells all the things
they need to function normally, and keep them away from the things that
disrupt normal function. Prescription drugs disrupt normal cell function.
When cell function is normalized, you cannot be sick. This is what the
orthomolecular approach is all about. It's using vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals,
and natural remedies to rebalance the body and make it well again. The
obsolete approach of using toxic prescription drugs to suppress symptoms
is guaranteed to make and keep people sick, yet pharmaceutical companies
grow as sales go up every year. Go figure!
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