Mass
media promotes pharmaceutical industry hype; the general
public chooses easy drugs over nutrition and exercise
The headlines are ablaze with results from a new study that
shows raising levels of your good cholesterol may take no
more effort than popping a daily pill. But what the headlines
don't mention is that this so-called "groundbreaking" study
involved no more than twenty people! When a sample size that
small, the results are probably not even statistically significant.
It's amazing to me how the pharmaceutical industry takes
a tiny shred of evidence -- a distorted study, a slight improvement
in blood chemistry, or a tiny reduction in symptoms -- and
exaggerates that evidence until it sounds like a miracle
cure in a pill. The mass media seems more than happy to go
along, too, and they regularly print front-page news headlines
with highly misleading statements on the supposed benefit
of various prescription drugs (such as the current round
of ridiculous claims about statins).
The fact is that no prescription drug comes close to producing
the health benefits of simple physical exercise. Daily exercise
outperforms prescription drugs by some 10,000% according
to some blood chemistry markers. A daily 30-minute walk will
make you far healthier than a daily dose of whatever drug
is the current rage. And yet part of the reason prescription
drugs are so popular -- and so heavily promoted with absurd
news headlines -- is because the general public wants to
believe in them. They want a magic pill that allows them
to avoid the responsibility of taking charge of their own
health. So they're primed to believe in any miracle promise
offered by the pharmaceutical industry. But it's really just
quackery. Organized quackery. By and large, prescription
drugs are worthless, and even when they improve one particular
area of blood chemistry (like modifying good or bad cholesterol
levels), they introduce a whole array of dangerous side effects
that can cause far greater problems.
Let's face it: your body already knows how to be healthy.
You don't need to ingest chemicals on a daily basis to balance
your blood chemistry, all you need is regular physical exercise,
outstanding nutrition, and avoidance of all metabolic disruptors
-- the ingredients in foods and beverages that cause disease
in the food place. Prescription drugs are just a convenient
way for people to avoid making healthful lifestyle choices
and, instead, put their health (and their wallets) into the
hands of greedy drug companies. |
