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. And 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
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.
And yet pharmaceuticals 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!
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 $100,00 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. Sadly, this is not only
the typical prescription drug patient I'm describing here,
this also describes many doctors and health care workers
who dole out the drugs in the first place.
Given this reality, it takes a great leap of imagination
to believe that prescription drugs are somehow good for you.
It's almost like walking into a Michael Jackson video, seeing
a roomful of half-dead zombies drooling on each other, and
shouting like Jim Carrey, "I want whatever they're taking!"
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.
When you take prescription drugs on a long-term basis, you're
sure to come out worse than when you started. Prescription
drugs are only appropriate for short-term interventions that
save a patient's life while they make radical changes to
their diet, nutrition and lifestyle that correct the underlying
imbalances. For example, an obese middle-aged man suffering
from extremely high cholesterol is obviously at risk of a
sudden heart attack. Statin drugs might be legitimately used
for a few weeks or months just to keep the guy alive while
he makes radical lifestyle changes that will ultimately bring
his cholesterol (and his body weight) down to reasonable
levels.
The legitimate uses for prescription drugs
That's a reasonable, legitimate use of prescription drugs.
But that's not the way they're being promoted today. 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, folks. 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.
But don't worry: when everybody's sicker than ever, the
drug companies will promise they have the next big cure.
All you have to do is pop daily pills at $200 each, and all
your health problems will be solved! |
