ON REDUCING THE AMOUNT OF DRUGS AND MEDICINES IN YOUR LIFE

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ON REDUCING THE AMOUNT OF DRUGS AND MEDICINES IN YOUR LIFE

 

" The best doctor gives the least medicines. " - Benjamin Franklin

Another way to put that is, " The best patient NEEDS the least medicines. "

Anything that you can do to be healthier is likely to reduce the number and

amount of drugs that your doctor would need to prescribe for you. A good doctor

is certainly willing to see that you are taking as little medicine as possible.

One reason to take only minimum doses is that all drugs carry a risk. You could

say that vitamins carry a risk, too. You could say that EVERYTHING in life

carries some risk. You could, but that would obscure the real point that drugs

carry a higher than average risk, and they are regularly used by a very large

number of people.

Vitamin supplements have an especially high margin for error; drugs do not.

Let's take the most dangerous of vitamins and one of the safest of all drugs for

comparison. The vitamin is Vitamin D and the drug is aspirin.

The U.S. Recommend Daily Allowance for vitamin D is 400 International Units

(I.U.) per day. It has frequently been said that vitamin D can be toxic at

relatively low levels. Certainly doses of over two thousand I.U. per day are

hard to justify. It is instructive to note, however, that as far back as 1939

some really enormous doses of vitamin D were found to be remarkably non-toxic.

In several countries, infants including preemies were safely given from 200,000

I.U. to over HALF A MILLION units of vitamin D in a single injected or oral

dose. This is hard to believe; the references are on pages 544 and 584-591 in

the medical textbook The Vitamins in Medicine, third edition, by Bicknell and

Prescott (1953). This is quite a comprehensive work. There are a total of 344

scientific papers on Vitamin D cited in one chapter.

Aspirin is a drug generally regarded as safe enough to not require a

prescription. It is also one of the leading causes of death from poisoning each

year. A normal recommended dose of aspirin would be two 5-grain tablets every

four hours. An arthritis sufferer might be told by the doctor to take more than

twice this amount. Probably one hundred aspirin taken at once would be fatal.

Let's do some math.

100 aspirin divided by two is 50. The toxic dose for aspirin is therefore

about 50 times the normal recommended dose on the bottle.

500,000 I.U. of vitamin D divided by the U.S. RDA of 400 I.U. gives us 1250.

This means that BABIES have taken 1,250 times the U.S. RDA in a single dose and

have lived! That is indeed a high safety margin.

How much safer is vitamin D than aspirin? Well, if you take 1,250 and divide it

by 50, you get 25. Therefore the most dangerous of vitamins is TWENTY-FIVE

TIMES SAFER than the safest of drugs. This means that all the other vitamins

are safer still. It also means that almost all medicines, particularly

prescription drugs, are still worse.

The biggest reason prescription drugs require that prescription is because they

ARE dangerous. That is the whole point. Doctors and pharmacists try to

carefully figure just how much of the medicine you can take without UNUSUAL

danger. The information that they have to go on is generally provided for them

by the drug manufacturer. You might find this information in a leaflet included

inside the box with your prescription. You will also find this information in a

reference book called the Physicians' Desk Reference (PDR). The PDR is

basically a two-thousand-page " Who's who " of every drug there is. You may ask

the pharmacist at any drug store for a look through this book. If he or she

says " no, " then it's time to do business with a different pharmacy.

Inside of the PDR you will find drugs classified under type, generic name and

brand name. It is easy to look up any drug that you or a family member take.

Be ready for some unpleasant reading. Most drugs have many more precautions

than uses, that is, more dangers than benefits.

Why are drugs still used, then? Several hundred years of medical tradition is

one reason. Physician unfamiliarity with therapeutic nutrition is another.

Money, big multi-billion dollar drug company money, is another. Pick your

reason, and consider another: patients accept drug therapy. They accept the

risks and the side effects. Patients practically demand a wonder drug. " Cure

me, Doc " puts the physician on the spot. She has to do SOMETHING, and since her

background is in drugs and surgery, that's what she selects from. That may not

be ideal.

What can you do, then?

1. Ask the doctor to fully explain the risks and side effects that you read

about in the PDR. Now ask for justification as to why you should let your body

take those risks. If you do not get a full and straight answer, or if the

doctor is " too busy " to discuss this with you, then it is time for a new doctor.

2. Ask for the absolute minimum possible dose.

3. Get back to the doctor right away if there are any negative effects of the

medication.

4. ASK FOR AN ALTERNATIVE INSTEAD OF A DRUG! Some doctors are happy to work

with interested patients who want to avoid medicines when they can. If your

doctor is not interested, then you can find a doctor who is.

If you are already taking a medication:

1. I really do NOT think that it is a good idea to just suddenly " stop "

medication. This is especially true if you are taking something more than a

pain-reliever or other non-essential drugs.

2. Inform the doctor that you are interested in getting off the medicine that

you are on. If that is not realistic, then you can tell the doctor that you

would like to gradually decrease the amount that you have to take.

3. It is best to work with the physician who made the prescription for you in

the first place. After all, the doctor that put you on the medicine should be

the one involved with taking you off of it. The doctor should give you a

schedule to follow that gradually reduces your drug dose.

4. If the doctor wants to see you for monitoring your progress, then do it.

That's only fair, plus it provides you with documented evidence that you are

succeeding without the medicine.

5. If your doctor believes that you cannot reduce the level of your medication

at all, you can honor that viewpoint without agreeing with it. A second

medical opinion might be in order next. If you find a whole string of doctors,

all saying " Don't you dare stop taking your so-and-so, " then you need to stop

and do some serious reconsideration.

At this point, you may feel like the person in a French restaurant who keeps

asking every waiter for chow mein. You are just not going to get what you want

there. There may be a good reason for it. Or, it may simply be a matter of

taste.

Some people will then begin on their own to reduce or eliminate their medicines.

No doctor is so naive as to think that this doesn't happen every day. It is an

individual's right, and an individual's risk, to do so. I cannot recommend it.

Drugs, and for that matter surgery as well, are options that do exist. They are

widely regarded as severe measures, though, and may not be necessary for your

well being. If proper nutrition and living bring you good health, there is no

NEED for medication.

A prescription too often represents a guess. Voltaire once said that " Doctors

are men who give drugs of which they know little, into bodies of which they know

less... for diseases of which they know nothing at all. " We can allow that

medical knowledge has advanced a good deal since the 18th century. However, we

cannot not allow that drugs are safe. They never have been safe, and they are

not safe now. Medicine is LESS imprecise than in Voltaire's time, but it is

still imprecise. Refer back to the Physician's Desk Reference again for proof

of this.

Therapeutic nutrition is a serious option, and a safer one, too.

Ask for it.

 

Copyright C 1999 and prior years Andrew W. Saul. From the books QUACK DOCTOR

and PAPERBACK CLINIC, available from Dr. Andrew Saul, Number 8 Van Buren

Street, Holley, New York 14470.

 

 

 

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