If prescription drugs are so good, where are all the healthy drug takers

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If prescription drugs are so good, where are all the healthy drug takers JoAnn

Guest Apr 02, 2005 14:45 PST

 

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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 (see related

ebook on 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!

_________________

JoAnn Guest

mrsjo-

DietaryTi-

www.geocities.com/mrsjoguest/Genes

 

 

 

 

AIM Barleygreen

" Wisdom of the Past, Food of the Future "

 

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