I am a big proponent of living a healthy life, from eating healthy (avoiding fast food) to exercising to avoiding all forms of medications (except in cases of crisis i.e. life or death situations). I am inspired to write about this today, again, after reading an article in the NY Times of a woman who took a very mild anti-inflammatory drug and had a severe reaction that completely changed her life. You can read the story by following this link. To sum up her case, she had a job as a secretary that she loved and after her shoulder started hurting, her doctor prescribed an anti-inflammatory drug. The pharmacy dispensed the generic version to her and after taking the drug for only a short time, her skin started sloughing off (about two thirds in all), she was placed in a burn unit in a hospital, went into a medically induced coma, and came out with her lungs severely affected as well as being rendered legally blind. All this from a pill that was supposed to reduce inflammation. She sued the company and won, surprisingly. I say surprisingly because there have been past cases which have gone against the plaintiff saying that the drug company is not responsible for the what is on the warning label. Luckily for her, she took a different tact and claimed that the drug was defective. In any case, she suffered due to medication when all she might have needed was a little physical therapy and a chiropractic adjustment to allow her body to heal her. The biggest problem I have is that almost all the drugs prescribed under the veil of "health care" do not make a person healthy. If that was the case, then the person taking the most pills would be the healthiest person on earth. I ask you, is that true? Find a person who is taking upwards of ten pills a day and tell me how healthy they are. On the contrary, most pills prescribed merely manage the disease that is afflicting a person's body, they do not heal the body. If the system that doctor's prescribe to made a person healthy, than after a given period of time, any person taking medication to lower cholesterol for instance would eventually be able to go off the medication and keep their lower cholesterol, correct? Yet that is not the case. The same should be true for high blood pressure medication and anything else meant to manage a given disease. Yet in all these cases, including the one I mention today with the woman and the anti-inflammatory, the medications don't cure anything, they merely mask the symptoms and give the patient a false sense of "health".
These are the same reasons that I don't take medications for anything anymore, not even the cold that I am going through now. Yes, the medication could take away my stuffy nose and my stuffy head, but they won't make the cold disappear any quicker. How many people live a long and healthy life just by treating their bodies they way they should be treated? There are plenty of them, yet the medical profession would have you believe that in order to lead a healthy life, we need to treat the body with medication, not natural remedies or a healthy life style. Now, more than ever before, the medical profession has become big business, tied to the pharmaceutical companies and incessantly looking to increase profits. If you read the article I linked to my blog today, you will see just how concerned the companies are with a patient's health; not at all. There are already situations, as I mentioned above, in which patients can't sue the pharmaceutical companies for the side effects they experience due to defective warning labels. How can a company not be responsible for what is on a warning label? Isn't that their responsibility to ensure the safety of all the people taking their pills? It should be, but it isn't. They are merely concerned with keeping a given drug on the market so that they can reap as much profit as possible from a given drug. Damn the patients and anyone who suffers as a result, its not their fault. If there has ever been a case of a more backwards system, I haven't heard about it. Yet, I am mostly preaching to deaf ears I feel. Most people that I know seem to be in love with their medications and their doctors who prescribe them. I have friends who have experienced side effects from pills (such as weight gain) and won't change anything because the pill makes them feel better. Trust me, I used to be that way as well, until I ran into a few situations that made me think otherwise and begin to abhor the medical profession (mostly).
About three years ago, I got to a point where I essentially had a permanent head ache. Every day I would wake up and my head would hurt. I would take Advil, or Tylenol, or some pain killer to try and stave off the pain for the day. After a while, they didn't do a thing to take the pain in my head away. Nothing worked. That was around the time that I met my current chiropractor. (Now most people still think of chiropractor's as the remedy for back pain, however, that is the least of what they do). After explaining to me what he did which is put the spine in alignment so that the body can heal itself, I figured I would give it a try. Within a week, my head aches were gone and I have experienced only 1-2 head aches a year since. Its not miraculous work, its just allowing the body to heal itself, without medication. Still not convinced that chiropractic works? My wife had horrible seasonal allergies to the point where she was receiving an allergy shot at least once a week, had inhalers if things got bad, and was not in good shape in either spring or fall. She also started seeing the same chiropractor that I did and within a few months, she didn't need anymore allergy shots and her inhalers got thrown in the garbage. That was three years ago and she does not suffer from seasonal allergies anymore. The only thing that changed was the introduction of chiropractic care into her life. Still not convinced? My mom as also been going to see the same chiropractor and after getting adjusted for a couple of years now, her previously super high blood pressure has been brought down drastically, her medication has been reduced and it looks as if within another year or two she will be completely off her meds, all by allowing the body to heal itself, not by pumping it full of more medications. Listen, I am only talking about this because I see how it works and I don't want the people I know to have to take pills to managed their issues. If your interested in more information, please get in touch with me and I will connect you with my chiropractor. Think about it, is it worth it to try something where you don't have to take any extra pills and it may get you off any pills you are taking? I would think so. Don't end up like the woman at the beginning of my blog having to sue a pharmaceutical company for experienced side effects. Be proactive and heal yourself.
No comments:
Post a Comment