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Now before I get going on my rant, I want to make one thing very clear:  I am NOT anti-medicine.  There are definitely situations in which taking medication, while not perfect, is the best course of action.  For example, if you have a severe bacterial infection, antibiotics are the way to go.  If you have severe diabetes, insulin is a necessity.  If you are experiencing a major allergic reaction, suppressing it with steroids can save your life. 

My issue is with what in my opinion is the indiscriminate use of medications for every little symptom and also using medication to suppress very normal bodily reactions to poor lifestyle choices.  Got a runny nose?  Take a pill.  Got a headache?  Take a pill.  Upset stomach from eating too much?  Take a pill, and maybe some liquid medicine. 

Now, taking medication even for trivial or extremely temporary symptoms wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t for a little thing called side-effects.  And one of the big problems with side-effects is that a lot of times people don’t realize that the symptoms they are getting are side-effects.  So what do they do?  They take another medication to counter the side-effects of the first medication.  And it’s not just the people with the symptoms who do this.  In fact, in many cases it’s doctors who are prescribing one medication after another for their patients who keep coming up with new symptoms.  In a recent blog post, I mentioned one of my patients who was taking 38 different prescription medications each day, all prescribed by the same doctor!  This is a major problem!

It is not unsual in my practice to see patients who are on 10 to 15 prescription drugs and sometimes additional over the counter drugs.  In most of these cases, the patients are still bothered by one or more major symptoms, and in many cases, those symptoms turn out to be side-effects of one or more of the drugs they are taking.  Oftentimes, it seems that the most helpful thing I can do for a patient is to provide assistance in getting his or her doctor to reduce the medication (or helping the patient find a new doctor who will reduce their medication if their doctor is uncooperative). 

In fact, while I often recommend nutritional supplementation to patients, many of them wouldn’t even need it if they simply got off any non-essential medications and started to eat a reasonably good diet.  You see, a big part cause of medication side-effects in many cases is that the medication produces nutrient deficiencies.  The alterations in biochemistry caused by the medication causes the body to have an increased metabolic need for certain nutrients and/or causes the body to lose nutrients faster than normal through the urine and stool. 

For example, the cholesterol-lowering drugs (statins) deplete the body’s supply of a nutrient called coenzyme Q-10 (or CoQ10 for short).  CoQ10 is very important to normal muscle function (including heart muscle function), and depletion of this nutrient causes abnormal muscle function - which is why statins often have the side effect of muscle pain and may in some cases cause diminished heart pumping (also called heart failure) with resultant fatigue, shortness of breath, etc..

Another example is diuretics, which may be prescribed for high blood pressure.  Diuretics cause the body to lose potassium.  Potassium deficiency can cause severe muscle cramping and pain, and in rare severe cases may even cause sudden death due to heart failure. 

In recent years several drugs have made headlines with their spectacularly dangerous side-effects.  These include weight loss drugs resulting in death, anti-inflammatory drugs causing heart attacks, and osteoporosis drugs causing severe bone necrosis (tissue death). 

Many people are beginning to question the widespread use of medications, but people need to become more aware and not just blindly take medication because they saw it advertised as something to help their symptoms.  It’s not even a good idea to just blindly accept whatever your doctor prescribes.  There are many resources for checking on potential side-effects available today, such as one I recently discussed in another blog article on prescription drugs. Another excellent resource can be your pharmacist (pharmacists typically are FAR more knowledgeable about drugs than doctors are).  My recommendation is to do your homework and weigh the potential risks and benefits of any drug (unless it is an emergency situation, of course - in which case, handle the crisis and THEN do your homework).

Stay tuned for more on natural health!

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