“It runs in my family.” “Isn’t taking blood pressure medicine common?” “My cardiologist says that I’ll be on this statin for the rest of my life as a precaution… it’s very common.”
You have been led to believe that just because something is common, it’s normal. Au contraire (as my French grandmother would say). Taking a litany of medications for lifestyle conditions isn’t normal at all.
The way I see it, if the body were meant to take a pill once we hit the magic age of 50 for blood pressure, high cholesterol and hot flashes, well then shouldn’t we have been born with some automatic mechanism of manufacturing these drugs naturally
We take more prescription medicine now than any period of history and more than any other country by far! Yet we continue to be one unhealthy bunch. Last year we spent $44 BILLION dollars on the top ten selling drugs in the United States alone. 7 of the 10 drugs are DIRECTLY related to our lifestyle choices, such as metformin and prilosec for blood sugar and heartburn. 53 billion prescriptions for prilosec were written last year, a drug commonly prescribed especially when you consider there are only 315 million Americans. Is getting heartburn normal? No it is not. It’s the bodies warning sign…. STOP EATING THIS CRAP, IT HURTS TO DIGEST IT. I mean how much better of a signal can our internal feedback system give us?
And let’s discuss my favorite, simvastatin, a drug to reduce cholesterol. 93 BILLION prescriptions, were written last year. Again I ask you, does the body just stop working and start producing tons of cholesterol for no reason? Is it just because we eat too many eggs? The answer to both of these questions is an emphatic NO. There’s always a cause and effect relationship within the body. How is it possible that the body knows how to create a human being, ie baby, with 75 trillion cells in 40 weeks with virtually no help from you, and yet somehow the body goes awry and start pumping out cholesterol to the tune of 93 billion prescriptions being written. Your cholesterol goes up when you body needs more cholesterol. And your body needs more cholesterol when it has to produce more hormones. And when we are constantly creating situations in the body due to the chronic physical, chemical and mental stress that we endure each day, the body is set to respond. And respond it does.
Antidepressants are the most widely prescribed class of drugs in America to the tune of 264 million prescriptions filled in 2011. My goodness, that’s nearly one prescription for every man, woman and child in the United States.
We simply must get away from the notion that better health comes from better chemistry. There is, of course, a time and place for medicine, but it is NOT every time and every place. And a drug that is required for the rest of your life is a drug that should be examined.
Remember just because it’s common that the average American is obese, is on prescription medication for lifestyle causes, watches 4 hours of TV daily, is stressed beyond belief, sedentary, sits more than 12 hours each day and has no clue what a chiropractor does, DOESN’T MEAN IT’S NORMAL. West Functional Chiropractic is about returning to normal. Hop on the bus, because this bus is taking a new road to better health. Make it a great week.