If the power company has a power outage in your area you will not return to full power by changing a light bulb. If your brakes are out on your car changing the oil will not help. If your house is a mess it will not improve if you take a walk. If you have headaches constantly it may be “all in your head” but taking a psyche drug does not handle it. If you have a medical condition taking a drug for it will not solve the reason you have it, but it may mask the symptoms. Taking a drug for depression will not handle the fact that your family member has died.
Health care needs to change but not in the ways proposed by the government. If you have high blood pressure taking a drug to control it does not solve the problem; the reason it is high is undiscovered. Having your blood pressure checked is not preventive medicine but taking action to avoid developing high blood pressure in the first place is prevention.
The thing you could concentrate on is demanding doctors and other health care workers discover WHY something is what it is and fix that! Find the cause of your health problems. Do not accept any masking treatment protocols but rather insist on getting help to find the cause.
Here are some startling facts provided by Grace E Jackson, MD in a 2010 presentation entitled “Psychiatric Drugs“ based on her experiences while employed as a clinician and Medical Director within several agencies that deliver publicly funded services to the mentally ill. She cites The Department of Veteran Affairs comparison of death rates of demented veterans who avoided psychiatric drugs to those who took newer antipsychotic medication or old “conventional” antipsychotic medication. Of 12,821 patients who avoided these medications 18% died within one year. Of the 10,615 veterans who experienced treatment with antipsychotic drugs the outcome was quite different; 23% of veterans died within 1 year who took newer antipsychotic meds, 25% of veterans who took older antipsychotic meds died within 1 year and 29% of those who took both (sequentially or concurrently) died within one year.
The United States comprises 4.5% of the world’s population but consumes 90% of the stimulant sales, 63% of the antipsychotics, 51% of the antidepressants. Our enemies will have an easy time of it because drugs cause apathy, inaction and disinterest in life by the user.
What about the deaths caused by properly prescribed medications? Dr. Barbara Starfield, in an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) 2000, pointed out that her research estimated the adverse effects of medication taken exactly as prescribed resulted in 106,000 inpatient deaths due to the pharmaceuticals and 199,000 outpatient deaths due to pharmaceuticals EACH YEAR. In 2006 there were 629,191 deaths in the US attributed to cardiac disease, 560,102 due to cancer and 305,000 due to adverse drug reactions. There is not a physician in existence that could possibly predict which of his patients are going to die due to a properly prescribed pharmaceutical drug. Some doctors are not willing to live with that. Some doctors have decided to look for other ways to help patients. When you minimize prescription use you have to find out what CAUSES a patient to have a problem and then, addressing that cause, you can figure out what the body is missing resulting in poor health or you can figure out what toxin is causing the difficulty. It is not glamorous to talk to patients about their diet and exercise habits, it is not glamorous to prescribe nutrients to handle deficiencies but guess what… it avoids unnecessary complications and patients like it when they get better. It is simple when someone breaks a leg to make the right recommendations to heal the leg, it is obvious what needs to be done when someone is pregnant, it is obvious to decide what to do when someone is in a car wreck and requires surgery but those solutions do not work for the common everyday chronic health problems like digestive disorders, fatigue, headaches, diabetes, heart disease, arthritis…. and on and on. Those problems are chronic, complex and deserve a comprehensive evaluation that is unique for that patient and results in clear paths to solutions and the alleviation of the problem. Yep, restoring circulation and wiping out aches and pain and increasing energy are things any conscientious doctor can help you with.
We need real health care and real health care reform and we are not going to see effective medical care until we demand it. It will take the public outcry to change any of this so start talking if you care. You know, organic food did not magically appear in the grocery stores, it was demanded by enough of us for someone to finally listen and then competition took over. Competition for your interest and your health care dollars will change America for the better so start talking about what you want.