Recently, a 50-something year old buddy of mine was trying to get new health insurance for his wife and himself. While shopping around one of the insurance representatives asked him how many medications he and his wife were taking. When he said none the rep was surprised!So much so that she repeated the question. According to the insurance rep, it's very rare for a person in their 50s in the United States seeking health insurance to not be taking multiple medications. This is truly sad. Our expectations as a society are upside down. I am not against medications when absolutely needed, but my goal is to keep people off them. I don't think a 50-year-old person should have to be on medication! A few daily supplements, yes. Medications, no!
I don't want to sound like a hypocrite. I'll take a Tylenol for a headache or an antibiotic for a real infection, but I don't picture myself being on any chronic medication--ever! It could happen, but I don't picture it no matter how old I get. I also try to live my life like I will never have to take medication. This is the type of shift in our thinking we all should have. If you go to a physician's office with the expectation of getting "fixed" by a medication or vitamin supplement, you are missing the boat. You should be going to a health professional mostly for coaching, teaching, reassurance, and maybe an occasional short-term medication(s) with the intention of getting off of it.
Oddly, I am confronted with this "fix me" attitude working in an integrative or complementary medicine practice. You wouldn't think people would have a "fix me" and "medication" mentality when seeking alternative approaches. But they do. Just like with traditional medical practices, when visiting an alternative practice the rule should be: Do not expect supplements or an alternative modality to magically "leapfrog" the need to get off your butt and move your body daily, eat whole foods, get leaner, get some sleep, deal with relationships, etc.
While supplements are inherently much safer than pharmaceuticals and ideally work to "normalize" body biochemistry, what people don't realize in our "pill-popping" culture is that adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are one of the top ten leading causes of death in this country, at over 100,000 deaths annually (and this figure was for hospitalized patients only). How can this figure be minimized? Use pharmaceuticals correctly (of course, when absolutely needed), get off them and stay off them!
Here's a tip: When you go to your doctor's office always ask (especially if medication is being prescribed), "What do I have to do, change, or achieve to get off this medicine(s)?" If you don't ask or have that mentality, it's much easier for your health practitioner to just check off that you're taking the medication right and not having any obvious side effects.
In a traditional doctor's defense, they really don't have the time to spend with patients to really look at the whole person. They have very little, if any, experience with seeing how food manipulation in a patient can really change people dramatically. Traditional doctors also are not studying as their main focus, foods and how to apply nutritional biochemistry to solve their patient's problems. To them the solution to everything is medication because that's who "reps" their offices and funds their educational symposiums. Sadly, the emphasis on medication is also the basis of their training. All most doctors know is the "disease care" model and how to treat acute and chronic symptoms with medication. But all these prescribed pharmaceuticals do for chronic diseases is treat the symptoms of the disease not the disease process itself. Simply put: They don't cure!
