Recently, the US Surgeon General’s office released information on a new health campaign called “Script Your Health.”

It serves to reduce the complications of not taking prescribed medication properly. It is designed to help people who are on maintenance medications to remember to take everything they should, when they should.

The biggest healthcare consumer group to have the most trouble with non-compliance is teenagers, followed by Baby Boomers. Teens are forgetful, and Baby Boomers comprise the highest population of medicine users.

Sigmund Freud said that forgetting things is in part purposeful.

People write us all the time that they hate having to take medicine and frequently forget to take it, even though they have fancy pill cases, little cell phone alarm reminders, and other tools designed to help them remember.

But neglecting to take medicine that you have come to rely on can be very dangerous, as many people may have found out the hard way.

Whether it is because of willful non-compliance or just “spacing out” on it, there are withdrawal consequences to not taking it when the body is expecting it.

This goes for prescription supplements as well.

Ideally, however, it would be preferred to not have to take the medicine in the first place. The less intrusive your healthcare experiences can be, the safer and healthier overall you will be. That is a fact.

Research continues all the time to try and figure out how to reduce time spent under anesthesia to make surgery safer, how to reduce dosage of certain pharmaceuticals to minimize side effects, and how to boost natural practices to eliminate the need in the first place for surgery and pills.

If you are one of the millions of people who depend upon prescription medication to stay ‘healthy,’ you have likely been one to have forgotten to take your medicine (or have had to take it later than the ideal time).

There are some conditions for which a certain pharmaceutical is necessary, no matter what you do. It could be, though, that the dependence upon these medications could be minimized.

For everyone else-those who have to take a medication for a condition that lifestyle changes could fix- it is much safer to just do the work and make the changes. And, as an added benefit, you won’t get that lecture from the doctor chastising you for bad habits and forgetfulness.

Consider this as well…there are a growing number of physicians who are prescribing medicine at double the needed strength and advising their patients to cut the pills in half, thereby reducing the cost, or co-pay, for that medicine.

This is a sad dynamic if you think about it, especially if you consider that the cost of a guide, book, or nutritional coaching session (which is generally a one-time fee) is much, MUCH cheaper than the recurring cost of expensive medications.

I’m not telling anyone to run out and throw their medicines into a brown bag and dump them. That is also very dangerous.

Getting off medications takes time and work…and the careful supervision of your doctor. But, your doctor will love that you are making the changes needed to turn your chronic condition around and many times doctors are right on board with that effort.

In the short term, the advice is do what you can to remember to take your medication as prescribed without forgetting it or otherwise messing up.

That will keep you healthy enough for the longer term goal of making the healthy changes needed so that your doctor feels comfortable reducing your dosage a little at a time until you won’t need it at all anymore.

For help with reducing your blood pressure naturally, see the easy exercises in my Hypertension No More program.

Warm regards,

Christian Goodman

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