You are probably much healthier than your doctor thinks. And most certainly a lot healthier than your collection of prescription medicines suggests.
In fact, you are probably much healthier than you have been led yourself to believe.
Dr. Teppo Jarvinen, of the Department of Orthopedics and Trauma at the University of Helsinki, wrote an article in a recent British Medical Journal that argued that it has become the norm for doctors to prescribe medicine, not because you are sick, but because you might get sick.
In other words, drugs are prescribed not for existing conditions, but to prevent ones that have not yet happened. Prevention of something that may or may not happen has now become a disease in itself.
For this reason, where a British hospital chart used to have room for five medications, it now has room for 30, and the British medical system is responsible for 18 drug prescriptions per person per year. The rest of the Western world is probably in a similar situation.
Osteoporosis is a good example, with many women being prescribed drugs to prevent the loss of bone mineral density in their postmenopausal years when they are supposedly at increased risk of osteopenia or osteoporosis. But as a thorough literature review in the May 2015 edition of the Journal of Internal Medicine reveals:
– 85 percent of fractures in elderly women are not due to osteoporosis but to falls because of muscle weakness
– Bone mineral density does not predict fractures in the elderly
– Osteoporosis drugs do not prevent fractures anyway.
Given that the drugs are expensive and far from side effect-free, the massive overprescription of these drugs seems unjustified.
According to a 2008 article in the British Medical Journal, up to 70 percent of people with prescriptions for proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) have neither stomach ulcers, nor a chronic inflammatory condition that justifies the PPI prescriptions. It is not supposed to be given to people to prevent occasional heartburn after fatty meals.
If you suffer frequent heartburn/acid reflux, click here…
Health authorities in the U.S., Britain, Australia, and many other countries around the world recommend that statins (cholesterol drugs) be prescribed for healthy people to prevent cardiovascular disease, even if they have only a 10 percent chance of developing it (7.5 percent in the U.S). Meanwhile, after conducting a thorough literature review, medical specialists argued in a 2013 edition of the British Medical Journal that healthy people with a smaller than 20 percent risk of cardiovascular disease do not benefit from statins and that these drugs do not change the age at which they die or even the severity of the cardiovascular complaints from which they suffer later.
To lower your cholesterol naturally and clear out clogged arteries, click here…
All these are cases where drugs are prescribed to prevent, rather than to cure. Even worse, in some of these cases research shows that they do not have a preventative effect, anyway.
There are many reasons for thinking that overprescription is a bad idea.
Most importantly, if people are put on drugs, they may not be as motivated to change their lifestyles to prevent diseases. If you know you can take a proton pump inhibitor afterwards, you won’t even think of preventing heartburn by skipping the fatty meal. This holds even more strongly for regular exercise to increase muscle strength and decrease fracture-causing falls, and for healthy dieting to reduce cholesterol. Drugs replace behavior modification and healthy lifestyles.
Furthermore, virtually all drugs have side effects. They clash with each other. They overwork your liver and kidneys that must break them down and excrete them.
Finally, they drive up the revenue that governments and private health insurers spend on healthcare. This leads to higher taxation and higher insurance premiums.
Suspicion confirmed , our health care IS a multi million dollar _BUSINESS_……
Suspicion confirmed , our health care IS a multi million dollar _BUSINESS_……
I have known this for some time. Take the girl I work with. She has always got something. She was going to one dr. who prescribed for her to go to the local YMCA and take water exercises. She refused to go. Then he sent her to the nurses who work with people regarding their diets. She refused to comply with their instructions. One day she was naming off the meds that she was on and it was probably 20 of them, plus she sleeps with oxygen even though she is only in her 50's. She changed to another dr. who convinced her she had lime disease (the only time she goes outside is to get into the car). He was treating her for that, then he convinced her that she has fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. He sent her to a rheumatologist but the rheumatologist told her she needed to get off several of the meds she was on and told her she didn't need to be coming to him. Now the doctor is going to sent her to UVA for more tests. If she had gotten off her hiney and exercised like the first dr. prescribed and stuck to the diet the nurse gave her, she wouldn't be having the problems she supposedly has now. I personally believe the worst thing wrong with her is pure laziness. No doctor and no medicine can help you if you won't help yourself. There is no magic pill but there are plenty of doctors out there who will give you medicine for any complaint, no matter whether you need it or not.