DRUG SIDE-EFFECTS. WHY CARE?
Pharmaceutical drugs are designed for specific purposes; to relieve your pain, bring down your temperature, reduce your blood pressure or inflammation. In an age where we want our symptoms gone and gone NOW - drugs are considered to be the ultimate answer. There is however a flip-side to the benefits - quashing our pain, neutralising our heartburn and suppressing our eczema all come at a cost rarely acknowledged by medical professionals. So, if they do not seem to be concerned about them why should we?
Why do we get side-effects?
Drugs work by suppressing the body's functions by STEALING VITAL NUTRIENTS. These are the very vitamins, minerals and hormones that are essential to your good health giving you the ability to fight off infections, to heal, repair and grow. In the desire to be relieved of our immediate ailments side-effects tend to meld into the background and are often dismissed. What can seem like new symptoms or “newly emerging diseases” are often the depleting effects of the original drugs being taken. Paracetamols, acid blockers, antidepressants, antianxiety medications, corticosteroids, diabetes drugs, hormone replacement therapy (HRT)... the list is as long as the national formularies book - all have side-effects of varying degrees.
Lets use statins as an example. These drugs are prescribed to reduce cholesterol. While suppressing the production of liver enzyme HMG-CoA they also block the production of CoQ10, a nutrient imperative to the creation of energy in every single cell in your body. A lack of CoQ10 leads to high blood sugar levels, heart palpitations, irregular heart rhythm, memory loss, fatigue and depression. Instead of addressing the causation – in this case the depletion of CoQ10 caused by the statins, there are two potential outcomes. New drugs to combat your new seemingly unconnected symptoms OR more seriously, the diagnosis of having a “new disease” such as diabetes, coronary artery disease or Alzheimer's. More drugs, more side-effects and a further worsening of your health.
The drug cascade
Managing disease through multiple-medications is the norm, in fact if you have made it to your 60s without a rolling prescription of at least 3 drugs you are considered unusual. “Good science” and “evidence-based medicine” are terms frequently broadcast to reassure us that the pharmaceutical industry has our best interests at heart, however the complexities of drug interactions that occur when taking multiple medications makes it almost impossible to ascertain safety and indeed efficacy. With little regard to the functional impact of drug side-effects alongside a mechanistic approach to the body, it is no wonder that people can be on an ever-increasing number of drugs while becoming more ill in the process.
The HOLISTIC way forward
Suppressing symptoms with drugs is a bit like snipping the top off of a weed, they just keep coming back. To actually resolve the problem, to heal, you need to pull out the roots and change the nature of the soil – this is the holistic approach. Whether it is an acute illness, autoimmune, hormonal, gastrointestinal or cardiovascular; dis-ease in the body is a whole-person experience. Homeopathy is a powerful holistic therapy that not only addresses the symptoms of your dis-ease, but fortifies your body systems while changing the very quality of your 'soil'. When drugs are essential, holistic treatment will complement, helping to mitigate their side-effects. Holistic treatment however has a deeper purpose. By stimulating the body's innate self-healing mechanism you will move beyond “disease management” and a constant fire-fighting of symptoms to address the underlying cause. Holistic therapy is about treating the person as a whole and not the disease, it does not matter what age or how advanced your condition may be - it IS possible to break the cycle of drug dependency and the knock-on impact of side-effects.
For further reading look at researching for drugs and conditions regarding your specific interests on greenmedinfo.com a database with thousands of quality studies. Also Pharmacist Suzy Cohen's book 'Drug Muggers'.