Your Diseases Are Not Caused by a Lack of Drugs
By: Sayer Ji
Let’s get one thing straight from the outset: No disease is caused by the lack of any drug. Acid reflux, for instance, is not caused by a lack of Nexium. To disregard this undeniable fact is to leave logic and reason at the doorstep.
Yet this way of thinking perpetuates the mass migration-like leap many of us are taking over the cliff of a burgeoning-trillion-dollar-plus, drug-sales-driven medical establishment. In this establishment, the standard of care is to merely suppress the body’s symptoms of disease with patented, exorbitantly priced chemicals that do absolutely nothing to address the root causes of suffering.
Even worse, some of these chemicals were developed in secret by the massive drug industry, which repackages certain known biological poisons as “miracle drugs.” The industry simply re-purposes one or more of the drug’s effects as “therapeutic actions.” And yes, most Americans still consider the chemical cocktails given to them with promises of relief as state-of-the-art medicines -- newly minted and approved – when actually they may be poorly tested and unsafe. Thus they as unknowing guinea pigs, could very well be taking in an experimental manner. Do I sound passionate enough about the issue?
Let’s face it. Very little effort today goes towards identifying, understanding and addressing the underlying causes of disease (and some of these diseases could actually be drug or chemical induced); to the contrary, the entire point of pharmaceutically dependent medicine is to treat the symptoms of disease as if they were the disease. After declaring war on the symptoms, the medical community uses chemical warfare to reduce or even eliminate the symptoms. This of course creates new, often more dangerous symptoms that require the use (and sale) of even more potent and expensive drugs. While this is an excellent business strategy, at least in the short term (before the lawsuits from mass health problems are organized), eventually people are forced through their suffering – because the underlying disease was never treated -- to realize this is a highly orchestrated downward spiral from which there may be no escaping.
The irony is that so-called “natural” and “alternative” medicine is often labeled as quackery because it does not rely on drugs, but rather addresses the multitude of factors that lead to disease by understanding and responding appropriately to the underlying causes of symptoms. These symptoms, after all, are the body’s way of communicating the problem – sometimes, in fact, the symptoms are themselves the solution; e.g. the majority of fever symptoms are fighting the infection. Natural medicine uses much safer dietary and non-chemical means to assist the body’s inherent self-healing abilities.
Most Americans, however, do not rely on these time-tested methods, largely because they have not received Federal Drug Administration (FDA) approval.
Americans trust that the FDA has their best interests at heart, even when the capital requirements to receive new drug approval can cost upwards of $1 billion. FDA drug approval most likely will never be granted to things that can be grown in your back yard for free, or purchased at a health food store. This is because of the legal, financial, and regulatory framework the FDA has created. Can you see an investor putting a billion dollars of cash into the clinical trials necessary to gain FDA approval when the natural substance submitted has no market exclusivity, patentability and no chance of gaining the investor a return on his or her investment? It would never happen.
Let’s take a quick look at the top five drugs sold in the United States in 2010:
Nexium ($5.276 billion), Lipitor ($5.272 billion), Plavix ($4.675 billion), Advair Diskus ($3.655 billion) and Oxycontin ($3.54 billion) amount to more than $23 billion in sales last year. Not a single one addresses the underlying causes of the diseases for which they are prescribed.
Nexium, the “acid blocker” first on this list, is in the chemical category known as proton pump inhibitors and blocks the secretion of hydrochloric acid (HCL) by interfering with the proton-pumps in the acid-producing cells in the stomach. HCL is essential to digest protein, absorb minerals and fight infection by providing a stomach acid barrier. Blocking the acid by poisoning the parietal cells in this way has now been proven to increase the risk of bone fracture, atrial fibrillation, gastric tumors and infections.
Pretty sad, considering all you wanted to do is quell some indigestion, particularly when ginger or a glass of water could have done the trick.
Next on the list, Lipitor, is a class-action lawsuit ready to explode. In 2009 the Clinical Journal of Cardiology published a human study indicating for the first time that statin drugs actually weaken the heart muscle. How can Americans stomach the idea of taking a drug proven to “prevent heart disease” that has been proven to weaken the heart muscle, along with over 75 known serious unintended adverse effects (see GreenMedInfo’s statin page).
Red yeast rice, policosanol and guggul and three of several dozen known natural lipid modulators that do not have the severe side effects associated with statins.
Plavix, an anticoagulant blood thinner, has been found to increase mortality in a number of studies. Pine bark extract is powerful blood thinner which unlike Plavix and aspirin does not increase bleeding time significantly.
Advair Diskus, while life-saving during acute bronchial asthmatic flareups, bears the FDA blackbox warning which states that it “increases the risk of death from asthma.” An asthma drug that increases your risk of dying from asthma? Black cumin seed, magnesium, and turmeric are three of many possible natural anti-asthmatics.
Oxycontin is up to two times more potent and therefore addictive than morphine. Natural anti-inflammatories with proven pain-killing properties include ginger, turmeric, olive leaf and rosemary.
In a nutshell, if it is natural you have the environment’s blessing. If it’s a drug, the best you get is the FDA’s blessing, and that’s determined by capital flows, investors’ interests and controls – in short, profit -- that have next to nothing to do with what is in the best interest of your health.
