You see doctors. I see drug pushers.

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Staying healthy as you age is a challenge.

I’ve been thinking more about health as I get older. You can’t live much of an outrageous lifestyle when you are sick. My philosophy is that with the proper attention- diet and exercise- good health is a natural result. My interactions with doctors have followed this general path as well. I avoid them like the plague.

I see them once a year or so to look for problems but otherwise I stay a healthy distance away. I haven’t had a cold for years and even when I do get one, I know that it’s a waste of time to see the doctor because all he will do is treat the symptoms. My recovery will proceed the same with or without him. I stopped getting flue shots several years ago. I didn’t get the flu with them and I don’t get the flu without them.

Doctor’s are part of my back up system.

By and large, I view doctors as an emergency backup and an early warning system. They are pretty good at that. But, unfortunately they don’t stop there. When I spent three days in the hospital recently, I experienced an epiphany about doctors and the medical care industry. The nurse was getting my information and asked what medications I took. When I answered “None.” she paused and studied me carefully. “That’s unusual.” she said. “You know most people your age take several medications.”

You’ve got to be kidding!

And, of course, I didn’t know. First of all, I don’t hang with people my own age much and when I do, it never crosses my mind to ask them what drugs they are taking. It is interesting that I call them drugs while the nurse called them medications. I don’t think of myself as old at 70 although I do admit  that some things don’t work quite as well as they used to and I just accept that my knees will be painful whatever I do. It amazes me that people my age are expected to be drug addicted. And that doctors are shameless drug pushers.

It’s not heroine.

Of course they aren’t literally drug addicts because at least some of the medicines are not addictive. If the doctor didn’t tell them to take the drugs and assure them that those drugs are improving their lives, they would be perfectly happy to spend the money elsewhere. So long as they routinely take these drugs, however, and accept the doctor’s prescription, they might just as well be addicts. Drug dependent old folks will scrimp on food and housing in order to fund their dependency. And they are still sick even though the drugs mask their symptoms.  Is this healthy?

I don’t get it.

I have always distrusted treatment of symptoms, taking a chemical that forces my body to change an outcome, like blood pressure medication and drugs to lower cholesterol. I know enough about statistics to understand that association is not the same as causation and that you don’t die from high blood pressure or high cholesterol. When I look at the medical profession pushing drugs that treat symptoms, I don’t see health practitioners, I see witch doctors.

What about the unintended consequences?

Then too, there is the unintended consequences of these drugs. Many of these drugs have serious impact on nutrition because they interfere with normal body functions when they fix the symptom they target. Doctors manage their witches brew of drugs by adjusting quantities and adding new ones to counteract the unintended consequences of the earlier ones. It’s a cycle that continually gets worse as the body is driven crazy from the effects of the drugs. Your body suffers even though the health threatening symptoms disappear.

Do you take drugs?

So today, my question for readers is this. What drugs are you taking and why. Do you know what they are supposed to do for you and do you know the problems that they create along the way. Do you think that doctors prescribing these drugs believe that these drugs improve your health- or do you think like me that they are nothing more than pushers?