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Medication Dangers
 In the 20th Century, Western medicine substantially decreased
our risk of dying from infectious diseases, but at the same time, chronic diseases such as cancer, stroke and heart
disease increased several-fold. The explosion of the use of drugs to control infectious diseases has resulted in a society
addicted to drugs. There has been a massive shift in medical emphasis from seeking causes of illnesses to alleviating
the symptoms of those illnesses.
Recently, a committee of the United States Senate held an inquiry into the use
of drugs in the U.S. They determined that each year 40,000 people are killed from mis-use of medications and
an additional 60,000 1o 100,000 die from treatment-resistant bacterian that evolved, in part, from drug over-use. It
became apparent that such drug mis-use and over-use is increasing in western medicine every single day. Senator Edward
Kennedy claimed: "Physicians are inadequately educatied about drug entities and must rely on the drug manufacturer for
dosage." Many prescription dosages are standard for all, despite the fact that each individual can be significantly
different in his or her acceptance or reaction to such medication.
Consider the comment in the light of the language
of the Hippocratic Oath taken by physicians upon graduation: "I will give no drug to any, though it be asked of me, nor
will I counsel such." The ancient teacher also advised his students that the first law of healing was, "Above
all, do no harm." (In other words, do not make things worse.) In a report from the World Health Organization,
we are advised that one of every four people who die in hospitals
is killed by drugs.
Today, the majority of people take pain killers for everything
- headache, muscular pain, low back discomfort, the common cold, and on and on, without looking for the cause of the sickness.
Pain is the body's way of telling us that something is wrong. Covering up this health signal with medication is
like putting a strip of tape over the red dash-light that says your car engine is overheating!
According
to the National Kidney Foundation, if you take Ibuprofen products (Advil, Motrin, etc.) sparingly, they will do little harm
to your system. However, if you take them in quantity or regularly over a long period of time, they will cause kidney
disease, ulcers, gastrointestinal bleeding and increas your chance of heart attack and stroke.
Statin drugs (e.g.
Lipitor, Pravachol, Zocor, etc.) are used by millions of people to lower their cholesterol levels and prevent heart disease.
These medications can actually worsen heart function in some people due, in part, to a drug induced deficiency of coenzyme
Q10 (CoQ10). Statin drugs work by inhibiting the body's production of cholesterol. At the same time, they
also inhibit the body's production of CoQ10, which is a necessary nutrient needed to produce energy. Studies have
shown that people with heart failure exhibited subnormal concentrations of CoQ10.
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