Lesson #6 - Medication As a Significant Cause of Poor
Health and Premature Death
(A 2.3 min read)
Here Is an interesting, little-known, significant cause of common health issues and the third leading cause of death in the US (and other Western countries).
Surprised?
I had the unfortunate experience of witnessing people hospitalized for manageable conditions, receiving medication that ended up causing extensive kidney damage or blood clots, which led to their death.
However, it is not always so quick. Many of the commonly prescribed medications may cause side effects that may worsen one’s health and shorten one’s life span more gradually.
According to the study cited above, and other similar studies, this even includes, medications prescribed correctly.
Now, before I continue, I would ask you that if anything you read here that may suggest that you medication may be causing adverse effects, make sure to speak to your prescribing doctor about this.
My view and experience of medical treatment is as follows, emergency care medicine has done wonders to save lives, however, the management of chronic diseases only with pharmaceutical drugs, without looking into and addressing lifestyle and dietary habits, seems to be beneficial mostly in the short run, while it may produce more harm in the long run, especially as multiple medications are prescribed over time.
Off course, there are always exceptions to the rule, however there are several reasons why approved medications can cause harm, but the one I’d like to highlight here most is that medications typically don’t address the underlying causes of the conditions for which they are intended.
For example, diabetes is not caused by Metformin deficiency (Metformin is a medication for diabetes), but rather due to issues such as PUFA accumulating in cells, blocking the ability of cells to utilize glucose, for example.
High blood pressure, for example, is not caused by Lisinopril or Amlodipine deficiency (these are medications for HBP), but it could be caused, as I pointed out in the last lesson, by a deficiency of magnesium, potassium, or calcium.
When synthetic drugs listed above have no natural function in the body and interact with our cells, they can produce unintended consequences.
Medications may target one organ or system, but adversely interact with other organs or systems in the body.
For example:
- Tylenol, taken for a headache, may adversely affect the liver.
- Cholesterol lowering medication may cause muscle weakness and pain, diabetes, and dementia.
- Long-term use of antacid meds can weaken bones.
Sometimes, a person may not be aware that a medication is the cause of a side effect. For example, one may take a beta blocker (a heart medication) and attribute the fatigue or erectile difficulty it is causing to aging.
How do you know if a medication you are taking is affecting you?
There is a great resource available online, which was once reserved for doctors. It is the prescriber’s digital reference, found at www.pdr.net
You can type in the medication you take and read about all the info relevant to this medication, including cautions, contraindications, and side effects. To understand why medications can produce harmful effects, let us continue exploring cholesterol-lowering medications.
Below is a copy of the list of potential side effects from www.pdr.net that may result from the commonly prescribed Simvastatin.
How do you know if a medication you are taking is affecting you?
There is a great resource available online, which was once reserved for doctors. It is the prescriber’s digital reference, found at www.pdr.net
You can type in the medication you take and read about all the info relevant to this medication, including cautions, contraindications, and side effects. To
understand why medications can produce harmful effects, let us continue exploring cholesterol-lowering medications.
Below is a copy of the list of potential side effects from www.pdr.net that may result from the commonly prescribed Simvastatin.
Why does cholesterol-lowering medication potentially cause so many side effects?
Well, this type of cholesterol-lowering medication blocks the production of cholesterol, in order to try to limit the amount of cholesterol that is deposited in plaque in the arteries. What often is not considered is that cholesterol is produced by human cells because it is essential for so many functions in the body.
This diagram highlights some of the important functions of cholesterol in humans:
When you remove cholesterol, you interfere with all the important structures and functions shown in this diagram and essentially interfere with health. For example, a decrease in cholesterol can affect nerve fiber health, leading to neurological issues such as memory loss. Less cholesterol also results in reduced production of testosterone and progesterone, leading to fatigue and a lack of well-being.
This is just one example related to one medication. Similar examples can apply to many other medications.
Hopefully, this helps you understand how medications can produce harmful effects. The extent of the harm caused by prescription drugs is so widespread that it is a significant contributor to medical errors - a leading cause of premature death.
If you don’t want to run into such problems, what can you do? To illustrate an alternative approach you can take, let’s continue using cholesterol as an example.
How to lower cholesterol safely.
First, it is important to ask and understand what causes blood levels of cholesterol to rise.
While it is widely believed that cholesterol levels are influenced primarily by the consumption of cholesterol in the diet, many studies show little relationship between dietary cholesterol and blood levels (more about this another time). The main reason for high cholesterol in the plasma (the liquid part of the blood) is the reduced ability of cells to make use of cholesterol to do all that they are supposed to do with it (make hormones, bile acids, myelin, etc.)
This usually happens under conditions of low thyroid function, insulin resistance, or poor sugar metabolism, and excess stress. Under these conditions, a person may end up with more cholesterol and less of that other important “stuff” that cholesterol makes because the cells of the body have a reduced ability to utilize cholesterol to produce all these things.
Therefore, it is important to determine the cause of the high cholesterol. If I work with a client and determine that she has high cholesterol due to an underactive (low) thyroid function, then, I can use natural means to address the low thyroid function. The main causes of low thyroid function are a variety of stressors and the insufficient intake of iodine. If the latter factor is relevant, I could help her optimize her iodine intake. Here is a study that supports this approach. It showed that supplementing with iodine lowered cholesterol in overweight women (a classic sign of low thyroid function).
As you can see, it is possible to address high cholesterol, along with many other conditions, safely and naturally without needing to resort to prescription medication.
Moreover, something that almost no one knows (even doctors), is that cholesterol doesn’t get deposited in arteries to form plaque if it doesn’t undergo free radical damage to form lipid radicals (formed by excessive intake of PUFA).
This brings us to the end of this course. I gave you life-saving information to help you slow down the aging process and to invigorate your health.
Hopefully, this type of example provides you with a glimpse into the value of receiving guidance from a knowledgeable holistic health practitioner such as myself.
Would you like to book an appointment or a preliminary
chat? Just reach out!
