We Are Overmedicated!

Yes, I know that your doctor said that you have osteopenia, high cholesterol, diabetes, high blood pressure, etc., etc. And I don’t doubt the diagnosis. Your doctor examined you and found the problems. That is diagnosis.

It is the treatment that is the problem.

So let’s go back to a time when prescription medications were never advertised. Let’s go back to a time when you saw your doctor for advice, not for a prescription. It wasn’t that long ago, was it? And let’s stop fooling ourselves. Our bodies are not much different from similar people 50 years ago, except for the fact that we eat more, ingest more processed foods, drink more, and take more medications. We eat more junk food, fast food, more snacks, more sugar that makes us eat even more sugar. And that’s not the way our grandparents ate. We sleep less, spend less time with our families, more time on the internet, less time at church, at clubs, etc., etc. Our bodies are the same bodies as those of our grandparents, but our lifestyles are not.

So here’s what we do. We see the doctor and get a prescription. The doctor says to see him/her in three months. We see the numbers on our blood test go down, and we cheer. What’s to cheer about? The medication makes our numbers look okay, but are we really okay?

Even worse, a medication creates side effects requiring another medication. So we get that prescription, and we temporarily feel better. The medication is safe. After all, it was approved by the FDA. Guess what? The FDA never tested those two medications together. They were only tested individually. And the problem moves on where you take a third drug, and a fourth. I’ve seen patients who were taking over 20 different medications.

The answer is simpler than you think. When your doctor makes a diagnosis, listen to the diagnosis. You may need a medication. But then you have a job to do. That job is to find all the ways in which you created the diagnosis to begin with and fix that, so that you can get off of the medication. And when you tell your doctor that’s what you’d like to do, he or she will monitor your progress. Sound impossible? I have been to two wellness clinics, and I have seen some of the sickest people you can imagine, under doctors’ supervision, get off of all, or nearly all, of their medications. Their tests normalize. They feel better than they have in years. Please take control of your health. Start reading, start planning, look for answers. They are not hard to find. Make the commitment to changing yourself. If you want a list of newsletters that I recommend, please email me at DrSheldon@SolidBite.com or call my office. You can start the process of regaining your health.

Lee N. Sheldon, DMD