Disclosure: I haven’t had a prescription drug in a decade. I haven’t gone to the doctor for an ailment other than physical (destroyed hamstrings) in that same period. I rarely get sick, and if I do, I let my body repair naturally…  I do use over-the-counter stuff from time to time, but only if absolutely necessary for proper sleep or daily function. Typically, a medicine will expire before I’ve used a fraction of it… This plan has worked pretty well for me.

The thought of drugs and/or going to the “doctor” makes me sick (hell yeah, pun!). Sure, now and again someone comes down with a malady that cannot otherwise be handled naturally (think: brain cancer), but more often than not, when someone has the most minor of aches, pains, fevers, etc., they’re making an appointment with the “doctor” and likely coming home with a brownish-orange bottle of chemicals.

Did you know 100k Americans die each year due to prescription drugs? At 4% of all deaths, that’s a pretty high number for something that’s supposed to be helping us. One could argue more than that would die without them, but I’ve been unable to find any literature to back that up.

How did we get to rely so heavily on prescription drugs? It’s a vicious cycle, actually. Pharmaceutical companies have lots of money. They can afford big-time, effective marketing (see: the bevy of ads on TV, which tell you exactly what you need to ask your doctor for if you have an ailment). The doctors read all about these drugs in periodicals that are more or less funded by these pharmaceutical companies and their ad dollars. Editors know that if they print a piece against drugs, of which many exist, they will lose those ad dollars… They don’t want that… So they don’t print the negative, the doctors don’t read the negative (they only have so much time for study; the major journals are likely all they get to), and all they have to go on now is heavily lobbied writing. They then prescribe based on what they’ve read, and the drug companies get even more money.

Do you know what the best drug for the human body is? Itself. Always has been and always will be.

You’ll likely noted I’ve quoted the word “doctor” above. The reason for this is that most doctors aren’t educated in nutrition and/or natural healing. The stats are quite sad, in my opinion.

Eat better, sleep more, put less refined crap in your body, and maybe you too can avoid the doctor’s office and those magic pills that could very well kill you.

Next time you have a sore throat, please don’t go reaching for the phone. Pop some vitamins, drink some water, get some rest, and feel better about not pumping your body full of foreign substances.

”Our food should be our medicine and our medicine should be our food.” – Hippocrates.