Drugged-Out Nation

I start a new series as of today, on the topic of Drugs. The pharmaceutical kind, that is. You know, the stuff you go to the drug store to get.

I’m not anti-drugs. There’s a time and place for them. They can save lives. And sometimes they are necessary.

But the problem is that they should be used as a bridge, to be a stopgap measure while a person is working on getting healthier.

Instead, they are the only thing the great majority of people turn to when they are not feeling well.

As a result, drug use is at an epidemic level. In the U.S., per capita drug use is one dozen. Imagine that: on average, every man, woman and child in the U.S. is taking one dozen medications.

And I’m not taking any, so that means someone is picking up the slack for me.

The thing is: if you truly want to be healthy, you need to cut down and then cut out taking any medications.

Because taking medications is one of the surest ways to end up living a High Density Lifestyle, and with it, a very unhealthy and unhappy life.

Here’s the most ironic thing: in the U.S., every child is taught the slogan, “Just say no.” And yet, what kind of a lesson is being taught when the use of prescription medication is so rampant? Where’s the “Just say no” of that?

In 2008, overall drug sales in the U.S. were $291.5 billion. Lipitor, a statin used to control cholesterol, was the top-selling drug, followed by the acid reflux medication Nexium, and Plavix, an anti-platelet agent that reduces the risk of heart attack or stroke.

Sales of cardiovascular and gastroenterology medications, as well as ones that regulate central nervous system issues like seizures, depression, pain and Alzheimer’s, accounted for half of all drug sales in 2008.

Another big seller are antidepressants – they were the third most-popular type of drug dispensed in 2008, with $9.5 billion in sales.

It’s a boom time for the depression business, as long as you’re not a psychotherapist – fewer patients are seeing psychotherapists to resolve their mental health problems. Instead, says Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center, “there’s a greater emphasis on drugs.”

Over 3.5 billion prescriptions a year are written in the U.S. And as a consequence of all those prescriptions written, here’s no surprise – the 4th leading cause of death is medication side effects.

And the outlook for the future? With prescription volume growing exponentially year after year, it’s not good.

This is great news for the drug industry and insurance companies – drug costs are driving premiums through the roof – but not good for the rest of us.

Drugs have direct, powerful effects on human systems. Most of these effects are negative, and taking multiple drugs increases the risks. Psychologically, the growing attitude that drugs are the answer for every ache and angst is destructive for individuals and societies.

With drug advertising everywhere, what is the message being drummed into us and our children: that for every symptom and sensation the solution is a pill?

The drug industry has been the most profitable industry by far year after year, and they have no ethical problem with the totally unethical act of giving financial incentives to doctors to write prescriptions for their products.

And it goes both ways: many doctors have no ethical problem with the totally unethical act of taking financial incentives from drug companies to write prescriptions for their products.

This is a sad state of affairs, and until it changes, we are going to be stuck in the quagmire of High Density Lifestyle living.

Which means we’ll continue to have people getting sicker, with their medical needs and costs draining the system; health care costs and premiums will continue to skyrocket with less coverage and higher co-pays; and businesses will be strangled with the burden of trying to give employees health care coverage.

The answer – along with health care reform – is for people to learn how to be healthier, and one of the most important steps in seeing that happen is the reduction and elimination of prescription drug consumption.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be delving into this more.

The Meat You Eat: Steroid Use in Livestock

In yesterday’s article, I discussed the rampant use of antibiotics with livestock – primarily used as a tool to help them grow larger and bigger – and how 70% of all antibiotics used in the U.S. is for livestock use.

But that’s only half the story of the drugging of livestock: antibiotics aren’t the only drugs given to livestock to help them grow faster.

Each year, U.S. farmers raise some 36 million beef cattle. 99% of all beef cattle entering feedlots in the United States are given steroidal hormone implants to promote faster growth.

A large percentage of poultry and pigs are also fed these drugs.

Many cattle are fed the same muscle-building androgens—usually testosterone surrogates—that some athletes consume. Other animals receive estrogens, the primary female sex hormones, or progestins, semiandrogenic agents that shut down a female’s estrus cycle. Progestins fuel meat-building by freeing up resources that would have gone into the reproductive cycle.

While federal law prohibits people from self-medicating with most steroids, administering these drugs to U.S. cattle is allowed.

There are six anabolic steroids given, in various combinations, to nearly all animals entering conventional beef feedlots in the U.S. and Canada:

* Three natural steroids (estradiol, testosterone, and progesterone), and
* Three synthetic hormones (the estrogen compound zeranol, the androgen trenbolone acetate, and progestin melengestrol acetate).

So this means that when you eat meat, chicken or pork, and drink milk, you are consuming unsafe drugs that weren’t prescribed to you.

Consuming extra hormones disturbs the natural hormonal balance in the body, and eating animal products laced with hormones can have serious consequences for both children and adults.

Kids’ bodies are small and still developing, so exposure to even tiny amounts of the hormones in animal products on a regular basis can have a large impact. According to a report on hormones in meat and milk that appeared in The Los Angeles Times, “The amount of estradiol in two hamburgers eaten in one day by an 8-year-old boy could increase his total hormone levels by as much as 10 percent, based on conservative assumptions, because young children have very low natural hormone levels.”

The Cancer Prevention Coalition warns parents that even small amounts of animal products contain enough hormonal residues to harm children, saying, “No dietary levels of hormones are safe, and a dime-sized piece of meat contains billions of hormone molecules.”

When kids eat the flesh of cows who were treated with hormones, the spike in hormone levels can disrupt the development of their brain and sex organs. According to a report by the European Union on the effects of hormone-laced animal products, “Certain organs are more susceptible to the effects of estrogens, androgens, and anti-androgens [all hormones used in cows raised for food] during development than during adulthood. These organs include the brain, and the … primary and secondary sex organs.”

The negative consequences of feeding children meat were clearly demonstrated in Puerto Rico in the early 1980s, when thousands of children experienced premature sexual development and painful ovarian cysts; the culprit was meat from cattle who had been treated with growth-promoting sex hormones.

The hormones in meat-based diets are also blamed for the early sexual development of young girls in the Western world—nearly half of all African-American girls and 15 percent of their white peers now enter puberty at the age of 8.

Raising the amount of estrogen and other hormones in our bodies through the consumption of meat and milk can cause other disorders, including gynecomastia, or enlarged male breasts. In one school in Italy, nearly one in three boys aged 3 to 5 and more than half of boys aged 6 to 10 were found to have enlarged breasts, and the hormones in meat were suspected to have caused the disorder.

And that’s just the known effects it has on children. For adults, it can have all kinds of repercussions, from hormonal imbalances, to auto-immune problems, cancer, liver and kidney failure, and all kinds of other things.

Questions and controversy over the impacts of these added hormones on human development and health have lingered for four decades. In 1988 the European Union banned the use of all hormone growth promoters in meat because of these issues.

Yet, the U.S. FDA refuses to adequately regulate their use to promote growth in cows, even though these very same drugs in the U.S. are prohibited for over-the-counter use by humans.

And to take it one step further, all concern about the use of steroids in animals has focused on whether trace residues of these hormones in the meat have human-health consequences.

But there’s another way that these powerful agents can find their way into people and other animals. A substantial portion of the hormones literally passes through the cattle into their feces and ends up in the environment, where it can get into other food and drinking water.

Yikes!

The Drugging of Livestock

There are many reasons to consider cutting down or cutting out eating meat. Over the course of this series I’ve talked about the health and environmental ramifications of a meat-based diet.

And of course, cutting down or cutting out meat consumption plays a key role in living a Low Density Lifestyle.

But one of the detrimental health ramifications that I haven’t mentioned to this point is the fact that livestock – chickens, pigs, and cattle – are fed antibiotics on a routine basis. They are fed the drugs not to stop illness but to encourage rapid growth, by promoting weight gain or more efficient feed consumption.

This is a public health nightmare, because the widespread use of antibiotics in livestock can lead to the spread of dangerous bacteria in humans, because it causes the development of bacteria that are immune to many treatments.

70 percent of antibiotics used in the United States is given to healthy chickens, pigs and cattle annually – a total of twenty-five million pounds of antibiotics per year fed to these animals. This is eight times more than the amount used as human medicine.

The FDA reports that 2 million Americans contract bacterial infections during hospital stays annually, and “70 percent of the infections are resistant to at least one antibiotic.”
This is the price that Americans pay for the widespread use of antibiotics in livestock.

With that in mind, in July the Obama administration announced that it would seek to ban many routine uses of antibiotics in farm animals in hopes of reducing the spread of dangerous bacteria in humans.

In written testimony to the House Rules Committee, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, principal deputy commissioner at the FDA of food and drugs, said feeding antibiotics to healthy chickens, pigs and cattle should cease. And Dr. Sharfstein said farmers should no longer be able to use antibiotics in animals without the supervision of a veterinarian.

In July, Congressional hearings were held to discuss a measure proposed by Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York and chairwoman of the Rules Committee. It would ban seven classes of antibiotics important to human health from being used in animals, and would restrict other antibiotics to therapeutic and some preventive uses.

These drugs are penicillins, tetracyclines, macrolides, lincosamides, streptogramins, aminoglycosides, and sulfonamides, along with any other drug used to treat bacterial illness in people.

The legislation is supported by the Union of Concerned Scientists, Pew Environment Group, and the American Medical Association, among other groups, but opposed by farm organizations like the National Pork Producers Council. The farm lobby’s opposition makes its passage unlikely, but advocates are hoping to include the measure in the legislation to revamp the health care system.

Of course, we know how famously well legislation to revamp the health care system is faring. It’s been watered down many times by interest groups – primarily the insurance and drug companies – who have much to lose if the status quo is upended.

The use of antibiotics for “purposes other than for the advancement of animal or human health should not be considered judicious use,” Dr. Sharfstein said in his written testimony. “Eliminating these uses will not compromise the safety of food.”

Much of Dr. Sharfstein’s testimony summarized information that has been widely accepted for years by medical groups.

Robert Martin, a senior officer at the Pew Environment Group, which has paid for an advertising campaign to support the measure, said the prospects for the measure’s passage were improving.

How Do Plants Protect Us From Disease?

I discussed in yesterday’s article the use of herbs as medicine, and how herbs can be a vital part of enjoying real health and wellness and healthy living.

And, of course, a Low Density Lifestyle.

Today I want to get a little technical and discuss the scientific reasons plants can protect us from disease.

The reason plants/herbs can help us fight off ailments and inflammation is that they contain certain compounds. The phytochemicals in plants can reduce the risk of diseases associated with chronic inflammation, including cancer and diabetes.

At the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Western Human Nutrition Research Center in Davis, Calif., research molecular biologist Daniel H. Hwang conducts studies to help scientists understand how phytochemicals fight inflammation.

His investigations have uncovered modes of action used by phytochemicals in many herbs.

Hwang’s team has found, for example, that phytochemicals can interfere with the normal flow of certain chemical signals or messages sent to and from cells involved in chronic inflammation. The messages these cells send are in the form of proteins.

In particular, his group is closely examining proteins known as TLRs (short for “Toll-Like Receptors”) and NODs (an abbreviation for the tongue-twisting “nucleotide binding oligomerization domain containing proteins”).

Their experiments show that certain phytochemicals can interfere with messages that, if unimpeded, could travel from TLRs and NODs, reaching and activating genes that can trigger an inflammatory response.

The studies suggest that different phytochemicals have different ways of interfering with these messages. For example, curcumin can undermine certain TLRs when a specific part of curcumin’s chemical structure reacts with what are known as “sulfhydryl groups” in TLRs.

But resveratrol, found in red grapes, has a different set of targets. Hwang’s experiments suggest that resveratrol interferes with molecules called “TBK1″ and “RIP1.” If unimpeded, these molecules would help convey signals to and from TLRs.

No matter how you perceive the healing nature of plants, whether you feel it is based on the healing spirit within the plant, or you feel it is predicated on the phytochemical reactions that plant substances have with cells that cause inflammation, the bottom line is: plants heal.

And the more we subscribe to that and the more we look to the plant world and less to the pharmaceutical

world for our healing assistance, the easier will we be capable of living a Low Density Lifestyle.

The reason for that is that the more natural we live, the easier is it to experience healthy living.

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At Last! A Drug to Reduce the Symptoms of Insufferable Cheeriness

I’ve been telling you about the benefits of laughter and humor as an important component to living a Low Density Lifestyle, and how there are Laughter Yoga clubs all around the world to spread the good cheer everywhere.

But let’s face it: is it really a good thing for people to be full of laughter and good cheer all the time?

I mean, how many of us were berated by teachers when we were growing up for being too perky and bubbly? And how many of us were told the infamous line by a teacher or even parent: “Wipe that smile off your face.”

Well, isn’t there a good reason that we were taught this important fact of life? Absolutely!

We can’t be happy and cheery all the time! It would be insufferable for everyone.

And now, thanks to the good folks at Pfizer, there’s a new drug to treat this condition. It’s the first-ever depressant medication to come on the market, and it goes by the name of Despondex.

It’s a drug for the annoyingly cheerful.

Watch the above news report to learn more about it.

And then ask your doctor if Despondex is right for you – it just might be.

And ignore the critics who say we don’t need drugs for this type of treatment, that there are natural ways to snap out of a good mood, such as eating high fructose corn syrup and white bread.

Don’t believe them. We need Despondex, and we need it now!!!!!!

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How Well Do You Sleep?

Now, She is a Great Sleeper! Do you sleep as well as that?

(Please note: YouTube has embedded ads in the video. If you don’t want to see them, below the video on the right it says “Ads by Google” and then there’s a little box with an “X” in it. Just click the “X” and it will shut off the ads.)

One of the signs of being stressed out is not sleeping well. Sleeping well is crucial to relaxation, stress management and healthy living.

Many people have trouble sleeping. They use all kinds of sleep aids/medications to help them. But taking drugs for sleep is not an answer if you’re interested in health and wellness. The answer is learning good stress management approaches.

Do you have trouble falling asleep, or do you have trouble staying asleep? If so, the stress if getting to you.

If you want to have stress management and experience stress relief, then review the articles on 30 Ways to Relax Part 1 and Part 2. The suggestions on ways to relax are also relevant for ways to help you sleep.

The ideal is to sleep like a baby. To hit the pillow and be out like a light. Then you know you have no worries, you have good stress relief techniques, and you’re well on your way to healthy living.

Sleeping well also keeps you in the land of The Low Density Lifestyle.

If you want to see some really good sleepers, see the video above and check out the pictures below for some uncanny good sleepers.

Nighty-night to all!! See you in the the land of dreams!

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Achieving Good Health and Wellness

Achieving good health and a state of wellness is an important cornerstone of living a Low Density Lifestyle. Yet so many people unfortunately don’t know what good health means–and if you’re not in good health, there’s a good chance you’re living a High Density Lifestyle.

What Type of Doctor Are You?

When you think of health and wellness, what do you think of?  Do you see a doctor in white coat prescribing drugs?  Or do you think of a doctor/practitioner of alternative medicine, who might perform acupuncture on you or prescribe herbs and/or nutrition?

Most people think of the former, and when they are sick they think nothing of going to the doctor to get taken care of.  Unfortunately, that is not the route to achieving good health and wellness.

A Brief History of Modern Medicine

Interestingly, in the United States, the system of modern medicine is only a little more than 100 years old, and before the system was put it place, doctors were either natural healers or allopaths – those who prescribed drugs and surgeries.

About 100 years ago, the American Medical Association started flexing its muscle and medicine became a business. The allopathic doctors pushed out the competition, labeling the natural healers as quacks, and became the only show in town.

Modern Medicine – Its Strengths and Weaknesses

Modern medicine has a lot of benefits, and is at its best with emergency, life-saving measures. But it is at its worst with chronic ailments and with helping people become healthier. Because modern medicine is disease-oriented and not wellness oriented, it has no concept of what health is, besides the usual definition of “absence of disease.”

And because of its inability to understand what health and wellness is, in the U.S. we have a country of sick people, along with a medical system that is broken and offers no easy solutions.

Achieving Good Health and Wellness

To achieve good health and wellness, you have to take your health in your own hands, which makes sense, since who knows your body better than you?

But most people don’t do that. We succumb to the authority figure, thinking they know best. But the medical model is flawed. It’s only recently that alternative medicine has regained its popularity – and that’s because people are becoming more frustrated with the standard approach of drugs, more drugs and even more drugs, with some surgery thrown in for good measure.

More people are breaking free of the modern medical model by choosing the safer approaches of alternative medicine. These approaches boost the immune system and can lead to a better sense of wellness.

Good Health = Low Density Lifestyle

The truth is that good health is not that hard to achieve, if you are willing to make the commitment to it. And it’s well worth the price, because when you feel healthy in your body and mind, it is such an amazing feeling—that’s because you will be living a Low Density Lifestyle.

Taking Pharmaceuticals: Are You Out of Your Mind?

Pharmaceuticals: Out of Your Mind?

Ok, I’ve been writing articles the last few days on pharmaceuticals, saying that you’ll never acheive good health, and never attain a Low Density Lifestyle, if you take pharmaceuticals.

I close this series with the above video. This gives you a chance to rock out and groove to the music and images, while also getting the point about pharmaceuticals.

In essence, pharmaceuticals will make you go Out of Your Mind.

Drugs and the Good Doctor

Sky-High Drug Use

Why has the use of drugs gone sky-high? Is it because good doctors care about you and want to give you a drug that will help?

That’s highly unlikely. We have become a nation of drug abusers, and the good doctors are drug pushers.  The per capita consumption of drugs in the U.S. has gone through the roof.

Good Health and Drugs Don’t Mix

Good health is an important aspect of living a Low Density Lifestyle, yet taking drugs will not allow you to achieve good health. In the last two days I have featured articles about well-known cases of abuse of drugs and the tragic endings they caused.  First, the article on Heath Ledger, and then on Travis the chimp.

Today I want to talk about drugs one more time. I don’t mean to beat the subject into the ground, and I’d rather focus on things positive, but because most people are indoctrinated by drug companies into thinking they need more drugs than they really do (if they need any at all), I want to talk about it one more time.

As I said above, to achieve good health and get into the Low Density Lifestyle groove, you’re going to have to open your eyes about drugs.

Lipitor and Dr. Robert Jarvik

Today, I will talk about Lipitor and the good Dr. Robert Jarvik, who until the spring of 2008, was the corporate spokesman for it. Dr. Jarvik, and Pfizer, Lipitor’s manufacture, used false advertising to convince people that Lipitor was an essential drug.

Dr. Robert Jarvik, born in 1946, resides in New York City. Best known for the artificial heart he pioneered, he has since been working on several other heart-related inventions. He most recently is working on the Jarvik 2000 FlowMaker.

Dr. Jarvik, who received his medical degree from the University of Utah, is not a cardiologist and has never been licensed to practice medicine. In 2006, he returned to the spotlight when he began to appear in television and magazine ads for the Pfizer cholesterol drug Lipitor. In the ads, Jarvik is shown doing a number of physical activities while stating, “When diet and exercise aren’t enough, adding Lipitor significantly lowers cholesterol.”

False Advertising/Side Effects

But as it turns out, the ads contain false advertising. In the ads, he is depicted rowing a one-man racing shell across a lake. Yet, Dr. Jarvik does not know how to row, and a stunt double played Dr. Jarvik in the scene. One colleague of Dr. Jarvik said, “He’s about as much an outdoorsman as Woody Allen.” Dr. Jarvik is not a cardiologist, nor a practicing physician, yet here he is dispensing advice, and supporting his claim with some fancy sleight-of-hand.

Lipitor, which is a statin drug, is known to have serious side effects. Two of the most troubling potential side effects of Lipitor include extreme muscle pain and muscle disease (statin induced myopathy), and serious liver problems.

In addition to serious muscle and liver problems much research has shown that side effects of Lipitor could include sexual dysfunction and performance problems, as well as memory loss, personality changes and irritability.

Another FDA approved statin called Baycol was recently pulled off the market due to serious side effects and even deaths.

Because of the false advertising, the United States Congress investigated Dr. Jarvik, Lipitor and Pfizer. This led Pfizer to cease the ad campaign with the good doctor.

For Pfizer, there was much at stake. Lipitor is the world’s bestselling drug, with 2007 sales of $12.7 billion. To help drive business for the drug, Pfizer spent $258 million from January 2006 to September 2007 on the marketing of Lipitor, with much of that going into the Jarvik campaign.

Yet drug companies continue to market away, spending tons of money to make you believe that you need to take medications, and that there is nothing else that can help you better your health.

Good Health and Drugs Don’t Mix

One more time, I want to repeat. If you want to achieve good health and live a Low Density Lifestyle, drugs are not the answer, no matter what the good doctor might tell you. They are a band aid solution at best, and at worst will lead you straight down the path of a High Density Lifestyle.

Drugs and the Crazed Chimp

How many drugs do you take? One, two, half a dozen, maybe even a dozen? Or maybe you’re in the minority and take none.

Drugs for Everything

We have drugs for everything—to help your cholesterol, to thin your blood, to elevate your mood, to settle your anxiety, to lower your blood sugar, to reduce inflammation, to kill pain, to stop your headaches….the list goes on and on and on.

Way Too Medicated

We are way too medicated as a culture. There are times when drugs can be helpful, and there are occasional times when they are necessary, but forgive me if I am repeating myself—we are way too medicated as a culture.

You want to be healthy? You need to lessen or stop your medications. Drugs block the ability for your body’s own innate healing system to work. And drugs block your ability to live a Low Density Lifestyle.

When you take pharmaceuticals, it blocks the body’s ability to tap into its own healing reservoir. We all have great innate healing capabilities, but we don’t even scratch the surface of utilizing them.  Instead we run to the doctor for every ailment, and predictably a medication is given. But doctors aren’t fully to blame—writing prescriptions is what they’re trained to do.

Travis the Chimp

You may have heard in the news about the chimpanzee who recently went berserk and severely mauled a woman in Connecticut. The 14-year-old chimp, Travis, was a family pet and was highly intelligent and extremely friendly and docile. After the mauling, the Travis was hunted down by police officers and killed. Travis’ behavior stunned his owner, because it was so out of character.

What caused Travis to go crazy? It turns out that a little before the attack, he had been acting rambunctious—he had taken the keys to the house and unlocked the door, and went outside and was walking around the neighborhood. Travis’ owner brought him back inside and then gave him tea mixed with the anti-anxiety medication Xanax.  The drug had not been prescribed for Travis.

In humans, Xanax can cause memory loss, lack of coordination, reduced sex drive and other side effects. It can also cause aggression.  This is what caused Travis to snap.

So if this drug changed the behavior of a docile chimp so radically, what can it do to a human?  Its use is to calm you down, but it can do quite the opposite.

And so, the lesson of this is (and I know this is a bad pun): Don’t monkey around with drugs. You won’t find your way to a Low Density Lifestyle if you do.

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