I get thoroughly amazed, any time we go to local pharmacy for my wife's Metformin, at all of the prescription bags, that are full, hanging in the Will-Call area. I think to myself, "that many people have health problems?" and then I say "yep".
I first became aware of this prescription drug thing while taking my parents to doctors appointments. Patients in the waiting rooms would bring plastic bags full of prescription bottles. My mother took only thyroid Rx regularly, and my father, thyroid, and one other for Parkinson's which seemed to do no good at all. The doctors were always amazed that was all they took. And then once when my cousin came to visit and said he was taking 9 Rx medications regularly.
Oh, rest assured, if these people go to their doctors feeling great, AND they have prescription coverage, their doctors will be sure to find something wrong with them, so they can write a nice, expensive script, and then get some fringe benefits from the companies making those meds. I hold most doctors in the same regard as I hold most car mechanics: Both have captive audiences, who don't really understand what's going on.
I hope things have gotten better but my Grandfather would take out a briefcase full of meds everyday. Basically, he had a heart problem but his heart medicine had side effects which needed to be treated with another medicine which had it’s own side effects and so on.
We had a visitor stay with us for 3 or 4 days and she brought a whole shopping bag of meds with her. She had no clue what they were for but merely said that if the doctor said she needed them, then she needed them. End of story.
I was reading that during the Spanish flu, a large percentage of the deaths weren't from the flu, but from bacterial infections attributed to the nasty masks that people were wearing. I saw the start of that happening to me if I had listened to my doctors. Saying that they saw "something wrong" during a stress test, a doctor prescribed propranolol. Although subsequent testing found no evidence of a heart problem, both the prescribing cardiologist and my personal physician suggested that I stay on the propranolol. However, the propranolol had side effects. I began experiencing tightness in my chest, and chest pains that felt very much like the way that people describe the pain of angina. But I had none of these problems before I started taking propranolol. I spoke to my doctor about it, and he was going to prescribe something else to deal with the chest pains and tightness in my chest. I asked, "How about, I just quit taking the propranolol." He disagreed, but this was the same doctor who once told me that everyone over the age of forty should be taking a statin drug so I wasn't trusting him so much. On my own, I quit taking the propranolol, and within a few days, these symptoms went away, and I felt fine again. I found another doctor and she saw no reason for me to be taking propranolol or any other medication for my heart because, while they refused to explain whatever it was that they were worried about to me, she obtained my medical history when I switched doctors and saw nothing to indicate a heart problem. Doctors are nice to have around but you can't surrender your brain to them.
Amen! Which is why I made the statement I did in reply to Hal’s remark about being the doctor. I am responsible for my health so in essence, I AM the doctor and the guy with the power to prescribe medicine is the consultant.
As noted by several members, bigfarma (sic) , has tricked Americans into thinking vaccines help, including vast trickery using fake history (rewritten ) about disease and length of life (expentancy) that is even being taught to pre-schoolers, k-12, and college graduates. i.e. the false history is overwhelming as all society has been tricked, for over a century (to get them to go to war, millions dying after being lied to; getting them to hurt their own family/infants/ children ) in so many ways) the most awful, egregious , perhaps, being the millions of females of child bearing age have repeated miscarriages caused by "in house" biolagoical things ... (namely combined hcg with virus in flueshots (sic) ) ... Some areas, some groups, who have no idea at all of the trickery, but they remain 'isolated' from the modern biological warfare and things associated with it, may have much better health doing what they know to do, living 'right', without being poisoned by modern toxins , and protecting themselves, knowing or not, from pollution by having a strong good healthy diet - good living foods, instead of dead, lifeless foods (artificial, synthetic, sprinkled with pesticides, etc ) .... p.s. the 'proof' ? (of bigfarma atrocities ? ) .... I asked them. They admitted it. (before they knew I was not going to help them)
Notice the "quiet" epidemics ? People 'hooked' on diabetes/ blood sugar/ blood pressure pills... Anziety, defression, shignlets, Kan Sir, hair loss, infertility , indi ges chun , contant pation, eyesight/etc, trained from birth to do what the officials say, without thinking how it may be all wrong... (and often is) .... Good OP by the way - pain relief without drugs has been known for centuries... why is it so difficult to find out about in the so-called 'advanced' countries today ? (hint: money)
Is Big Pharma Your Friend? Yes they are. As the recipient of several of their products that make my life better I definitely consider them a friend.
If big pharma was doing their job they would not be cancer.diabetes and Alzheimer skyrocketing Just look at the charts and see that they go back just a few years because if they go back farther they can not find enough to put on the charts. Medical mafia that has fooled everyone into believing they are helping .
Can someone find group/ crowd photos from the 50's and 60's to compare with years after that ? I was pleasantly surprised to see photos from public and/or private event(s) that showed tens of thousands of people in 1969 or before then..... virtually or actually, not one was overweight. It was odd though, also, decades earlier, recruiting men for wwII, that so many were sick, determined by the licensed doctors doing the intake/exams for the military, that the health standards/ requirements/ had to be greatly relaxed to get enough men to meet the quotas... while just a few years earlier, in wwi, only one out of a hundred men were disqualified, and that was usually for flat feet. (i.e. not for disease)..... So from these observations, disease increased starting after wwi, but overweight increased (greatly) after the late 60's .... (perhaps also , drug use increased more after the 50's , which may have gradually led to the weight gain in the later decades... (prescription, not illegal drugs) ) ....
I think this post is a bit over-the-top, Martin. "Big Pharma" does not profess to have cures for cancer, diabetes, or Alzheimers so the premise is absurd. I am not a fan of the pharmaceutical industry, but I am thankful for my blood pressure medication that is reasonably priced for treatment. During my childbearing years I was equally grateful for birth control pills. Big Pharma is often vilified, but they definitely are a "friend" to some people who need medication. Ask anyone who lives with constant pain if they'd give up their medication. My mother died from kidney failure brought on by untreated high blood pressure. I am grateful that thanks to a small yellow pill keeping my blood pressure in check I will not suffer the same fate. So I suppose that Big Pharma is my "friend."