Pills!

Pills, pills, pills!

Just watch the TV ads in the evening! There is a pill for everything! I swear that diseases are made up just so Big Pharma can sell you more pills!

Did you ever listen to the side effect of some of those pills? The side effects are worse than the disease!

Now don’t get me wrong, some pills are beneficial. Aspirin has been around for a long time and is quite beneficial for occasional ache and pains.

When I visit my doctor (sorry, Nurse Practitioner, I haven’t seen a doctor at the doctor’s office for years, I wonder why they call it a “Doctors office”?), I’m invariably prescribed a pill to take. Shouldn’t they figure out what causes the problem (it’s called root cause analysis) before they prescribe something?

I think they have a list in a book somewhere that tells them “if the patient has this complaint, then prescribe this pill”.

Fundamentally I think that we have become a nation of “wusses”.  You get a hangnail and have to see the doctor and the pharmaceutical industry is more than happy to play to those fears.

Nothing wrong with a little pain, just ask any athlete. “No pain, no gain” basically means that if you don’t feel any pain then you haven’t pushed yourself enough to achieve any worthwhile benefit. I know, as a runner, that if I don’t feel a certain amount of discomfort after a workout then I’m not really improving. On the other hand, it doesn’t mean that I’m going to continue if I have a sprained ankle (then I may have to take a pill, probably aspirin).

But if you want to take a pill, here’s what I recommend (see below)