Paleo Quick Tip of the Day #77 Polypharmacy and Death by Doctor

pqtd 77 Polypharmacy

Polypharmacy is the use of four or more medications by a patient, generally adults aged over 65 years. Polypharmacy is most common in the elderly, affecting about 40% of older adults living in their own homes.  

It is hard to believe that we have come to this, as a society!  Older adults, in particular, are more susceptible to this, since as a rule they have more medical conditions,  and also they are from a time when people just “did what the Doctor said, no questions asked!”  Let’s hope that time is now GONE, at least for those of you listening to or reading these words!

Iatrogenesis is the word that means “Death by Doctor”.  This means that if you follow a doctors advice and suggested treatment, that it winds up KILLING you!  Rare, you think?  Once in a blue moon??

Think again:  Death by Doctor is now the third leading cause of death in America, right behind heart disease and cancer!  Some of these deaths are from botched surgeries, and infections picked up in the incredibly dangerous hospital environment...

But the vast majority are from prescribed medications, being taken as prescribed.  The side effects of the medications, particularly in relation to one another, are that deadly!  

We used to think of medicines as cure-alls- a simple PILL that would cure all our ILLS.  We rarely consider that ALL pharmaceuticals have side effects, often side effects that are far worse than the disease or condition they are supposed to “cure”.  And they do not cure the condition!  This is a common misconception: the vast majority of prescribed drugs just treat the symptoms, and do nothing to achieve a cure- only your own body, given enough healthy nutrients from good food, ample sleep, rest, and sunlight can cure itself.  Increasingly, our ever more potent and dangerous pharmaceuticals pose a real threat to our physical and mental health.

My own advice?  Steer clear of modern medicine, as much as you can!  You can do this by living a healthy lifestyle, eating right, ditching grains and sugars and loading up on green veggies, grass fed meats and dairy.  Have a daily Green Smoothie, so you don’t need a “drug cocktail” each day as you get older.  Invest in a Vitamix, so you don’t have to buy an insulin pump later.  

And if you do have a medical condition already?  Keep your medication list down to TWO at the most at any one time!  Even with two medicines, the complications of side effects are staggering to monitor- get it down to ONE.

And I mean non-prescription drugs as well- Tylenol, Ibuprofen, even aspirin- these are toxic drugs, and also interact with other drugs in negative ways.

Even ONE modern, super potent, mind-altering drug is way more than a human should ever have to endure, but at least it can be isolated in its effects that way.  I like to think of modern pharmaceutical medicines as similar to modern processed fake “foods” like fast food, breakfast cereals, and pop tarts- horrible JUNK that should be completely avoided as much as possible!  

The human population used to live long, healthy lives with no drugs.  Once a person survived childbirth, they lived just as long (or longer!) than modern Americans do today.  Go into any old cemetery and read the born and died dates.  The only thing that makes people think we all live longer today is because we have eliminated almost all of the deaths in childbirth of both mothers and children.  That skews the statistics in favor of modern lifespans.  

But, the quality of life is also very different- heart disease, cancer, diabetes- virtually all the diseases of modern life we now take for granted hardly even existed back then!  And let’s not forget one of the biggest modern killers of all- iatrogenesis, or death by doctor!