Drugs comprise the major treatment modality of scientific medicine. Many individuals, especially in the Western world regularly take prescription drugs for chronic health problems. Sadly, many do not realise that the drugs they are taking could be making their condition worse.
Most drugs don’t cure illness. They just suppress symptoms. Unfortunately, drugs also suppress functions. Though drugs provide symptom relief in the short term, over time they may worsen the underlying condition because they interfere with our body’s self-healing mechanisms. For example, many people take ibuprofen or other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) to cope with arthritis and inflammatory conditions. While NSAIDs are effective in reducing pain and inflammation in the short-term, they are also known to reduce blood flow to cartilage. Since blood carries all of the nutrients and immune substance necessary for tissue repair, NSAIDs can actually worsen the original problem when taken chronically.
The second problem is that, by definition, drugs correct a specific imbalance by causing at least one other and often several other imbalances. When a drug is introduced into the body to address a malfunction in one biochemical pathway, that drug inevitably interacts with many other pathways.
A study recently published in the The Journal of the American Medical Association (1) found that many common prescription drugs have depression as a side effect—and that one-third of Americans are taking at least one of these medications.
The list of drugs that are linked with depression includes:
- Proton pump inhibitors (used to treat reflux)
- Beta-blockers (used to treat high blood pressure)
- Birth control pills
- Corticosteroids (used to treat asthma, autoimmune, and inflammatory conditions)
- Prescription-strength ibuprofen
This is a perfect example of an “unintended effect” of a medication. And it’s yet another reason that medication should be a last resort, rather than a first line of treatment, for chronic disease. This is why an ancestral diet and lifestyle and a Functional Medicine approach that focuses on preventing and reversing disease rather than just suppressing symptoms with drugs makes so much sense.
References
(1) Prevalence of Prescription Medications With Depression as a Potential Adverse Effect Among Adults in the United States.
(2) www.chriskresser.com/the-fatal-flaw-of prescription-drugs
