A pill for every ill

The focus of health care in modern society is the quick treatment of physiological symptoms regardless of cost and potential harmful side effects to patients. An example would be the dispensing of the anti-inflammatory drug Diclofenac which is liberally prescribed by GPs to alleviate pain generated by swollen muscles and sprains. What you are not told, however, is that the drug increases the chance of heart attacks by about 60 percent! Another example is the over prescription of anti-depressants for the relief of stress and anxiety. These anti-depressant drugs may well be useful in severe cases for short periods of time however, long term use can have insidious impacts on our lives.

So the potential side effects of such drugs can be significantly more deleterious than the original complaints. So why is this occurring – surely this cannot be in the public benefit?

Well, the simple answer, whether we like it or not, is that the prescribing of drugs has little to do with health and more to do with the corporate greed of international pharmaceutical companies. These companies will only peddle drugs if they can obtain patents for them and sell them at usurious profits. There are many examples where promising cures for diseases like cancer have been shelved because the pharmaceutical companies were unable to secure patents over the constituent components of the cures and therefore could not generate profits from their sale. It does not seem to matter whether people are dying unpleasant and dehumanising deaths from these diseases. It would therefore be easy to dismiss Western medicine and its trappings altogether if it were not for the good that has been achieved amid the greed of these corporations.

pills

GPs these days work long hours every day and they simply do not have the time to spend in searching out alternative cures for our aches and pains and can be excused for resorting to dispensing short term relief at the flourish of a pen. Healthcare unfortunately has fallen prey like everything else in our modern society to the relentless pressure of the working day where hours worked must correlate to money earned.

The future of effective healthcare therefore lies not in the sole reliance on Western medicine but on a combination of this and other alternative medical traditions and natural health care remedies. Such non mainstream traditions include homeopathic medicine, acupuncture, chiropractic manipulation, hypnotherapy, emotional freedom technique and many others. Many of these traditions do not just focus on alleviating symptoms but also focus on generating cures. They focus on the individual as a whole person comprising a mind and body.

Much research today shows that many modern day ailments arise from both mental and physical dis-eases. A fully balanced health care system would ensure that all patients had access to the best possible solutions for their ailments rather than the limited number of solutions we are currently given today.