Part II: But first…. A history lesson!
How can it be, that we… citizens of the USA 🇺🇸…., with practically unlimited access to western medicine, are currently among the sickest in the world? 😷😭 Study after study supports the same conclusion…
💰💰💰We spend more on healthcare for worse health outcomes than comparable countries around the world, regardless of age or income.💰💰💰
Part of the problem is the belief in the “insta” system, and how it applies to the healthcare industry.. Americans expect to go to a doctor and receive a prescription for “something”, and they are dissatisfied if the doctor sends them away without one. (not all problems are solved by pills!)
It is no longer surprising to me when a patient can neither tell me the name of their medication or even what it’s for when I talk to them at the pharmacy. They just need a refill of their “little yellow pill”. #blindtrust 😳
When we have 20% of US citizens on 5 or more prescription medications a day (often written by more than one physician), the odds of drug interactions goes up considerably. The odds of side effects and deficiencies rises exponentially as well. #playingwithfire
Prescription drug errors kill more than 100,000 Americans a year, and medical error is the 3rd most leading cause of death in the United States (3rd only to heart disease and cancer… two largely “preventable by lifestyle” diseases). An estimated 1.5 million people die each year from these top 3 causes.
Now that’s a pandemic worthy of being called a pandemic!
#whereisthemedia
We forget that regardless of our heritage, our forefathers (and fore-mama’s) used tools from nature. 🌿 The most dangerous part of living was to make it from infancy to puberty. The dangers of infancy and childhood stemmed more from malnutrition and poor sanitation than anything else with the exception of actual childbirth (a high risk situation for both mother and child).
Our ancestors were not of the “insta” world, and they were loaded with practical knowledge, intelligence, and common sense. #theoriginalsurvivors They understood that wounds and injuries (visible or not) took time to heal. They also passed down healing “recipes” from generation to generation. Scientific studies (thousands of them) now provide evidence of the mechanism of action of these herbal remedies. 🌿 Many cultures also understood that emotions were, more often than not, tied to specific illnesses. (ex: Grief is often a harbinger of lung dis-ease if not dealt with properly)….. not because of superstition but because of biology and physics.
So what happened? How did we manage to lose all of this very important information? We know we live in a “need it now” world where “fast medicine” is king. Where did “slow” medicine go, and how and why did it nearly disappear?
Have you ever heard of a guy named John D Rockefeller? He was an oil tycoon in the early 1900’s who, at one time, controlled 90% of our country’s oil.
Rockefeller was arguably the wealthiest man in the world in his time. 💰💰💰💰💰💰Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie (another tycoon of the era) had money, and they wanted more. These two men were well aware of the many healing modalities in existence in the very early 1900’s. Chiropractic care, naturopathy, homeopathy, holistic care (the most common of all) nurtured mind, body (using common to the area plants), and spirit (The USA was a strong Christian nation back then, and faith was infused into all aspects of life 🙏).
Abraham Flexner (who was neither a physician or a medical scientist) was hired by Carnegie and Rockefeller. He was a former school teacher with specialized training in psychology.
Flexner produced a report (known as Carnegie Foundation Bulletin Number Four or “The Flexner Report”) that was submitted to Congress in 1910. The report concluded that (among other things) all the natural healing modalities (which have been around since before Jesus!) were unscientific quackery and should be outlawed. It also called for the standardization of medical education, allowing only allopathic (patented medicine and medicine practiced in a modern “westernized” fashion) based medical licenses to be issued. It was a tremendous blow to naturally based medicine that is still felt to this day in the USA. 😭
Why would this be an important piece of history? Well, Rockefeller wanted more control of the medical world, and he wanted to sell the “new fangled” patented pharmaceutical drugs 💊(which coincidentally had a petroleum base). The problem was that nearly everyone was comfortable using their versions of “slow” medicine all over the country. Plant based therapeutics are not patent-able, and Rockefeller knew that in order to control the pharmaceutical industry, he would need to put the kibosh on natural remedies. The Flexner Report achieved this purpose, and nearly overnight, people had no choice but to move from “slow” medicine to “fast” medicine, and doctors had no choice but to abide by the new rules or risk being jailed or losing their license. Sadly, this is still the case today. #controlfoodandhealthandyoucontrolthepeople
Most history books paint this event in a different light. I remember reading about it in pharmacy school 30 years ago, and (in the naivety of my tender college years) thought it was quite an achievement to have so quickly modernized medicine. I just didn’t realize back then that most commonly published history is slanted towards the victors, and therefore doesn’t always reflect the entire truth.
This history is important as a segue to learning how to heal properly.
Stay tuned for Part III….. Mind over Medicine 💊.
xoxo~ liz
www.goodmedicine.info 👈 (ready to learn how to be the CEO of you? )
#historyisimportant
#everythinggoodtakestime
#ThanksYL
Archives for September 2020
Power to Heal – part 1
Modern medicine IS our friend. Make no mistake about that. Like humpty dumpty…. We cumulatively get “put back together again” about 234 million times a year (major surgeries). But that’s not all that goes down in the annals of modern medicine. An estimated 4.38 BILLION prescriptions 💊 get filled annually in the USA. ( 20 percent of Americans take at least 5 prescription drugs daily)
That’s a bucket load of modern medicine for anyone’s book. Can too much of a good thing like modern medicine, be too much?
Our world has turned into a place of “insta” ….-gram, -pot, -cart, -gratification, -weightloss, etc. We want the “stuff” but not the work.
The pharmacy world has the capability to work that way too… “insta-relief”, “insta-I’mnotgonnadiefromabloodclot, “insta-birthcontrol” etc….. BUT adopting a quick fix via pharmaceuticals for the long term solution will rarely end well for those who pursue it and make no effort to fix the root problems at hand. #thisiswhyIdowhatIdo
💊How can it possibly work for a diabetic who continues to destroy their body slowly with excess sugar and carbs, yet feels their disease is “under control” because they are medicated?
💊 What is someone’s muscularly weak spine going to look like in the long term…. When they opt for opioid or steroid pain relief instead of yoga, supplements that support proper inflammatory response, diet, and chiro or acupuncture care?
💊Medicating long term will ALWAYS come with side effects. Medications are built that way because they are imperfect. Side effects are most often the result of a caused deficiency from the very medication designed to “fix” something. What kind of deficiency you may ask? Well… that depends on the medication. It could be a vitamin, a mineral, a hormone, an enzyme…. Or even a multitude of these…. And sadly, THIS is not taught well in pharmacy, medical, or nursing school.
💊Addictions…. According to web.md, roughly 20% of the US population has (or is currently) abusing prescription meds. It can happen so fast, and even to the best of people. I’ve seen it more times than I care to think about in my 30 years of pharmacy. Innocent addiction.
💊Antibiotic resistance…. Over use and improper use of antibiotics has led to this. The result? We have a LARGE problem on our collective hands…. Super bugs that are harder to kill.
Yes, we have definitely benefited from modern medicine. But just like anything else, is too much of a good thing possible in health care? You can bet your health savings account on it! 💰And is there anything we can do about it? You bet your insurance policy there is! 💰
Stay tuned for part II!
xoxo~ liz
www.goodmedicine.info
#knowbetterdobetter
#ThanksYL
#halfthebattleisunderstandingtheproblem
Telomere Health
Believe me friends, the word “may” shouldn’t even be in the title of the attached article.
The cliff notes version of the article is this:
👉 Telomeres…. you want them long, not short. Short telomeres are directly linked to cellular aging. Cellular aging is NOT something you want….. it leads to depression, hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and overall mortality.
👉 Ultra Processed Foods (UPF’s) – For those on the Standard American Diet (not coincidentally, also known as the SAD diet), UPF’s make up almost 50% of consumed calories. Examples of UPF’s would be most (non-organic) soft drinks, flavored chips, white bread, sweetened breakfast cereals, prepackaged soups and “fast” meals, chicken nuggets, hot dogs…. basically, if the ingredient list is long and unpronounceable, it’s likely a UPF.
Three or more servings of UPF’s per day were found to have a significant impact on length of telomeres.
Find your farmer. Shop organic. Shop farmer’s markets. Eat whole foods! (Have you tried Young Living’s Einkorn products? 🌾 #YUM ) Keep your telomeres happy ya’ll! 😘
xoxo ~ liz
www.goodmedicine.info
#sharingiscaring
#telomeresneedlovetoo
#ThanksYL
#askmewhyIdowhatIdosometime
Dream Job
God lines our life path with opportunities, but that doesn’t mean we always listen well enough to take them. #detours
It’s not always about what’s safe either. #heoftenasksustouseourwings
…..Moreso, it’s about trusting in God’s plan that He has for each one of us instead of trusting in ourselves or the plans we think we know best for ourselves.
#guiltyofthelatter
#pursuingtheformer
I wanted to be a vet so badly I could practically taste it growing up, but my allergies (and allergist) said “absolutely not”, and so I became a pharmacist. Miraculously, my allergies went away the semester before I graduated from pharmacy school. (crazy but true!)
If you could have any job in the world (regardless of payscale) what would it be, and why?
#daydreambeliever
Fluoride Facts
Digging deeper on fluoride and its history. Let’s get a little Friday learning in!📚💖
xoxo~ liz
www.goodmedicine.info
#whatweknowvswhatwethinkweknow
#ThanksYL