{"id":6467,"date":"2014-12-15T07:29:48","date_gmt":"2014-12-15T13:29:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wholehealthchicago.com\/?p=6467"},"modified":"2021-10-17T09:22:01","modified_gmt":"2021-10-17T14:22:01","slug":"getting-off-your-meds-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wholehealthchicago.com\/blog\/2014\/12\/15\/getting-off-your-meds-part-1","title":{"rendered":"Getting Off Your Meds, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Wait, don\u2019t tell me. You\u2019re taking a constellation of medications and you\u2019d really like to stop. You hear the announcer listing all those side effects in TV commercials. Worse yet, you\u2019re already experiencing some of them. You\u2019re angry that every day of your life you pop a handful of\u2026what is it you take exactly? You\u2019re not positive because you take your meds on faith, really, hoping the motives of your doctor, health insurance company, and the drug industry are of the highest order and in your best interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But you do have doubts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat are all these drugs going to do to me over the years?\u201d and \u201cDo I really need this?\u201d are among the most common questions my patients ask me. In fact, fully 25% of the new patients we see at WholeHealth Chicago write on their \u201cReason for Visit\u201d line some variation of \u201cI\u2019d like to get off my medications,\u201d or \u201cLooking for something natural for my\u2026\u201d  And generally–not always, but generally–we can help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This week we start a series on eliminating prescription drugs, or at least reducing your dependence on them. Individual upcoming Health Tips will focus on families of prescribed drugs, including statins, antidepressants, asthma inhalers, blood pressure meds, and so forth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you see a title pop up that\u2019s not something you take, you might want to read it anyway because, and let me break this news gently, you\u2019re aging (is he talking about me?). And given the state of US health care it\u2019s extremely likely that one day you\u2019ll be sitting with your doctor and at the end of your visit she\u2019ll reach for her prescription pad (or, these days, her fingers will fly across her keyboard) as she says to you \u201cI\u2019m sending this prescription over to your pharmacist.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At that moment you will have officially joined a very American way of life, as detailed here by researchers at Mayo Clinic<\/a>. Statistically, with every decade that passes you\u2019ll add one and then another drug, an increasingly larger chunk of your budget going to the already vastly overpaid pharmaceutical industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this really the way you want your life to go?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worrisome trends<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This particular Health Tip was triggered by a couple of worrisome trends that caught my attention. It helps if you understand that the health care system is pretty much controlled by three enormous industries:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  • The first two, the insurance and pharmaceutical industries<\/strong>, are for-profit endeavors, meaning their primary obligation is to their shareholders, not the patients who are their customers.<\/li>
  • The third industry, the mega-hospital systems<\/strong>, own not only hospitals, labs, and x-ray facilities, but with every passing week more and more doctors and their practices (though, rest assured, not your WholeHealth Chicago team). These behemoths wear their not-for-profit badges proudly and self-righteously. Your sense of a not-for-profit entity is likely more along the lines of Doctors Without Borders, whose volunteers are struggling to contain the Ebola virus even as the organization is quickly running out of money. Northwestern Memorial Hospital is another kind of not-for-profit altogether, one whose largesse from the public includes occupying Chicago\u2019s best real estate tax-free and which pays its CEO $9 million a year.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    The first really troubling trend I noticed came when I opened a fairly thick envelope of computer generated letters sent by a health insurer about you and how often you were refilling your prescriptions. The letters had been written by some company that your health insurer either owns outright or contracted with to monitor your prescription filling and pill swallowing habits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    These letters were phrased in the always dubious, pretend-benevolent language of authority. Typical was this sentence: \u201cAs you know, doctor, high cholesterol is associated with premature heart disease, and if your patient is not taking her (insert drug name<\/em>), she might be at risk. Our computers show she has not filled her (drug<\/em>) since (date<\/em>), so you may want to contact her.\u201d In other words, if you haven\u2019t filled your prescription for months, the implication is that I should \u201ccall and find out why.\u201d If you\u2019re filling your prescription irregularly, you might not be taking your med correctly, and \u201c(drug name<\/em>) should be taken daily for best results.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Pause to ponder the words of French philosopher\/social theorist Michel Foucault, as applicable to the scenario just described as any other:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cThe real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the workings of institutions that appear to be both neutral and independent, to criticize and attack them in such a manner that the political violence that has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The patient referred to in these letters might have cleaned up her eating and tossed her smokes and currently be in training for a marathon. In other words, maybe she doesn\u2019t need to take statins at all. But this notion is in no one\u2019s reality system. And please note these letters are devoid of suggestions for nutritional counseling or lifestyle changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    But things gets worse<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    As mentioned earlier, the current trend is for physicians to sell their practices to the mega-hospital systems and become salaried employees. These hospital systems are simply collecting as many warm patient bodies as they can, in order to get better reimbursement rates from insurers and suppliers. Your doc is now reporting to some middle manager whose freshly minted degree in \u201cHealth Care Management\u201d is still wet with ink and whose only healthcare experience was working as a vet tech after class in  high school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    His preeminent goal is to train your doctor to become a team player. Team players are docs who prescribe in order to get everyone\u2019s cholesterol down to a certain level\u2026to increase reimbursement. Who get everyone\u2019s blood pressures to a certain point\u2026to increase reimbursement. Who move patients off brand-name drugs and onto generics. Who switch them from psychotherapists to generic antidepressants. Whatever works\u2026to increase reimbursement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Why? Because the middle manager\u2019s job, and your doctor\u2019s, is on the line if there\u2019s no evidence of compliance with the \u201cstandards.\u201d  And to get all your numbers under control–your cholesterol below X, your blood sugar below Y, your blood pressure at Z (even if you faint in the process), your mood artificially cheerful (even if sex is a memory and you can\u2019t see your genitals because of your belly)–the pharmaceutical industry supplies pills, pills, and more pills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    How many pills? Picture this. It\u2019s important.<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    Every few hours, 24\/7, from anywhere in the world, just like 95% of physicians practicing today I can open the electronic medical record system of my practice. One of the ubiquitous tabs running across the top of the computer screen is marked RX. It\u2019s for renewing prescriptions, and when I click on it up come all the prescription renewal requests for my patients from pharmacies across the US. Not surprising, dozens and dozens of renewals are requested every day, 24\/7.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    These renewals represent you\u2026swallowing and swallowing and swallowing pills. You\u2026monitored by nanny-computers making sure you\u2019ve been dutifully standing in line at Walgreen\u2019s and taking everything as commanded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Although WholeHealth Chicago may look busy when you arrive, in the scheme of things my own practice is definitely on the smallish side. I see 13 or so people a day. Most internists see 30 to 40. And the prescriptions I\u2019m asked to renew are mainly those prescribed by other physicians that my patient and I are in the process of whittling down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Curiously, when I\u2019ve asked my physician colleagues outside of WHC about their drug renewal systems, virtually all of them say they\u2019ve turned the daunting project of prescription renewal over to their physician assistant or nurse practitioner. \u201cHow many rx refills do you receive a day?\u201d I ask. \u201cI don\u2019t know. Dozens. Maybe a hundred. I don\u2019t handle that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    This is you, people\u2014your lives. If you\u2019re not actively working to trim down or get off your meds altogether, know that nobody else is going to do it for you. And this is why, over the next few Health Tips, I\u2019ll be trying to help extricate you from this system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Be well,
    David Edelberg, MD<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Wait, don\u2019t tell me. You\u2019re taking a constellation of medications and you\u2019d really like to stop. You hear the announcer listing all those side effects in TV commercials. Worse yet, you\u2019re already experiencing some of them. You\u2019re angry that every day of your life you pop a handful of\u2026what is it you take exactly? You\u2019re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2087,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[214,2,211,50,3],"tags":[217,1279],"class_list":["post-6467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-pharma-evils","category-blog","category-g","category-healthy-lifestyle","category-knowledge-base","tag-prescription-drugs","tag-side-effects"],"yoast_head":"\r\nGetting Off Your Meds, Part 1<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This week we start a series on eliminating prescription drugs, or at least reducing your dependence on them.\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/wholehealthchicago.com\/blog\/2014\/12\/15\/getting-off-your-meds-part-1\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" 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