Medication: A Quick Fix, Not a Solution

People don't generally think about how that Aspirin really works when they take it for a headache or how that Tylenol works when they take it to reduce a fever. People don't generally think about the medicine they give their kids when they are sick with a cold. People don't generally think about what medicine really does to the body or if it actually works.

How many of you out there browse through a pharmacy looking for the drugs you need and trying to think about the mechanics of a pill? I'll say that not many of you think about things like this because you grew up in a nation where medicine is a gigantic norm. Everybody takes medicine or has at some point in their lives taken medicine for something. We were all taught that if you were sick, you need to either go to the doctor to get some treatment (usually in the form of drugs) or to go to your local drug store to get something over the counter.

In the healthcare field, healthcare professionals such as nurses, doctors, paramedics, etc., would always ask if you're taking any medication for any particular problem that you may have. If you have high blood pressure, diabetes, etc., two questions would immediately pop up: how long have you had it and what do you take for it. If you have a flu, what do you take for it? Depression? What do you take for it? High cholesterol, vision problems, skin problems, anything that you could put a problem to, what do you take for it?

Perhaps you do have a certain condition that you routinely take medication for. Maybe you only take one kind of medicine. Maybe you take two. Maybe you have a whole freaking pharmacy in your own closet and you live off of every one of those drugs. You probably don't even know the names to half of those drugs, but you sure do know the colors and what they are for.

But now let's forget about how many drugs or what kind of drugs we take. Let's think about how these drugs really work. Are they doing anything for you? How could they be dangerous? Is it the drugs that help you out or is it just your body doing its job? Can you make yourself think you're getting better or worse?

Medication is administered through several different common avenues: orally, through your veins (intravenous or IV), through your muscles, through your bones, through your skin, and through aerosol or sprays. If you have any type of experience in a hospital, you would have noticed that drugs are usually administered orally or through IV's.

Drugs do not choose where they are to go. Drugs do not know what they are supposed to be used for. Drugs travel through your blood stream. When you take medication orally, it goes to the stomach where it is passed to your small intestine where the medication is absorbed into the blood stream, goes through the heart, and pumped to every part of your body. If through an IV, then the medication went right to your blood, taken to your heart, and is pumped to your entire body. No matter how the drug is administered, it will eventually reached your blood and taken through your entire body where every cell and organ would be affected by it in some way.

Some parts of your body won't have any reaction to the drug. Other parts may have a positive reaction. Yet others would have a negative reaction. When parts of your body has a negative reaction, you would have what is called "side effects." It is hoped that the intended target for the medication reacts well with the medication, but it may either have a negative reaction or no reaction. But even if the intended target reacts well, other parts of your body may be harmed by the drugs. That's why on every drug commercial that floods the media always advise you of the side effects of the drugs they advertise and suggest that you talk to a doctor before taking them.

Administering drugs is not always simple. Actually, it's very tricky because everyone's body is different. Aspirin may not affect you one bit, but it may kill me. Tylenol may work for you but it might make me nauseated. You may need a higher dosage than I would need for a particular drug. You may have certain conditions that might make taking a seemingly harmless drug into a deadly poison. Also, if you're taking other drugs, then taking additional drugs might be harmful to you.

Since drugs are not organic (that is, natural), our bodies do not always work well with drugs. Our bodies are organic and need organic materials to work with. Imagine if you decided to drink a pint of motor oil. What do you think would happen? Well, it may not kill you, but it would certainly mess you up because your body cannot digest it and it doesn't even recognize it. But oil does have a lot of toxins that could very well poison your body. However, if you drank a pint of vegetable oil, you won't die from it. You might get nauseated, but your body could work with it because it's organic.

In the same way, drugs are not organic and do hold a lot of toxins that can damage the body. That's one of the reasons lower dosages is recommended if it could do the job. The higher the dosage, the riskier it could be to someone's health. Since drugs do hold toxins, it's best to take them at lower dosages first over a certain amount of time so that the body could hopefully filter out some of these toxins. Since drugs are toxic, it's easy to commit suicide by taking a ton of them, because the more you take, the more toxins you get, and too many toxins can kill you.

Drugs are not designed to cure. Think about it, of all the drugs you've taken, how many of them are design to cure anything? None of them. In fact, doctors have to be careful with their wording when prescribing any medication, because they know that what they prescribe is not a cure, but a treatment, and the treatment is really for the symptoms more than anything else. When you listen to these drug commercials, pay attention to what they say this drug is supposed to do, and almost every time you would hear that the drug is used for reducing symptoms.

Symptoms are really the major problem, not the disease. The pain you feel is more likely from the symptoms or from the treatment you're getting. Do you know what a cold is? It's not when you get sick because you were walking on the tile floors with no socks on. It's your body's reaction to a foreign body that entered your body. When a foreign body enters your body and your immune system is alerted, then your body goes through several steps to get rid of it. Your body would raise the temperature, giving you a fever so that this foreign body could be fried. If that doesn't work, then your body would try to get rid of it by coughing or squeezing, using air in the lungs to blow this foreign body out if it's in the lungs. If that doesn't work, the body would vomit contents from your stomach or frequently try to crap it out (diarrhea). Your body would make you fatigue so that you would be put out of commission while it's trying to figure out how to fix a problem. The virus itself probably didn't do anything to you: your body's reaction to this virus is what really messed you up.

When you are given medication for this cold, the medication itself really doesn't do anything. Your body is already at work in trying to fix the problem, well before you started getting medication. Then when you're body is finished destroying this virus, it will relax and reset things in order. Then you start feeling better. The medication was just a distraction for you.

Now some medication can get the job done, but only on a temporary basis. When you have an asthma attack, you take an inhaler or any aerosol treatment that uses albuterol and then you'll be fine. But you could still get an asthma attack because the medication in the inhaler wasn't meant to cure you, but to give you a "quick fix."

People with high blood pressure are given several different drugs, but one of them is nitroglycerin, which is in the form of a pill or a spray and has to be taken under the tongue. This medication supposedly dilates your blood vessels so that the blood could flow more smoothly. Blood pressure is the force of blood hitting the arterial walls when the heart pumps it out. Some people's blood pressure is naturally higher than others, while other folks have naturally lower blood pressure. But this medication doesn't fix the problem, because that person would have high blood pressure until he or she makes some lifestyle changes.

When people have "clinical depression," they take medication for it. However, the medication is only a quick fix, because that person would always have depression unless he starts taking steps to recovery. Despite what you've been told or what you've experienced, this condition does not have to be a life-long problem.

People with severe allergy problems carry an Epi-Pen that has epinephrine in it. When they have a severe allergic reaction, they take that thing and stick it in their thighs. They usually don't need to do this unless their breathing is being compromised. However, once again this drug is only a quick fix. You will continue to have allergies unless you take steps to get to the root of the problem and find out why your body gets crazy whenever it's confronted with certain things like foods, etc. Just like with any drug, it reacts differently to different people, and too much epinephrine could kill you.

Some drugs are organic. A person with diabetes could be treated with food, but if food is not around or if the person's sugar is so low that he can't do anything, then a drug called Dextrose 50 (or D50) is given. This medication is simply sugar water, both of which the body recognizes and works well with.

If there's a condition that's caused by a deficiency in a certain vitamin such as Thiamin, then that vitamin would be administered through an IV. Now, why is this vitamin a drug? Well, because anything that a doctor uses to either treat or cure a problem is considered a drug. If a doctor uses an orange to treat a problem, then it would be considered a drug.

Drugs, for the most part are good for reducing symptoms. We have medications to reduce fevers, pain, nausea, fatigue, and for everything other symptom that we could think of. But remember that is all drugs could really do: make life a little easier for you by reducing the symptoms. However, symptoms are the body's way of letting you know that something is going on. Suppressing symptoms may be nice for a while, but living your life suppressing symptoms isn't the way to go. You need to get to the root of the problem and take care of it once and for all. Simply suppressing symptoms is like ignoring the fact that your car has an oil leak and all you do is constantly refill the car with oil. Eventually, that leak would become a costly problem unless you do something about it.

Before you take that drug, ask yourself a few questions. One, would these drugs really help me in the long run? Two, would these drugs actually work or would they just keep my body from doing its job? Three, what would I do to help my problem that doesn't involve drugs? Four, is my problem as bad as the doctors said it is.

Drugs are simply quick fixes, not permanent solutions. You do not want to live your life dependent on drugs. Get to the bottom of your problem and fix it. You would be surprised at how much you could do on your own to help a problem.