Serious Side Effects and Sicker People
Ok. I’m warning you in advance- this is going to be a rant, so watch out!
Today in my email inbox, amongst some of the other junk mail, was a notification suggesting that if I, or a loved one, had ever taken a particular anti depressant medication while pregnant, I may be interested in participating in a class action law suit as this medicine has now been shown to cause birth defects.
How have we gotten to a place where we’re taking things like this, poisons, if you will, without knowing what they are and what the ramifications will be?
I don’t take this lightly and this is not meant to me a dismissive post suggesting that those who are depressed should not take meds; far from that. I recognize that there is a broad range of mental illnesses requiring many different modalities of treatment, some of which may include prescription medications.
What I have an issue with is the ease at which these meds are distributed and without trying other things first. Why are diet, exercise and perhaps psycho therapy not the natural first step to ask people to include in their regime when dealing with depression? Why are strong medications and then more medications for the first medication’s side effects step number one?
I worked with one client who shared her own experience with me; she’d been diagnosed as clinically depressed as well as having a anxiety disorder. She was put on a regime of effexor and trileptal. Then she had to add meds for the stomach distress caused by the two. She gained weight and developed acne, too. Long story short: fortunately, she found a new naturopathic MD who was able to guide her off those prescriptions, add some natural relief via Sam-e, 5 HTP, fish oil and a gluten free diet (which ultimately led her to Paleo).
Will there ever be a day when prescriptions are no longer the first course of action? Oh, right, silly me for asking such a question when there is simply too much profit to be made from the sales.
Sigh.
🙁
I will continue to support the Hippocrates approach: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”.
