Effects of Drugs on Everyday Life

You are sitting down in your living room – you turn on the TV to watch a good movie – it’s a two hour movie but every fifteen minutes you are bombarded with advertisements – and most of them are about all the up and coming drugs to help us survive all the diseases we have.  Its truly a mixed message – we are telling our children to “Say NO to Drugs” but the TV is sending a different message to our children every hour that they watch television.

In the year 2000, the U.S. population was 276 million and nearly one-half of those Americans live with some type of chronic condition.  About 60 million live with multiple chronic conditions (such as, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, glaucoma, lupus, etc).  Generally, when people have chronic conditions they are relying on drugs to mask the symptoms of what they are experiencing but all along thinking that everything is all right when they don’t have the symptoms anymore.  But at what cost are your symptoms gone???

Gary Null’s report in “Death By Medicine” claims that our conventional health care system is responsible for 800,000 deaths every year in the US alone.  Drugs and doctor error rank third in US fatalities.  Today, it is expected that by the time you are 40 years old, you will be taking a few different medicines for various diseases or ailments.  Should that be the norm??? 

Each year 41,000 seniors are hospitalized for ulcers – and some 3,300 of them die – because of their arthritis drugs.  32,000 suffer hip fractures attributable to drug-induced falls, with sleeping pills, antipsychotic drugs and antidepressants leading the pack as the culprits.  If you would like a real good book, read “Bitter Pills” by Stephen Fried.  He says, “we take our medicines on faith.  (This author seems to feel that that faith is misdirected – our faith should be with our Lord Jesus).  We assume our doctors are well-informed, our drug companies scrupulous, our FDA diligent – and our medications are tested and safe.  All too often we’re wrong – dead wrong sometimes. 

The fact of the matter is, nearly everything that drugs are supposed to do can be achieved using safe, natural means which have no side effects other than good health. This includes reducing or eliminating troublesome symptoms, increasing longevity, reducing your weight and lowering your risk of contracting disease -- all the things pharmaceutical drugs don't really do.  But sometimes, it’s easier to talk people into harsh treatments, dangerous drugs, etc. rather than do something as simple as changing ones’ lifestyle.  God gave us all we need to know on how to take care of our body, but we have fallen to man’s ways – and it is becoming more and more evident that man’s ways cause further harm to the body.

Drugs are not food but are chemical substances, which alter the body's normal chemistry. Most if not all medications have some kind of negative effect on the body. It’s the long term taking of drugs that is dangerous so we need to maintain a healthy respect for medications, and use them only when really necessary.

It is a sad tragedy is that we are spending all of this money on disease management focused on drugs and surgery, and our return on this investment is profoundly poor. Millions of people are needlessly suffering with painful crippling diseases because they have violated basic health principles.  Many more people do not even have the energy they need to get through the day because they are so riddled with chronic disease and/or the medicines they are taking sap all their strength – and they live in the “dead-zone.”

Is American Medicine Working?

“At 14 percent of the Gross National Product, health care spending reached $1.6 trillion in 2003.15 Considering this enormous expenditure, we should have the best medicine in the world. We should be reversing disease, preventing disease, and doing minimal harm. However, careful and objective review shows the opposite. Because of the extraordinary narrow context of medical technology through which contemporary medicine examines the human condition, we are completely missing the full picture.

Medicine is not taking into consideration the following monumentally important aspects of a healthy human organism: (a) stress and how it adversely affects the immune system and life processes; (b) insufficient exercise; (c) excessive caloric intake; (d) highly-processed and denatured foods grown in denatured and chemically-damaged soil; and (e) exposure to tens of thousands of environmental toxins. Instead of minimizing these disease-causing factors, we actually cause more illness through medical technology, diagnostic testing, overuse of medical and surgical procedures, and overuse of pharmaceutical drugs. The huge disservice of this therapeutic strategy is the result of little effort or money being appropriated for preventing disease.  Prevention skills would help save us all from the pitfalls of disease and premature death.

All the statistics above represent a one-year time span. Imagine the numbers over a ten-year period. Working with the most conservative figures from our statistics we project the following 10-year death rates. (by Dr. Joseph Mercola)

Often, negative health and lifestyle choices are made because of a lack of knowledge, and a lot of people just do not look into all their options when confronted with a health crisis.  We automatically look for the “magic bullet” or pill to correct the problem at hand.  But think about it; if you go to the doctor for high cholesterol and he prescribes a statin drug – the next thing he says is, “now you will need to come in every three months for a liver check.”  Let’s think about this; you had high cholesterol numbers and didn’t need a liver check, but now that a drug has been prescribed you will need to worry about whether or not it kills our liver???  ALL drugs are toxic to the body – they tear down the body – they generally have adverse symptoms – they are extremely expensive – and most (we are told) will have to be taken the rest of our lives.  Most people just accept that verdict.  We did not!! 

When David was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, he was told that he would have to take the A, B or C drug the rest of his life.  A drug, Levaquin, had put David in the hospital about 7 years ago and he couldn’t eat or drink for three weeks.  So the option and thought of taking drugs for the rest of his life was a scary thought.  We started to look for other options and began an educational process to help us understand what MS was and what alternatives we had.  Most people do not look any further than the diagnosis and the treatment plan put before them.  Call us radical, call us pioneers, but against all kinds of opposition, we knew God had answered our prayers and was telling us that the Hallelujah Lifestyle was what was going to work for us.  We stepped out in faith – with many people thinking we were crazy for not following the medical advice we received – BUT we knew what we had prayed and we KNEW that God was talking to us.  We stepped out in faith and obedience to follow where God was leading us.

David did not get results for seven months on the Hallelujah Diet – why did we stick with it?  Think about it – if we had given up at six months, we would never have known the blessing of success – that victory was just one month away and we would have missed that blessing!  Never give up because you never know how close you are to the very victory God wants to give you!

You say, “Organics are expensive!”  Let’s compare some pricing.

*Celebrex 100 mg (100 tablets)  $130.27  (the cost of the active ingredients is $.60  That is a 21,712% markup
* Norvasc 10 mg (100 tablets) $272.37 (cost of active ingredients is $5.80  That is a 134,493% markup
* Prilosec 20 mg (100 tablets) $360.97 (cost of active ingredients is $.52 – That is a 69,417% markup
* Zocor 40 mg (100 tablets ) $350.27 (cost of active ingredients is $8.63 – That is a 4,059% markup

Watch the video below for a funny paraody about drug companies.

We buy 85% raw, organic foods and my grocery bill is usually about $125 a week.  My food is so much tastier than downing red, yellow and purple pills with no flavor and no satisfaction.  We go to the doctors once a year for a checkup, bloodwork, etc. and have no other medical expenses.  We are both in our late 50’s and take NO medications.  Sadly, health professionals do not consider that the norm – they question us with disbelief that we are not on any medications at our age.

Look at the fact sheets on the drugs we take:  (if you can read them – the print is SO small).  Here’s an example of Premarin:

Gosh, with all these possible side effects – one would think we would have been better off NOT taking the medication.

Of course, most medications also mention that DEATH is one of the side effects.  One thing for sure, your chances of a Pre-Mature death can be enhanced by consuming drugs over a long period of time.

We all know that someday we are going to die.  But why rush the process? We live our lives, we work hard with the dream of retiring someday and being able to enjoy life – travel – visit long ago friends, family . . . but all too often our body retires prior to our physical job retirement.  The quality of life goes down the tubes (and into the pharmaceutical pockets).   If by adopting a new healthier lifestyle, you can live a quality and abundant life and be able to achieve our purpose in life with vigor and zeal, why not make the necessary changes to give ourselves the best chance we have at a quality life.  Over two million Americans are plagued by Drug side effects each year.  Every time we put a drug in our body, we are introducing toxins to our body.  Each toxin has to be dealt with and eventually, our body gets in an “overload mode.”  We cannot beat death – but we can work towards living a full, abundant life on this earth and when it is our God-given time to meet Him, we can go peacefully without a disease-riddled body to greet Him.

 So, the question is:  Which side do you want to be one?  Wellness or Sickness?  The time has come that we must make a choice.  Do we want our future to include wellness or do we want to be caught in a vicious trap of illness and disease?  We can choose to actively seek out health – learn how to nourish our incredible bodies, learn how to revive our spirit OR you can remain passive about the potential perils lurking around us, gradually losing your life and energy until sickness finally catches up with you.  If you don’t make a decision for health, the choice will statistically be made.  No one really wants to be a ‘customer’ of big medicine companies!

for you.  The Hallelujah Lifestyle is an opportunity for you to avoid the pitfalls of disease and the misery that comes along with being ill – so the choice is yours!  Take steps today – every minute your body’s cells are reproducing at a rate of 360 million a minute – every mouthful of food or drink you consume will either nourish or harm your cells.  Don’t wait till you are diagnosed with a disease to start making the life changing decisions that will alter your future or don’t wait until the Doctor sends you home to die because there is nothing left for them to do to you. 

Get educated – join the powerful forces of people who are taking control of their futures, their health and their lives!  It is our opinion that we should become educated about the choices we have in life – this very educational process can alter our health outcome and our future.  It's our passion to increase the public's awareness of the health tragedies facing our nation.

What choice will you make?

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On the lighter side – Just for women - Here are some new drugs to consider – just for women

The flawed conventional health care system we have in America is responsible for 800,000 deaths every year.

In 1994, an estimated 2,216,000 (1,721,000 to 2,711,000) hospitalized patients had serious adverse drug reactions (ADRs) and 106,000 (76,000 to 137,000) had fatal ADRs, making these reactions between the fourth and sixth leading cause of death.  (Dr. Joseph Mercola)

THE GREATEST THREATS TO BIG PHARMA

“The greatest threats to the profits of Big Pharma are:

“PREVENTING DISEASE: teaching people how to avoid cancer, diabetes, etc.

“CURING DISEASE: reversing or eliminating disease.

“EMPOWERING PATIENTS THROUGH EDUCATION: exposing the myths of conventional medicine and giving patients new choices in improving their health. . . .