I pour myself a big glass of herbal tea, sit down, and get all geared up for my favorite television show when another one of those pharmaceutical commercials comes on with the smiling faces of actors and a soothing voice in the background trying to squeeze in the long list of side effect in only 30 seconds. Without a doubt it is a clever approach since visual images almost always garner most of the attention.
Certainly, pharmaceutical medications are not only useful but necessary under the right set of circumstances but too much of a good thing may actually produce diminishing returns.
A recent article titled "The Side Effect of Side Effects" in one of the most widely disturbed senior publications made a compelling case that tens of millions of people are suffering everyday – often without knowing why – from the side effects of prescription medications.
The average number of prescription medications for a person 60 years old is 5! Are we really that bad off? Do we really need 5 drugs just to maintain a reasonable quality of life? If we are truly that bad off perhaps we need to look in the mirror and wonder why and then take action to turn this runaway train around before it is too late.
One other problem according to this article was that multiple prescription medications aren't generally designed to work seamlessly with one another thus producing side effects on top of side effects.
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