Prescription Alternatives:Hundreds of Safe, Natural, Prescription-Free Remedies to Restore and Maintain Your Health, Fourth Edition

765 Pages·2009·4.5 MB·English

by  Earl Mindell

Prescription Alternatives
Hundreds of Safe, Natural, Prescription-Free
Remedies to Restore & Maintain Your Health
EARL L. MINDELL, R.Ph., Ph.D. VIRGINIA HOPKINS, M.A.
AND
Copyright © 2009 by Earl L. Mindell and Virginia Hopkins. All rights reserved.
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ISBN: 978-0-07-160032-3
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CONTENTS
Introduction
PART 1 L F G H
AYING THE OUNDATION FOR OOD EALTH
Chapter 1 Changing the Pill-Popping Mind-Set
Chapter 2 How to Avoid Prescription Drug Abuse
Chapter 3 Drug Interactions and How Your Body Processes Drugs
Chapter 4 How Drugs Interact with Food, Drink, and Supplements
Chapter 5 How Drugs Interact with Other Drugs
Chapter 6 How to Read Drug Labels and Information Inserts
Chapter 7 Surgery, Drugs, and Nutrition: Minimizing the Damage and
Maximizing Your Recovery
Chapter 8 How to Avoid Medical Errors in the Hospital
PART 2 P D T N A
RESCRIPTION RUGS AND HEIR ATURAL LTERNATIVES
Chapter 9 Six Core Principles for Optimal Health
Chapter 10 Drugs for Heart Disease and Their Natural Alternatives
Chapter 11 Drugs for the Digestive Tract and Their Natural Alternatives
Chapter 12 Cold, Cough, Asthma, and Allergy Drugs and Their Natural
Alternatives
Chapter 13 Drugs for Pain Relief and Their Natural Alternatives
Chapter 14 Antibiotics, Antifungals, and Their Natural Alternatives
Chapter 15 Drugs for Insomnia, Anxiety, and Depression and Their Natural
Alternatives
Chapter 16 Diabetes Drugs, Obesity Drugs, and Their Natural Alternatives
Chapter 17 Drugs for Eye Diseases and Their Natural Alternatives
Chapter 18 Drugs for the Prostate and Their Natural Alternatives
Chapter 19 Synthetic Hormones and Their Natural Alternatives
Chapter 20 Drugs for Osteoporosis and Their Natural Alternatives
Chapter 21 Drugs for Herpes and Their Natural Alternatives
Chapter 22 Drugs for Impotence and Their Natural Alternatives
Chapter 23 Drugs for Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Their Natural
Alternatives
Resources and Recommended Reading
References
Index
INTRODUCTION
If you have this book, you’re probably taking at least two prescription drugs or
you know somebody who is. If you or someone you love is taking any type of
medication, from an allergy medicine to a beta-blocker, you’ll want to know
how the medicine affects the body and how to stay healthy while on it. We’ll
give you that information in this book, but we’re also going to tell you how you
can solve your health problems without the drugs. Ultimately we hope that this
book inspires you to get off your prescription drugs and keep yourself healthy
primarily through lifestyle, wholesome foods, and natural remedies. We have
found that almost everyone taking a long-term prescription drug can wean him-
or herself off drugs and create good health—often vibrant, radiant good health—
using simple, safe, natural remedies with no side effects.
As a general rule, prescription drugs cause imbalances in the body, ranging
from depletion of vitamins and minerals to constipation and lowered immune
function. They can also cause more serious problems, including death.
Prescription Alternatives gives you a tool for easily and immediately accessing
information about how the drugs you are taking affect your body, the steps you
can take to counteract these imbalances, and what alternative treatments are
available.
Most books sell well for a few years and then decline in sales. Sales of this
book have increased over the years, as more and more people realize the need to
find better ways to stay healthy. In this fourth edition we have added new drugs
and their side effects, new research about drugs and natural remedies, and new
natural remedies that have proven themselves over time. In particular you’ll find
a lot of helpful new information in the chapter on heart disease, as research on
the underlying causes of heart disease has expanded greatly over the past few
years. There is also a good deal of new information about prostate health and
impotence drugs, as well as important new research about conventional hormone
replacement therapy, which has sent millions of women to their doctors looking
for natural alternatives. We’ll give valuable insights for both men and women on
how to achieve hormone balance.
There is no possible way we could cover every drug available or every
problem with every drug. We have tried to cover the most commonly used drugs
in detail, but we also urge you to take responsibility for any drug use by
consulting with your pharmacist and reading the drug insert. Knowledge of the
side effects and interactions of drugs is changing every day. It is our goal to
teach you how to be a knowledgeable and discriminating drug consumer who
knows how to ask the right questions and get the necessary information to stay
healthy.
The United States and New Zealand are currently the only countries in the
world that allow drug companies to advertise prescription drugs directly to the
consumer. It used to be that prescription drugs could be touted only to
physicians. But now consumer ads on TV tantalize you with great promises of
health and well-being, skim through the side effects as quickly as possible, and
then suggest you contact your physician or a drug company hotline for more
information. The drug companies are also responsible for the expensive, slick,
four-color ads you now see in consumer magazines and newspapers. You are
bombarded with more than $3 billion worth of advertising for prescription and
over-the-counter drugs every year. That should give you an idea of how valuable
you are as a drug consumer and how staggering the profits are that drug
companies rake in every year.
For every dollar that drug companies spend on research and development,
they spend 50 cents on advertisements and promotions. The most heavily
promoted drugs are not those that represent great breakthroughs in improving
your health, but the ones that drug companies stand to profit from the most.
You’re not the only target of expensive drug company promotions, either: the
doctors who prescribe drugs to you are strongly pressured by drug sales reps to
prescribe their latest products. It’s estimated that drug companies spend
approximately $9,000 per physician per year on these promotional efforts. These
efforts are working, too. According to the National Institute for Health Care
Management, 40 percent of the recent increase in drug sales can be attributed to
25 of the most heavily promoted drugs.
Drugs have powerful effects on the body, so please don’t abruptly stop taking
any prescription medication. It’s best to work with a health care professional to
monitor your health as you switch from drugs to natural alternatives.
This book is not intended to convey the message that all prescription drugs are
bad. Used conservatively—with great care and only when necessary—they can
be lifesavers for some people. On the other hand, prescription drugs are grossly
overprescribed and misprescribed in the United States, resulting in the death of
at least 160,000 people a year in hospitals alone and in injury to nearly a million.
The other bad habit that this book may help you avoid is what we call the
“drug treadmill.” People over the age of 50 are the most familiar with this
scenario. Here’s how it works: Let’s say a fairly healthy 50-year-old named Bob
visits his doctor for an annual checkup and is prescribed the seemingly harmless
drug Tagamet (cimeti-dine) for indigestion. The Tagamet causes joint pain, but
Bob doesn’t know this. So he starts to take Tylenol (acetaminophen) to treat the
pain. Bob likes to have a few cocktails before dinner, but he doesn’t know that
combining alcohol and Tylenol can cause serious liver damage. (Liver damage
caused by acetaminophen is one of the leading causes of emergency room visits
in the United States.) In addition, the Tagamet is already putting stress on Bob’s
liver, which is being chronically damaged by the combination of drugs and
alcohol. Because of the constant stress, his liver is unable to keep up with the job
of detoxifying his body, and soon he is coming down with colds and getting
infections. So his doctor prescribes antibiotics, which further compromise his
immune system and cause damage to his intestines. Furthermore, Bob now has a
chronic sinus infection, for which he takes allergy drugs that make him irritable.
This is one example of the drug treadmill, and this book is about how to avoid it.
A Word About Alternatives
Just because a health remedy is found in a health food store or on a website with
a lot of green, leafy graphics doesn’t mean it’s necessarily safe or effective.
There are plenty of schemes, scams, and frauds to go around in the world of
natural remedies and alternative medicines, not to mention well-meaning but
misguided advice from people who haven’t done their homework.
One of the most common deceptions in alternative medicine is the practice of
claiming that a substance has an effect on the body based on test tube research or
a theory that’s backed up by a lot of biochemistry babble. These types of
medicines are usually associated with a lot of fanfare, exclamation points, extra-
bold headlines, and grand claims about how they will cure everything from
hangnails to cancer. Just because a medicine comes from the jungle, a tropical
island, or the mountains of Nepal does not mean it works. It often just means it’s
dirt cheap and enormous profits are being made. We have seen dozens of so-
called miracle cures come and go over the years, and we suggest having a wait-
and-watch attitude toward them.
The remedies we recommend in this book are backed up by generations of
use, as in folk medicine, by research, or by both. How do you know whether it’s
worth trying the latest, greatest natural remedy? Look for human studies
published in peer-reviewed journals or opinions from experts in the field who
don’t have a financial stake in the product. In the Resources and Recommended
Reading section at the back of this book, you’ll find a list of health newsletters,
websites, and books by experts whose opinions we respect.