Why Not Pharmaceuticals?

There's a time for pharmaceuticals, and that time should mostly be surrounding emergencies. If I'm in a car accident, please take me to the ER, get some painkillers flowing and an antibiotic so that I don't get infections from my open wound. Oh yes, I prefer some anesthesia with my emergency surgeries as well.

Pharmaceuticals save lives, no doubt about it. The problem is, people feel they're a big fat 'EASY' button for any ailment. Rather than take responsibility for their health, their food choices, their actions, they know they can go get a prescription to "fix it." They also carry a massive list of real side effects, you know the ones, you hear them in triple speed at the end of commercials.

Okay, so what's wrong with an easy button, you ask? That's a great question, and I'm glad you asked! The answer is simple, but quite profound. Are you sure you're ready to swallow the red pill? (a Matrix analogy, not a real pharmaceutical :P) The answer is, pharmaceuticals don't cure root causes. They suppress symptoms to get you going again without complaining to your doctor anymore. Everybody wins, right! ... Right?

Let's look at a few examples:

1. Take a pain killer to relieve that headache
2. Rub some numbing cream on your back
3. Slather steroid cream on your babies head
4. Every kid needs antibiotics for their ear infection
5. Over 45? You should be on a statin, just in case
6. Heartburn, you say? Here's your PPI

So what's wrong with those? 

1. Headaches have multiple causes, none of which are a deficiency of pain killers. No root cause fix means they will just come back.
2. Numbing cream will not fix the root cause of back pain. Anything from musculoskeletal, posture to stressed kidneys can be causes to consider.
3. Steroid cream? It may help short term but will cause more issues later. Instead, take dairy and gluten out of the diet and check for an unbalanced microbiome if you want to fix the root cause.
4. Antibiotics in kids destroy their gut, and guess where 75% of our immune systems are rooted? The gut. That's why ER's are full of kids who "just finished their antibiotics two weeks ago, and now it's back again!". 
5. Statin? That should be a four-letter word. That means your doctor has no idea why your cholesterol is high or how to lower it naturally and safely. 
6. According to the Washington Post, nearly 20% of the US population, has heartburn. What's prescribed for that? Antacids and PPI's (proton pump inhibitors). The reality is that the cause is almost always the opposite, low stomach acid, and using these pills will only make it worse and guarantee a life long customer. 

There's symptom treatment, and then there's real healthcare. Caring for someone's health means finding the root cause of the issue and guiding them through the changes they need to fix it for good. Pharmaceuticals are a means to an end (no side-effect pun intended), but they don't resolve the real issue causing the symptoms. They miss the cause and delay and worsen the patient in the long run.

I love real-world stories in healthcare, and who better to use as an example than myself...

Some of my earliest childhood memories were of horrible ear infections. Ear infections that would have me so fatigued I didn't want to move. Fevered but chilled and wearing my winter coat on the couch while watching tv. It was just awful.

The fix? The only thing everyone knew to do back then, antibiotics! 7-10 days of tasty pink stuff squirted in my mouth, and I was good to go. Until next time, then rinse and repeat...

Fast forward to my early 20's; now it was strep throat. Every single bleeping winter, I would get strep throat and require 1-2 rounds of antibiotics. What were my other options? None given by the doctor, and I didn't know anything back then, so I happily gulped each pill down until my symptoms were gone. 

Now in my 30's, things started to get really out of hand. It was moving into my chest, and I went from bronchial infections not just once per winter, but twice. And then it started to affect my sinuses too! I would be on three rounds of antibiotics many winters from my chest and sinus infections combined. When would this craziness come to an end!?

It was then that I had enough and started learning and training on how food affects your body, how to support your body with herbs and fasting so that it can do what it innately does (was designed by God to do), heal. Spoiler alert: I haven't taken one antibiotic since.


Through those decades of antibiotics, here's what I learned:

1. Antibiotics aren't healing the root cause of a problem.
2. My body's downward spiral kept accelerating with just antibiotic treatment.
3. My doctor never once mentioned the black box warning (think warnings on cigarettes) like tendinitis and tendon rupture, peripheral neuropathy and central nervous system effects from the Cipro she was repeatedly prescribing me. Source.
4. My doctor didn't believe food affected the body (can you put just anything in your car's gas tank and expect it to run optimally?)
5. My doctor never brought up probiotics or any mention of the utter destruction done to my microbiome and immune system.

The disregard for understanding what makes a person sick, what the physiological and biochemical problems are, ignorance of nutrition and the body's innate healing process caused me to spiral out of health for decades. 

Thankfully, after starting to learn the truth and simplicity of healing, I restored my damaged gut and never required an antibiotic again for these chronic, decades-old issues. This was the start of my passion for learning more and helping others.

Pharmaceuticals are often the first go-to when you see a medical doctor, but they usually don't fix a root cause. Without a root cause fix, your issue will never be resolved. Find someone who can help you get to the root cause and utilize herbs and supplements that have added benefits as side effects, not nausea, anal leakage, blindness and death. 

Matthew Kelly
Detoxification Specialist
Functional medicine practitioner

This post is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any condition or disease. All opinions and information provided on this site are for educational purposes and should not be used as medical advice.