The False Hope Of Prescription Medications - A Pharmacist Tells All

For every ailment in today's world there is a pill. A solution in the form of a capsule or tablet or liquid with a concoction of chemicals inside designed to "cure" our misfortunes. Big Pharma has made their mark. As a pharmacist who's been in the medical field for over 10 years, I actually find this quite concerning given the pharmaceutical companys' primary motives for financial growth with little to no regard for patient safety and outcomes. The television commercials say it all. Drug companies are here to market, profit, and prosper off of sick people. You're of no value to them if you're in good health. This might be all well and good if the end goal was truly a nation, or a world, full of vibrant, healthy people who occasionally needed the help of Big Pharma to get back on their feet. But it's not. We live in an era where pill popping is the norm and weight issues and chronic diseases reign supreme. A quick look at the numbers confirms what we already know.

In 2011, a total of 4.02 billion prescriptions were dispensed at a grand total of $319.9 billion [1,2]. In case you were wondering, this amounts to approximately 12.9 prescriptions for every man, women, and child living in the U.S. at a cost of roughly $1,026.68 per year per person. Most of this isn't hitting our pocket books, not directly anyway. Insurance companies pay for the majority of the costs. In 2011, the average copay for 75% of all prescriptions dispensed in the U.S. was $10 or less thanks to the increasing availability of generic medications and prescription drug coverage [1]. I could write an entire book on the statistics behind the legalized drug world, but I'll stop for now. If you care to look into the subject any further you can read the IMS Institute for Health Informatics report here.

Main Street Vegan Radio - The Plant-Based Pharmacist w/host Victoria Moran - "2013 - A Healthy Start To A New Year"

I had the wonderful opportunity a couple weeks ago to kick of the New Year with radio host Victoria Moran on her radio show Main Street Vegan! Victoria Moran is the bestselling author of 11 books and hosts a weekly radio show on Unity.FM geared towards improving the health and lives of others and the planet by promoting a vegan lifestyle. She has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and was voted Vegan Of The Year in 2012! To learn more about Victoria's work check out her book Main Street Vegan: Everything You Need to Know to Eat Healthfully and Live Compassionately in The Real World.

In this segment, Victoria and I talk about a number of interesting health-related topics including:

• My childhood years and dream of pursuing a pharmacy career
• How America got itself stuck in the current healthcare crisis
• Big Pharma's role and influence in the healthcare system
• The best available treatment options (both conventional and alternative) used in treating some of the most common chronic diseases
• Which vitamins and supplements are truly necessary
• How to make a healthy lifestyle a permanent fixture in one's life

This Is Your Brain On [Psychotropic] Drugs

Life is full of emotions. Happy. Sad. Nervous. Frightened. Excited. Depressed. Crazy. Anxious. All of these are a normal part of life. Everyone experiences these emotions at one point or another.

At times these emotions may lend themselves to be more intense than at other times. I've experienced this myself in life. I remember the overwhelming sense of joy I felt when I finally graduated college and landed my first job. That was an incredible high for me. I can also remember being at the lowest of lows in life just a few years prior as pharmacy school and my personal life seemed to come crashing down on me. That was an awful feeling that seemed to last forever and something I never want to experience again. When times like these come in life we often turn to those closest to us to share in our experiences—good, bad, or ugly. Our friends and family are our personal counselors.

Today, however, every emotion has been labeled as a "disease" or "disorder". Every human being walking the face of the planet is mentally ill, according to the drug manufacturers anyway. These greedy business entities have designed a system where they profit off of everyday life experiences of people. Depressed because of a breakup or loss of a loved one? Big Pharma deems you as having major depressive disorder. Anxious when you attend new functions and meet new people? You have social anxiety disorder. Have a typical, energetic 6 year old who can't sit still in class for hours on end (because everyone knows that little kids are supposed to be able to do this)? Your child is suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Lessons From A Pharmacist - I Get A Big, Fat Paycheck While You Stay Sick

Hi. My name is Dustin Rudolph. I've been a practicing pharmacist for over 10 years now, and I'm here to tell you something you may not like hearing. I get a BIG, FAT paycheck every two weeks while YOU (or at least the vast majority of you) stay sick. To put it bluntly, I get rich off of your misery.

Why does this happen? It happens because I, along with the rest of my colleagues in the medical field, practice profit-based medicine. We put profits before patients.

If this makes you angry then good. If this disappoints you then good. If you're a fellow colleague of mine and me calling it like it is pisses you off then good. Quite frankly, I don't give a damn how it makes you feel as long as it makes you feel something. That way I know I've fulfilled my purpose in writing this article because maybe, just maybe, you'll do something about those feelings which will positively influence how you live your life from this point forward.

Functional Medicine - The Future Is Now In 21st Century Medicine

Dr. Mark Hyman isn't one of those doctors who's eager to pass out pills and procedures like candy when patients come to see him for their medical problems. He doesn't care about "labeling" a set of symptoms just so people can finally put a name to whatever they're suffering from. He wants to do more than just this.

He wants to get to the root cause of his patient's problems. Instead of taking a backwards approach to treating diseases by throwing more drugs at them he takes a forward thinking approach of finding the underlying cause of these diseases and then targets those issues to better the lives of his patients. He practices what is known as Functional Medicine and hopes to help both patients and doctors view health and disease from a different perspective. This perspective focuses on long term solutions instead of short term relief from a medicine cabinet full of prescriptions.

He shares his personal story of discovering this new vision of what healthcare should look like in his speech at TEDMED 2010. His insights into the management of the emotional, mental, and physical wellbeing of a human being gives hope that one day our current medical system may finally realize that our conventional ways of compartmentalized thinking are outdated and in need of a major overhaul. The body is a whole system of interconnected parts that all affect one another. More pills are not the answer. More understanding and knowledge about this systemic approach is.

Photo credit: Editorjp (Wikimedia Commons)

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by Dustin Rudolph, PharmD
Clinical Pharmacist

Check out Dustin Rudolph's book The Empty Medicine Cabinet to start your journey towards better health. This step-by-step guide leads you through many of today's common chronic diseases (heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer, and more), giving you the facts on foods versus medications in treating these medical conditions. The book also contains an easy-to-follow guide on how to adopt a whole foods, plant-based diet as a part of an overall lifestyle change, producing the best possible health outcomes for you and your family. Hurry and get your copy today!

We'd love for you to join us in spreading the good word about plant-based nutrition and lifestyle medicine by telling your family and friends about our website at www.PlantBasedPharmacist.com. 

Share and rate this post below or tell us what you think by posting a comment. Thank you again for stopping by and until next time... be happy, be healthy, and live the life you've always dreamed of!

Dr. Don & The Plant-Based Pharmacist - Food Subsidies, Lobbying, and the American Healthcare Crisis

Did you ever think about why our healthcare system is setup the way it is?  Or how our agriculture system is organized in a way that promotes the healthcare system by making it easy for people to buy and eat inexpensive foods which make us sick?

Dr. Don Wagner and myself went to the public airwaves with these topics to help others understand what goes on behind the scenes of government, politics, and the agriculture and healthcare industries.  We expose the food subsidy programs which act to further fuel the American healthcare crisis as well as talk about the money being exchanged between pharmaceutical companies and doctors and politicians.  There's a reason why you're bombarded with endless commercials and advertisements for disease promoting foods and medications that don't work to deal with these food choices.  You deserve better.  You deserve to know how to take back control of your life, your health, and your future and that's what Dr. Don and I aim to do by working together to inform you of topics like this.

I've included the links to the two articles I wrote that Dr. Don references throughout the program at the end of this article.  I hope you enjoy them and this show.  Remember, your best way to beat the agriculture and pharmaceutical companies at their own game is to adopt a healthy lifestyle so you can avoid becoming dependent on their products or services. By doing so, you benefit individually and act to end the current healthcare crisis by using less medical resources.  You'll be happier, healthier, and will look forward to the years to come instead of dreading the typical downhill slide that ends in disease and suffering that so many others experience in life.

Dr. Don radio show archive from 12/21/11

My articles on food subsidies, lobbying, and special interests:

Our Taxes - Are They Making Us Sick?

Big Money, Special Interests, and the American Healthcare Crisis

If you like what you see here then you'll LOVE our daily Facebook and Twitter posts!  Also, don't forget to sign up for  Our Free Online Mailing List  to get all the latest updates from the Plant-Based Pharmacist!

by Dustin Rudolph, PharmD
Clinical Pharmacist

Check out Dustin Rudolph's book The Empty Medicine Cabinet to start your journey towards better health. This step-by-step guide leads you through many of today's common chronic diseases (heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer, and more), giving you the facts on foods versus medications in treating these medical conditions. The book also contains an easy-to-follow guide on how to adopt a whole foods, plant-based diet as a part of an overall lifestyle change, producing the best possible health outcomes for you and your family. Hurry and get your copy today!

We'd love for you to join us in spreading the good word about plant-based nutrition and lifestyle medicine by telling your family and friends about our website at www.PlantBasedPharmacist.com. 

Share and rate this post below or tell us what you think by posting a comment. Thank you again for stopping by and until next time... be happy, be healthy, and live the life you've always dreamed of!

Big Money, Special Interests, & The American Healthcare Crisis

Is there such a thing as having people's best interest in mind when it comes to their overall health anymore?  Last week you learned how your tax dollars are making America sick, literally, as the USDA provides 97%-98% of its subsidies to promote the production of foods that are linked to the gluttony of chronic diseases that people are suffering from in this country.  Then the USDA turns around and publishes dietary guidelines telling us to eat these same foods in our everyday diets.  This week you'll learn how money changes hands between special interest groups and the world of politics and industry when it comes to our health, our food, and our attempts to "fix" the American healthcare crisis.

Picture yourself in charge of finding a solution to our current healthcare crisis.  What would you do?  Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, strokes, osteoporosis, obesity, and the list goes on and on and on.  That's a big task to say the least!  And I'm sure you would agree that the most logical and successful way to approach these issues would be to allocate as much of our nation's financial resources as possible towards the methods proven to be the most effective, safest, and least costly when it comes to treating these diseases.  To do this, you first need to know which methods of treatments are the most effective, safest, and least costly.  Second, you need to know where the money goes and how this money influences what treatments end up being talked about when you're sitting in the exam room of your doctor's office.