Throughout the field of health, wellness and medicine it is well known that too much is often much worse than too little.
Most of us, given our American sensibilities and temperament, are predisposed to taking too much medicine, either on doctor’s orders or through our own self-prescribed treatment plans.
More specifically, The Health Coach observes that most take too high an amount of remedy, and too many doses per day, week or month, and for far too long.
“More is better than less”, appears to be the mantra of the day. And so it is, because of the overwhelming commercial interest fueling most health and wellness enterprises. The resulting JUGGERNAUT is not just represented by the pharmaceutical industry; but also by the nutraceutical industry; health & wellness MLM’s; homeopathic, herbal, essential oil and mineral supplement business entities, etc.
We have no intention of throwing the baby out with the bath water in this little health coaching rant. Because we all know that each medicine has its purpose, in its right time and right place with the right individual. However ….
Determining the right medicine, in the right dosage, for the appropriate period of time is getting more and more difficult. So many influences in the form of advertising, competing healthcare interests, different schools of healing wisdom are making it quite challenging to use proper discernment. Especially given our individual limited knowledge coupled with the glut of conflicting information on the internet. Everybody wants to be a health coach these days, before their knowledge is fully baked in the oven of experience?!
Throughout it all please be aware that medicine – no matter what form it takes – is powerful stuff. An essential oil or homeopathic can alter the body chemistry in profound ways, just like a powerful psychoactive pharmaceutical can. When an individual embraces a lifelong self-treatment regimen of calcium supplementation, they ought to be very careful about the unintended consequences even with a mineral so benign as calcium. See essay below for further explanation:
OVER-COMPENSATION: Are you breaking a basic law of healing?
Diseases of The New Millennium
There are a plethora of new diseases, ailments, conditions and imbalances which have escalated exponentially with the turn of the century. We’re talking about illnesses like MCS (Multiple Chemical Sensitivity), EI Syndrome (Environmental Illness Syndrome), CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome), Hypertoxicity Syndrome, Morgellons, as well as a whole host of Multi-Infection Syndromes.
In virtually all of these cases, we see at least two common symptoms present:
(1) Diminished and compromised digestive capacity
(2) Hyper-reactivity, hyper-sensitivity, hyper-intolerance, hyper-allergy to a vast range of stimuli, especially food.
These two symptoms go hand in hand, mind you. When the medicines are not properly digested, they can become toxic in the system. If there’s a leaky gut involved they can pass through the often attenuated and compromised membranes of the small intestine (e.g. celiac sprue disease) and trigger all sorts of immune responses because it is looked at as an antigen or foreign body. Hence, we see the increasing incidence of auto-immune dysregulation and other forms of immune system dysfunction. Truly, this is becoming epidemic, and most are unaware what their problem is.
Because of this deteriorating state of affairs, it is more important for folks with the aforementioned deficits to micro-dose their remedies. For the strong and robust, rather than macro-dose their remedies, better to tone it down. Or else the medicine may not be as effective the next time they need it.
It is likewise important to pulse their remedy-taking: 5 days on; 2 days off or 3 weeks on; 1 week off or 3 months on; 1 month off.
The more necessary the remedy for a life-threatening disease, the longer it can be taken with less time off. 6 months on; 3 days off. Only your doctor can advise you appropriately on matters involving pharmaceutical prescriptions.
The point here is that when you stop taking any particular medication for a while, you allow your body to re-boot so to speak. Every medicine will lose its effectiveness over time, the longer it is taken. It’s a time-tested, experience-proven axiom of healing.
Also, the more we blindly use our medicines as a compensatory measure, the more we will experience unintended consequences, toxic side effects, and collateral damage to cells, tissues and organs.
VERY Instructive Story:
During the 70s lots of hippies and beatniks immersed in the great health craze sweeping across America would make pilgrimages to different ashrams in India. In one particular Ashram, the manager kept receiving complaints from the plumber that the pipes in many of the rooms kept getting clogged up, wreaking havoc with the whole system.
Well, the situation only kept getting worse, until the manager brought it to the attention of the Meditation Master of the entire ashram. He told the manager that if he looked deeply into the matter, that he would see that the pipes which were breaking down were because of the Westerners who were coming in large groups. They were all bringing their bottles of pills and tablets from America of which they were taking too many. Due to a combination of weak digestion and improper tableting process the hard pills were traveling through the GI tract undigested thereby clogging up the plumbing.
In closing:
There is another HUGE issue associated with this subject that we will take up in Part II – Drug Interactions.
You can probably imagine what might occur when you mix a daily cocktail of pharmaceutical medications with a bunch of herbal remedies. And then throw some alcohol or caffeine or recreational drugs into the mix.
The number and complexity of potential interactions (with mostly negative consequences) is only increasing because of the ever-evolving healthcare marketplace. Therefore, “Buyer BEWARE!” and “User, BE MORE AWARE!”
May you enjoy great health,
The Health Coach
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© 2012 The Health Coach
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