You and I Are Too Old to Believe That All Over-the-Counter Drugs Are Safe
Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society
Beware of medically-induced aging, which has nothing to do with time
Dear Reader: Nothing in this article should be construed as medical advice. As with all such pieces, please do your own research and seek medical advice for your unique situation.
If you’re around my age, say sixty up (I’m 71) like all of us and our parents, we grew up with familiar product names that were widely available. Geritol, for example, was for some mystery condition called “tired blood.”
Just what is tired blood anyway?
From Wikipedia:
The name conveys a connection with aging, as in "geriatric". The product has been promoted from almost the beginning of the mass media era as a cure for "iron-poor tired blood".
Which is, natch, pure drivel.
Among many other familiar and therefore friendly-sounding products, Geritol made all kinds of claims which got it into serious trouble. I remember the product name, along with many others, which dotted the landscape of television’s baby-step years.
Such products’ marketing teams realized the power of this form of communication. Suddenly TV audiences were being dive-bombed with messages for products to cure damned near anything.
Just head on down to your local drug store, you don’t need a prescription, no sirree. Fix you right up. In too many cases, as with Geritol, the product’s first ingredient is sugar, so naturally you’re going to feel an energy rush.
Sadly, that 70+-year-old history of OTC fake fix-its from early TV days pales to today’s supplements and prescriptions carpet-bombing. Too many of us who grew up believing that medicine, and by virtue of association, pills, could do anything, still somehow believe the promise of magical cures. It’s rarely the case.
We grew up with AS SEEN ON TV as though that magically conveyed authority to snake oil salesmen. It did. Still does.
Some medications do indeed work-I’m not addressing those here.
If anything, certain medications, including OTC drugs, especially taken by the aging adult, can cause serious side effects. Those side effects can be misread as “just aging” when it’s the medication itself that’s causing them. That worsens when a busy or lazy doctor prescribes yet another med to deal with another symptom and now you have polypharmacy.
With the FDA unable to regulate supplements, that market is caveat emptor. That’s a whole other story with some serious consequences in particular for the liver in both men and women, just to name one issue among many.
Supplements are drugs, let’s not fool ourselves. OTC products are drugs, let’s not fool ourselves. So is food- which is really good news, but we have to be just as careful. As such, all of these can have all kinds of effects on our bodies.
To say nothing of how all these things we ingest can interact.
I’m not going to discuss supplements here; just a few drugs and some OTC meds which can affect our health even as we are taking them to alleviate symptoms.
First, AARP published this piece as a reminder that all OTCs are not safe. Not at all.
For example, those of us over fifty have kidneys that often don’t work as well. Part of that is age, but most assuredly not all of it. That is often from bad habits.
Then if you take too many seemingly “innocent” OTC drugs, such as with acetominophen (Tylenol), you can end up needing a liver transplant.
Many of our organs can suffer from supplement or OTC use if we overdo it.
Change the habits, we often change the illness and our symptoms and the need for the OTC meds goes away. Not always but often.
It’s remarkable how many everyday OTC drugs can cause symptoms which mimic aging, cause falls and worse. In this case it’s not aging, it’s the poison we put into our bodies (which also goes for lousy food).
Here’s AARP’s latest updated article about prescription medications.
This new article lines out many of the commonly-prescribed medications which cause dizziness, brain fog, confusion and falls. Too many people- and doctors- again pooh-pooh as “just getting older,” when in truth we are getting sicker from the medications and OTC drugs, especially when and if they interact.
I was on a cocktail of drugs, prescribed for conditions I didn’t have by well-meaning VAdoctors who apparently didn’t do enough research into the side effects. In 2017 I created a table which listed thirty-two discrete and problematic symptoms that most of my providers ascribed to aging.
At the time I was constantly in training, was eating a very disciplined diet. The symptoms made absolutely no sense whatsoever given my habits.
In that table, I traced a solid or dotted line from the medication to the symptom. Every single medication was implicated. Three months later I had cycled off all of them (with supervision, please do not do this without checking with your doctor first), and every one of the symptoms resolved.
Nobody said anything to me about how I was aging after that. I had my life back because I had my health back.
My buddy
is a self-described “hammer,” with all his various ills showing up as nails, especially since he was able to do a great deal for his health (and his wife’s) via major dietary changes. That said, the instinct to first use food as medicine is an excellent one.By his own admission he knows that diet doesn’t do it all. That said, if dietary changes improve 85% of what ails us, that’s one hell of a good start.
Jim recently published a piece worth sharing all about getting old, and what you and I might want to seriously consider as we move towards the inevitable:
Here’s a key quote from Jim’s piece:
This post makes the point that the word cure is no longer mentioned in modern medicine. Diseases are managed. Never mind that there is solid evidence that type 2 diabetes can be reversed, and even cancer can be put into remission by adopting a low carbohydrate, high fat diet. There is no money in that. Treating symptoms, rather than root causes, creates a self-perpetuating cycle that makes the big pharmaceutical companies enormously profitable. Feeding this cycle (in this case literally) are the big food companies. A surprisingly small number of corporations make almost everything you see in your local supermarket. Many of them are owned in whole, or part, by tobacco companies. After all, food is a basic requirement of life, so it’s much easier to sell than cigarettes. (author bolded)
The word CURE has slipped out of our lexicon to be replaced by “managed.”
“Managed” teaches us to assume we will be ill forever. “Managed” is word soup to teach us that we have to be one a med forever. “Managed” is a word that George Carlin would bloody well skewer. In lieu of George….
I CALL BULLSHIT.
OTC drug companies and supplement manufacturers are also enormously profitable.
Let’s see…
The global over the counter (OTC) drugs market size was valued at USD 125.28 billion in 2023 and is expected to reach over USD 229.01 billion by 2033, expanding growth at a registered CAGR of 6.51% from 2024 to 2033.
It’s also true that some of us get bad news because of genetics, an accident or pure lousy luck, and of course aging, we do indeed have to take a med to manage a condition. I take Emgality, a shot that stops migraines. Anyone who suffers from them can understand how I felt, given that I got up to twenty migraines a month, when a medication stopped them completely.
There’s that. And so far, no side effects, which would have tempered my enthusiasm. So are there “miracle drugs” which do good? Damn right there are. But too much of what ails us can be addressed by habit changes first before we pile on the meds, OTCS and supplements.
Speaking of which….
The global dietary supplements market size was valued at USD 177.50 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 9.1% from 2024 to 2030. Rising prevalence of chronic disorders, including obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, and the busy lifestyles and resultant changes in dietary patterns of consumers are among the key factors driving consumption worldwide. Manufacturers are continuously introducing novel products and formulations targeting specific consumer needs and preferences, such as weight management, sports nutrition, and brain health, among others. Consumers are increasingly made aware of such products and their benefits through effective marketing campaigns, influencer endorsements, and social commerce. (author bolded)
Parasites are making billions on our lack of education, lack of awareness, eagerness for a quick-fix-by-pill to avoid the real work of getting ourselves healthy.
If your physician prescribes a medication, stop there. Ask that doctor to justify it. Even better:
Research the med and all potential side effects. If your doctor doesn’t go into this in detail, get another doctor.
Research any and all potential interactions with any OTC drugs you take. If your doctor doesn’t go into this in detail, find another doctor.
Or at least, YOU bring it up to the doctor and hold their feet to the fire for answers. If they don’t want to play ball, at that point, find another doctor.
Ask for nutritional assistance. If your doctor can’t give it (most can’t) get a nutritionist.
You and I get one body. Too many people are already on a death list, waiting for new organs because of bad habits, bad supplements, and bad doctoring. Too many people die with organs that those waiting for them can’t use (that depends, but that’s another article), so people dying of liver and kidney failure can’t donate. Talk about a Catch-22.
To that:
Of the 123,000 Americans currently on the waiting list for a lifesaving organ transplant, more than 101,000 need a kidney, but only 17,000 people receive one each year.
Now to livers: a message to all those people using weight loss and other bodybuilding supplements or who end up taking WAY too much acetominophen because they don’t check the labels on things like cough syrup:
In 2022, liver transplant activity continued to increase in the United States, with an all-time high of 9,527 transplants performed, representing a 52% increase over the past decade (2012-2022).
Liver transplant recipients were 94.5% adult and 5.5% pediatric. The overall size of the liver transplant waiting list contracted, with more patients being removed than added, although 10,548 adult patients still remained on the waiting list at the end of 2022.
Again. So much of what gets us in serious trouble can be stopped- bad food choices, bad habits, taking unregulated supplements when we could instead change our eating and exercise habits, challenging our doctors about the scripts they want us to take. So much of this is preventable.
PREVENTABLE.
Doctors are all too often part of the problem. To that, last year I had a VA urologist insist, in fact with great anger, that I take a medication for frequent urination. Had I taken it, given the state that I was in at the time, could have swiftly led to either death or a colostomy bag for life.
A visit to the ER revealed the real issue which was easily fixable-without a potentially deadly prescription.
I had done the research, refused to take the script, engraging the doctor. How dare I question her knowledge?
That relationship didn’t end well. That doctor got reported to the Inspector General’s office. We should all stand up for ourselves.
We have to be the cure- by questioning, calling out the BS, and not leaping onto the next popular bandwagon supplement that some damned fool celebrity promotes.
They make money, you and I potentially get sick.
I am not going to call you foolish for abusing your body. I sure did, and my kidneys were paying the price. So I am doing every imaginable dietary correction so that those poor organs can- and they have- largely healed from my transgressions.
As a result I am not waiting for a kidney, heading for dialysis or any of the other horrible outcomes that too many of us face.
My liver is doing just fine for the same reasons. I’m still 71. They are still aging organs, but they aren’t further damaged by meds and OTC products which can harm them. Coming back from the insults that I hurled at my body for all those decades wasn’t easy but it’s doable.
At least a good portion is anyway, if we change our dietary habits, challenge our doctor’s scripts, research what we’re taking and understand the side effects, STOP taking meds which have serious side effects (with supervision) and just say no to the silly supplements which are unproven and make miracle promises.
One life, one body, one set of organs. Do you really want a pig kidney inside you? I don’t either. I don’t ever want to be that desperate that it becomes an option. Nor do I want that for you.
To avoid that or worse, question everything that goes into your body. Every food, every vitamin, every supplement, every single thing. Know your unique body. That unique body deserves the right foods, the right vitamins, the right everything.
You deserve that.
Because if we do that, we can indeed…
Play.
Thanks as always for hanging with me today. I am well aware that some of you are on your backs with issues, some have compromised bodies, and many of us are dealing with the results of the cards we dealt ourselves and which life dealt us. That said, I continue to believe that we can make progress, even if it’s in inches. I hope this piece added value to you. If so please consider
If you know someone who has a need for this kind of information please consider
Either way please protect your one precious body from the parasites who want your money and do NOT care about your health. I do.
Yes, yes and yes! And a big add to your important list is always self advocate. People think docs know everything and can be easily intimidated. I grew up with a dad doctor. He always stressed getting a second or third opinion and I learned to ask questions from him.
“Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.” ~ Hippocrates.
Vegans unite!