What Precipitated This
In about 2008, I saw a physician who told me that I had on-coming hypertension. I think my BP was over 140 pretty consistently. She suggested that I start taking medication. I was not too hot on this idea probably because it signaled something that I had always heard about but wanted to avoid. I asked her if there was another way to deal with this. She said diet and exercise. I was already doing the exercise. So that left diet. She did not seem too impressed with that method and said that most people would not do it anyway. She herself was quite hefty. So I could see why she wasn't interested. But I remember a phrase she said to me. Referring to medication, she firmly said, "It has been proven that this works." I can't remember if I gave diet a feeble attempt. It would not have made any difference anyway from what I have learned with the food I was eating. So eventually I succumbed and started in on what most people in the United States begin doing in their 60s and 70s. To comfort my misgivings, she said that a lot of athletes in their 20s and 30's were also on medication for hypertension. Age didn't always have anything to do with it, said she.
I started in on Lisinopril. All of these medications have side effects. A minor, but annoying one, accompanied my ingestion of Lisinopril. Coughing. I could not stop. It just appeared one day. I went on with it for some time not thinking about it until I couldnt take it anymore. Then somebody told me it was probably the medication. The doctor changed it to Coreg (Cardevilol).
Since that time, I have been told by people in the medical field that doctors get kick-backs from drug companies for subscribing their drugs. If that is true, no wonder she wasn't interested in me not taking medication.
Anyway, the single medication I was taking was apparently not doing the trick to her satisfaction. So it was time to bring out another one and add this onto the pile. Amlodipine (Norvasc). Somewhere in here I also got another one for cholesterol, Pravastatin. I don't know how many people I have met since then who are on exactly the same stuff I am. It is sort of a right of passage. You hit a certain age or BP level, and you join the crowd. All of us have gone down to some drug store and bought a pill case with compartments that go from Sunday to Saturday and these things are either in our pockets or sitting on the kitchen table with their mouths open waiting for another load. And if you leave the house for more than a week, then you start hauling around a suitcase or bag of medications.
So I was working at Lake Tahoe in the summer of 2013, and this is when it started coming down. I had noticed that for the last few years when I would go to the Mall with Linda, I would tell her, "I am going to sit down over here on this sofa. You can hit the road and go to every store in the United States." I felt like an old man. I was more interested in reclining than shuffling through the Mall. I had normally been a vivacious soul, but at Tahoe is when it really started to get to me.
In my summer job, I would go to work and feel like I had been beaten by thugs. Around I would stumble and sit whenever the opportunity afforded itself. I was really happy to be driving the truck all day.
Then I started going to bed at 8:30 pm. My usual habit was to stay up till midnight. But maybe it was the intensity and heavy lifting the job demanded. It didn't make any difference. I could have slept like Rip Van Winkle. I was still worn out. Totally exhausted every minute of the day. Sitting down, I would fall asleep within minutes. I had absolutely no desire for anything. ANYTHING. All I wanted to do was sleep or sit. Moving was an effort. I remember thinking to myself often, "So this is what it is like. I have heard about this. I have seen it in aged people how they are content to sit the day away. But I am only 67. How will I make it to 80? If I have to live like this until I am 80, I am not interested in it. How would I ever last till 90?"
I was down at Costco renewing my poisons with all the other seniors who were taking the same crap as I and mentioned this to the pharmacist. He told me, "It's the meds. They were meant to slow you down, and that is what they are doing. Talk to your physician and ask him to cut it in half."
Finally I got out of Tahoe and to my doctor. His response was that maybe I was depressed. That was a good one. He doesn't know that I laugh almost non-stop. I told him that I wanted to cut some of this medication down - eliminate it all if possible - and get my desires for life back. He wasn't too excited about it, but he relented and told me to cut the Cardevilol in half and then eliminate it in two weeks. In addition, he told me to cut my eating portions in half. Controlled starvation, he called it. But then - now get this - he handed me another prescription - Losartan (Cozar). He warned me to keep monitoring my BP everyday and if it went over 140, I was to race down to Costco like I had been bitten by a Cobra and start swallowing Losartan.
What I Did
Somehow this wasn't making sense. All these people could think of was to change me from one medication to another with the result that I would still feel the same way. Somewhere in here somebody told me to check with a Naturopath. I didn't even know what that was. Well, it is a doctor who has been to med school but somewhere in here took a different fork in the road than all the other doctors we all know. I wasn't sure about this because all my life I have gone to doctors who practice Western medicine whose routine seems to be medications first and then surgery not long after. But in short time, I discovered that there is an alternative to Western medicine. This alternative is not just another way that MIGHT have some benefit. I am still learning, but I believe that this alternative is THE way all medicine should be practiced. And I am trying to figure out why it isn't. But I think I am learning the answers. It is all about money. Money for the doctors and money for the pharmaceutical companies.
I have just started, but I am going to record the results here as I progress through what I have learned based on the film "Forks Over Knives," which you can find on NetFlix. Then you make your own decision. I am going by this mantra, "Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die."
I started in on Lisinopril. All of these medications have side effects. A minor, but annoying one, accompanied my ingestion of Lisinopril. Coughing. I could not stop. It just appeared one day. I went on with it for some time not thinking about it until I couldnt take it anymore. Then somebody told me it was probably the medication. The doctor changed it to Coreg (Cardevilol).
Since that time, I have been told by people in the medical field that doctors get kick-backs from drug companies for subscribing their drugs. If that is true, no wonder she wasn't interested in me not taking medication.
Anyway, the single medication I was taking was apparently not doing the trick to her satisfaction. So it was time to bring out another one and add this onto the pile. Amlodipine (Norvasc). Somewhere in here I also got another one for cholesterol, Pravastatin. I don't know how many people I have met since then who are on exactly the same stuff I am. It is sort of a right of passage. You hit a certain age or BP level, and you join the crowd. All of us have gone down to some drug store and bought a pill case with compartments that go from Sunday to Saturday and these things are either in our pockets or sitting on the kitchen table with their mouths open waiting for another load. And if you leave the house for more than a week, then you start hauling around a suitcase or bag of medications.
So I was working at Lake Tahoe in the summer of 2013, and this is when it started coming down. I had noticed that for the last few years when I would go to the Mall with Linda, I would tell her, "I am going to sit down over here on this sofa. You can hit the road and go to every store in the United States." I felt like an old man. I was more interested in reclining than shuffling through the Mall. I had normally been a vivacious soul, but at Tahoe is when it really started to get to me.
In my summer job, I would go to work and feel like I had been beaten by thugs. Around I would stumble and sit whenever the opportunity afforded itself. I was really happy to be driving the truck all day.
Then I started going to bed at 8:30 pm. My usual habit was to stay up till midnight. But maybe it was the intensity and heavy lifting the job demanded. It didn't make any difference. I could have slept like Rip Van Winkle. I was still worn out. Totally exhausted every minute of the day. Sitting down, I would fall asleep within minutes. I had absolutely no desire for anything. ANYTHING. All I wanted to do was sleep or sit. Moving was an effort. I remember thinking to myself often, "So this is what it is like. I have heard about this. I have seen it in aged people how they are content to sit the day away. But I am only 67. How will I make it to 80? If I have to live like this until I am 80, I am not interested in it. How would I ever last till 90?"
I was down at Costco renewing my poisons with all the other seniors who were taking the same crap as I and mentioned this to the pharmacist. He told me, "It's the meds. They were meant to slow you down, and that is what they are doing. Talk to your physician and ask him to cut it in half."
Finally I got out of Tahoe and to my doctor. His response was that maybe I was depressed. That was a good one. He doesn't know that I laugh almost non-stop. I told him that I wanted to cut some of this medication down - eliminate it all if possible - and get my desires for life back. He wasn't too excited about it, but he relented and told me to cut the Cardevilol in half and then eliminate it in two weeks. In addition, he told me to cut my eating portions in half. Controlled starvation, he called it. But then - now get this - he handed me another prescription - Losartan (Cozar). He warned me to keep monitoring my BP everyday and if it went over 140, I was to race down to Costco like I had been bitten by a Cobra and start swallowing Losartan.
What I Did
Somehow this wasn't making sense. All these people could think of was to change me from one medication to another with the result that I would still feel the same way. Somewhere in here somebody told me to check with a Naturopath. I didn't even know what that was. Well, it is a doctor who has been to med school but somewhere in here took a different fork in the road than all the other doctors we all know. I wasn't sure about this because all my life I have gone to doctors who practice Western medicine whose routine seems to be medications first and then surgery not long after. But in short time, I discovered that there is an alternative to Western medicine. This alternative is not just another way that MIGHT have some benefit. I am still learning, but I believe that this alternative is THE way all medicine should be practiced. And I am trying to figure out why it isn't. But I think I am learning the answers. It is all about money. Money for the doctors and money for the pharmaceutical companies.
I have just started, but I am going to record the results here as I progress through what I have learned based on the film "Forks Over Knives," which you can find on NetFlix. Then you make your own decision. I am going by this mantra, "Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die."