DePrescribing

A cure for the high costs of medications

You probably know I don’t put much trust in Big Pharma products.

It’s a shame.

When I was in medical school through the early years of my practice I was a Big Pharma fan and believer just like most docs.

What happened?

Do you really want to know?

The truth?

Can you handle the truth?

Well keep reading if you want to know.

Probably around year ten of practicing my craft, sorry but I kind of like the phrase “practicing my craft”, I started noticing that many of my adult patients who were on all of the Big Pharma medication protocols to control/treat their disease were still getting all the complications of the disease.

Hypertensive patients on the best blood pressure medications still ended up having organ damage and strokes.

Patients with High Cholesterol on the newest and latest cholesterol reducing statin medications still ended up needing cardiac interventions, stents and bypasses.

Diabetic patients on oral medications, insulin or both still ended up with organ damage, vascular disease, early dementia and pretty much just a sped up aging process.

People who stayed out of the sun and used sunscreen lotions on their skin still ended up with skin cancers as well as other more harmful internal cancers that increased sunshine and Vitamin D usually decrease.

There are other examples but I’ll stop here and leave those perhaps for a future newsletter/post/substack.

So you can kind of say that ten years into medical practice my eyes became wide open.

Photo by Quinten de Graaf on Unsplash

So I had a choice.

I could shut my eyes and take the easy way out and just continue to go along with the flow, follow all the Evidenced Based Medicine (EBM) protocols put out by medical societies which were usually sponsored by Big Pharma.

Can you say perhaps biased???

Or

I could open my eyes and look for safe alternative treatments that act closer to the root cause mechanism of the illness.

I’d put another pic of eyes opened but honestly those pics can be a bit creepy.

I could offer safe alternative treatments to my practice along with the traditional EBM protocols. I could do this while having an open discussion and allow the person in charge of their health, you the patient, make the decisions you feel best with what I believe to be a fuller informed consent.

So I am NOT anti medication nor anti traditional healthcare. I use these every day in my practice.

But I am open to using holistic, functional and nutritional lifestyle treatments as well.

Here is an example of keeping my eyes open and looking for solutions.

Hypertension- how does it occur?

What goes on in the body that could cause high blood pressure?

You could also read the link below.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41440-022-00987-0

Or let me interpret.

IR is Insulin Resistance. Insulin has a job. It’s to move EXCESS carbohydrates out of the blood and into our cells that utilize them for energy and other things.

What we need is a healthy balance where we have just enough insulin to move the carbohydrates around without stressing any parts of our body.

The best place for insulin to move the carbs is into the muscles where they can be used and burned most efficiently.

When muscles have no further room insulin moves the EXCESS carbohydrates to Fat cells (Adipose). When Adipose runs out of room EXCESS carbohydrates can get moved into visceral (organ) fat and organs. The above is a dynamic process with all 3 going on simultaneously but the order is important as we want glucose storage to be in safer places, not in areas that can be damaging.

Muscles are safe and the energy turnover is continuous.

What the research article is saying is that when Fat (adipose) cells start resisting Insulins effects, that is called Adipose Insulin Resistance and Blood Pressure goes up.

Treatments:

Traditional:

Use Blood pressure medications to lower your blood pressure, but these medications do NOT affect the mechanism we just discussed. So while blood pressure looks controlled the mechanism that caused it is still occurring, you just don’t know it. So the root cause/trigger is NOT being addressed with traditional treatment using blood pressure medications.

Pearl: The mechanism that causes the high blood pressure is just or perhaps more dangerous than the high blood pressure itself.

IMW treatment:

Teach you how to reduce adipose insulin resistance to fix the imbalance that caused the high blood pressure. When blood pressure starts reducing we start weaning off the medications.

So when I hear politicians bloviating about the high cost of prescription medications and how they are going to pass this law and that law to lower the prices of medications, I pretty much ignore them. The more they get involved in healthcare the more expensive it gets for everyone.

So instead of complaining I prefer to just work on fixing the problem.

So what have I discovered?

Well I’ll tell you.

I discovered that by using a blend of traditional and functional healthcare I can help lower the amount of $$$ my patients spend on prescription medications.

How do I do this?

It’s called teaching my patients why they have their illness, showing them what the root causes are, and then we work to reduce/eliminate the triggers at the root. When the root cause is controlled without medication, their illness improves and their need for prescription medication is also reduced or eliminated.

So if you no longer need a medication to treat an illness that you no longer have, would you call that a cost savings?

At the IMW we have been deprescribing prescription medications for many years now. We have reduced/eliminated medications for hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes and other health issues for many patients.

As we are deprescribing we monitor each patient closely. They not only feel better, younger and more in control of their health, but we show them their before and after lab results further showing how much healthier they are WITHOUT all the prescription medications.

So if you are looking for a different option to save money on prescriptions, without relying on health insurers, prescription plans or government programs, consider working with someone who can help you find the root cause triggers of your health issues.

Work on you Wellness as opposed to your illness.

Take control of your health.If the past 2.5 years tells you anything, I don’t think we can count on the traditional healthscare system to have your individual best interests at heart.

As always comments and questions welcome.