by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.
Doctors overprescribe medications, especially ototoxic ones. That is no secret. A doctor’s real job is to root out the source of your health problems and fix them. His job is not supposed to be that of a “band aid applier”—one who covers up the real problem with a band aid solution like treating the symptoms with drugs. Yet this is what the majority of doctors seem to be doing.
However, there is another side to the story, and this applies to you if you are already wolfing down a handful of drugs every day. One medical doctor explained, “I am a physician. Often, we are afraid to stop medications because if something bad happens, we could be sued for causing Mom’s stroke, heart attack or death.
I love it when my patients stop their medications themselves or refuse to take more, because then I am safe from our culture of blame. Many of my geriatric patients are on far too many medications and would be better off without them. It takes enormous moral courage to do the right thing in our current litigious environment.” (1)
If you are taking drugs, especially if you are taking several drugs for many months or years, you can make it easy for your doctor to really help you get off the myriad pills you take if you insist that he help you safely get off any unnecessary drugs. (As in the case of the above doctor, he may be secretly relieved you are taking this positive step to help yourself.)
I have said, and will continue to say, that drugs should be your last line of defense, not your first line of attack. There are many other safer and effective treatments you should try first. Not only will you help improve your health, you will not be putting your ears at risk from all the ototoxic medications out there.
Far too many older people gulp down a handful of pills every day. Often the original medication was to treat some condition. Many of the subsequent pills were prescribed to treat various unwanted side effects from that original medication. Then more drugs are added to treat the side effects of those pills, and on and on it goes.
As a result, you end up being grossly overmedicated. Taking all those extra (and largely unnecessary) drugs leads to all sorts of physical, mental and emotional problems such as depression, anxiety, confusion and a false diagnosis of dementia, especially if you also have an untreated hearing loss.
Don’t let ototoxic drugs inadvertently damage your ears and leave you with hearing loss, tinnitus or balance problems. To learn which drugs are ototoxic, get the 3rd edition of Ototoxic Drugs Exposed. This book contains information on the ototoxicity of 877 drugs, 35 herbals and 148 chemicals.
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(1) Physician Warns about Drug Dangers. The People’s Pharmacy. October 24, 2011.
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