protect your children from legal drugs

protect your children from legal drugs

In the essay some weeks back (“some thoughts on medicine”, see link at bottom), I expressed my thought that much of American medicine is geared to treating symptoms with powerful pharmaceutical drugs.  Make no mistake these drugs are powerful bio-chemicals and they come with a heavy price tag – their side effects and harmful actions on the body.

Currently, many powerful pharmaceutical drugs are being routinely prescribed for young children in the US.  This is a serious problem.  Ritalin and other similar drugs (adderall, methylphenidate) are prescribed for various behavioral concerns such as attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity. Statin type compounds are prescribed for cholesterol control. This is sick – no fooling – this is wrong.  (The whole mindset that prescription drugs are the answer to almost every problem or challenge in life is itself unhealthy.)  Let’s briefly discuss these 2 drugs and their effects on young children’s developing bodies and brains.

The very real risk with powerful behavior controlling compounds is that they may seriously alter and thus damage the healthy development of a child’s brain.  This has been a concern for some time.  Here is a link to an article from November, 2001.

Do you think it is wise to have your child take Ritalin or other such drugs when they can harm your child and there are other natural approaches to help a child with concentration type problems in school?  The concern here is that long-term drug use by a child may not only alter the brain’s development, but may also make the child more prone to addictions later in life.  On the surface, you are telling the child that the use of drugs is the answer to behavioral problems.  (A very deterministic, materialistic, and unduly simplistic proposition.)  As well, the brain’s blood chemistry is significantly altered by these drugs during childhood brain development.  Long term use of these drugs cannot but alter the normal development of the brain, possibly leading to a predilection in the individual for later (teenage, adult) substance abuse.

When doctors dismiss these valid concerns, they are showing their arrogance. The human brain is by far the most complex organ, object, that we humans know of, and we still do not understand it very well.  Thus, caution is appropriate when doing anything that can alter the normal (read “natural”) development and normal functioning of the brain.

When I was a grade (or elementary) school child in the 1960s, we had a mid morning break, called recess.  For 20 minutes or so, we would be outside playing (usually kickball, but then when a little older, basketball).  Again, later, we would have a lunch period.  After quickly eating from our metal lunch boxes, we would go out to the play area and resume our games.  Yes, it is difficult for children to sit still through hour after hour of coursework at their desks in the classroom.  This is why we were given periodic breaks during the day to burn off some of that high energy that children quite naturally have.  (No classmates we knew of were on any prescription drugs in those years!)  So, we believe children should be given these needed breaks for physical activity and exercise during each school day.  As well, put your children on a more natural and wholesome diet.  Cut out, or at least reduce, the processed sugars in their diet.  (Breakfast cereals can be a big culprit here.)  Have your children eat more natural foods, such as more fruit and vegetables.

In very rare cases, prescribed drugs may be appropriate.  But, drugs are not the answer for normal, natural childhood energy.




Now to this bogeyman of cholesterol.  Statin drugs instruct the liver to make less cholesterol.  The problem is these drugs damage the liver over time.  We have heard that doctors are recommending that children as young as 2 or 3 years of age be put on these drugs so as to reduce their cholesterol and hence the buildup of plaque in their arteries.

What the doctors will not tell you is that half the people who have heart attacks later in life do not have high cholesterol.  Also, half the people with high cholesterol never have a heart attack.  This indicates that there must be other factors in heart disease and that cholesterol is not the only and perhaps not the major factor to be concerned about.  (Actually, it appears that homocysteine is the culprit.  A by-product of protein digestion, it makes the plaque able to stick to the walls of the arteries.  Supplementing with adequate B-Vitamin complexes can reduce the damage that homocysteine can do.  Do your own research on the Internet, the information is out there.)

Please parents, do not ever put your children on statin drugs.  Do you want them to have liver problems early in their adult lives?  If you ruin your liver, you are out of luck.  Liver transplants, even if you can get one, do not always work out very well.  Protect the one you were born with!!  The doctors put my wife on statins.  When I found out about that, I had her get off them at once. Now, Lucy exercises regularly and that is helping to control her cholesterol levels.  (Her parents did not have heart attacks.  I doubt that she will have one.)

When dealing with these doctors, a healthy skepticism and common sense are appropriate and necessary.  This bizarre cult like belief in the US that these doctors are near omniscient and near infallible is simply what you find on the ground in a cow pasture, if you get what I mean.

Here is the link to our earlier essay.

Thanks for reading.  Now, pass this on to parents you know to help protect their children. For older readers, pass this on to your adult children so as to protect your grandchildren.

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