When I was a child, I was an asthmatic. I remember having an asthma attack at the age of four. It was the only one I ever had, but I do remember the difficulty in breathing for about ten minutes, my mom freaking out, and then taking me to the hospital.
After that, I was on a constant prescription for a pill called Theo-dur and a Proventil inhaler. I only took the pill half the time because it tasted like chalk and I hated it. I never actually inhaled the Proventil because I didn’t think it worked. So I just puffed it into my mouth for years.
I also had very terrible allergies. I had to get allergy shots twice a week up until I was six or seven. Then it dropped down to one shot a week for a few more years.
I remember being in the pediatrician’s office as a child, laying prone on the table, with drops of different liquids, all with different allergens, being lined up in rows and columns on my back. The doctor would then prick me with some kind of needle, somehow in an attempt to see what I was allergic to. It did not feel good.
I got all the usual rounds of immunizations and booster shots, including the flu shot. I remember several horrible bouts with the flu while in grade school, the worst being when I was in third grade. It was in December and I could barely eat or drink anything for three weeks without vomiting. One night, I was so dehydrated that my parents took me to the emergency room to get an IV.
As a child, whenever, I got a common cold, it would manifest itself in a month-long coughing fit of which I had no control in suppressing. It led to many sleepless nights of sitting up, inhaling penicillin from a “breathing machine” to “open up” my lungs. Because I wouldn’t get better with the breathing machine, I was often given a prescription of prednisone. I have since realized that the source of all this coughing was chronic bronchitis.
Something Changed
When I was fifteen, I started refusing all those yearly booster shots and flu shots. I was very stubborn (I still am) and there really wasn’t any chance my mom was going to get me to take those shots.
Around the age of sixteen, I started to notice I didn’t have trouble breathing anymore, especially when I exercised. At the time, I thought I just outgrew my asthma.
I certainly wasn’t getting the flu anymore… in fact, I don’t think I’ve contracted true influenza since grade school.
I still had allergies, which actually didn’t begin clearing up until I started seeing a chiropractor at 22.
I still had the month-long coughing fits ( I had a very bad one my senior year in high school), but they were only about once a year as opposed to two or three a year as a young child.
My parents did what they thought was right. They both worked in a hospital and were around doctors and nurses all the time. When I was sick, they were given medical advice that they thought would work. I don’t fault them at all.
What I fault is that medical advice. I fault the failed notion of throwing pills and shots in the direction of sick people, believing that those pills and shots will actually cure a sickness or disease. They didn’t in my case. In fact, all those medications and shots KEPT me sick.
Pharmaceutical Propaganda
For example, Lipitor, Crestor, and other statin drugs don’t fix the problem, which is a malfunctioning liver. They cover up the symptoms and true cause by lowering the cholesterol.
Cholesterol is necessary. In fact, when the liver is working properly it sends various forms of cholesterol to various tissues in the body where they belong.
When the liver stops functioning properly, it doesn’t send cholesterol to the various tissues, it sends it into the blood. This happens when someone smokes, drinks alcohol, and eats a fatty diet for a long time.
So why don’t we see commercials with actors pushing healthy eating habits and regular exercise to promote a better functioning liver, which will then send cholesterol to the proper tissues and not into the bloodstream?
Because there is no money in a healthy, preventative lifestyle. There is no product to market like there is with drugs, potions, lotions, and shots.
Health care in this country is driven by corporatism i.e. pharmaceutical companies. That corporatism has infected the medical profession to a point of no return.
One can’t help but laugh when vaccines are being developed for addictions to substances like cocaine, nicotine, and methamphetamines, as you can see if you click here. The vast, vast majority of people will never have addictions to these substances. Yet we all need to be protected from a potential cocaine addiction, right? You never know when a meth habit will sneak up on you.
Here are some references to help illustrate my point.
-Top pain scientist fabricated data in studies helping to get Celebrex and Vioxx FDA approval
-Pfizer to pay $2.3 billion for knowingly misbranding Bextra
-Paid pharmaceutical consultant to 10 companies also a full time professor at Harvard Medical School
-Medication errors injure 1.5 million people and cost billions of dollars annually
-Medical Doctor Retracts H1N1 Vaccine Advice After Reading Insert
I do feel there is a place for modern medicine. But only as a last ditch resort. If a child is born with a congenital heart defect, a surgery is most definitely needed to help that child survive.
If I break a bone, I will go to an orthopedist. If I get into a bad car accident and my arm is hanging by tendons, please get me to the emergency room as fast as possible. I am not opposed to medicine in emergency situations like those.
What I am opposed to is the medical / pharmaceutical propaganda all around us. When a baby is born, and there is no history of gonorrhea in the mother or father, why does that baby need silver nitrate in their eyes? Real science or mindless hospital procedures?
When hepatitis B is only transmitted through unprotected sex and sharing needles, how can it be justified giving this vaccine to a newborn baby? Did that baby have sex or share a needle when someone wasn’t looking?
I want people to know there is an alternative to drugs, surgeries, and shots. I have become healthier with those things out of my life and so has my family.
I think others deserve that as well. Don’t you?
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post, Brandon. I was fortunate enough to have parents that let us “ride it out” through pretty much all our childhood infections and I now get sick far less than any of my “health concious” friends who get the flu vaccines and the like. Plus when I do actually catch something, I recover much faster than they do.
Keep preaching, brother!
I to was a product of uneducated parents that were sick, and kept us sick as kids. It never dawned upon them that you can’t take inorganic chemicals and pour them into a subluxated organic body and expect wellness. Not only must we NOT drink the allopathic coolaid, we need to get out as Chiropractors and TEACH. We can and will make that difference in the lives to come.
Well done Scott! Great information on these topics Brandon.
Lets Un-subluxate the World!
Thank you for this inspiration. I’m going to warn my patients about the “Chemical Koolaid”
Camarillo Chiropractor
Dr. Bates