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(NaturalNews) Last Wednesday`s New York Times featured a story with the headline "In Sour Economy, Some Scale Back on Medications", which lamented the fact that "for the first time in at least a decade, the nation`s consumers are trying to get by on fewer prescribed drugs". However, after over a century of mainstream medicine suppressing natural alternatives and promoting ever increasing approved drugs, lower overall prescribed drug use should be good news - if only the mainstream media such as the New York Times would better serve their readers by reporting the truth about mainstream medicine`s system of managed illness and the benefits of natural alternatives.

Notably missing from the article was information about how heavily the United States depends on mainstream drugs and the increasingly poor return we are getting for that investment. Instead, the article included such hand-wringing quotes as:

"I`ve seen patients today who said they stopped taking their Lipitor, their cholesterol-lowering medicine, because they can`t afford it," Dr. King said one recent morning.

"I have patients who have stopped taking their osteoporosis medication."
So what`s the bad news?

The disconnect between America`s steadily declining health and steadily increasing use of prescribed drugs is obvious, and can be found in the article itself, which, while noting that prescribed drugs were down during the first eight months of this year compared to last year, also notes that:

"from 1997 to 2007, the number of prescribed drugs filled had increased 72 percent, to 3.8 billion last year. In the same period, the average number of prescribed drugs filled by each person in this country increased from 8.9 a year in 1997 to 12.6 in 2007."

and

"Overall spending in the United States for prescribed drugs is still the highest in the world, an estimated $286.5 billion last year."

An even more telling illustration that the article failed to address is the fact that despite spending 40-60 percent more than any other industrial country on drugs and healthcare, the United States ranks only 45th in life expectancy and 42nd in rates of infant mortality.

The only hint about whether a decrease in the amount of drug use might not be such a bad thing was the statement by Gerard F. Anderson, a health policy expert at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, that "a lot of people think there there`s probably over-prescribing in the United States."

But then Anderson returned to the mainstream "company" line that for other patients "the prescribed drug is a lifesaver, and they really can`t afford to stop it."

Left unsaid is whether or not the conditions that drugs are considered lifesavers were ones that nature could have treated or prevented more safely, effectively and much less expensively in the first place. Or whether such conditions might have been created by prescribed drug side effects to begin with.

Despite claims such as the one in the article that "Pharmaceutical companies have long been among those arguing that drugs are a cost-effective way to stave off other, higher medical costs", the truth is that prescribed drugs do not cure illness or lead to true wellness, but instead merely manage illness by making the body perform unnaturally - such as suppressing beneficial cholesterol production with statins like Lipitor, blocking stomach acids for patients who have too little stomach acid, and producing artificially weak bones with horrific side effects with osteoporosis drugs like Fosamax.

Over 95% of all prescribed drugs have side effects, many of which are serious and a great many of which lead to other conditions which require more drugs. As noted by such alternate health authorities as Jon Barron and Dr. Joseph Mercola, by the time an average person reaches late middle age they are taking a combination of 15 prescribed and over the counter drugs daily, which increase to up to 25-30 medications as a senior citizen. When your only marketplace is the human body, it is a great model for profits but a horrible one for health or humanity. And, as Jon Barron aptly noted in his book "The Miracle Doctors", it usually all began with one or two conditions that could have been treated safely and effectively by nature.

In an economy that is rapidly taking a downward turn, it is easy to see how people feel they cannot afford costly medications for the sake of their pocketbooks and financial survival. If the truth were told, people would also know that they cannot afford those same drugs for the sake of their health and mortal survival as well. Neither can our virtually bankrupt nation afford a health care solution which rewards the greed and ineffectiveness of drugs that manage illness and lead to more drugs and illness in a never ending cycle.

It is time to demand the truth and to have true health freedom. Only by returning to the nature-first approach to treatment and prevention that has served mankind for over 6000 years will we break the mainstream stranglehold on our health and freedoms by a system that places profits over humanity.

Live long, live healthy, live happy!

Tony Isaacs

"In health there is freedom. Health is the first of all liberties."
- Henri-Frederic Amiel 1828-1881

"Nature alone can cure disease. Doctors cannot heal. They can only direct the sufferer back to the pathways of health. Nature alone can create, and healing is re-creation."
- Dr. Willaim S. Sadler

"Unless the doctor of today becomes the dietitian of tomorrow, the dietitian of today will become the doctor of tomorrow."
- Dr. Alexis Carrol (Famous Biological Scientist and head of the Rockefeller Institute)

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