When I was a kid and got sick, I remember my mother made me toast, tea with honey, and put cool compresses on my forehead to bring down my fever. I would stay in bed with my TV tray and watch The Electric Company or Romper Room while breathing in the steam from the humidifier in the corner of the room. There was no panic or need to rush me to the Emergency Room. I spent a couple of days out of school and then got better. And life went on as usual. The ’80s were such a simpler time, right?
Nowadays, a case of the sniffles puts people into a panic and sends them straight into their pediatrician’s office demanding a prescription for antibiotics. Plying your kid with Motrin or Tylenol for a slight fever has become standard operating procedure. Never mind that a fever under 102 is actually beneficial to the body to help fight off the virus that is making you sick in the first place.
We have become a society that has forgotten how to treat illnesses without running to the ER or loading up with OTC or prescription medication to suppress every aspect of our immune system, which only drives the disease further into our bodies and keeps us sicker longer.
It’s not 1980 anymore; it’s 2013. We’re supposed to be healthier than at any other time in history. It’s been 30 years since I was that little girl eating toast and drinking honey in her tea. ARE we healthier now? “Modern medicine” was supposed to be so advanced by this time that all diseases should be curable. We’ve poured billions of dollars into research study upon research study with the promise of newly approved drugs that will make us healthier, happier and live extraordinary lives. At least that’s what the commercials tell me. Take this pill and you’ll be doing Tai Chi or lying in a bathtub overlooking a glorious sunset with your mate, who looks like George Clooney and just drove in with his pickup truck after a long day of roping cattle and just took an ED drug, so he’s ready for a good time! Um, yeah right.
Look around. Look at the people in your family, your neighbors, your work associates. Are they healthier? Are their kids healthier? Childhood obesity is at an all-time high. Women today have a 1 in 8 chance of developing breast cancer during their lifetime. One in 74 men and women will be diagnosed with leukemia during their lifetime. And the real shocker, 1 in 2 men and women will be diagnosed with some type of cancer during their lifetime.
And that’s just cancer. The statistics for heart disease are just as sobering. More than half of all men and women over the age of 45 will develop heart disease in their lifetime, according to a new health risk analysis.
What about vaccines? Ah, vaccines. The epitome of health. The greatest medical miracle of our time! Yes, I am being sarcastic. New research finds that vaccinated kids visit hospital emergency rooms more frequently than their unvaccinated counterparts. A new study also finds that these kids are now chronically ill. Don’t forget about the alarming increases in rates of autism, ADHD and developmental disorders. But vaccines don’t cause autism. Except when they do.
So how did we get here? One reason is that we’ve become so brainwashed by the media and the relentless advertising of pharmaceutical medication that we’ve forgotten how to live a healthy lifestyle. Our doctors haven’t helped much in this regard either. They’ve basically become pill pushers too. High cholesterol? Here’s your pill. High blood pressure? Here’s your pill. Can’t sleep? Here’s your pill. The list goes on. No talk of diet or exercise. Just pill after pill. I’ve seen elderly people on 20-30 different prescription medications. Parents would rather put their kids on anti-psychotic medication then take gluten and food coloring out of their kids’ diets as a first-line treatment because diet is “too hard.”
It’s 2013 and there needs to be a fundamental shift in our way of thinking when it comes to health and wellness. Health is not going to come from a pill bottle. We need to get back to that place where having a cold or the flu shouldn’t be considered a reason to go into crisis mode. We’re human. We’re going to get sick. Take charge of your health. Strengthen you immune system. Eat the right foods. Get enough sleep. Slow down. Don’t let the media bully you into injecting toxins into your body in the name of health. Save the trip to the Emergency Room for a true emergency. Most importantly, trust your instincts. Get online and do some research. This is the age of information. Ignorance is no longer an option.
~ Savage
To read more blogs by Savage, Click Here.
After just getting into a ‘stoush’ with my school’s nurse over my son’s absences (he has had a total of 2 viruses but has hit the magical limit of ‘allowed’ days) I was told by a friend why they are so insistent on dr’s notes. The school’s attendance record has bearing on their funding (for our public school anyway) so that is why they insist on a note (and start to harass you about days off). I am sure I have a black mark against my name at the school now for refusing to take my child to a dr when I know that a couple of days’ rest is all he needs. Last time I looked the school is a service provider not the gestapo.
Good for you Catherine!! I feel the same way.
My daughter is eleven. When she was seven she was out of school constantly with sinus issues. They kept pushing me to give up her tonsils. I had read “How to Raise a Healthy Child In Spite of Your Doctor” and resisted. Finally they wore me down and I scheduled. A friend suggested she get tested for allergies. Why did the doctor not suggest this? I then had to INSIST the dr. test her for allergies and turns out she was severely allergic to dust mites and we lived in an apt. with wall to wall carpet. We moved, problem solved. Taught me to distrust doctors a lot.
I don’t know if all schools require a doctor’s not when a child is out for three days in a row, but her school does. I was appalled. who has the money, and why am I going to expose her to God knows what when she has a simple cold or fever? I found out the parents simply send the mildly sick kid to school on the third day, or the first day when they know the child is getting sick and the nurse can send them home (so it doesn’t count towards the three days.) Yes, it is horrible, and means ALL the kids are going to get the cold, but try to talk to the nurse about common sense solutions. No. It’s policy. THIS is why you have all the constant running to the doctor, partly. It’s infuriating. The expense, the exposure to sick kids, the exposing everyone else to yours. The school forces this. Why? I can’t imagine, but someone should do an expose. Maybe the schools are somehow getting something out of all these forcible doctor visits.
My kid had a temp of 99 and the nurse said I had better go to the doctor before it “turned into something” and by the way, “get those tonsils looked at.” Give me a break. Meanwhile, our school nurse is in her sixties so she should know better.
Amen and amen!
I love the “What did the Dr. say?” question, too. Sometimes I fib and say I called and talked to a nurse . . . more often I just push fluids and Vit C and wait it out (whatever it might be).
If I always listened to my Dr., I wouldn’t have pushed for more than a year to get my son evaluated for Autism. Now that we have an official diagnosis we can get to work helping him!
“What did the Dr. say?” Sometimes I have to say, “Who cares?”
Ha….same for me, an “80’s” survivor! I often think the same thing when my sister (8 yrs younger) calls to inform me every 3 months that she has yet, ANOTHER infection that she called her DR. for and got a script for an antibiotic, same for my niece! I tell her all the time how it is not good for her, blah…blah….UGH!
Did i just hear someone pouring “homemade” chicken soup into a bowl?……..oh….i must have dreamt that!:)
Pingback: Flu vaccines! | fighting autism and the rest of the world
Bravo Stephanie – could not have put it better myself.
For those who want the low down on fevers this may be of help:
http://www.homeopathyworld.com/blog/homeopathy-and-fever/
Hippocrates said “Give me a fever and I can cure the child.”
We suppress them at our children’s peril.
Best wishes
Mary
Mama Nature’s no fool. Fevers over 102 are beneficial, too. The immune system does what it needs to detox you – to bring you back to wellness – and the symptoms are its means.
Well said shawn, the infection is undoing or removing all the accumulated crap that we ingested in the previous months/years before. It’s a shame people believe they are better off interfering with this healing response.
“Never mind that a fever under 102 is actually beneficial to the body to help fight off the virus that is making you sick in the first.” I get crazy looks when I share the same info about fevers. I don’t even talk about “loading up with OTC or prescription medication to suppress every aspect of our immune system, which only drives the disease further into our bodies and keeps us sicker longer” for fear I might be completely shunned! Let the shunning begin!
I remember being in 7th grade and getting chicken pox. my mom took me to the doctor just to confirm it and i was in my room resting. we had friends visit and i thought at the time they were just coming to say hi, but found out later it was so they could get it to. i rested, put socks on my hands and got to watch tv in my room. it wasnt’ bad, i recovered quickly. it shocks me that they have a vaccine for this now. and that it is now causing shingles in the younger population. you don’t mess with nature. she will come back to bite you. the more vaccines and pills there are, the more diseases and illnesses seem to happen. when will people realize that there isn’t a quick fix for things. let your body do what it was meant to do. heal and be stronger
Brings a tear to my eye how far we hav fallen… How its taking a major punch, like child chronic illness, for the demise of natuality ( if that’s a word) to be revisited
People have been brainwashed into believing only a doctor has the ability or the right to make health decisions. Parents have handed their power to someone else. They no longer have a clue how the handle, much less treat a sick child. In a way, we are told (by the media, doctors, even employers) that a child becoming ill bad and the fault of the parents. If you don’t vaccinate and your kids gets sick, you should have. If you did vaccinate, your genes are just messed up.
Oh my, well said and AMEN!
Every word absolutely true. A pill or a needle is not going to fix us and we need to become responsible for our own health and that of our children again.
100% right on!
Amen to that
Awesome, awesome, awesome post!!!
When my 17 month has congestion/cough the first thing out of everyones mouth is “what did the dr say?” My answer is, “I have no clue what she’d say, we don’t go to the dr unless seriously neccessary.” What is it with people?
So true Stephanie! I don’t run to the doctor every time my son has a cough or sneezes and the judgments begin IMMEDIATELY. I don’t remember my mother taking me to the doctor each time I did it as a kid. Yet somehow I am expected to camp out at the pediatricians office and stuff all types of meds down my kids throat “to make him better.” What happened to the days of home remedies, rest, good food? GREAT post!