All Medicines Are Poisons

Dictionary.com defines "poison" as:

1. a substance with an inherent property that tends to destroy life or impair health
2. any variety of alcoholic liquor

Dictionary.com defines "drug" as:

1. a chemical substance used in treatment, cure, prevention, or diagnosis of disease or used to otherwise enhance physical or mental well-being
2. any article, other than food, intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of humans or other animals

You can see how these 2 can certainly be interchangeable when speaking of various substances.  It's important to know that ANYTHING that is not classified as a food, that you put into your body, is considered a drug and a poison.  This means that something as simple as caffeine is considered to be a drug/poison.  Now, most of us think of something that is going to kill us when we think of the word poison.  I think the film industry is responsible for that misconception, because you can clearly see from the definition that it is not necessarily something that causes death.  It is simply something that impairs health or destroys life.

So, let's stick with the caffeine example for a minute before I get to main reason for this post.  Caffeine is the most widely used "drug" in the United States.  It is not considered a food because it has no nutritional value.  It is considered a drug because it alters various biological and physiological processes in your body.  It falls under the category of "poison" for the same reasons, including the fact that you can have side-effects from caffeine.  Side-effects are the unwanted characteristics of a drug that come along with the wanted benefits of the same substance.  When you ingest caffeine, you want to be alert, energetic, and awake, and it does just that.  However, caffeine also can cause headaches, rapid heart beat, nervousness, insomnia, and much more.  Those would be the side-effects.  Do you understand the difference?  When you eat an apple, you get the full nutritional benefits, but it doesn't come with any side-effects.  Please note here that allergies are NOT considered side effects.  So if you're allergic to peanuts, and you eat one, the cascade of unwanted events you will experience are not side effects, it's just your immune system going haywire.

Why am I talking so much about this?  Well because, in some of my previous posts, I've mentioned various diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, strokes, etc.  All of these diseases are treated with some sort of medication.  All of the medication used to treat these diseases (or any disease) will help to alleviate the effects that the disease is having on you, but they also ALL come with their own side-effects.  It's absolutely true.  Every single medicine out there has some sort of potential side effect.  And the medicines that treat the diseases I've mentioned above are usually taken for the rest of one's life.  Most of the effects of these medications start with the liver.  In case you didn't know, one of the main functions of the liver is to detoxify the blood.  As you know, anything put into your body goes into the bloodstream and thus to the liver.  From a single dose of Tylenol for a headache to a regular regimen of Lipitor to a night of binge drinking in a bar, the liver goes right to work to remove that "poison" from your system.  Obviously, over the course of several years, your liver is going to be quite overworked, especially when it comes to alcohol.  Next to the liver, the kidneys are hit pretty hard too.  Whatever the liver removes from the blood is sent to the kidneys so that it can be dumped into the bladder in order to be excreted.  Those are the two main organs affected.  Of course, side effects can affect any part of the body, including the brain, heart, lungs, muscles, bones, etc.

My message to you is to start making the changes necessary NOW to improve your diet and increase your physical activity so that you will lose unnecessary weight.  Obesity is a major risk factor for many diseases, especially the ones mentioned above.  Simply losing 10 lbs of body fat can cut your risk for developing some of this disease IN HALF or even reverse the effects of some of them!  Isn't that an amazing thing to know?

I know that eating all of your favorite sugary, fatty, fried, greasy, oily foods tastes soooo good, but is it really worth it to have a free-for-all with that stuff and suffer the annoying and painful and sometimes deadly consequences later on in life?  I don't think so.  Besides, do you really want to have to be responsible for taking 20 pills or more a day just to keep a stupid disease (that you shouldn't have) at bay?

Get healthy.  Eat right.  Exercise.  Lose Weight.  And you WON'T need to depend on poisons to keep you alive!