Polypharmacy highlights the problem with conventional medicine

Harriet Pike’s recent article in The Pharmaceutical Journal, ‘Deprescribing: the fightback against polypharmacy has begun’, points to a clear problem relating to conventional medicine. The reductionist approach associated with this type of medicine lends itself to polypharmacy. Initially, a doctor will monitor a patient’s progress through life by controlling blood pressure, cholesterol, sugar and so on. Unfortunately, this control is generally drug managed.

By the time this patient reaches the age of around 60 years, he can experience other symptoms, such as those relating to his digestive or skeletal system. Again, more drug intervention is involved, resulting in a total daily intake of between 6 and 12 different drugs. This happens at a time of life when the body is least able to assimilate or eliminate drugs; i.e. the liver and kidneys are no longer working at optimal efficiency. Given time, each drug will produce pathology in the same way that smoking tobacco will initially produce functional change, but after decades will produce tissue change in the arteries. This insidious development will not always be recognised by the doctor who, instead of abandoning this drug, will often attempt to save the situation by administering another counteracting drug.

Needless to say, the one person who suffers in this situation is the patient. We now need a vitalistic and holistic approach to our health problems, rather than a drug disease superimposed on top of a natural disease.

Alexander Black, homeopath, Lanarkshire