Video: Anti-Aging Health & Prescription Medications

Hi, Dr. Minkoff here.
We’ve been talking about anti-aging

and I want to now bring in another part of this which has to do with prescription medication.

You know we have this attitude in America that it has to be now and the result has to be right away and that health is something that you can snap your fingers and get.

You can take a pill, you can take a hormone, you can take a this, you can take a that.

The basics of lifestyle are ignored and I have a headache so I’m gonna take a drug.

I have a pain in my shoulder so I’m gonna take a drug.

I’ve got a little bit of nausea so I’m gonna take a drug.

And there’s a big downside to this and the downside is that drugs are poisons

and these poisons are gonna wreck your chances for aging long and aging well.

So I want to talk about this a little bit cause it’s a huge, is a huge problem and

and it’s it’s it’s mostly Americans that feel this way. If you go to Europe

their patients on health and what to do to achieve health, is much much different.

I’ve had European patients who said well, I say your testosterone is a little bit low

and they say, you know I know here
in America you give everybody hormones

but what is it that’s holding my testosterone
down or it’s not getting it up

and I said well there’s this and this and this
and this and they say well how long will it take?

I said well it might take six months to
a year and they say well that’s fine.

just like with complete
acceptance to that idea.

Where the average American patient wouldn’t feel that way at all.

Now here’s the point and I think this is just an amazing thing.

How many prescription drugs are
you taking? Like list them.

Okay, and I consider prescription drugs even over-the-counter drugs.

If you’re taking an antihistamine or acid blocker or something like this, these are actually ex-prescription drugs, almost all of them.

Only one in 13 people who are 65 or over, don’t take any regular prescription drugs.

That means that 12 out of 13 people who are 65 or over are on a prescription drug, at least one.

It’s actually worse than that.

Fifty percent of people who are 65, take five or more prescription drugs.

Okay. So you drive down the street and you have a 65 year old driving a car

and they’re under the influence of five or more prescription drugs.

And you know if you look in the
Physician’s Desk Reference at

diabetic meds, cholesterol
meds, arthritis meds,

these kinds of things that people are taking and you look under mental, emotional, psychological effects,
you will find that they all do that,

they all do that. They’re
basically cell poisons

and they affect people, they affect their awareness,
their perception, their their reaction time.

And we live here in Florida so there’s a lot of people over 65 and they’re, 50% of them are
on five or more drugs.

Now that, this is amazing because I used to be an emergency room physician

and many of the people who come to emergency rooms are people who are in nursing homes.

And so you would get a 75 year-old from a nursing home coming in in an ambulance,
who was semi-conscious

and the complaint written was, she just isn’t herself, she’s not quite with it and she’s complaining of a bellyache.

And you get this person
in the emergency room.

And then you get their list of medicines

and the average person in that
emergency room that I, that I worked in

who was coming from a nursing home wasn’t on just greater than five prescription drugs, they were on an average
of 12 prescription drugs.

Okay, because they needed
something for sleep and they needed something for pain and the duh duh duh duh duh, okay.

So, we had a computer in the emergency room where you could plug in the drugs and then the computer would give you what would be the interactions of those drugs and what were the potential side effects of those drugs.

But you know the computer if you put in more than three drugs, it would go tilt.

It couldn’t tell what would happen with more than three drugs let alone twelve drugs or five drugs.

Who knows what this poor person’s bellyache and lowered state of awareness was.

My thing usually was, okay we’re
gonna bring him to the hospital,

we’re gonna take them off their
drugs, they’re gonna be monitored.

If they actually had to have something for their blood pressure or something else,
we’re gonna deconstipate them because many drugs cause constipation.

We’re gonna give them fluids and many times a lot of them would just wake up.

It was drug interactions that were causing them to be ill and have the problems
that they were having.

So if you want to live a long time,
stay away from drugs,

doesn’t mean that sometimes
they’re not necessary an emergency

or you may have a problem that needs temporary,
a temporary solution which is a drug

but most of the time they’re way way overdone and they’re not really even necessary.

So there’s this cascading side-effects.

One drug combats the side
effects of another drug.

So you take a drug and now you’ve got a little bit of nausea, so then you take another drug

and then the combination of those two drugs give you some arthralgias or some muscle pain, well then you’re gonna
take another drug.

And then you feel a little bit tired because now you’re on three drugs

and now you take something
to like perk you up, okay.

It’s just endless and it’s crazy.

So there’s side effects and then drug interactions.

So the real question is, is there something else that would work better and safer and more reliably
with less risk to you? That’s the real question and in my mind it isn’t even a question.

Bodies have problems because most of the time they’re deficient in a nutrient
or they’re toxic with something in the environment.

And if you look at it from this way,
you can often solve the problem

without resorting to a medication.

Could the condition respond to a better diet, exercise and better supplementation?
And the answer is almost always yes.

My first action with a new patient who usually comes to my office with complex symptoms

of long duration and they’re quite sick,

most of them respond within six weeks to

an organic Paleo diet, lots of water, make sure that they have a bowel movement every day.

I might use magnesium as a laxative or something natural.
Okay, basic things.

Get 20 minutes of sunshine every day

and walk for 15 or 20 minutes every
day, it’s my basic prescription.

And then a few supplements.

I’m gonna put them on a multivitamin, it’s called BodyHealth Complete.

I’m gonna put them on fish oil, I’m gonna put them on some magnesium, I’m gonna put them on PerfectAmino amino acids and I’m gonna put them on a probiotic.

And at 6 weeks at a rechecked visit almost everybody’s feeling better.

Their intestine feels better, they’re constipation’s better, they’re bloating’s better, their energy’s
better and their sleep’s better.

Usually it’s a neglect of basic things that causes people to be sick.

It might be excess of bad things.

They’re drinking too much, they’re not sleeping enough, ok.

They’re not getting any exercise, they’re just way too stressed out.

These are all modifiable

and drugs don’t actually do
anything for those things

except give you another side effect.

So there’s plenty of physicians around who do this stuff and who can help you,

but my main point is, the next time you go to the doctor

and you get a prescription
written, I would think twice.

Fix up your diet, make sure you’re drinking plenty of fluids, get some sleep, handle your environment, make sure you’re going to the bathroom and voila, you’ll feel better.

Okay, hope this helps.