One Pill Makes You Larger and One Pill Makes You Small...

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I don't like taking medicine when I am sick, only because I'm lazy and can't be bothered, and often I feel that you get better just as quickly without. On the other hand, I also believe with all of my heart that, in terms of homeopathic medicines, "all-natural" means "doesn't work". If I am going to take medicine, I want it to be as least natural as possible.

How do you feel about medication?

-- Kymm (hedgehog@hedgehog.net), September 18, 2000

Answers

It's funny, but over the last year or two I've been more reluctant to take non-prescription medications like Tylenol or aspirin, unless blinded with pain; I just don't want to put that stuff in my body unless I absolutely have to. Fortunately, my health has been good enough that I haven't had to take anything more serious than that.

/Robert

-- Robert (rbdimmick@earthlink.net), September 18, 2000.


Never. I never put drugs in my body, except for recreational use. I much prefer lumpy mashed potatoes. If I do get sick, which I rarely do, I can always get well, too. It just works that way.

-- jojobo (bobojojo@earthlink.net), September 18, 2000.

I've spent my life not taking even an aspirin unless I was at my so called death door. Always preferred to ride things out. Then got bitten by the poisonous brown recluse spider bite and I became a pill popper - yuk. Truly believe that has messed up my immune system and makes me more prone to illness now - hence came down with Congested Heart Failure this past July and of course, on more meds. Daily I wonder if this was brought on by my meds for the spider bite or if it played a roll in my CHF, will never know.

-- a.j. quinn (quinn30290@aol.com), September 18, 2000.

I take antibiotics for chronic UTI's, but otherwise I mostly stay away from medicines. I take alka-seltzer for bad headaches, but I usually let colds, flus, and stomach ailments run their course. I have taken cold medicines in the past, and I found that they generally just help you function for a short time, then they wear off and you feel just as bad, if not wors

-- Catherine (catcoicrit@earthlink.net), September 18, 2000.

I grew up with migraines, so I learned to take what I could and hope to heck I could keep it down. I get very few migraines now (and am more grateful for that than just about anything in my entire life, let me tell you), but I am not adverse to knocking down a regular headache as quickly as I can with ibuprofen, because even those headaches often drive me to nausea, and once that happens, the day is shot. If I can't eat something, I can't feel better. And I simply spent too many days in agony during the first 20 years of my life to not employ whatever legal methods I can to stop my pain now.

As for cold medicines, I really didn't bother with them until a couple of years ago. I don't get that many colds, anyway, but lately I've found that Dayquil or a generic is helpful in getting me through work.

-- Charlie (jovi775@yahoo.com), September 19, 2000.



I like taking other people's prescription medications for pain, especially if I'm not in any pain - because then you just feel really good.

-- Bart Tangredi (Bart565@cs.com), September 19, 2000.

I grew up with this ascetic New England attitude toward medicine: if you take it, you'll get addicted and the germ will evolve to get stronger, so just learn to live with the pain, baby, it makes you stronger. It's no accident that the Christian Science movement came from Boston.

Now I'm getting wimpy in my old age and if I need painkillers or germkillers, I go ahead and take them before I'm already knocked flat. The road to hell is opening up before me.

-- Diana (diana@alum.mit.edu), September 19, 2000.


I believe in better living through chemical intervention. :o)

Gimme them drugs.

Tracey

-- Tracey (icemouse@mdvl.net), September 19, 2000.


I'm right with Catherine on cold medicine, I have found that it just makes the cold last longer, because you take it and you feel better, but all it does is postpone the cold, because when you stop taking it, the cold comes back and runs its course.

-- Kymm (kymmz1@yahoo.com), September 19, 2000.

I think cold medicines were invented just to keep people going to work every single day. Why take a couple of days off work and sleep and get better when you can medicate yourself to work all day and be miserable all evening?

-- Catherine (catcoicrit@earthlink.net), September 19, 2000.


I don't know if anyone has actually checked this out, but some evolutionary biologists believe that most cold symptoms actually serve a useful purpose in healing (such as the fact that a high fever makes the blood less habitable for germs). At any rate, cold medicines don't even purport to make you better faster, they're just designed to make you more comfortable during the time you're sick.

I usually don't take cold medicine unless I'm dying or something, but I pop ibuprofen like candy for my various aches and pains.

As for homeopathic medicine, I think a lot of them do work, but the problem is that these remedies usually haven't been rigorously tested for appropriate doasge, side effects and drug interactions, and the formulations often vary among manufacturers.

-- Jennifer Wade (jenwade@earthlink.net), September 19, 2000.


Ugh. Brown recluse spider. That is ghastly. Did your bite ever heal?

I take something when I don't feel well. Especially when I get bronchitis, because the hacking cough keeps me awake and miserable and unable to get any rest, which, in turn, makes the cough worse and ensures that I won't be able to hit a high C for six months. That's when I run to the doctor and beg for whatever will nuke that thing.

There are other medications I simply couldn't live (or love) without, despite their detractors, who insist that those of us who take them are disrupting our natural processes. I'll spare you the details.



-- Catriona (catri696@purpleturtle.com), September 19, 2000.


Speaking as a fellow sickie, I take everything I'll take everything I can get my hands on, currently.

I've been diagnosed with "the viral crud" since two thursdays ago. This past saturday I went to the doctor because it had migrated into a sinus infection. I was then diagnosed (almost certainly falsely) with asthma at the same time. It's just a bad case of bronchitis, and my ears both feel full of cotton.

I'm on an antibiotic now, but believe me when I tell you that tonight is going to include a trip to the store for the most powerful cough syrup they've got, baby.

Jas

-- Jason Packer (jpacker@us.ibm.com), September 20, 2000.


i take cold medicine at night, cause i figure that the sleep i'll lose if i don't will just keep me from getting better longer.

-- nicole (nicolemrw@go.com), September 21, 2000.

Aside from the diabetes, I hardly ever get sick (or perhaps it's because of the diabetes... I eat much healther than I did before, and I'm getting tons more exercise. So, aside from the 'incurably fatal' part of it, diabetes might be the best thing that ever happened to my health.) So, when I do get sick, it's a special occasion. Nuke me, baby; I want morphine!

-- Colin (ethilrist@prodigy.net), September 21, 2000.


Catriona - thanks for asking about my brown recluse spider bite. It's healed as well as it's going to. It took l 1/2years to get this far, my foot does swell if I do any major walking and of course, foot will never win a beauty contest now as I was bit on the top of my left foot and the scars aren't pretty, but so grateful to have my foot.

-- a.j.quinn (quinn30290@aol.com), September 21, 2000.

I don't take cold medications because, like Jen Wade says, fever does a body good. Also, I've heard that germs leave your body packed into mucus, so decongestants that dry you up actually keep the germs racing around your system reproducing and making you miserable longer. Also, I hate people who are STEALTH SICK, that go around touching doorknobs and exhaling into your airspace when they are crawling with viruses, but you can't tell because their nose isn't red and slimy.

However, for menstrual cramps and migraines, pass the codeine.

-- Kim Rollins (kimrollins@yahoo.com), September 26, 2000.


Well, one thing I know, that even small pain can destroy (and it does destroy) your nervous system, and nervous system cannot be recovered. I take medicine as soon as i have any pain. And for those who like be in pain but not take medicine -- be careful, it may lead to much greater health problems than simple head-ache. My point is, by keeping our bodies away from the medicine we think that we protecting ourselves, but in fact we open doors to major health problems.

Yes, every medicine has its own side efects, and it is not a restricted information. Any one who wants to know about side efects, go ahead, no one will hide it from you. And believe me the day you will know about the major health problems that can accure, even because of simple pain, you will be glad to accept those small side efects from the medicine. And by accepting the medicine you will save yourselves, from the head-ache that will accure much often because of your foolish mind, that advised you not to take medicine.

-- Sergey (sergious_net@msn.com), December 24, 2003.


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