Obesity and Prescription Drugs

Today I saw an article about America's Top 10 most medicated states and I decided to research what the top 10 fattest states might be. According to the most recent info I could find, the findings were very similar:

10 Most Medicated States:
1. West Virginia
2. Alabama
3. South Carolina
4. Tennessee
5. Arkansas
6. Missouri
7. Kentucky
8. Louisiana
9. Mississippi
10. Iowa

10 Fattest States
1. Mississippi
2. Alabama
3. West Virginia
4. Tennessee
5. South Carolina
6. Oklahoma
7. Kentucky
8. Louisiana
9. Michigan
10. Arkansas/Ohio

The top 3 drugs sold last year were:

Lipitor- a cholesterol control drug
Nexium- an acid reflux drug
Plavix- an anti-platelet drug to prevent strokes and heart attacks

The obvious thing that this comparison shows is that obesity and lifestyle-related health problems are the motivation for most of this prescription use. But more importantly, it seems to indicate that these things are not working!

With the rampant prescription use in this country, we should be in better health over the years if these pills do what they say they are going to do. Certainly, that is how doctors prescribe them. As someone who is watching so many of my family members take part in the use of these dangerous drugs (I feel that I can pretty freely call them dangerous considering an anti-platelet drug was listed as one of the causes of death on my dad's death certificate), I can say with confidence that they are not helping.

The problem is, the average American has NO CLUE how to eat a healthy well-rounded, disease-preventative diet. And it's not entirely our fault. Just like the beauty industry, we have companies and organizations telling us the wrong things. We are being told that refined grain products, conventional meat, and dairy are all acceptable foods to eat freely. And the greatest lie we're being told is that processed, packaged, and convenience foods are foods at all.

So just as consumers need to be ruthlessly savvy about lipstick ingredients, so too do we need to be about our food. And the same rules apply. If it isn't 100% whole food that readily grows or exists in nature and is free of all synthetics, additives, isolates, fortifiers, etc., then it is not serving our health. Real food is true medicine.