To be objective & fair, I have used Tylenol or Acetaminophen, Flexeril or Cyclobenzaprine, & prescribed antibiotics to treat sinus infection, an eye infection, took a benzodiazepine before having LASIK to help me calm down since I was really nervous about it. I took metformin & lisinopril regularly to lower my blood sugar & HbA1c & blood pressure, but then embraced lifestyle health improvements such as regular exercises, drinking more water, removing alcohol from my life, waking up earlier at the same time every day, going for regular walks, hiking regularly, doing strength training, up regulating proteins & fats in my diet, & eating more real whole natural food & less industrial ultra processed foods.
Oddly at 173 lbs. I am as heavy as I have ever been, but more muscular, stronger, faster, more endurance, and feel better all the time now, even better than I did at 30 years of age 11 years ago. I keep the metformin & lisinopril as backups on the shelf if my health drifts from bad diet choices for a moment as sometimes I take a radical departure to my old ways & make butter coconut mochi, rice crispy treats, ice-cream or similar yummy dessert items at home from scratch :) I keep track of my blood glucose using finger prick blood drop into test strip inserted into a glucometer electronic blood glucose testing device that operates on a 2032 three volt coin cell battery like the kind installed to power back up the CMOS chip on a motherboard of a computer.
Oh & Meg & I take a multi-B & multi-vitamin, GABA to calm down, melatonin at bedtime, & keep a glass of water next to our bed since we often wakeup to go pee in the middle of the night & are also thirsty, a consequence of being super active & more easily dehydrated, thought I also cut back on the amount of coffee I drink, in ebbs & flows up & down regulating how many grams of coffee beans I allow myself daily :) I was trained & think like a scientist and my digital gram scale one of my favorite devices.
I often use Vioxx as an example because Merck the maker knew about how it will kill tens of thousands of people with heart problems from exposure to Vioxx, entirely disclosed in internal executive emails within Merck 5 years before Vioxx went into mass production. Paying out more than $10.1 Billion in total losses, Merck ended up making more than $25 billion in profits overall on Vioxx sales, even after paying out all the claims & penalties & net damages & would have made $35 billion without compensating families of the victims of Vioxx poisoning.
The odd thing about Vioxx that it was incredibly effective as an NSAID at reducing pain & inflammation by selectively inhibiting the COX2 enzyme system. In some individuals that caused erosion of their mitral valves, though ibuprofen used in excess can do the same thing at higher dosing schedules of in common language if you take too much ibuprofen per day to many days in a row.
Now for the startling truth, its diet of excess sugar, refined starches & all kinds of carbohydrates, not enough fresh home cooked meals made of real food, since that requires more time an effort & in many households mom & dad both have to work because housing & fuel & food costs a lot more now while the value of the US dollar also reduced progressively weaker since 1913 & really bad after 1973 when Nixon issued an emergency stop to the Dollar Gold Standard, which was to benefit his friends mostly, so typical as a kind of nepotism or corruption.
I believe corruption present in all businesses & governments in every country at some level because every person contains a flaw that can bloom into narcissism or selfish greedy thinking if under the right circumstances with the right motivations & possibly access to funds when no one else watching or a liability for abuse of misappropriated funds that went missing to the tune of $5 trillion that the US Federal Government has no idea where it went, its entirely MIA or missing in action. It probably went up the noses of so many Federal Agency people who snort cocaine because their useless busywork Federal Program recently deleted by DOGE was getting paid for effectively doing nothing.
If you go to a grocery store or supermarket in the USA, you will find uninterrupted yearlong access to oranges or fruits that are out of season. Did you know that obesity rates are up to 45% of the US Population now, including many children incredibly. Not just America either, in India & China & Australia & New Zealand & most other countries except Japan which has the lowest rates of obesity at less than 5% in part because of their Metabo law about waste size & diet of more lower cost real veggies, sea food, fermented food, the Diet of Japan consists mostly of healthy foods, even in School where parents take pride in making real home cooked like dishes for school meals, then the Children in Japan learn personal accountability by having to clean up after themselves since no public Japanese schools employ a janitor.
In Japan more people walk & move more often, which raises their metabolic rate so they can burn off the rice carbs in their diet & the Omega 3 rich seafood entirely anti-inflammatory fats, & they get more minerals & vitamins from the vegetables & fruits & berries & nuts included in their meals. In essence the eat more real whole natural food in Japan & have a more balance diet to activity level & are less sedentary even in old ages & many never retire or retire when they are in their 80s and often live to be 100 or more.
The society in Japan takes better care of its people even as they age as the population of Japan consists mostly of people over the age of 60 now, or an aging population where fewer young fertile couples have children or their population pyramid inverted or upside down, which is problematic long term but also has immediate problems as known locally within Japan as The Lost Generations, since around 2003 real estate so expensive that people in Japan are forced to live in a small room at their parents' house well into adulthood & feel embarrassed by this & often work online & are afraid of being judged so they never go out & live a boring lonely isolated existence that is really disturbing & sad & hard to fix.
Nearly all countries where soda pop or sugar sweetened beverages often also sweetened with HFCS or high fructose corn syrup, say Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disorder. That is correct, many teens in many countries have swollen disrupted liver function from drinking too much soda rich with sugar & devoid of vitamins or minerals. They would be better off drinking water or tea or coffee.
Meg & I do not even like soda, & there are so many options of zero sugar flavored beverages in cans & bottles now, even zero beer with low or no alcohol, or low ABV wine, and of course cold brewed hand ground coffee beans tastes amazing :) Green tea can taste amazing if you brew it at 175 F for 1 min, then rebrew it a few more times :) You can drink coffee & tea with nothing added :) In many locals water is dangerous to drink, so filtering it then boiling it before making coffee or tea helps a lot. One of my most popular blog posting ever was about the Good, the Bad & the Ugly of Boiling Water.
Now they want to have you talk to your doctor about Ozempic, the latest anti-diabetic injection pen, so they want you to talk to your doctor about something you saw in one of their ads featuring odd people dancing around like children doing strange things without teaching you one fact of any kind about the drug or how it works or what it does in your body, but the people in the video are smiling like they just won a lottery, & are euphoric & look deranged or confused. About half the people I work with take Ozempic shots.
I think the pharmaceutical commercials are the funniest thing I have ever seen, but they are also annoying because all they do is put the brand name word in someone's mind so they next time they are at a doctor's appointment they ask their doctor about this drug name, when the doctor only has about 10 minutes with them, & doesn't really know very much about the patient or the drug or the conditions for which the drug is prescribed to treat & has little or no idea about how to cure the disorder of the patient with diet & exercise or healthy lifestyle changes.