I seem to have identified, throughout my life, two quite distinct tribes of people, and I wondered what insights might be found here.
They are essentially the tribes who default towards or away from medicine.
What do I mean? A few people that I know—and I have anecdotal evidence from others that they experience the same—seem to be on all sorts of medication pretty much all the time. There's one guy I know who is surfing stimulants and depressants throughout the day to keep awake and then hopefully sleep. There's one who suffers acid reflux and rather than look at his diet he continues to eat greasy burgers and spicy curry, but takes pills to deal with his condition.
Then there are those (myself included) who tend to keep away from medicine as much as possible, looking first towards diet, exercise, fresh air, social contentment and other factors before seeking the 'magic pill'. If I have a headache I'll give it time... I'll try eating something, try some deep breathing and only if it's persistent over more than half a day I might take a tablet.
It makes me wonder if I am coming from a place of privilege—I really don't have that many complaints (or if I do, I live with them until I've tried losing weight, giving up alcohol, taking up yoga first – three things that I have done to deal with back problems, sleep issues and weakness)—or if health is generally available to almost everyone.
Am I missing something? Could most of the world be pretty healthy if they defaulted to examining their habits before they take a trip to their general practitioner? What are your thoughts?
my folks are village people so I was raised worshiping the almighty tea and have a strong aversion to taking painkillers.
That being said, despite my relatively holistic lifestyle, I sleep poorly and am in and out of hospitals for various ailments, all of which I'm prescribed some treatment or other that I unwillingly take.
So I think, at least for me, there's a middle ground to be struck. Maybe I should try sleeping pills, given that all other natural remedies haven't worked.
Oh dude I relate to this so much.
I've seen friends and family use and abuse drugs and medicines instead of fixing the root cause.
For instance one of my neighbours started to use antibiotics for even the weakest of colds. He started on this over use of antibiotics from a very young age that now as a young adult his body has developed resistance to antibiotics. He's forced to use significantly higher dosages to see any effects at all and this has negatively affected his quality of life.
My dad being a rational man taught me a cautious appreciation for modern medicine and I'm glad that my body is relatively healthy and thankfully not over reliant or depended on medicine.
Lifestyle changes do drastically improve one's life and help mitigate most health issues.
One just needs to have enough presence of mind to accept help when its needed and not go down rabbitholes of quack medicine and extreme "bio-hacking"
That last paragraph is a very good point. And I'm absolutely not saying doctors and medicine don't have a place - I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for a timely injection of epinephrine when I was ten years old... but for sure, medicine (in my world view) is to be used sparingly and only when necessary.