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I have hundreds of Xanax saved up (.5mg apiece) for "Plan Z" (when every other plan has been exhausted).  Lost my job recently (due to my inability to stand for bullshit, thus mouthing-off to my supervisor when they were microscoping me too much), and if I don't find one by Aug. 1st — then my whole stash, washed down with a couple beers, is guaranteed to work.  That date, is the day of my older brother's 60th birthday (the one who was always trying to kill me in my early youth, and ended up becoming an Eagle Scout).  I won't have a suicide note as such, only some brief thing like, "Congratulations on your 60th, you finally killed me."  Just so he feels crappy the rest of his life.

I've been so turned off by the bickering and the personal attacks on this site that I'm done interacting with people, especially when I'm attacked for trying to protect the site from child pornography.  That's just unacceptable.  But I started this series of health related discussions to raise awareness of what i feel are important issues for all of us, in the hopes that I can help aid other gay men in our community live better lives.  Probably nobody reads these things, but i'm thinking of writing a book on healthy living and i figure that it might help to lay my thoughts out here and practice my writing skills here.  So here we go..

A lot of important health related assessments and decisions take place in front of the bathroom mirror in the morning.  We look at the person staring back at us and we form an opinion of ourselves that help determine our self respect and self esteem, which of course fuels our mood and personal interactions with others.  We do important grooming and dental hygiene, making decisions whether we will floss our teeth etc.  Its all very important.  Probably the most important decision we make, however, concerns the medications we put into our bodies on a daily basis.  We're not doing it right.

If you've read any of my previous writings like this you know i'm not very high on primary care physicians and how they manage their patients.  They do so much harm to people with how they diagnose and treat conditions after the fact without considering the root cause of the problems or try to fix the underlying issues.  This diagnose and treat, diagnose and treat philosophy is not doing patients any good and in so many cases its harming them as we will discuss shortly.  It's how they've been taught and unfortunately the industry is geared towards getting people in and out quickly to maximize profit.  Worse yet, there's an almost trillion dollar pharmaceutical industry fueling this obsessive drive to put people on more and more medications.  It all helps, doesn't it?

Well, let me ask you this question.  How healthy are you?

I don't really know.  How do i know?  Well, one good way is to count up all the medications you take on a daily basis.  On one hand there's 84 year old Mary Smith, who takes a daily aspirin because she heard that it was good for her heart.  She also takes a Centrum Silver each day to make use she stays on top of things.  In total she takes two medication, really neither of which are to cover a diagnosed disease process, but there you go - she takes two.  Phillip Joes is also 84 years old, but when the computer prints out his medication list its literally 5 pages long.  He takes over 38 medications, several of which are often multiple times per day.  Now compare the two of them.  Who is healthier in your opinion?  Obviously Mary, but lets drill down a little deeper and look at what Phillip is taking and why he's taking them.

The first thing Phillip takes is an antidepressant - Paxil.  He takes this for depression and he's been on it for almost 15 years now at the behest of his primary care physician, who was concerned because he was down.  It's a pretty benign medication and the doctor was adamant that he not discontinue the medication himself.  There have been a few times that he's forgotten to take it and ended up developing a hangover sensation, so he knows its nothing to mess with.  But does he really need it?  Probably not, and no it is not a benign medication - at all.  For one thing, the SSRI's are notorious for causing significant weight gain as a side effect.  By significant, i mean 30 plus pounds in some instances.  This is a very common phenomena and is widely known by primary care physicians.  It has been shown to blunt your motivation, leaving you less sharp and tired.  Most concerning however, is primate research showing how chronic use of these medications in people who are not actually clinically depressed led to a decrease in mass in the anterior cingulate cortex and hippocampus regions of the brain - yikes!  Its a stroke of marketing genius to come up with a medication people don't actually need and they have to take their whole lives without even considering discontinuing it.  Well, its time to consider it.  If you're on one and you wonder if you even really need it, consult your primary case guy to begin a long term taper over several months.  If you hit a snag and feel like you need it again fine, but if not d/c it as we say in healthcare.

Phillips also is on Prilosec for his gerd.  Another benign medication, or so we used to think.  Doctors used to worry that the stress of critical illness of patients in the ICU led to severe reflux that needed to be treated with proton pump inhibitors.  If you were admitted to the unit, you got protonix no questions asked.  When they did this, it turns out everyone got sicker for having taken it.  They found that the acid in the stomach was one of the most important things that prevented microbial agents from entering into the gut.  Understand that microbes enter the gut not only from the foods and liquids we consume but also from the air we breathe.  Airborne pathogens are inhaled and coat our respiratory, nasal, and oral mucosa, eventually being sloughed off and swallowed into the stomach.  When you raise the pH of gastric secretions, you're letting more of these bacteria, viruses and fungi into the intestines and eventually into our blood stream.  Worse yet, the change in pH alters the composition of the bacteria in our gut biome, hindering what we now know to be one of the most important sources of our immune system.  Further data has shown it negatively impacts heart health and kidney function and hinders absorption of key nutrients.  Oh geez.  But i have reflux, what now?  Ok lose weight - thats the number one problem.  Also, watch what you eat.  Lower the fat and cholesterol of your foods.  Finally, consider when you take your medications in the morning.  So many medications are supposed to be taken with food because they're formulated with things that are known to cause dyspepsia.  Don't take any of your medications on an empty stomach! (not even your multi vitamin!)

Antibiotics, he's on one of these too.  Did you know that they did a study on these things to see how long they stay in the system of a human being and were stunned to find out the body had a terrible time clearing them?  A dose of Azithromyacin stays at clinically significant unchanged levels beyond six months in the human body!  Holy smokes!  That's a good thing, right?  No!  Azithro is pretty broad spectrum and wipes out your gut microbiome for months!  Turns out all antibiotics do this.  If you get a sore throat from a cold and even if it is strep its typically self limited without antibiotic treatment unless a person is immunocompromised.  So why take an antibiotic that is going to wipe out your immune system?  Ask your primary care physician who seems to love prescribing these things.  I'm just kidding they have no idea.  Be very reluctant to take anything like this unless the indication is screaming for it, such a s non self-limiting infection.

Statins and BP medications.  These delay death but do nothing to treat the underlying problems, which are obesity and excess cholesterol intake in the diet.  Statins i've written on extensively in my other entries, do little to control what is coating the endothelia lining our arterioles.  Yes, it treats the LdL level and total cholesterol, but they do little to change the cholesterol particle size, which we are fining is far more important in pathogenesis.  It does very little, but it causes spikes in insulin, which is very bad!  In short, it doesn't remove the disease, doesn't help it much, and actually harms you in the process!

I think you people are getting the gist of where i'm heading with all this.  All these medications, you really don't need any of them, none of them treat underlying disease, and they do more harm than good.  They're also expensive as shit and a pain in the ass to take.  Furthermore, the quality of life taking these things is awful as are the scores of side effects that they generate.  Its a marketing fucking goldmine.

So lets circle back to Mary a minute.  Why is she only on two pills?  Because she led a healthy lifestyle, eat clean, exercised, and stayed thin.  Yes she was lucky she didn't inherit rank genes, but really this is very rare to be honest.  If you're someone that's currently on 5 pages of medications its not too late.  Many of the conditions you have stacked one on top of another and treated with medications that bring quality of life lowering side effects can be removed by making the right decisions at the mirror in the bathroom in the morning.  Look at yourself and ascertain how much weight you need to lose and lose it, whether by diet or surgical approach.  My suggestion is to change to a whole plant based diet - it has staggering health benefits for weight loss, heart disease, diabetes, and atherosclerosis.  There's no cleaner diet out there.  Start an exercise program that includes cardio AND resistance training of bother upper and lower body.  Make this a part of your routine 3-4 times a week.  Finally, discontinue as many unnecessary medications as you can.  You'll find you feel better, have higher self esteem and enhanced mood, and will be healthier overall.

I'll finish with a quote from Dr. Kim Williams, President of the American College of Cardiology: "There are two types of Cardiologists - those that are vegans and those that are behind in reading the literature."

Thank you and god bless.

Take a handful of pills simultaneously, instead of one at a time? This is the number of pills that are best for suicide?  Round pills are superior to oblong tablets? Still life pictures of pills can be artfully arranged, like flowers? Cap pill bottles securely, so they don't all fall out?  :)