This weekend I had one of those moments. You know the ones. One where your head feels like it’s going to explode. Where giant green flames are going to shoot from your nostrils, large enough to topple an infrastructure that is corrupting America, large enough to engulf to money-loving sell-outs that are touting “Health-Care” reform, and bring down an industry that is literally brain-washing our kids, and to a lesser extent, adults as well. So what could have been so aggravating? What could have gotten me so frustrated that I needed to compose myself before I could answer my son’s commercial-inspired question? It was something that I’ve seen hundreds of times already. I don’t know why, but this time I had an epiphany. THIS IS WRONG! THIS IS AFFECTING MY CHILDREN!

My son and I had been watching a really cool episode about construction crews building a huge bridge adjacent to the Hoover dam, when a commercial came on for Cialis. What I realized was that the pharmaceutical industries are teaching our children a new vocabulary without our knowledge. Yes, that’s right. If you have kids that watch TV, they have probably already been exposed to terms such as incontinence, acid-reflux, or the one that my son and I heard: Erectile Dysfunction. And this burns me up! My son doesn’t even know what an erection is for, let alone that it can be ‘dysfunctional.’ And he has to hear that he should ‘ask his doctor’ about it? Why should every other commercial be an advertisement for prescription drugs?

Now what I realized, other than the fact that my six year old asking me what erectile dysfunction is is quite an uncomfortable moment, is that we are desensitizing our kids to the truth about prescription drugs! These substances are being peddled like candy, often with the side effects minimized or not discussed at all. The average child will see over 50,000 pharmaceutical commercials before the age of 18! Psychologically, kids, and many adults, are being trained to think that when you have a problem, you take a pill. We have an obligation to set the record straight and shout from the top of our lungs – NO! This is not right!

Even medical doctors are taught that the care of their patients follow a course of least invasive, to more invasive in the treatment. The first steps should always be to focus on lifestyle change: Diet, exercise, relaxation, CHIROPRACTIC! Yet how often does a person’s doctor prescribe a pill FIRST, without taking the time to look at their patients’ lifestyle? Is it because it is so much quicker to push a pill than to take the necessary time with a patient, or because Big Pharma is subsidizing the doctors’ education about the drugs, as well as paying out bonuses based on the number of prescriptions sold? How can you “ask your doctor” and expect an honest, non-biased report on the drug if the people educating the doctor about the pill are pharmaceutical salesmen, not scientists?

Something even more shocking, the pharmaceutical industry spends about $4 billion a year in direct-to-consumer ads such as commercials. THAT’S A LOT OF MONEY! What if they took that money and actually made the pills safer? Or used it to promote lifestyle change so our society could actually be healthier, not just doped-up? Or maybe just reduced the costs of the drugs they sell so they could be afforded by those without health insurance, and reduce the payouts of insurance companies, which could ultimately lower our health insurance premiums? The amount of wasted money is ludicrous, not to mention it inflates the over-all health care budget in our country, which we all wind up paying for one way or another.

Over an eight year period from 1997 to 2005, direct-to-consumer ads have increased 296.4%, and direct-to-physician promoting has gone up 86%. In the past 7 years, we have seen a 65% increase in hospitalization from prescription pain killers, 33% increase for all other prescription drugs, a 37% increase in accidental poisonings from prescriptions and a 130% increase in INTENTIONAL poisonings. According to a 2007 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, over 106,000 people die each year as a result of prescription drugs. We are fighting the WRONG war on drugs. The pushers aren’t the ones on the streets, they are the ones training our doctors, the ones advertising on TV, the ones brainwashing our children.

So please, if you don’t want your kids asking you what E.D. is, or why they should ask their doctor if the ‘purple pill’ is right for them, turn the TV off! Or at least mute the commercials. You could get involved and write to your legislator. The truth needs to be told: Health does not come from a pill bottle, or from a scalpel. Health comes from inside of us, from the regulatory systems that we have been created with, and controlled by the NERVOUS SYSTEM. Chiropractors are the ONLY professionals trained to locate and remove this interference in a safe, gentle and natural manner. Make an appointment today!

PS: In the words of Bill Maher (love him or hate him), “Ask your doctor if getting-off-your-butt is right for you!”