Friday, February 22, 2013

The worst winter and the inevitable need of medicine

If you're having a winter like ours, then your home must be filled with germs.  We've had viruses with fever, strep throat, ear infections, bad colds, persistent sore throats, etc. Years ago, when I ingested cough medicine but the cup load, I never thought about what was in these liquid solutions or what was in those little pills.

Flashforward to today.  When raw red onions in your socks don't bring down your or your child's fever, what to do?  Ibuprofen, Acetaminophen... have you ever looked at the ingredients? Here is an example:

Anhydrous citric acid, butylparaben, D&C Red no.33, FD&C Blue no.1, flavor, glycerin, high fructose corn syrup, microcrystalline cellulose and carboxymethylcellulose sodium, propylene glycol, purified water, sodium benzoate, sorbitol solution, xanthan gum.

Not pretty, is it? And these are the inactive ingredients... on top of the medicine.

Or how about those little tablets:

acetylated monoglycerides, colloidal silicon dioxide, corn starch, croscarmellose sodium, methylparaben, microcrystalline cellulose, pharmaceutical glaze, pharmaceutical ink, povidone, pregelatinized starch, propylparaben, sodium benzoate, sodium lauryl sulfate, stearic acid, sucrose, synthetic iron oxide, titanium dioxide, white wax

Glazes, inks, preservatives (something has to make them last on the shelf that long), colors, flavors, corn syrup, sorbitol, propylene glycol, etc etc.... 

This winter I had gotten stuck on a slew of antibiotics and my almost 2 year old had his first one, for an ear infection.  For me, it was eight days of fever with strep throat.  I tried ingesting honey with raw garlic and cayenne... I just couldn't do it. 

If I could find a way to break out of the medicine world, I would!  For now, I'm grateful that we only need this stuff once in a blue moon.  And we are taking our probiotics religiously.  I'm still baffled over the famous doctor line "it's perfectly safe" and how we all just seem to believe that.

Spring, you cannot come fast enough!