Over the past few decades, the over-prescription and overuse of opioid medications has transitioned into an national epidemic. The National Institutes of Health reports that 128 people in the United States died from an opioid overdose every day in 2018. In 2017 that totaled up to 47,000+ American deaths due to the misuse of prescription pain relievers, heroin, and other synthetic opioids. The question we should all be asking ourselves is, how did we get here?
Beginning in the late 90's, big pharmaceutical companies began heavily pushing the prescription of their opioid based medications to doctors. These companies knew the addictive properties of these pain pills but spent a great deal of money to convince the medical community otherwise. They would take doctors on expensive vacations and buy them lavish gifts as an incentive to prescribe as many pills as they could. The pharmaceutical companies knew that once the patients were addicted they would keep coming back for more and the doctors, who were wrapped around their finger, would keep prescribing them. If you think this is starting to sound like the plan of a Bond super-villain it's because it basically is. The more people who became addicted, the more money these companies and doctors made. It is important to realize that this was not all doctors or pharmaceutical companies but a small, devious group that caused this tragedy.
Another crucial thing to realize is that many of these patients came into their doctor's office with routine aches and pains and left with a pain pill prescription. The first problem is that these pills only treat your symptoms and work to mask your pain instead of finding the root cause of it. Finding and fixing the root cause will give you control over your pain instead of becoming reliant on pills. The second problem with these pills is the nasty side effects and addictive properties. A quick list of the harmful side effects include drowsiness, confusion, nausea, constipation, euphoria, and slowed breathing. I don't know about you but I don't like the idea of dealing with all these side-effects to get rid of my pain. Especially, when there is a healthy, natural alternative.
That alternative is Physical Therapy. Here at Rise Above Physical Therapy we figure out what's truly causing your pain and teach you how to prevent it from coming back. This is something that no pill can do. Don't let the pharmaceutical companies continually profit off of your pain and misfortune. Come join the Rise Above family and experience a natural way to get your life back.
If you're interested in learning more about this topic, check out a Netflix series: The Business of Drugs, "Opioids". They do a great job explaining the process of what happened and how it's affected our nation in great detail.