In 1830, British settlers in New Zealand brought European rabbits for food and hunting play. There was no rabbit innocent in New Zealand, and the number grew rapidly. At that time, rabbit oysters beneath thousands of hectares of land and many farmlands were ruined. In order to prevent the rabbit from destroying the ecosystem, New Zealanders brought the fox, the rabbit's nemesis. The fox has done enough for himself. But I have created another problem. It also means that the endangered birds, such as kiwi, weka, and kakapo, have also eaten.
Mark Twain liked this story as an example of unintended consequences. This fox story reveals the dangers of approaching a complex interdependent world with simple logic.
The side effects of the drug are tail tails
Chronic diseases are neither natural nor inevitable.
November 9, 2017by News Peppermint
In 1830, British settlers in New Zealand brought European rabbits for food and hunting play. There was no rabbit innocent in New Zealand, and the number grew rapidly. At that time, rabbit oysters beneath thousands of hectares of land and many farmland were ruined. In order to prevent the rabbit from destroying the ecosystem, New Zealanders brought the fox, the rabbit's nemesis. The fox has done enough for himself. But I have created another problem. It also means that the endangered birds, such as kiwi, weka, and kakapo, have also eaten.
Mark Twain liked this story as an example of unintended consequences. This fox story reveals the dangers of approaching a complex interdependent world with simple logic.
The side effects of the drug are tail tails
Whenever I prescribe medication for my chronic illness as a physician, I can not help but remember the fox story of New Zealand. We prescribe hydrochlorothiazide for hypertension, sulfonylureas for type 2 diabetes, and statins for heart disease.
I'm not saying these drugs are ineffective. Through this medicine, people are definitely saving lives. But while the human body is very complex, these drugs act like a big hammer. The fox has solved the rabbit problem, but it is similar to the other problems in the ecosystem. Kakapo is now extinct in New Zealand. What side effects do the drugs we use have on the human body?
At least it is more than we think. Hydrochlorothiazide, widely used for hypertension, increases hemoglobin A1C and weakens glucose tolerance. It is an indicator of insulin resistance and causes diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and dementia. Hydrochlorothiazide also increases LDL cholesterol and triglycerides and lowers HDL cholesterol, increasing the odds of cardiovascular disease. Sulfonylureas also increase the odds of cardiovascular disease.
There are studies that statins, which are the most prescribed drugs in the United States today, also increase the risk of diabetes by weakening glucose tolerance.
Of course, it is obvious that taking medication is better than taking into account the benefits and damages of each medicine. However, in these chronic diseases, it is a fact that the drugs used to solve one disease are the cause of other chronic diseases. It shows how complex the human body is and how infrequent our medicine is. Mark Twain would have liked this story too.
Our bodies are not made to suffer from chronic diseases.
The academic community tries to solve this problem by studying molecular biology and pharmacology. If we find the source of each disease, we can find a more effective drug, or even cure it.
But decades of research have shown a different kind of truth than a cure for chronic diseases. The very thing is that the human body is extremely complex. As we dig deeper, the causes of chronic illness have become more intertwined. One thing that is clear in these chronic diseases of hypertension, diabetes and heart disease is that they are caused by abnormal metabolism, not just one wrong switch in the cell.
There is no magic bullet that solves all the problems at once. Finding the cause at the molecular level is not yet possible with our own strength. So what if we do not look for solutions in our bodies, but outside? Will we repeat the foolishness of the New Zealanders, where every effort again causes another problem? Or will we be able to find out the external factors that make us chronically ill and eventually win this fight?
Maybe it's possible to win. There have been recent reports that hunter-gatherers and nomadic people have not suffered from these chronic diseases. This is not because they have not lived long enough. One study showed that hunter-gatherers could live up to 78 years after passing the crisis of infancy and adolescence. We should not blame the genes. The genes of hunter-gatherers were more vulnerable to chronic diseases than today's European genes.
The key is their lifestyle. People's lifestyles were very diverse at the time, but their commonality was that they did not have any lifestyle habits of the people today - the conditions that cause chronic diseases. It is processed food, sitting style life, and chronic stress .