I had a consultation today with a woman in her 80’s, she has trouble walking and is using a walker with pain in her back and weakness throughout her body. I did a check and found that she had a short leg and was suffering from and Atlas Subluxation Complex. However, I told her that she shouldn’t start care. Simple tests showed that she was weak throughout her body. At first I thought she was dehydrated (common for older people with difficulty walking that don’t want to pee too much). Getting her some water didn’t help. I then asked her about any medications that she was on. She is on over twenty medications! I couldn’t believe it! She has been seeing multiple doctors, each giving her multiple prescriptions with no one orchestrating drug interactions. It hit close to home because when I was in school a close relative was hospitalized for exactly the same thing.

This is an epidemic. Millions of our seniors are in a similar position, taking multiple drugs without someone monitoring the interactions. So many of these individual drugs are later found to be harmful and are taken off of the market after studies were done on their safety. No safety studies are done on multiple prescriptions! This is worse than experimenting on them because with an experiment at least someone is watching the outcome. So please, ask your mother, father, aunts, uncles, and grandparents what drugs they are on, who gave it to them, who knows about all of them, and is one of the doctors taking an active role in monitoring their multiple prescriptions. Ask them especially if they have a fall. It may not be that they are “getting older”, they may just be literally drugged out of their gourd.

Remember over 1200 people die each day in the US from prescription drugs alone (and people worry if chiropractic is safe!). Don’t let your loved one become a statistic! Find a medical doctor trained in reducing multiple prescriptions and then help them choose a true health practitioner.

As for this prospective client? I told her that while I could help her, she would not get any dramatic changes without first getting off of some of the medications. I referred her to a medical doctor that I trust, and told her to focus on getting control of her prescriptions before giving me a call again.