For the last two or three years I’ve had regular doctor’s appointments for blood pressure, cholestrol, obesity, gout, and just aches and pains associated with these medical problems. For the last two or three years I’ve had more than one prescription per ailment. I’ve been told to lose weight – go low fat, give up red meat, and avoid low-carb diets because they permit you to eat fat.
My son and his family came home in mid-June, and they were working on low-carb and showing signs of success (loose clothing and trimmer profiles.) We decided to honor their diets and not pig out that weekend. After they went home, we stayed low-carb. We cut out grains. we started counting carbs in snacks and making wiser decisions. I didn’t keep an accurate count, but believed I was around 30 carbs a day.
Then two weeks later, I began having dizzy spells several times a day. When we visited our son for the 4th, he suggested the dizzy spells I was having might be due to low blood-pressure, and suggested I add a few carbs if I was taking blood pressure medication. I thought about this and realized that after stopping the daily medication, I had stopped having dizzy spells, so I decided to forego the medication.
When I got home, I called my doctor and she said to track my blood pressure daily and bring it with me to my next appointment in August, and I promised to call her again if I had any problems. Since then, I’ve had no dizzy spells, I’ve dropped twenty pounds, and my blood pressure is down and holds a pretty consistent level. Today it is 112/74 and my pulse is 66. When I began treatment for high blood pressure, it was around 160/110.
I’m not a fanatic about low-carb. I eat low-carb and from time to time sneak in popcorn, although much less in volume than I was known to eat, and every couple of weeks we eat pizza at the Mellow Mushroom, again not as much as I would normally eat.
Is it possible that we get so many prescriptions because it’s easier to write a prescription and make a little for prescribing the drug, than it is to actually look after our health. Who does it profit if we stay sick? Certainly not us.