Great point, though turning people away from smoking and fattening food (to mention two common life style disease causes) would be a long and hard process, both because of stubborn consumers and because of lobbyism from companies. Being healthy is thankfully becoming more and more important to people these days, but there's still a long way to go.

A lot of people have no choice since they have to work to take home the bacon.

Must ... resist ... the doughnuts ...

Yea I do not understand why drug ads are legal. They used to be illegal now that is all I see on tv. I woul;d rather have the cigarrette ads back because atleast people know they are bad for you. Its seems like there is a medicine everything, and instead of relying on our own bodies to fight things offf we pass the buck to medicine and in the long run we are weakening ourselves and strenghtening viruses/bacteria as they become imune to our medicine. I only use medicine as a last resort, and even then its been a long time since I have teken any (minus the chronic I am always smoking :) )

There are different types of medicine.

Painkillers cure the symptoms of an illness like headaches, aches & pains, fever etc... I don't see anything wrong with numbing the pain while your immune system takes care of the illness itself.

Some bacterial/viral infections need medication to be cured. But viral infections like colds/flu cannot be treated with antibiotics AT ALL, but you can cure the symptoms with painkillers.

Other medicines like antidepressants or cancer drugs are essential in specific cases.

Modern medicine is one of the reasons why humans are living longer. I agree with you to an extent about lifestyle but people have to work to earn money to survive.

Pain killers tend to tell your body to ignore the pain and since you may not feel the pain chances are you will continue to do what is causing the pain and thus make it worse or still have the pain when the pain killer wears off. If you are in pain it is best to treat the cause not the symptoms. That is the problem with most medicine, it cures sympotns not sources of illness/pain.

The most effective way is, for example, when you feel a headache coming and you know it's going to hit regardless of what you'll do next. Take a pill and stop what you're doing that's causing the headache. The pill will stop the headache and give your body enough time to recover so that when the pill wears out, you won't get the headache at all.

Why? Because the majority is dumb and weak willed (yeah, it does sound like preaching from a high horse, but can you really disagree?).
Don't wanna deal with it? Make it go away? It comes back? Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Changing a lifestyle? Most won't even try unless they touch death. Why eat healthy, cook for yourself, and know what you're buying when you can get tasty stuff that cooks itself? Why moderate yourself if you don't see any consequences? Why prevent a headache when you can squash it when it happens? Why even think of any other way to live?

Humans can't regulate themselves without repercussions and consequences, and are not in touch with their innermost feelings, the fear of others losing you, the fear of death and not completing your tasks in this world. Routine, offices, and the obsession with today mute that. The way others see you far exceeds the way you see yourself in importance, and people don't think enough of themselves, replacing it others' thoughts about them.

I could go on, and perhaps I'm over-analyzing, but that's what I think. Good thread, RB.

I never said they did.