The Difference between Drugs and Nutritional Supplements

For whatever ails you, a person has some choices about what to do about it.

The Drug Approach

What a drug does is it forces the body to do something that it normally wouldn’t do. When it comes to a medication, the body reacts in certain ways to this medication, and this is done in order to achieve a desirable effect.

For instance, in order to balance itself and handle the effects of a drug, the body has to lower its blood pressure. If this is what you want to happen because it’s a blood pressure medication, it’s a good thing.

However, there are also various other ways the body can react to the drug and sometimes this is not such a good thing – this is called a “side effect”. It is the reason someone can wind up on 4 blood pressure medications. Each drug is given in an attempt to balance another drug so as not to create the various side effects of the other drugs. It is a balancing act.

The Natural Approach

What a nutritional supplement does is it gives the body the actual tools it needs to fix the body.

In the case of neuropathy, it is the nerve cell that is damaged. The body needs certain tools (nutritional factors) to create healthy nerves. Drugs don’t repair anything; they treat the symptom, not the cause of the problem.

As with our example of blood pressure, if they don’t know what is causing the high blood pressure, the drug just lowers it artificially. The supplement for blood pressure doesn’t force the blood pressure low, but addresses the cause of high blood pressure and brings your body into better balance, and the blood pressure goes to normal.

The cause of nerve damage can be known. It can be the result of too much sugar in the blood, the chemicals used in cancer treatments, injury to the nerve, etc. – but one thing is known, the damage is done to the cell and this causes the pain, tingling, numbness, etc.

You can cover this up with pain killers, or with other drugs that are manufactured to handle this, but the drugs aren’t building health. They are trying to force the body to not give you pain, not give you numbness, etc. And sometimes more damage to the nerve cell might happen due to the drug or other drugs you are taking.

The Nutritional Approach

Nutritional supplements are actually vitamins and minerals that the body needs to build health at the cellular level. The body needs certain nutrients to function properly.

In the case of neuropathy, there are specific ingredients needed by the body to build healthy nerve cells. These are the supplements you want to take.

Another difference is that if you are taking a drug and just covering up symptoms, you have to continue to take the drug to get relief and sometimes even have to increase the drug to get the same relief.

If you take natural supplements, the body can fix the problem, and as long as you don’t do anything to damage the cells again, there is an end to taking the supplements.

For information on health problems and what can be done, see the MCVitamins.com Index or use the Search Form. You can also email us and get help.