Just a spoonful of vinegar...

Ever wonder why there's a pill for everything?

High blood pressure?- there's a pill; Constipation?- there's a pill; Feeling blue (sad or ischemic)?- there are even more pills. How did this happen?

Well, there's a reason the pharmaceutical industry makes billions of $. In a word, it's patents. A corporation mixes up a pill, slaps a patent on it, and then markets it, convincing people to take the pill or else. And in a sense, people have to pay the corporation's price, because there are no alternatives (until the patent runs out- 15 years!). Or are there?

Take vinegar as a case in point- vinegar helps lower blood sugar after a meal, and increases fullness, so less is eaten. Now imagine you could make a pill which lowers glucose (for diabetics) and suppresses appetite (for the dieting masses)- you could make a fortune, right? So why isn't anyone making a fortune off of vinegar? In a word, it's patents.

No one has heard of vinegar as a treatment for diabetes or weight control, because there haven't been 50,000 commercials/print ads/sales pressure on docs and pharmacys/etc. etc. No drug company sells it, because it can't be patented, so the profits on it would be negligible. But why don't doctors prescribe vinegar instead of metformin? It's because they can't!?

They can't prescribe vinegar over metformin, because there have been 1000 studies done on metformin (think of drug studies as the drug industry's marketing to doctors), and a few on vinegar. In the end, doctors are coerced into prescribing the more studied drugs for fear of litigation. Why doesn't anyone study vinegar? Because no one can patent it- there's no $ to be made.

If this all sounds circular, it is. This is a classic systemic problem- the cycle of pill/patent/marketing ensures that ever newer and costlier drugs will supplant older, cheaper ones. This is even seen in the shenanigans of drug companies combining older, cheaper generic medicines into one pill, and repatenting the combo pill as a 'new' medicine! (zetia and glucovance, eg.). And there are other examples of medicines (niacin and MCT oil) which were bypassed by the drug industry for more expensive pills.

The bottom line in all this is that there is a cheaper alternative to the expensive pills- it starts with disease prevention, healthier lifestyles, and yes, eating salad with heavy vinegrette. In fact it could be said that a spoonful of vinegar helps the medicine price go down.