(NaturalHealth365) If you’re spending money on pharmaceutical medications and fancy new medical equipment, you’d like to think they’re actually working, right?  Well, in a world where “big pharma” wields an enormous amount of power over the American public (through their lobbyists and the government), this isn’t something you should assume to be true.

Just think of it this way: doctors, health officials, and skeptics are always happy to point out that supplements aren’t regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), so we should be wary of what we’re taking.  And, in all fairness: there are supplement brands out there pushing products that just don’t work.

But, as new research points out: the same can be said about hundreds of medications pushed by big pharma – along with plenty of other medical interventions and recommendations across a wide range of disciplines.

Warning about pharmaceutical medications: New research says many drugs are ineffective as a medical intervention

In a new study published by eLife, a team of researchers analyzed more than 3,000 randomized controlled trials published between 2003 and 2017 in three leading medical journals – the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Lancet, and the New England Journal of Medicine.  These studies were intended to analyze the effectiveness of current “best practices” among a variety of medical disciplines, types of interventions, and populations.

Within the available data, researchers found nearly 400 medical reversals, aka “whoops, we were wrong” de-adoptions of low-value and ineffective medical practices. These include various medications, wearable step-tracking technology (to allegedly promote weight loss), and medical recommendations such as annual or bi-annual mammograms for low-risk women under 50.

In other words: hundreds of medical products, services, and medications out there are NOT shown to work.  Yet many of them are still widely used – and being paid for in billions of wasted taxpayer dollars via Medicare and Medicaid.

Why is this so?  As the researchers hypothesize, “Once an ineffective medical practice is established, it is difficult to convince practitioners to abandon its use.”

This all begs an important question: who is truly benefiting from all these ineffective medications, medical devices, and other interventions?  It certainly doesn’t seem like the patients who are being told to use them are.

If medical and drug companies truly wanted to put the health of their customers first, they should be more transparent and pro-active when data comes out showing that their products are not working.

You’re more profitable to big pharma if you’re sick and reliant on medications: 3 tips to take your health into your own hands

Globally, pharmaceuticals companies are expected to hit a profit of $1.5 trillion in the year 2023 – and they’re certainly not far off yet, with a chart-topping $1.2 trillion just last year.

As it stands, preventing health problems does not create as many profitable opportunities for medical and drug companies as “treating” health problems (often with medications that people are told to take indefinitely). It’s truly not just cynicism to say that drug companies care more about creating wealth for themselves and their shareholders than about creating health for their customers.

Try the following if you want to reduce your dependency on potentially ineffective and nonetheless expensive medical procedures and products:

• Use high quality, nutritional supplements: Studies that try to criticize the use of natural supplements tend to focus on supplementation at very low serving sizes – which won’t produce positive results, for obvious reasons.
• Minimize your exposure to known toxins, including those in our food (e.g., sugar and pesticides); water (fluoride), and indoor air pollution.
• Get physically active: At least 30 minutes of moderate exercise – most days of the week.

Editor’s note: Build a strong immune system to protect yourself from infections and a host of unwanted problems.  Click here to get INSTANT access to the Immune Defense Summit, host by yours truly – Jonathan Landsman.

Sources for this article include:

ELifeSciences.org