CMV: Getting cold is actually the healthiest part of an illness, and our modern healthcare system enables people to skip this step by taking medication at all costs.

In the past, people didn't have cold medicine, and they weren't expected to work at 110% capacity all the time. If they caught a cold, they would take all the time they needed to recover, and if that meant the harvest didn't get picked or a small business didn't get maintenance done that was just how it was. People would also just have colds, and if it was bad they would take the rest of the week/weeks/month off, and rely on the community for support. There were no sick days, but there were no cold medicines either.<br><br>People who work for minimum wage and in a chain store don't have the luxury to take off all the time they want. They have to come to work, and in order to do that they need to not have the symptoms of a cold, or else their boss will send them home and they will get in trouble. To avoid that, they take some cold medicine to get rid of all the symptoms and they go to work. Problem is, this does nothing for the actual cold, and now they are in a confined space with a bunch of other people with no symptoms so they can't even tell they have an illness. This spreads the illness, and then they go home and give it to their families, who then give it to all of their coworkers, and so on and so forth. <br><br>But even if that person didn't have to work, they would still take the cold medicine to feel better. You only have to feel a little bad for a day or two and then you're cured, but if you don't take the medicine it will be a week or two. It's a no-brainer for most people, and it's even worse for people who have bad allergies, because in order to be able to do anything they need to take the medicine.<br><br>This has promoted all kinds of unhealthy behaviors. First of all, working while sick. Your body is supposed to take the time it needs to recover and be at 110% capacity again, or else it will never be at that level. Anytime a part of your body gets injured or sick, it needs time to heal. People who take medicine to skip the process are using their bodies while they still need all their energy to recover. When athletes blow out their knees and don't let them heal all the way, they are ruined. Your body is the same way, and the more you use it while it is hurt the more damage you will do.<br><br>Secondly, it has made people rely on medicine to feel good. Painkillers are given out like candy now, because people think that they should be able to feel perfect at all times. Anytime something hurts at all, they just pop a few painkillers and voila. People who had operations used to have to deal with a lot of pain, now they get a bunch of painkillers from their doctor and take them for months after the operation. When people have back injuries they don't try to avoid all the things that hurt their back and accept the pain of sitting in a chair for now in order to avoid doing permanent damage to it. No, they just take a painkiller so they can do whatever they want. <br><br>Lastly, this has caused a lot of illnesses to not be temporary. Before, a person would get a cold, and they would take all the time they needed to recover and be at 110% capacity again. They would also rest and stay in bed. Now, they take medication and go about their day as usual. This has caused all kinds of "chronic" illnesses to arise. When your body is given time to heal, it will heal. But if you don't give it time to heal, it will be permanently damaged. There are so many people now who have chronic pain, are chronically sick, have arthritis, have back problems, have autoimmune diseases, etc. This is because they didn't give their body time to heal after an injury, and the injury never went away. It's the same with mental illnesses. If someone is depressed, they need to be allowed to be depressed for however long it takes to get better, and they need to let their brain heal and not just try to force it to work the way it's supposed to. People who blow out their knees need to stay off them for 6 months to heal, and people who are depressed need to just be allowed to heal for 6 months. But no, we force people to get back to work, and we give them medicine to do it.<br><br>&#x200B;<br><br><br>Edit: <br><br>1. I didn't say there were no painkillers in the past. I said there were no painkillers that people took for months on end until they were addicted to them. Painkillers were given out sparingly for extreme cases, and no one thought they should feel no pain at all times. I also said the painkiller was so strong that sometimes it was just as painful to take the painkiller as it was to have the pain. <br><br>2. I didn't say people in the past didn't work. I said people in the past didn't take medication in order to work while sick. People in the past worked through their illnesses, but that's not the same thing. You can still work through something and not be miserable, but when you take medicine you are curtailing your body's natural response to a sickness and it will make you feel worse in the end. It is this type of thinking that caused people to blow off all their limbs in bloodletting. <br><br>3. Many people are saying this is the fault of the healthcare system and not the medicine itself. It's a bit of both. The healthcare system definitely plays a large part, but it is the medicine that makes it possible to skip the healing process. Also, the healthcare system didn't cause over-the-counter medication to be taken by people who aren't sick. If medicine didn't have all these side effects people wouldn't need the healthcare system to fix them, and they wouldn't be able to skip the healing process. <br><br>4. Many people have said that this is all anecdotal, and I don't have any studies to back this up. But the truth is, there haven't been many studies on all these cold medicines, and they have only been in widespread use for the past few decades. It's not anecdotal if it's a universal problem, if almost everyone takes the medication to some extent. <br><br>5. Many people have said that they could not survive without the medication, and if they didn't have it they would not be able to work. But the truth is, it's impossible to know whether or not this is true, because it's impossible to tell what the long-term consequences are of taking so much medication. Also, it's sad that people are put in this situation, but this is the fault of our healthcare system and not the medication itself. When people got sick in the past, they were forced to rest and rely on their community for help. When people are sick today, they are forced to work and rely on a pill to feel better. <br><br>6. Many people have said that the alternative is to just give everyone unlimited sick days, but that is not the case. There needs to be some happy medium. It can't be good to work while sick, but it also can't be good to take weeks of work off for every little cold. There just needs to be a better solution to this problem. <br><br>7. Many people have said that I am romanticizing the past way too much, and this was not the way it was. The truth is, it was exactly how it was. It was a hard life, but people tougher and more resilient than we are today. People who grew up on farms are capable of dealing with pain and illnesses, but people who grew up in cities are not. The truth is, if people didn't take this medicine they would be better off. Many people have said that I'm saying this is the case for every single illness, when in reality that was not what I said. Anytime a part of your body gets injured or sick, it needs time to heal. If you take medicine and skip that process, you will be damaged in the long run. It is not a panacea for every problem.