Does Optimum Health = Self Medication?

I tell you, if I had a nickel every time I went to the doctor and he prescribed antibiotics, I’d have, well, a whole lot of nickels.

It seems to me that it’s a no brainer to start to move some of these treatments out from under the “prescription” category, give adults a little bit of credit that they would be able to self-medicate when it comes to antibiotics.

But no, we can’t have these over the counter now, can we? Seems to me that this is more of a job creation and maintenance strategy than a healthcare strategy. Is there any real reason why we couldn’t take some of the older antibiotics which require a daily dose for 10 days and let people just take them on their own when they sense that they may have some kind of infection?

Just saying that it’s far past time that we took control of our health, including self-medication on this front – it’s a bit sad that instead of moving towards more medical freedom, we are moving towards less medical freedom.

I have friends in the quantified self-movement who self-medicate all the time – if anything we should be moving towards more self-control in medication as opposed to less. The only thing that is holding us back is the current political landscape – do we truly prefer to give us control of our bodies to some nameless bureaucrat?

What about doctors, you say? Sure, very important to be able to consult with a physician if you wish to – but having them as the arbiters of whether or not you can get medication or not, I feel that is simply wrong.

Simply put: we should have ultimate control over our own health – including medicine. Therefore we should be able to legally self-medicate ourselves with whatever drug we see fit to.

If you think about it, we are better informed now than ever before – and due to the explosion of information and the ability to sort the best information – and come up with the optimum solution, there really is nothing but regulation holding us back from optimum health.