I have written often about the return to holistic medicine using natural products to treat the causes of a disease and not just the symptoms — which is what we tend to do with our prescription medications.

I also pointed out seven different categories of dangerous prescription drugs:

1. Sleeping pills
2. Cholesterol drugs
3. Blood pressure medications
4. Alzheimer’s drugs
5. Arthritic drugs
6. Diabetic drugs
7. Chemotherapy drugs

For instance, taking even fewer than 20 doses of the sleeping pill Ambien in a year can significantly increase the death rate. In fact, some have reported an rise of as much as 530 percent in people taking these sleeping pills.

For this and other reasons, there is increased emphasis on holistic medicine as an alternative to the prescription drugs that have been the routine approach to almost all health issues in the recent past.

Remember that the majority of the prescription medicines do not treat the underlying problem; they treat only the manifest symptoms.

Also remember that there can be interaction between different drug types.

For instance, antibiotic drugs can alter the effects of blood clotting medications. Therefore, be sure all of your doctors know when there is a change in your medications.