In the U.S., 66% of adults are estimated to have at least one prescription, and the average person has nine filled annually. As an awake physician, one of the most depressing aspects of my work is seeing patients, especially the elderly, weighed down by numerous prescriptions that frequently do more harm than good.

For example, as I showed here, statins provide a negligible benefit (e.g., at best, taking them for five years extends one's lifespan by 3-4 days) but create significant side effects such as severe muscle pain and cognitive impairment for 20% of users.

This tragic situation is best demonstrated by a 2007 study which showed that simply discontinuing the least necessary prescriptions resulted in a 23% reduction in the death rate and an 18.2% decrease in hospital referrals. Sadly, since the trend in medicine is always to have people on more drugs, data like this has had no effect on the practice of the overprescription of medications.

Over the years, I've asked dozens of holistic doctors which widely prescribed drugs they consider to be the most unnecessary and dangerous, and in addition to statins, three frequently make their list:
•NSAID painkillers (discussed further here).
•SSRI antidepressants (discussed further here).
•Stomach acid blocking PPIs (the focus of this article).

Acid Reflux

Your stomach contains acid that it uses to digest food (primarily by turning on powerful enzymes that digest protein). When the stomach is digesting food, the acid should stay inside the stomach, but sometimes, it leaks back up into the esophagus (your throat) because the muscle that seals the top of the stomach (the LES) fails to fully seal. Since stomach acid is irritating, it frequently creates an unpleasant condition known as heartburn when it refluxes into areas like the throat that are not resistant to its acidity.