When I was young, my grandfather passed away, and I will never forget the emotion I felt knowing that a beloved advocate, role model, and mentor would no longer be with me. As tough as that was, it was not until a month later that something happened to alter the course of my life.

As the dust settled, I was helping get his house in order and was tasked with cleaning and organizing files, papers, and equipment that he had accumulated in the office.

One day, as I was flipping through a random stack of papers, one page caught my attention. As I looked at it more closely, I realized that it was a list of the medications that had been prescribed to him. Each one had a specific dose, to be taken at a specific time, for a specific purpose.

All-in-all, there were 23 different drugs. Twenty-three.

Two drugs were for anxiety caused by the blood pressure meds. Another was for constipation caused by the high doses of painkillers.

There were drugs for nausea caused by the sum of the drug cocktail.

There were muscle relaxers to help with muscle cramps caused by the anti-depressants. And, of course, drugs to keep him awake during the day - and drugs to help him sleep at night.

The list went on and on and on. And with each one, I couldn’t stop thinking about what a terrible life this must have been to live.

As I let it sink in, I found myself sitting there in tears.

At the time, I didn’t have much knowledge about the human body and brain, or just how destructive “medication” can be - but I knew that this was wrong.  It was at this moment, as I sat and reflected on what I was looking at, that I realized two things:

1) The quality of life is what matters. It doesn’t matter how long you live if your mind and body have failed you.

2) Our medical system is great for keeping people alive but seems to have little notion of how to optimize your health and life.

And as I looked at this medication list, and what they were all for, I got sick to my stomach thinking about how awful he must have felt.