>>First thing second: I haven't been to a doctor since 1994, and even then it was just some fake medical leave (which turned out to be a true one - I claimed psychological disturbance because of the deep division in the company, and boy did I feel better when I didn't attend to it for a few weeks). My consumption of medication varies wildly: I sometimes consume up to 4 ibuprofens a year, average 2, this year only 1. Nothing else, not even aspirin. Blood pressure, when I bother to check, is boring - 120 by 76 for years. If something hurts, I wait for it to pass, and it does. No insurance since 2001, and even then it wasn't much help. And though I do have some belly, I weigh 85 kg (83 on better days); when I graduated I weighed 80.
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>My non scientific opinion (personal view before you know who leaps in) is that the cocktail of drugs my mother ended up on (She ended up with one of those trays for every week where there where pockets for each day with a variety of pills) did her more harm than good and contributed to an early demise.

We had a neighbor who started with just some knee trouble. Priding himself in knowing anybody important around here, he went from one specialist to another, escalating from just oiling the joint to cleaning up the puss to having more trouble with the other leg to spending weeks in the spa (the mud there is medical, officially) to some weird infection they never saw to getting sent to a better clinic in Belgrade to a stiff and swollen finger to whole palm to being tied to a wheelchair to... It was endless and every step of the way he knew more and more important doctors. At some point one of the doctors said "not that you shouldn't take this type of medication any more, it's that when you see a pack of it you should not even read the label". Eventually died after three years of this.