Just take the medicine!

Do you ever get cross with TV advertisements? Which ones wind you up? As regular readers will guess, I like to point out messages being put across by advertisers which aim to make us believe we need their product to make us look younger, lose weight or feel successful. My current bugbear, however, is the over-the-counter medicine ad.

I’ve written before about the ‘warning lights’ our body switches on when we need to do some essential maintenance. If my car needs new brake pads, is on a slippery surface or running short of petrol, a light on my dashboard tells me what to do. I’m a responsible car owner so I take action: fill up with petrol, drive more carefully or book into the garage for some maintenance. And my body does the same thing. If I have a headache, it might mean a number of things. I could be stressed or unwell or I might have been staring at a screen for too long. If my tummy hurts, I may have been eating something that disagrees with me or trying to eat my lunch while doing three other things and ended up with indigestion. If I am a responsible body owner, I will try to work out what the ‘warning light’ means and take appropriate action. Unfortunately, a body is more confusing than a car because it doesn’t come with a manual. The fact that a light is flashing, however, and something needs to be changed, is usually clear.

At the moment, there’s an advertisement on the telly for anti-inflammatories that says it’s for people with ‘lives bigger than pain.’ What does this mean? Is it the same as a car that’s too important to have a service when there’s a rattle? And who remembers the commercial depicting two women meeting in the street, both sneezing and coughing, telling each other how busy they are, packing to go away for work, painting the bathroom and picking up the kids? Is that equivalent to a car that’s just too busy to be booked into the garage? It seems to me there’s a message here and that message is, ‘you don’t have time to stop and look after yourself; just take something to enable you to push through.’ Really? If we wouldn’t treat our cars that way, is it really ok to expect our body to thrive in such circumstances?

The ads for tummy trouble are just as…well…troubling. If you feel so bloated that you can’t fit through a small gap between people in a restaurant, you really should be eating special yoghurt that will take the bloatedness away. Wouldn’t it be simpler to find out why you feel bloated and make some appropriate changes? This was me a few years ago. Every day I would have sandwiches for lunch because that’s what everyone eats for lunch. Every afternoon my stomach would be uncomfortable. I eventually worked out that bread didn’t agree with me and I needed to choose a different lunch. Now I hardly ever have a sore tummy in the afternoon. What’s the right approach, to cover up the problem with a product, or find out why the warning light is on?

I have to admit that there is one medication ad that I find slightly more acceptable. A glamorous woman is about to fly a helicopter to rescue someone and has indigestion. I am quite happy to accept that she has indigestion because she is on call and had to eat her – possibly very healthy – lunch too quickly. And if I was in a helicopter, I would want the pilot to have a comfy tummy, and would fully support her taking whatever indigestion remedies she happened to have to hand. As someone who is frequently on call and ends up missing or rushing meals as a result, I understand!

My general point, however, is that we are being bombarded with messages that tell us, ‘you can’t stop; whatever is wrong with you, especially if it’s not life-threatening, just ignore it, take an over-the-counter remedy, and plough on.’ It doesn’t take much of a stretch of the imagination to interpret the overall message as, ‘your body doesn’t matter, don’t listen to it, you don’t need to look after yourself. All that matters is achieving, succeeding, reaching your goals. It doesn’t matter what shape you arrive in (you can always take another tablet) as long as you get there.’

Ok, maybe I am stretching a point here, but you can see what I am getting at. Actually, our bodies do matter and it isn’t always the right thing to take a pill and push on. Sometimes we might have to, and I certainly do every now and then. But let’s not get caught up in the idea that we never have to take notice of those warning lights, or that there is always something more important than self-care.

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