{"id":422,"date":"2011-07-01T03:21:16","date_gmt":"2011-07-01T03:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icaro.med.br\/?p=422"},"modified":"2024-12-30T06:17:23","modified_gmt":"2024-12-30T09:17:23","slug":"the-magic-pill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icaro.med.br\/en\/the-magic-pill\/","title":{"rendered":"The Magic Pill"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As I've said in other articles, there is no such thing as a \u201cmagic pill\u201d, i.e. a fast-acting remedy with no associated undesirable effects that is totally resolutive, supposedly without any cooperation on the part of the person taking it. But let's suppose for a moment that the Easter bunny, Santa Claus and an honest (\u201cprofessional\u201d) politician did exist and, of course, so did our magic pill: what would happen if you took it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As it's a pill, as soon as you swallow it, it falls into the esophagus, the entrance to what we call the \u201cgastrointestinal tube\u201d (which only ends at the anus) and has to travel all the way down this tube until it reaches the intestines (small and large), where it will be absorbed. But this tube is essentially a set of muscles that transport what we ingest through coordinated contraction movements, called peristalsis. And like any muscle, it needs oxygen, water and nutrients to work properly. Your pill won't get you anywhere if your body doesn't have enough breath, water and nutrients. And remember: every muscle needs periodic \u201crest\u201d and repair, or it goes into fatigue, and guess when your muscles actually rest? During a good night's sleep. But let's assume that your habits provide this sufficiently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Through the movements of the esophagus, your magic pill falls into the stomach and from there it is taken to the intestines, where it needs to be dissolved (in water, of course!) and only then, already in the form of smaller particles, can it be absorbed and fall into the blood. Now, the intestines only work properly when there is water, fiber and adequate intestinal flora (plus nutrients, since they're muscles, remember?). If any of these elements are missing, your gut won't be able to absorb anything as it should, and you'll eliminate your magic pill in your stools. Do you want that? Of course not! So, I suppose you have an adequate intake of nutrients, fiber, water and lactobacilli?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That's it: your magic pill has been absorbed by the intestines and has ended up in your bloodstream... Good! That's the end of the story, is it? No: your blood has to circulate well for your pill to be distributed to the organs of the body where you expect it to \u201cmagically\u201d work as expected. It turns out that good blood circulation depends on the proper functioning of veins, arteries, lymphatic vessels and your heart, which, again, are basically muscles (remember: muscles need oxygen, water and nutrients); it also depends on fluid, \u201cthin\u201d, easily movable blood, which can only be achieved in the presence of plenty of water (since about 92% of blood is water); and it depends very importantly on regular physical exercise in your daily life, which optimizes overall muscle function and is thus indispensable for good blood circulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And when the pill reaches the target organs, where it should act, it is the water that will transport it from the blood to the tissues of these organs, where its \u201cmagical\u201d effect will finally occur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally, of course there is no such thing as a \u201cmagic pill\u201d, but think that the above is the same route that your medicines, drugs or supplements have to take in order to have the expected effects. Have you understood, once and for all, that without the good lifestyle habits we've already mentioned, they may be less effective or not work at all?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Good thinking and good health!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cheers.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Como j\u00e1 disse em outros artigos, n\u00e3o existe &#8220;p\u00edlula m\u00e1gica&#8221;, ou seja, um rem\u00e9dio que tenha a\u00e7\u00e3o r\u00e1pida, sem efeitos indesej\u00e1veis associados e que seja totalmente resolutivo, supostamente sem qualquer coopera\u00e7\u00e3o por parte de quem o toma. Mas, por um momento, suponhamos que o coelho da P\u00e1scoa, Papai Noel e um pol\u00edtico (&#8220;profissional&#8221;) honesto tenham [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23405,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-saude-geral"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icaro.med.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icaro.med.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icaro.med.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icaro.med.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icaro.med.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/icaro.med.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23407,"href":"https:\/\/icaro.med.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422\/revisions\/23407"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icaro.med.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icaro.med.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icaro.med.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icaro.med.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}