If someone were to observe me at a grocery store, they would probably find my behaviour a little bit odd. I analyse ingredient labels for ages, put most things back and either scoff like a food snob or shake my head disapprovingly.

As a holistic nutritionist, I can’t help it; it’s the same way dentists probably scrutinise the teeth of everyone they meet and make a daily dua for their spouses to start flossing.

But for the longest time, there was one thing I did not scrutinise – medication.

I would find myself casually popping pills here and there for a cold, a headache or stomach cramps, never once stopping to read the ingredient label. After all, medicine was a wonderful friend to me; an ever reliable safety net that was there to catch me every time I fell even slightly ill.

It wasn’t until I saw the chart below that my attitude changed and I started to inspect pharmaceutical drugs the way I did food. The chart shows the risk of death due to “x incident” relative to the risk of being killed in a Boeing 747*.