Medication

Anything can kill you at anytime. We as humans are getting too paranoid about what we can and cant do and eventually, we will just be eating lettuce and drinking water by the exact millilitre What fun is that?

I understand that drugs and medicine are very dangerous, but they are prescribed in a perfectly safe dosage, unless you decide to overdose, but that is not the medications fault. You can even become seriously ill by eating too many bananas...

 

My doctor diagnosed me with fatty liver, and I take 7 medications. I think there could be a correlation despite the fact my doctor claims my fatty liver was through weight gain. Note: I have never touched a drink in my life.

 

I can hardly function without my medicine, so no, I'm not willing to stop taking it.

 

I don't think it's unreasonable to say that western society is over medicated. There is clear evidence that we have over prescribed and reduced the efficiacy of antibiotic drugs.

I would also venture that we are over prescribing anti-depressants. Many people who take these drugs every day would gain more benefit from decent therapy and lifestyle adjustments. Dishing out pills is often not the answer, but it happens anyway.

 

Well when you read about potential side effects, it says something of the nature "remember, your doctor prescribed this because they believe the benefit to your health outweighs the potential for negative side effects." Certain medications people need, so there's really no debate. Certain medications improve your quality of life so you just have to judge if the improvement is worth the risk. Some may even cancel out the negative effects. For example, in the case of sleeping pills, it's possible the benefits from good sleep may outweigh the detriments of medication.

The thing with the liver is that everyone has slightly different drug-metabolizing enzymes (cytochromes), so drugs affect people different. Some people may make a toxic byproduct during metabolism that gives them side effects, others may not. Eventually medicine will be more personalized but until then... I still think the benefits of many medications outweigh the risk.

 

Eventually we all die anyway. I'm not necessarily afraid of taking drugs, but I think everyone would be afraid in their life once about taking new drugs or medication.

 

Like all medical interventions, medicine should always be prescribed and taken on a risk/benifit basis where as the benifit should outweigh the risk.

I take 4 - 5 different medications to control my asthma. That may sound a lot, and some of the tablets I take have to be constantly monitored through blood tests due to the narrow therapeutic index (too low and they don't work, too high and they are neurologically unsafe and can cause seizures and damage), but the benifit I receive greatly outweighs the risk.

Without my medications, my asthma would rapidly deteriorate and I would end up very ill in hospital, or worse. Alcohol is also a no no for me on these meds due to how they affect my tablets and asthma.

I agree, sometimes people are quick to end up on meds, but if everyone follows the prescribing guidelines, there shouldn't be an issue.

Happy days

 

Whatever personal mis-givings we might have about medication, I think it's important to say that you should always continue to take drugs prescribed by a doctor unless/until you are told otherwise. To discontinue treatment without medical supervision can be even more risky to health.

 

I'm trying to cut back on medicine, I'm feeling better just being on a lower dose. All the medication I've been on hasn't helped that much and on a few occasions made me feel worse.

 

Why would you say that? For me, therapy has been utterly useless, and anti-depressants are really the only way I can function.

 

I'm on several medications for mental and physical health issues. I do worry about being overmedicated at times, but then I think back to when I wasn't medicated and how I couldn't really function. It's a tough balance to strike. People talk a lot about the overprescription of antibiotics these days a lot, too, and I'm struck with embarrassment because I take them as a prophylactic due to immunological issues. I think at times doctors do just feel pressed to throw a drug at a problem rather than getting to the root of the issue. When you only have 15 minutes or so with each patient it's hard to do any real "investigative" medicine and often people want a pill that will fix them rather than a complex lifestyle change. Still, a lot of the drugs people take *are* medically necessary. I'm sorry about what happened to your BF, that's terrible. The same thing happened to a friend of a friend who was only in his 20s. It does make one think twice about what we are putting in our bodies, but sometimes there's also just no other options, either.

 

I worded my comments carefully. Many (not all) people would gain more benefit from decent therapy. Not all therapy is decent - point accepted. It's also true that some patients don't properly engage with therapy to derive any benefit from it.

There is a place for anti-depressants and some people absolutely need them, I don't question that for one minute, but many (not all) don't. So if we are prescribing anti-depressants to people who don't really need them, we are in fact over-prescribing.