| Pharmaceuticals help us fight off disease and cure a great many medical conditions. Most of us take prescription drugs - medications that, by law, must be prescribed by a physician. If all goes well, the drug works for you as it is supposed to. But there is no "magic bullet", or drug that works the same for everybody without any risks or side effects. A side effect is basically an unintended occurrence that results from using a medication. Side effects can be good or harmful, depending on how you take the medication. For instance, antihistamines, taken to relieve allergy symptoms, such as itchy eyes and sneezing, have the side effect of drowsiness. If you are suffering from trouble sleeping, this side effect is good. If you need to deal with your allergies and drive your car or function at your job, however, it is bad.
The commonest cause of side effects is the fact that prescription drugs are extremely concentrated and ordinarily not found in nature, so they are hard on the liver. Once your liver is chronically stressed by using a medicine every day, any other tension you put on it, such as exposure to toxins, can undermine your well-being. As we become older, the liver works less efficient, so prescription drugs badly affect aging. Side effects can be subtle at first, and you might not attribute them to the drug you are using. Common examples include mild symptoms of fatigue, muscle weakness, forgetfulness, giddiness when you first stand up, trouble thinking clearly, uncharacteristic depression. Certainly, aging can have all those effects on us, but prescription medications can advance and speed up the process.
Once you start mixing medications the side effects amplify. When some drugs interact, they might become dangerous, inefficient or result in possible problems to your health. Sometimes, drug-to-drug interactions might trigger serious side effects, which might range from mild to fatal. Prescription drugs might interact with each other and with non-prescription drugs. Some kinds of food may also decelerate drug absorption, increase or reduce its effectiveness, or result in unexpected side effects.
Alcoholic beverages and caffeine might also impact on how drugs work. For example, mixing alcohol with beta blockers, a type of medication used to treat high blood pressure and heart problems, may decrease your blood pressure excessively. Alcohol might raise sleepiness and make it dangerous to drive or operate machinery if taken with certain medications. Combining big amounts of caffeine with bronchodilators – prescribed to cure asthma, chronic bronchitis and emphysema – may not be secure, because this type of drug and caffeine both stimulate the central nervous system.
So, before you start using a medication, inquire your general practitioner about possible side effects and drug-to-drug interactions. If there is a natural remedy for the medical condition you are suffering from, select the safest oral therapy. |
