Even after years of practicing medicine, I’m still amazed at the fact that most doctors (conventional and otherwise) don’t ever bother asking their patients what medications they’re on – over the counter or prescribed. What’s worse is these doctors then blindly prescribe even more medications to their patients, possibly doing more harm than good. So, today let’s focus on this topic because, for some of you, your medications may be the reason behind your mysterious or seemingly random symptoms.
I repeat…your health symptoms may be the side effect of the medication(s) you’re on!
Not all side effects show up the day after you start taking your meds. Meaning, especially for medications that you’re supposed to be on long term, the symptoms can come about insidiously. It could take weeks or months for you to start experiencing and noticing these side effects.
And sometimes it’s the increase in the dose of the medication you’ve been taking for a while that can cause problems.
Now you may be familiar with a couple of these side effects that are more common such as weight gain and gut irritation but I also want to shed light on some other less talked about symptoms.
By the way, medications that cause gut issues (mainly acid reflux) are unfortunately paired with a PPI, which is an awful medication that we can get into in another article.
Here is a non-exhaustive list of medication side effects
And why is knowing this important?
Because you may be experiencing one or more of these symptoms and not know why. And, more often than not, when you share this with your doctor instead of getting to the bottom of why you're experiencing these symptoms, they’ll just put you on more meds to treat these “new symptoms”. And these will in turn give you other side-effects and the vicious cycle continues.
And yes, your doctor is responsible for educating you about all the potential side effects of the medications that they prescribe to you (including the rare ones) but they don’t! They don’t even give you the tools to be able to educate yourself!! Meaning they do *not* practice informed consent. And, to top that off, in most cases you, the patient, are placed on these medications indefinitely, with no expiration date in sight.
So, does this mean that you’re powerless and a victim? Absolutely not!
One of the many things that you can do is to learn to advocate for yourself and ask important questions and pair that with your own research.
Some good questions to ask your doctor when they’re about to prescribe meds for you are:
All of this requires that you work with a doctor who is just as eager as you to understand and address the root cause of your health problems. And a doctor who respects and encourages your sense of agency over your health and your body!