Drugs are bad, mmmkay: or, the cure is worse than the disease
Once upon a time, my husband went to the doctor complaining of allergies and really bad sinus problems. So the doctor prescribed Claritin-D. Funny thing about Claritin-D: it works because it has pseudoephedrine, which raises one’s blood pressure. (Side note: he was also smoking at the time; another thing that jacks it up and doesn’t help the sinus trouble.) So the next time he went to the doctor, he got some lisinopril (an ACE inhibitor) for his slight hypertension. Some of the side effects of lisinopril include confusion, tiredness, nasal congestion, runny nose, sneezing, headache, and sweating. Did you notice how a couple of those mimic allergies? But the doctor didn’t mention that, and possibly didn’t even think about that because not everyone gets the side effects. The main thing that blood pressure medications are designed to do is reduce blood pressure, obviously, but I had an epiphany one day - what if increased blood pressure is a way for the body to help keep the arteries clear of plaque build-up? You know, how high water pressure in a hose or pipe keeps gunk from accumulating. Isn’t that one of the benefits of regular exercise, to flush the arteries of cholesterol clogs? It only stands to reason that if the body has a higher level of cholesterol in the blood, that on its own it would realize this and increase blood pressure accordingly to compensate. Biological mechanics are funny that way.
I came upon this epiphany when I realized that my husband hadn’t had to even go on medication for his high cholesterol until after he had been on the lisinopril for a while. And he was also on a beta blocker for a few years, because the lisinopril wasn’t quite doing it...what the doctors never considered was that he was a) not changing his diet, and b) still taking allergy medication with pseudoephedrine in it. And the simvastatin on its own wasn’t bringing down his cholesterol enough, so the doctor also prescribed fenofibrate.
Yes. At one point my husband took two hypertension meds and two high cholesterol meds, on top of the three medications from his psychiatrist.
Oh, but let me get back to that beta blocker, shall I? That was a fun meddy-go-round. Felodipine was not only expensive when it came off the formulary but also caused him to gain a good 30-40 pounds. What the hell good is a blood pressure medication that causes one to gain weight? Isn’t the goal with high blood pressure to lose weight? Of course it is! But the doctors just kept saying, “well, just diet and exercise.” Great, doc, but you’ve got him on not one but FOUR drugs that all cause tiredness, several of them cause joint and/or muscle pain, and at least two cause sweating or frequent urination (which leads to dehydration, which makes one very tired). And excessive weight gain is a known, listed side effect of felodipine. At some point the doctor switched him over to amlodipine, which is chemically similar but was on the formulary so it was much cheaper...however, the side effects are basically the same. We went on a hardcore diet (no exercise, just keeping ourselves to 1800/2000 calories a day) and he lost about 50 pounds. At that point he went off the amlodipine - I don’t remember if it was with the doctor’s blessing or not, but his BP is on the high end of normal even now.
Rewind back to when I was in college - we’d eat at the local Chinese buffet almost every Friday, I’d go with him to his parents’ house or my mom’s house for the weekend, and on the way to and from State College we’d often get some fast food. His mom cooks with a LOT of butter and my mom loves desserts. We also didn’t get a lot of exercise, and for half of that time, he smoked up to 3 packs a day. It’s no wonder his cholesterol was high back then!
But things have changed. We eat healthier (comparatively), and we get a reasonable amount of exercise (not high-intensity cardio, maybe, but I go up and down steps all day and he’s out in the garden - compared to being in college, when I was sitting on my ass in class for a good 4-8 hours a day and in my room or the computer lab for practically the rest of the time; or in a car, driving back and forth). Much less fast food and less butter, too, though it’s not cut out completely....let’s not be crazy, here. Also, he quit smoking and had sinus surgery, so his sinus issues aren’t as severe as they used to be.
In the meantime, his non-psychotropic meds have remained generally the same. I’m not even going into the issues with the psychotropics he’s been on over the years (Zoloft, trazodone, Ativan, Buspar, Wellbutrin, Seroquel, Risperdal, and maybe a few others that I don’t remember) because that would make this twice as long; suffice to say, there are plenty of problems with those as well.
So, to recap: lifestyle changed, medications haven’t, the doctor he sees at least twice a year hasn’t put this together and refuses to acknowledge that any of the medications he’s prescribing are the ones causing an insane amount of perspiration, muscle aches, joint pain, tiredness, lack of motivation, gastric issues, confusion, and sundry other side effects that are affecting my husband’s ability to function like a normal person.
Seriously, he would lie in bed all day long; sometimes sleeping, sometimes paralyzed by depressive/obsessive thoughts, but often just inexplicably exhausted to the point where the only thing that could make him get up was the desire to avoid urinating in the bed. Even the lightest of exercise - going up and down steps, walking from one end of the house or yard to the other - would tire him or make him out of breath, and with more strenuous tasks (mowing the lawn, for example) he’d often start perspiring so much (especially in humid weather or anytime it was over 70F) that he’d literally soak through a t-shirt and an over-shirt. I don’t just mean a few damp spots - I mean soaked through. I could - and did, on a few occasions - take the shirts and wring them out, with noticeable results. He’d easily go through 3-4 shirts on a warm day if we were out in the yard for a few hours doing weeding or planting or harvesting.
It’s funny - I had never noticed how bad it had gotten while it was happening. The progression was so gradual; every year it got a little worse, every season each basic task was a little more difficult for him to complete. Dishes, laundry, cooking meals, keeping house, yardwork, gardening...all of it slowly fell by the wayside as his energy levels deteriorated. There was no medical explanation, according to our doctor - his TSH levels were fine, so it wasn’t his thyroid. He didn’t have lyme disease or lupus or fibromyalgia. He wasn’t “sick” in any way they could figure out. And of course, we trusted our doctor - he’s a doctor, you know. Someone who went to years and years of schooling, someone who keeps up with medical know-how and is in charge of helping people to maintain their state of wellness - he’d know if the answer were simple, wouldn’t he?
One day, while lying in bed and looking things up on the internet, he came across something about statin drugs that made him reconsider taking the simvastatin that he’d been on for at least 10 years. It started with the article about statin drugs possibly causing Alzheimer’s, one of my husband’s great fears. He’s always prided himself on his keen wit and sharp mind and in all honesty would rather die an early death than suffer the slow torture of losing his mental faculties. In the past five years or so, he’d complain that he couldn’t remember things. He’d get off-track of what he was going to say, even when no one interrupted him. He’d struggle with mildly complicated concepts that shouldn’t have eluded him.
“I’ve lost my pretty mind,” he’d lament. “I used to have a pretty mind!”
He started looking at the side effects of the simvastatin, and everything fell into place: THIS was the reason he was constantly sweaty and uncomfortable. THIS was the reason he couldn’t get out of bed (known side effect: “aversion to exercise”). THIS was the reason he was confused and in pain almost all the time. So the next thing we looked up was how to safely get off the medication. He tapered off, and quit.
Even if his cholesterol is through the roof when he gets it checked in September, he’s not going back on that drug. We’ve agreed on that: he feels worlds better, and I have my husband back. He’s not 100% yet - I still have to make dinner on most days, and there’s a shitload of catching up to do - but he’s been up and out of bed by ten am every single day, doing at least 4 hours’ of work outside in the yard (splitting the time between tending the garden and maintaining the grounds), doing dishes daily unless they don’t need it, helping with the laundry, and is actually motivated to do more things around the house in general. Oh, and he only goes through one shirt on a normal day.
I wholly endorse the lifesaving efforts of doctors and other medical professionals. And I take medication myself, to regulate my thyroid, so this isn’t a blanket anti-medication rant. Medications can be wonderful things if one really needs them - but this whole experience has left me wondering how many medications are prescribed just to shut the patient up and make them feel like they’re getting something tangible for their co-pay?
My husband’s doctor could have said, back in the late 90’s when he was diagnosed with hypertension, “Diet. Exercise. Quit smoking. Your BP will go down and it will also help your sinus issues. Plus you’ll lose weight and it’s good for your heart and lungs. You’re in your early 20’s and that’s too young for medication.” But the doctor didn’t say this, and it started a chain reaction of side effects that led him to prescribe additional medications on top of each other - treating the symptoms instead of the cause.
I get the feeling this happens far more often than people would be comfortable knowing. Doctors are supposed to be this elite group of erudite citizens, the holders of the sacred knowledge that is Medicine, and the ones in charge of doling out the precious miracles that come in tiny pills and bitter elixirs. But they are human and fallible. They’re about as smart as anyone with a modicum of insight who can navigate the internet (or, in lieu of that, simply have access to a medical textbook and the Physician’s Desk Reference). Doctors are tacitly bribed by the pharmaceutical companies to write scrips for brand name drugs that may not even be necessary. Most people won’t question their doctors when something is prescribed because we’ve all been led to blindly believe that doctors Know What They’re Doing.
My doctor recently told me to start taking a baby aspirin a day, because having migraines puts me at a greater risk for ischemic stroke. However, taking the aspirin puts me in a higher risk group for hemorrhagic stroke (as well as other problems). Needless to say, I’m not taking the baby aspirin.
So. Can medications be good? Of course. I couldn’t function without the Synthroid. Are they prescribed when not wholly appropriate? Oh, hell yeah. There is no reason that an otherwise healthy 20-something should go on blood pressure and cholesterol medications. Are the FDA and the pharmaceutical companies comprised of pill-pushing fearmongers who are just out to make a buck and damn the long-term consequences? Absolutely. Consider the number of side effects listed on any drug. Half the time the side effects are basically symptoms that the drug is supposed to eliminate, like a migraine drug that causes headaches.
I came upon this epiphany when I realized that my husband hadn’t had to even go on medication for his high cholesterol until after he had been on the lisinopril for a while. And he was also on a beta blocker for a few years, because the lisinopril wasn’t quite doing it...what the doctors never considered was that he was a) not changing his diet, and b) still taking allergy medication with pseudoephedrine in it. And the simvastatin on its own wasn’t bringing down his cholesterol enough, so the doctor also prescribed fenofibrate.
Yes. At one point my husband took two hypertension meds and two high cholesterol meds, on top of the three medications from his psychiatrist.
Oh, but let me get back to that beta blocker, shall I? That was a fun meddy-go-round. Felodipine was not only expensive when it came off the formulary but also caused him to gain a good 30-40 pounds. What the hell good is a blood pressure medication that causes one to gain weight? Isn’t the goal with high blood pressure to lose weight? Of course it is! But the doctors just kept saying, “well, just diet and exercise.” Great, doc, but you’ve got him on not one but FOUR drugs that all cause tiredness, several of them cause joint and/or muscle pain, and at least two cause sweating or frequent urination (which leads to dehydration, which makes one very tired). And excessive weight gain is a known, listed side effect of felodipine. At some point the doctor switched him over to amlodipine, which is chemically similar but was on the formulary so it was much cheaper...however, the side effects are basically the same. We went on a hardcore diet (no exercise, just keeping ourselves to 1800/2000 calories a day) and he lost about 50 pounds. At that point he went off the amlodipine - I don’t remember if it was with the doctor’s blessing or not, but his BP is on the high end of normal even now.
Rewind back to when I was in college - we’d eat at the local Chinese buffet almost every Friday, I’d go with him to his parents’ house or my mom’s house for the weekend, and on the way to and from State College we’d often get some fast food. His mom cooks with a LOT of butter and my mom loves desserts. We also didn’t get a lot of exercise, and for half of that time, he smoked up to 3 packs a day. It’s no wonder his cholesterol was high back then!
But things have changed. We eat healthier (comparatively), and we get a reasonable amount of exercise (not high-intensity cardio, maybe, but I go up and down steps all day and he’s out in the garden - compared to being in college, when I was sitting on my ass in class for a good 4-8 hours a day and in my room or the computer lab for practically the rest of the time; or in a car, driving back and forth). Much less fast food and less butter, too, though it’s not cut out completely....let’s not be crazy, here. Also, he quit smoking and had sinus surgery, so his sinus issues aren’t as severe as they used to be.
In the meantime, his non-psychotropic meds have remained generally the same. I’m not even going into the issues with the psychotropics he’s been on over the years (Zoloft, trazodone, Ativan, Buspar, Wellbutrin, Seroquel, Risperdal, and maybe a few others that I don’t remember) because that would make this twice as long; suffice to say, there are plenty of problems with those as well.
So, to recap: lifestyle changed, medications haven’t, the doctor he sees at least twice a year hasn’t put this together and refuses to acknowledge that any of the medications he’s prescribing are the ones causing an insane amount of perspiration, muscle aches, joint pain, tiredness, lack of motivation, gastric issues, confusion, and sundry other side effects that are affecting my husband’s ability to function like a normal person.
Seriously, he would lie in bed all day long; sometimes sleeping, sometimes paralyzed by depressive/obsessive thoughts, but often just inexplicably exhausted to the point where the only thing that could make him get up was the desire to avoid urinating in the bed. Even the lightest of exercise - going up and down steps, walking from one end of the house or yard to the other - would tire him or make him out of breath, and with more strenuous tasks (mowing the lawn, for example) he’d often start perspiring so much (especially in humid weather or anytime it was over 70F) that he’d literally soak through a t-shirt and an over-shirt. I don’t just mean a few damp spots - I mean soaked through. I could - and did, on a few occasions - take the shirts and wring them out, with noticeable results. He’d easily go through 3-4 shirts on a warm day if we were out in the yard for a few hours doing weeding or planting or harvesting.
It’s funny - I had never noticed how bad it had gotten while it was happening. The progression was so gradual; every year it got a little worse, every season each basic task was a little more difficult for him to complete. Dishes, laundry, cooking meals, keeping house, yardwork, gardening...all of it slowly fell by the wayside as his energy levels deteriorated. There was no medical explanation, according to our doctor - his TSH levels were fine, so it wasn’t his thyroid. He didn’t have lyme disease or lupus or fibromyalgia. He wasn’t “sick” in any way they could figure out. And of course, we trusted our doctor - he’s a doctor, you know. Someone who went to years and years of schooling, someone who keeps up with medical know-how and is in charge of helping people to maintain their state of wellness - he’d know if the answer were simple, wouldn’t he?
One day, while lying in bed and looking things up on the internet, he came across something about statin drugs that made him reconsider taking the simvastatin that he’d been on for at least 10 years. It started with the article about statin drugs possibly causing Alzheimer’s, one of my husband’s great fears. He’s always prided himself on his keen wit and sharp mind and in all honesty would rather die an early death than suffer the slow torture of losing his mental faculties. In the past five years or so, he’d complain that he couldn’t remember things. He’d get off-track of what he was going to say, even when no one interrupted him. He’d struggle with mildly complicated concepts that shouldn’t have eluded him.
“I’ve lost my pretty mind,” he’d lament. “I used to have a pretty mind!”
Click to viewHe started looking at the side effects of the simvastatin, and everything fell into place: THIS was the reason he was constantly sweaty and uncomfortable. THIS was the reason he couldn’t get out of bed (known side effect: “aversion to exercise”). THIS was the reason he was confused and in pain almost all the time. So the next thing we looked up was how to safely get off the medication. He tapered off, and quit.
Even if his cholesterol is through the roof when he gets it checked in September, he’s not going back on that drug. We’ve agreed on that: he feels worlds better, and I have my husband back. He’s not 100% yet - I still have to make dinner on most days, and there’s a shitload of catching up to do - but he’s been up and out of bed by ten am every single day, doing at least 4 hours’ of work outside in the yard (splitting the time between tending the garden and maintaining the grounds), doing dishes daily unless they don’t need it, helping with the laundry, and is actually motivated to do more things around the house in general. Oh, and he only goes through one shirt on a normal day.
I wholly endorse the lifesaving efforts of doctors and other medical professionals. And I take medication myself, to regulate my thyroid, so this isn’t a blanket anti-medication rant. Medications can be wonderful things if one really needs them - but this whole experience has left me wondering how many medications are prescribed just to shut the patient up and make them feel like they’re getting something tangible for their co-pay?
My husband’s doctor could have said, back in the late 90’s when he was diagnosed with hypertension, “Diet. Exercise. Quit smoking. Your BP will go down and it will also help your sinus issues. Plus you’ll lose weight and it’s good for your heart and lungs. You’re in your early 20’s and that’s too young for medication.” But the doctor didn’t say this, and it started a chain reaction of side effects that led him to prescribe additional medications on top of each other - treating the symptoms instead of the cause.
I get the feeling this happens far more often than people would be comfortable knowing. Doctors are supposed to be this elite group of erudite citizens, the holders of the sacred knowledge that is Medicine, and the ones in charge of doling out the precious miracles that come in tiny pills and bitter elixirs. But they are human and fallible. They’re about as smart as anyone with a modicum of insight who can navigate the internet (or, in lieu of that, simply have access to a medical textbook and the Physician’s Desk Reference). Doctors are tacitly bribed by the pharmaceutical companies to write scrips for brand name drugs that may not even be necessary. Most people won’t question their doctors when something is prescribed because we’ve all been led to blindly believe that doctors Know What They’re Doing.
My doctor recently told me to start taking a baby aspirin a day, because having migraines puts me at a greater risk for ischemic stroke. However, taking the aspirin puts me in a higher risk group for hemorrhagic stroke (as well as other problems). Needless to say, I’m not taking the baby aspirin.
So. Can medications be good? Of course. I couldn’t function without the Synthroid. Are they prescribed when not wholly appropriate? Oh, hell yeah. There is no reason that an otherwise healthy 20-something should go on blood pressure and cholesterol medications. Are the FDA and the pharmaceutical companies comprised of pill-pushing fearmongers who are just out to make a buck and damn the long-term consequences? Absolutely. Consider the number of side effects listed on any drug. Half the time the side effects are basically symptoms that the drug is supposed to eliminate, like a migraine drug that causes headaches.