Many patients often feel that a drug doesn’t have any side effects because they didn’t get nausea, headaches, dizzy or sleepy.  But people need to realize that every drug has some kind of side effect.

According to the American Journal of Medicine, drug interaction is the 4^th leading cause of death in America, right behind heart attacks, stroke and cancer.  We’re talking more than 100,000 people per year, and those are conservative numbers. 

Also, we’re not talking about mistakenly taking the wrong drug, or the pharmacist couldn’t read the writing on the prescription.  We are talking about people taking a prescription medication that suddenly produces fatal consequences.

Probably one of the biggest reasons for this is the fact that most people are taking more than one medication at the same time.  This is absolutely shocking, because when the drugs are tested, the tests subjects are only taking the one drug.  Most American, especially older females are taking on average more than 3-5 medications.  There is no reliable study or safety showing how well two or three drugs interact with each other.  I think people are being put at risk when they take more than one drug at a time.

There are millions of people taking cholesterol lowering drugs.  In fact it is the number one selling drug in America.  Combine that with the number of people taking blood pressure medications, anti-depressants, medications for their diabetes, thyroid, allergies, heartburn, arthritis, and osteoporosis.  Let’s not forget the number of women taking hormone replacements, or the men who are taking something for erectile dysfunction. We also need to include the over-the-counter medications for headaches, PMS and the common cold.  Its ridicules when you think of all the natural approaches we have to help all of these conditions, without having to put ourselves at risk.

Americans are the most overly medicated people out there.  What we need to realize is, just because you don’t consciously notice the side-effect of the drug, don’t assume that it is not causing some type of side effect.  We might not be able to consciously notice the changes, but at the bio-chemical level our body may be functioning differently. 

Our liver could start functioning a little slower; it may not package toxins as well as it should, it could cause an over or under production of various enzymes.  Our kidneys could become more or less permeable to toxins.  Our intestinal lining may become weakened.  They can alter our hormone levels.  Whatever it is, it could be something that isn’t noticeable, which gives us this sense of calm that the drug is fine, but guys we need to realize…some of these possible side-effects may take weeks, or months or even years until it finally reaches a point that we realize it and then we go to the doctor and get another prescription to help with the new symptom….this is all wrong. 

Nobody knows how these drugs are going to interact or act in our body. We just can’t keep walking around swallowing more and more drugs, and assuming there are no potential risks or side effects. We need to start addressing the real causes and quit treating symptoms with drugs.  More than 90% of all the drugs taking are designed to help relieve symptoms. 

Our body is our own little pharmacy, and can make the same little drugs that we are having to pay for.  We just need to make sure we nourish our body properly so it can produce those little drugs, or hormones, or antibodies, or neurotransmitters, or enzymes or whatever.  We have choices!

Dr. Len Lopez