Taking Pharmaceuticals? Keep this in mind:
Doctors and nurses are smart professionals-- well trained and typically caring people who want to help. Unfortunately, our healthcare system puts competing demands on their time and attention. This translates to a particular problem I have seen again and again in my clinic. One that falls out of my scope of practice and puts me in a spot where it is difficult to address the complaints patients walk in the door asking me to help them solve.
Monday a patient reported vertigo/dizziness that had been plaguing him for nearly a year. He had tried everything Western medicine had to offer and had done every imaginable test. NOTHING was working.
As we discussed his health history he listed the pharmaceuticals he takes regularly. I asked, "Have you or anyone else taken the time to look at the side effects for these meds to see if dizziness might be one of them?"
"No," he replied.
Further research proved that ALL of them have dizziness/vertigo as potential side effects. Somehow NO ONE had considered this simple question.
As I mentioned, pharmaceuticals are out of my scope of practice, as they must be prescribed and managed by an MD or other medical specialist with the proper training and credentials. So, I can treat the symptoms and suggest that the patient take this information with him back into the system that failed him in the first place (because they didn't look hard enough for the root cause) and hope for the best. Some people will advocate for themselves within that system until they get results. Others won't, and may keep coming back to me looking for help.
Pharmaceutical side effects and what some have termed "pill burden" is one of the more serious examples of why I have begun to think of western medicine as similar to a savant. Just like Dustin Hoffman's character in the movie Rain Main could do wonders with complex math, but was unable to connect in a basic conversation. Our current healthcare system can perform miraculous feats with some of the most challenging diseases and traumatic injuries; but, it can be almost laughably out to lunch on the simplest basics of caring for a human body.
Months of debilitating dizziness is no laughing matter, though. Neither is the waste of precious time and resources spent chasing a new diagnosis when the answer lay in the treatment plan for a previous diagnosis.
The moral of the story: if you're taking pharmaceuticals and experience new symptoms, take a peek on the internet to see if it might be a side effect and/or be sure to ask your Pharmacist/MD/NP/RN to look into this for you.
And don't rule out this possibility just because you've been taking the same med for awhile with no side effects. Remember, bodies change every day and those changes accumulate.
Eastern Medicine works with those changes to guide your body to better health, without side effects!
