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Treating Side Effects Instead of Disease
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Treating Side Effects Instead of Disease
Dr. Varon’s latest Brownstone article explores ‘the prescribing cascade’.
Medication causes side effects that are mistaken for a new disease.
Instead of asking, “Could this be the drug?”, another prescription is written. Then another. Before long, it’s difficult to tell what’s illness and what’s treatment.
He gives the example of Prednisone, it is indispensable in the management of autoimmune diseases, severe asthma exacerbations, adrenal insufficiency, transplant medicine, and numerous inflammatory disorders.
But, Even short courses of corticosteroids have been linked to higher risks of serious infections, blood clots, broken bones, high blood sugar, mood changes, trouble sleeping, and other side effects that are often overlooked because the medicines are familiar. (4) Still, corticosteroids keep being prescribed for simple viral upper respiratory infections even though there is no strong proof they shorten illness or improve important health results.
Sometimes it simply means doing less until we know more.
Read it here https://brownstone.org/articles/the-reflex-to-prescribe/
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2 Replies
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So true! How many times have I gone down this road where 1 prescription becomes 3 to treat side effects. And with many people I know, that stacks to 6 or 7! Start over and you end up healthier than you started. There should be a whole medical specialty devoted to looking at a person’s prescriptions, understanding the interactions and side effects, and trying to terminate whichever ones are possible. I think pharmacists are supposed to do this, but I’ve never seen one that does.
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About prednisone: I was prescribed 40 mg daily for a week; my primary care provider went on vacation; my body became addicted in that week which showed up by leaving me with hardly enough strength or energy to get from bed to bathroom a distance of about 15 feet. An emergency visit to another care provider gave me a prescription for an alternate similar to but so very different from prednisone: started at 20 mg/day and daily tapered off so that at the end of the week I was more myself in strength and energy. And no longer addicted to prednisone. It is my understanding that the tapered off version of the steroid is more commonly used in Europe. Why is it not common in America? Why do so many American doctors insist on using the dangerous version of steroid (prednisone) rather than the safe and prepared packaged-as-needed tapering version?
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