Medicine – Friend or Enemy?

Apparently, we might think of the medicines as friends only as they protect us from various pains and infections but the fact is that if not used properly, the same medicines can turn into a dangerous enemy as well. It all depends on only one thing, how you use the medicines.

It may sound quite simple but this one aspect of medicine is the most essential one and success and failure of therapy entirely depends on  taking care of how  and when to use a medicine only. When we fall sick and look for doctors advise on our problem, the doctor prescribes us a certain medicines to  be taken at a certain times of the day, a certain number of times and for certain number of days. We come home, start taking medicines and then the moment we start feeling better, we tend to default on the therapy course just by our own sweet will. We feel that now we have recovered and its not necessary to complete the doctors given therapy because of which the disease do not get treated completely and there are good chances that the same problem will occur again soon. This is most common in bacterial infections but is equally relevant in other diseases as well. Moreover, the dose frequency is also altered as per own sweet will which doesn’t allow our body to get the full and required therapeutic effect and hence chances of relapse of the same disease remain unchecked. Indians have a lot of tendency to default on prescription advise and be their own doctor.

Broadly, there are three things which are an essential part of a therapy and if altered by our own will, can cause us problems. These are potency, number of daily doses and therapy duration. Lets talk about all these separately:

• Potency – So the doctor has prescribed you a medicine of the power 200mg but you feel 100mg is fine for you so you either take half the tablet or buy 100mg power. Technically, the potency of dose is dependent  directly on your body weight. When the trials of this particular drug was done that this drug was effective to its optimal level only when there is a certain amount of drug available in your blood. Below the optimum level, the drug might and will not work in your body fully since the optimum level of drug in blood was not attained. You might start feeling somewhat better initially since some drug is going in the blood but this will probably not sustain since potency has been altered. Conversely, if you start taking more power then prescriber, you might start to see overdose side effects and you will burden your liver and kidneys with unnecessary dose.
• Number of daily doses – So now you take the proper potency but the doctor has asked you to take this tablet twice a day while you by your own wish has started taking it once only. Now here we need to understand that way the drug works is that a certain minimum amount of drug is required in the blood to effect efficiently and the drug will be able to sustain this amount in the blood upto a certain time only. In this case, the doctor knew that this particular drug will be able to remain in potent quantity as well as action only till 12 hours of the day and for the action to remain constant for 24 hours, two tablets a day are required. So even after proper potency, if you alter number of doses, this will effect the overall benefit. On the contrary, if you take it three times, than the effect might not increase but you will get to see side effects if not advised by the doctor.
• Therapy duration –The doctor wrote the prescription for 5 days and you start to feel almost normal after 3 days so you stop the medicine. Now, what is the problem here? Again going a little technical in this, when the trial  of this drug in this particular disease was done it was probably found that the drug needs to be in the blood at a constant potency in a constant duration of dose for atleast a certain number of days so that the pathogen (bad element) can be eliminated completely. Without adhering to therapy duration, you might start feeling better in a short while, but be sure that the disease has not eradicated from your body completely and it probably will come back and this time even more strongly because disease has its own immunity as well and this time your older drug or its potency will be less effective against the resistance of the disease. Again, if you take it for more days than prescribed, then the benefits might not extend but the side effects will.

Follow the prescription diligently and then the medicines are your friend. Please remember you are not having any medicine by hobby. You have fallen sick and that’s why you have come to see a doctor. Please follow his advice like a good student and let him help you get out of this disease.