Your quality of life is doing the things you enjoy fully engaged
Medications have two main purposes.
- One is to increase your QUALITY of life. They relieve or control the symptoms that make it hard to do our daily tasks. Quality of life is your ability to enjoy and engage in your life. It is your ability to do the things you want to do during the day.
- The other is to increase your QUANTITY of life. They help control medical conditions so you can live longer.
ALL medications have potential side effects. Some of these side effects are a minor nuisance that goes away. Some of these side effects are so severe you are changed to a different medicine. Then there are some times when another medicine is started to treat the side effects of the first medicine. In most situations I highly discourage this practice. There are a few select exceptions.
Medications and Quality of Life
This blog is about the medications that are prescribed to help you live better. Using them is intended to improve your quality of life. But, they have side effects that keep you from functioning normally. Those side effects actually decrease your quality of life. Here are a few examples:
- Pain medication for back pain makes you so sleepy you just lay around.
- Blood pressure medicine makes your blood pressure so low you don’t have the energy to do regular daily tasks or you get really dizzy when you stand up or turn quickly.
- Anxiety medicine keeps you so groggy you can’t function.
- Sleep medicine keeps you sleepy all through the next morning.
- Diabetes medicine makes your blood sugar so low you are weak, shaky, and dizzy.
- Parkinson’s Disease medicine makes you so dizzy you can’t go out.
- Incontinence medicines makes you so constipated you are miserable.
It doesn’t make sense for a medicine intended to help to actually cause just as many problems as the thing it was prescribed to treat. Talk to you doctor! Your doctor might not know unless you talk about it. Your relationship with your doctor should include conversations about your goals. Let your doctor know what daily events and tasks are important to you. Then, work together to reach those goals through medication, physical therapy, counseling, diet, or other means.
We are here to help, too! At Meds MASH we will carefully review all of your medicines to be sure you are getting the maximum benefit with the least side effects. Often a dose change or an alternate medication can make a huge difference. We work closely with your doctor to optimize your medicines. You don’t need to live with side effects that hold you down. Contact us at www.medsmash.com.
For more application, check out my personal blog.
