Too many cooks
Yesterday I asked my GP about my blood pressure medication even though she was happy with my reading, especially considering my history of white coat syndrome. Her response was a refreshing departure from tradition. When she learned that my next cardiologist appointment is in December, she advised me to wait and have the discussion with him. She wisely asserted, “Too many cooks.”
The cooks may be highly proficient, but you will always end up with too many recipes.
Choosing the most delicious recipe is confusing and when we start blending, we step into a culinary minefield. Rarely does anything reliably scrumptious come of this.
The same is true with medication regimens. We like to boast that we have a regular GP, but they are often unavailable when we need urgent attention. We may consult with multiple specialists, and our latest data may not be available to attending physicians in emergency departments.
These wonderful Samaritans do an amazing job of saving lives and reconnecting us with family and friends after our special trauma, but since they all rely on prescribing specialized drugs there is a danger of interactions. From my experience doctors prefer not to second guess their colleagues presuming that their choice of drugs is correct and necessary. Their preferred course of action is to add to the pharmacy list, taking care to avoid dangerous interactions.
The more prescribers that get involved the faster the medication roundabout spins. Eventually a dizzying array of interactions are inevitable and overall effectiveness is significantly reduced.
Then there’s that uninvited kid who jumps on our turntable insisting they know how to go faster without getting dizzy and assures us they can stop as soon as we get scared. Yes, I’m talking about Doctor Google.
We can Google all the information we need on every drug, their purpose, side effects, interactions, warnings as well as generic brand names and special online deals.
So, we tinker. What could possibly go wrong? We start with upping analgesia, to improve our pain management. Nothing bad happened, so we move on to improving our sleep. It’s a bit hard to get over the counter sedatives but there are some powerful antihistamines available, with bonus hay fever mitigation.
Natural remedial herbs and supplements don’t count as medicines, do they. They’re advertised online on TV and in print media so they must be fine to treat those minor ailments and conditions we choose not to bore our busy doctors with. We can regulate bowel movements, reduce anxiety and even improve our eyesight with a small sample of supermarket specialties.
I recently joined the snaking queue of enduring exemplarists at the local pharmacist when the guy in front of me proudly told the girl processing his magic mountain, “I roll all my daily pills into a bowl in the morning, pour milk over them and that’s my breakfast.”
I chuckled in appreciation of his wit, then I realised that I could relate, and began to wonder how many of us are in a similar situation. Such a morning meal hardly sounds nutritious, let alone palatable and a haphazard cocktail of drugs, herbs and vitamin supplements is unlikely to be efficacious.
How did it get to this; what sort of substance singularity are we being accreted into? How can we escape its ravenous jaws?
We may not perceive our uninformed undisciplined experimentation as addiction, but the consequences can be just as dire. Our next GP appointment should be dedicated to critically examining our pharmaceutical regimens, official and unofficial (honestly). Less may well be best, for our health and wealth.
Too much of a good thing may harm us but too much of a bad thing definitely will.