The Disastrous Consequences of Self Medication

Popping of pills, at the drop of a hat, has become a trend and most of us are self-proclaimed experts on how to cure various types of illness. A large number of people try to experiment by either buying medicines over the counter at the nearby chemist, or take resort to whatever medicine is available at home or at the neighbour's place. This intake of medicines, without consulting any physician, is what can be described as self medication. It is very dangerous even for minor ailments, and can lead to many complications later. Self medication could be the root cause for habituation, addiction and allergy.

The potential threats of self medication can have the following consequences:

Wrong Diagnosis

Have you noticed that if you have fever, cough and cold, indigestion or stomach upset, almost everyone from friends, relatives to total strangers give expert advice to take a particular medicine? Sometimes it might happen that the symptoms just subside temporarily with these medicines and lead to major complications later. It then becomes difficult even for the doctors to diagnose and treat the illness.

Self medication can be severely reactive

A substantial amount of dangerous drugs such as pain relievers, cough syrups, anti-allergies, antacids, laxatives, vitamins etc are sold over the counter (OTC), which may not be suitable for everyone. In fact antibiotics such as Penicillin or Sulphur drugs can cause severe reactions in many people, the impact of which can be fatal.

Risk of cardiac arrest or kidney failure

Medicines like analgesics and pain killers are most commonly misused. They can cause acidity, gastroenteritis and other disorders if bought without the doctor's prescription, because the dosage is of primary importance. It can increase the risk of stroke by four times in patients who suffer from high blood pressure and can even cause severe kidney damage. This can prove incurable and mortal in the long run.

Hazardous drug combinations and insufficient dosage

Self medication also makes a person exposed to several medicines needlessly, each of which can have undesirable effects. The so-called alternative medicines abound the market and many irrational combinations are prescribed by some professionals. This is extremely dangerous as it can adversely affect on the body and lead to some serious problem over the time.

Fatal and disastrous effect on pregnant women

This is perhaps most dangerous, as self medication involves the intake of drugs, unlike other aspects of health care. If a pregnant woman takes medicine without prescription, it could harmfully affect the unborn child causing birth defects and congenital deformities.

Steps to prevent self medication

We can see that popping pills without consulting the physician is very dangerous and the government should propose stricter "Drug Control" to disallow the sale of over the counter (OTC) medicines in the market without a valid prescription. The doctors should also be more judicious in recommending the right drugs and general public should be made more conscious about the serious health implications of self medication, giving them adequate information about their use.

Tarun Kumar Sharma is a New Delhi based independent content writer with more than a decade of experience in professional web based content writing in hundreds of domains. He provides his national and international clientele with well-researched, creatively written and 100% plagiarism-free content with high quality standards. He can be reached at: onlytarun78@gmail.com or by making a call at +91- 9999162530

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