Are you self medicating yourself? Top 5 reasons why you shouldn't

Do you have the habit of popping the pill for headache, cold or a stomach ache?Do you very easily tell your friends and relatives to use medicines your doctor gave you if you feel that their symptoms are similar to yours? Do you keep refilling your prescription without consulting your doctor? Do you stop or take the drugs on your whims and fancy? Then you are a victim of self medication and half cooked knowledge.

1. Use and abuse of medicines

Some medicines or drugs are habit forming. Their unwarranted use may  have the potential of developing addiction. You may continue taking the drugs and expose yourself to the long term side effects of these medicines. If you stop taking the medicines then you may develop withdrawal side effects.

2. Exposed to side effects

By prescribing drugs for yourself and taking them without expert guidance, you risk the dangers of side effects. Some drugs are not to be used in certain medical conditions, some are not to be used with certain other medicines or foods. Failure to follow any of these precautions may result in the development of serious side effect. If the dose to be used is not known about correctly, then adverse effects due to over dosage may be exhibited.

3. Wrong diagnosis

Your diagnosis of your disease or some one else's may be completely wrong. By using medicines which are not required by your normal system, certain abnormalities may develop. A wrong diagnosis will not treat the disease and also it will worsen the present situation in absence of correct treatment.

 

4. Delayed recovery

If you have wasted a lot of time in waiting, self medicating your self without any visible results, you have wasted a lot of time and allowed the symptoms of your disease to exacerbate. This may develop further complications and may prove to be fatal as well.

5. Financial burden

Think of all the money that you have already spend in buying the medicines you self prescribed for yourself without any improvement of the symptoms. This results in sheer wastage of your time and money. Prescription drugs are not covered by health insurance so you end up paying much more than was deemed necessary.

Finally your safety lies with you and your doctor. Try not to take any medication for a persistent problem until your doctor prescribes and your Pharmacist recommends and guides you about it.