With Any New Symptoms, Consider Drug Side Effects
Connect the Dots
You wake up with a new symptom. Maybe it is a nagging cough. Maybe it is a rash, diarrhea, or a headache that will not go away.
Your first instinct is to panic and ask, “What new disease do I have?”
But in my experience, the first question you should always ask is this. “Could this be a side effect of something I am taking?”
It could be a new prescription. It could even be a new supplement. For example, magnesium commonly causes diarrhea.
We often forget that every single pill in your medicine cabinet has potential side effects. When you are taking multiple medications, those effects can compound.
Keep in mind that when pharmaceutical companies study medications, they usually test them in isolation. They do not test several medications taken by the same person at the same time.
I have a friend whose husband had a cough for a year. He went to a lung specialist and had all sorts of testing. They told him he had asthma and prescribed medications that he really could not afford because he did not have health insurance.
When she was telling me the story, I asked, “Is he on a blood pressure medicine?”
I asked because there is a class of blood pressure medicines called ACE Inhibitors. They frequently cause a dry, persistent cough as a side effect.
Sure enough, that was the case. After stopping the medication, his cough went away in a couple of days.
I used to always tell my students, “If there is one thing you learn from this rotation, it is this. Every new patient complaint is a potential drug side effect until proven otherwise.”
So often, that turns out to be true.
It is usually easy to connect the dots. If a symptom showed up around the same time you started a new medication, that is your first clue. Always bring it up with your doctor before assuming the worst.
Authored by Gerard Guillory, MD
Gerard Guillory, MD, is a board-certified internist who practiced for nearly four decades with a focus on functional, root-cause medicine. He is the author of three books on irritable bowel syndrome and the founder of It’s My Health, where he and his team put current health news in context and help members understand the underlying causes of chronic symptoms.
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