Consult your doctor before discontinuing medications

Imagine your doctor puts you on medication to treat a heart condition, asthma, diabetes or depression. Things have gone well, you’ve made some changes to your lifestyle, and you’re feeling fantastic. But then, you feel as if you no longer require those prescribed medications.

Eyeing your pill bottle or your inhaler, you can’t help but question, ‘Can I stop taking my medication?’ The medication no longer seems necessary, and you could use that money on something else.

Before you make any decisions, however, you need to speak with the doctor or your pharmacist regarding this decision.

Speaking to a health professional

The reality is that in many cases, stopping your medication and even tampering off without the supervision of a doctor/pharmacist is a dangerous thing to do.

Stopping blood pressure medication, for instance, could cause your blood pressure to rise dangerously high.

Quitting a diabetes medication can cause your blood sugar levels to spiral out of control.

And quitting a medication for depression will likely cause your symptoms to return. Before you know it, you may be right back where you started – or even worse off. Understand one thing--you felt better because you were on those medications, skipping or quitting them will only make things worse.

The consequences of poor compliance

When a patient doesn’t take their medication as directed, doctors and pharmacists refer to this noncompliance.

Noncompliance has serious consequences for patients and is one of the top reasons for trips to the emergency room. Not many know this but noncompliance is also a major issue in our country.

For example, stopping an inhaled medication that is used to prevent asthma attacks, can cause asthma symptoms to flare up, leading to difficulty in breathing.

In the end, that trip to the emergency unit because your asthma is out of control; costs considerably more than filling your prescription would have.

In patients with diabetes, noncompliance can lead to serious consequences such as permanent nerve damage and kidney failure, which can eventually lead to death.

People usually complain, ‘I want to proceed with my dose but my medication is so expensive.’ Well, patients stop taking their medications for a number of reasons. Some simply forget while others are concerned about over medication or side effects.

If you tend to forget your medications, talk to a doctor or pharmacist about different products designed to improve compliance, such as pill bottles with alarms that will light up or even text you when it’s time to take your medication.

Expensive medication is an ongoing problem and one that may feel more difficult to solve. But there are options.

Talk to your pharmacist about whether a generic drug is available and check with the drug manufacturer for coupons.

New medications hit the market every day, and drug-industry representatives are sent out to convince physicians to use these newer, more expensive medications.

The truth, however, is that many of these medications are for conditions that can be just as effectively treated with older medications, many of which are available in cost-effective generic form.

If you have heart disease or diabetes and your doctor is writing for a medication with an exorbitant price tag, discuss the possibility of switching to a medication available in generic form.

Another safe option to cut your prescription drug costs is to order them online through an accredited online pharmacy but unfortunately we haven’t reached this stage yet in Tanzania.

Caution

You should never stop taking any prescribed medication without consulting your doctor/pharmacist, but there are a handful of medications that can do more damage than you may think when suddenly stopped.

Below are just five of the types of medications that you should never stop or even adjust without the explicit instruction from your physician.

1. Blood pressure medication

When antihypertensive medications are suddenly stopped, it can cause your blood pressure to spike. If you feel that lowering the dose or starting on a different medication is what your body may need, tell your physician and discuss your options. And remember, your blood pressure can be high even when you’re feeling well, so it’s best to discuss this with your doctor rather than adjusting the dosage yourself and potentially harm yourself.

2. Steroids

Used primarily for their anti-inflammatory effects, steroids help ease the symptoms of ailments from Crohn’s disease, to asthma, to arthritis. Though steroid medications are often necessary and life-saving remedies, they can have severe side effects, one of which is decreasing your body’s natural steroid production. “After a prolonged period of taking steroids, your body may not be able to immediately produce steroids on its own when it needs to,” notes Monica Ferguson, MD, an internal medicine physician at Annadel Medical Group in Santa Rosa.

3. Antidepressants

It’s fairly common for people taking antidepressants to consider stopping their medication when they start to feel better. “The safest way to come off your antidepressants medication is to do so slowly,” says Dr. Ferguson. “It will likely be over the course of several weeks or even a few months.” Coming off an antidepressant medication too quickly can result in a depression relapse. Since these medications affect your brain chemistry, it’s important to remember that your brain will take some time to get used to a different chemical balance without the drugs, and therefore coming off these medications requires patience and a careful plan.

4. Diabetes medication

When your blood sugar seems to be under control, you may decide you want to stop taking your diabetes medications. If you’re a type 1 diabetic, your body will never be able to create its own insulin, so it’s pretty clear that you can never stop taking insulin. But if you’re a type 2 diabetic, you may be able to explore alternatives with your physician. Since this type of diabetes evolves and changes over time, you need to consistently evaluate your treatment plan with your doctor – this could involve reducing the dose of your current medication or trying newer medications. But it’s imperative that you don’t take any action on your own in regards to adjusting your medication without first consulting with your physician.

5. Antibiotics

Too often patients with a bacterial infection begin a course of antibiotics with every intention of following the doctor’s orders, then cutting their treatment short when they’re feeling better. What they don’t realise is that this can cause problems in the future.

“Antibiotics are prescribed in the dose that ensures every last bit of the targeted bacteria in your body will be destroyed,” explains Dr. Ferguson. “If you stop taking your antibiotics a few days before you’re supposed to, any remaining strains of the bacteria, the ones that were already strong enough to make it through the first few doses of the medicine, will survive in your system, and will be resistant the next time you take those same antibiotics.”

The author is a Pharmacist based in Dar es Salaam.