Absolutely not doing this: MIT’s Smart Pill Knows When You Swallow It
Not taking medication as prescribed remains a widespread issue. Each year, it contributes to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths and adds billions of dollars to health care costs.
Part of this is because of side effects, often severe – and providers who do not seem to care.
I have a first-person story on this – within 3 weeks of being started on an LDL lowering medication (my normal LDL is in the normal range already) – I began experiencing hip, thigh, knee and lower leg pain. When I discussed with a provider I was told (really) to “tough it out”.
During the past 4 weeks, the pain was so bad I became home bound. I have literally been out of the house 3 times, and 2 of those were physical therapy appointments to address the pain.
The medication has destroyed me life – and why? I stopped taking the medication 7 days ago and so far, the pain has subsided, but it can take weeks for the effects to go away. I presume they will go away and after that, I will do a “challenge test” – and start taking it again to see if the pain returns. I will let my provider know what I did – and why – because not being able to move is itself a major health problem.
(Temporarily stopping this medication is essentially zero risk anyway.)
50% of people who stop taking their medication do so because of side effects. Side effects are more common that pharma implies. Pharma provides “benefits” in terms of relative risks but hides or downplays side effects by discussing as absolute risk.
To understand the difference, consider this example:
- A control group taking a placebo has a 15% chance of something bad happening.
- The test group has a 12% chance of something bad happening. The pharma business will say that their drug reduces the risk by 20% in relative risk terms (15% to 12%). But it’s 3 percentage points in absolute terms.
Meanwhile, their clinical trial found 3% of participants had side effects – which is reported as 3% (absolute terms). They use relative risk to describe benefits but absolute risk for the side effects- skewing your view of the drug’s benefit.
Prior to this I was walking 3-4 miles most days and doing stair climbs and hills. On this drug, I am, most days, screaming in pain just going to the bathroom. I have not been able to return to my walks for 4 months now. This is not right.
Medicine should not be torture – particularly for questionable benefits. Having been told to “tough it out” – what can I do other than “Do my own research”? I am not going to put with this pain any longer.
