Tips For Healthy Living

Today, we take medications to ease pain, to reduce fever, to take away stomachaches, to lower our blood pressure, to reduce inflammations and to fight infections. Diseases such as hypertension and heart disease among others have an assortment of medications that are prescribed by medical doctors to treat the symptoms of these diseases. Individuals are inundated with reasons to take medications. Many of these medications can cause adverse (unpleasant or undesirable) side effects. Other medications can trigger allergic reactions in the individual taking the medication. There is a difference between having an adverse side effect to a certain drug and experiencing an allergic reaction to a medication. Adverse side effects and allergic drug reactions can occur from medications that have been prescribed or from those drugs that we purchase Over-the-counter.

A medication that has caused an allergic reaction has initiated an allergic reaction from the immune system of the individual. The immune system is recognizing that the drug is a foreign substance and is producing chemicals, such as histamines in large quantities in an effort to get rid of the “foreign body”, the drug.

Individuals experiencing an allergic reaction to a certain medication can have symptoms that range from mild to severe ones that can be life threatening.

How do you know if what you are experiencing is a drug allergy or a drug side effect?

The simplest answer to this question is that a drug allergic reaction is one in which your immune system is causing the reaction and when the reaction is caused by a medication’s therapeutic action than that is called, experiencing a drug side effect.

Drug Allergic reactions:

The symptoms that one may experience while having an allergic reaction to a certain drug is that they may have skin hives, a skin rash, itchy skin, itchy eyes, congestion of the nasal passages, or a swelling in the mouth or throat tissues. If they are experiencing a severe allergic reaction to a drug, they may be experiencing difficulty breathing, their skin may turn a bluish color, they may feel dizzy, faint, feel anxious, be confused, have a rapid pulse, be nauseous, experience diarrhea or other abdominal problems.

When a person is not allergic to a drug, that drug may still irritate them when they take it.

Drug Side Effect reactions:

Side effects to drugs are undesirable effects that occur in addition to the desired or therapeutic effect that the drug is supposed to have. Side effects from the same drug can differ from one individual to another and can also depend on the person’s age, weight, gender, ethnicity and also the individual’s state of disease. Side effects can happen when the drug is first started, or when dosages or decreasing or increasing or at the end of the medication regimen. Side effects are important because they can cause the individual to stop taking the medication or to miss doses or change the dosage in an attempt to avoid the side effect. Common side effects to drugs are stomach upsets, dry mouth, can happen with the gastrointestinal system, the skin, the blood, brain or bone. Mental side effects that certain medications can have on individuals include: agitation, anxiety, aggression, depression, hallucinations, hyperactivity, irritability, restlessness, and sleeplessness, weakness even suicide.

Muscular side effects seen in some drugs are leg cramps, muscle pain, muscle tremors, muscle spasms, and muscle tiredness, swelling of the feet or legs, and unexplained muscle weakness.

Other side effects that individuals have experienced after taking medications have been a sore throat, flu-like symptoms, cough, jaundice, liver or kidney failure, diarrhea, abdominal pain, nausea, stomach bleeding, vomiting, seizures, bone pain or bone loss, anemia, palpitations, low blood cell counts, high blood pressure, tachycardia (fast heartbeat, facial flushing, and thrombosis (blood clot).

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