Q: How can you tell if a medicine or supplement is helping you?
Why does ibuprofen work to ease muscle aches in some people but when others try it, they don’t get any relief? Why can amoxicillin cause a life-threatening allergic reaction in some people but in others can save their life?
We are amazingly unique individuals in how we react to medicines, food supplements and herbal products. Taking even one dose of a medication can cause any of several potential outcomes: relieving the symptoms you’re suffering from, cause dizziness, stomach upset, rash, or other unintended reaction, or no effect at all. It can even cause you annoying side effects while failing to relieve your original symptoms!
It SEEMS logical: if a medication is designed to treat or cure something and is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for it, you’d expect it to be able to do that for everyone, right? It certainly would be much easier if doctors could determine how a particular medicine would work on you BEFORE you buy it and take it. If only your doctor could be SURE that a particular medicine designed to treat the condition you are suffering from would “do the trick” and cure you.
If this were so it would make a doctor’s job SO MUCH EASIER! They’d examine you, decide what’s wrong, give you a particular medicine designed to treat it, and BAM! You’re fixed. If only it was that simple.
Giving a medicine to treat a particular condition isn’t predictable because we are all unique individuals when it comes to how we react to medicines, supplements and herbal products.
Despite our doctor’s best efforts to match the medicine to our condition, no medicine works in everyone, and no medicine works the same in everyone. Even with the best medical science available today, doctors still can’t predict exactly HOW a medicine, food supplement or herbal product will act inside you when you take it.
Ibuprofen, which is found in Advil®, and naproxen, the active ingredient in Aleve®, are very closely related and act to relieve pain and swelling in the same way. Still, many people find that one works better for them or causes fewer side effects than the other. Still others find that neither one works for them. Why?
Think of a medicine like a key. Medicines work a lot like keys, each with its particular shape. Each of these shapes or “keys” is designed to fit into a certain place in your body, much like a key fits into a lock. This place is called a “receptor” because it “receives” the key. Some of us have receptors whose shape fits a particular key perfectly while others have receptors whose shape only fits part of the key. Other folks don’t have any receptors that fit the key, which explains why medicines will work just fine for some people but only partly or not at all for others. I call the ones who get a good result from a medicine a “responder”.
If your doctor gives you a medicine to lower your blood sugar, he or she will have a plan to check on how you are responding to it. That plan may include testing your blood sugar with a machine to show if and how well your new medicine is working for you. If your blood sugar levels don’t change, then you’re not responding to that medicine and another approach is needed.
Not everyone who takes a medicine, food supplement or herbal product responds to it. Even though an herbal product may have dozens of glowing testimonials, when taking it each of us will respond to it our own way.
If you decide to try taking a new medicine or supplement, first decide WHY you are taking it or what exactly it is that you want it to do. Then, just like your doctor, have a plan to check how it’s working for you. One way to do this is to rate your current symptoms and carefully record them both BEFORE and AFTER starting the particular agent. Any changes in your symptoms will help you answer the question, “Is this medicine or supplement really helping me?”
