December 17, 2014

BEWARE of Side Effects —When More than One Doctor is Treating You

A very frustrated fibromyalgia patient came into the clinic a few weeks ago. This was her second attempt at trying our treatment program for her condition. A few years earlier this same patient showed interest in starting our treatment program but at that time there were too many other conditions, problems, doctors, excuses, etc. involved in her starting the program.

For some of you this may sound similar to what you are going through, especially the part about multiple doctors. As I have mentioned in my book, numerous published articles and seminars that working with fibromyalgia patients over the years I have found that no fibromyalgia patient has  just the diagnosis of fibromyalgia. All fibromyalgia patients have multiple conditions serviced by multiple doctors that rarely communicate with each other unless they are in the same clinic, and that might not even happen. This leads me to the problem that this patient and many others like yourself most likely have.  Multiple conditions involving many doctors suggesting  a mix of medications that often do not work together. It’s like a pharmaceutical soup that doesn’t taste right.

As a diagnosed fibromyalgia patient or even worse an undiagnosed fibromyalgia  patient you have a list of doctors who are treating you with a number of medications for a variety of symptoms and conditions.Your doctor’s give you medications for your high blood pressure, for irritable bowel, your headaches, skin rashes, depression, hair loss, etc. Unless your working with an integrated medical clinic where doctors work and communicate with each other there is a chance that some of the medications prescribed for you are counterproductive and often work against each other. They may also be causing complications of your existing conditions and adding more symptomatic problems.

Each doctor is doing his best to treat each individual problem. But, when you have a mix of all these medications there often is a toxic inflammatory reaction involving the body’s organs such as the liver, stomach, intestines and even the skin in the form of hives, rashes or other skin disorders. You might ask why is the skin involved? The skin is the largest organ of the body.

Because of this patient’s numerous medications, herbals and supplements along with multiple conditions and symptoms I conferred with a trusted friend who is an MD/ND. It was decided that unless this patient stopped  all herbals and supplements for at least one week and had her present physicians confer with each other concerning her medications that even a gentle detoxification program would not be successful. Sorry to say the patient refused to even consider these suggestions.

In summary:

If you have more than one doctor treating you with  different pharmaceuticals and supplements make sure each doctor knows clearly what you have been prescribed and the amount you are ingesting. There are thousands of deaths and hospitalizations that occur caused by adverse reactions to medications.

Toxicity of the organs especially the liver, kidneys, intestines and stomach are common in fibromyalgia patients due to the many medications that are prescribed to the patients. Gentle detoxing of these patients is one of the first steps in helping there body’s back to health.

If you would like more information on how we help patients with our program contact us.

Fibromyalgia, Pain Management