As my eyes opened in the morning, I could feel my body warmer than usual. And when I tried to lift my head up from the cushion, I could feel the weight in my head. It was as if my brain had suddenly become a 1000 times more meatier and the heaviness was pulling my head down. The pain was terrible. And when I tried to get up from the bed, my legs seemed too heavy too. It was as if the leg muscles were paining from a sudden burst of exertion. But I didn't remember doing anything physically stressful over the past 2-3 days. That was when I felt that I was probably developing slight fever and sickness. I walked over to the counter where I had kept my medicines. I picked up a pill and popped it straight in. Half an hour I was feeling much better and an hour later I stepped out for work.
At work was when Shibu pointed out this article to me. Scary, isn't it?
A particularly important piece to be noted from this article:
"Dr Altaf Patel, physician, Jaslok Hospital, lists four of the most common types of pill popping:
• Non-steroidal anti inflammatory drugs (NSAID). These set off asthma attacks. In Tanmay's case, it led to a massive cardiac arrest and subsequent coma and hypoxia.
• Cold medicines containing phenyl propanol amine. These can raise blood pressure, so blood pressure patients beware of popping pills to control that running nose or a cough.
• Aspirin. Dr Patel says that it's only a misconception that this is safe. Often, it causes internal bleeding and one doesn't even know about it until it develops into something serious.
• Paracetamol. The common use of paracetamol is to beat a hangover after a night of drinking. It causes liver damage.
"Only vitamin B-complex and anatacids should be sold over the counter, nothing else," says Dr Patel.
"95 per cent of drugs shouldn't be available OTC," agrees Dr Yeolekar, director, KEM Hospital."
I have decided now to at least think a thousand times before just casually popping a pill in.
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4 comments:
Scary, indeed. But there is only one case in that article -- the IIT professor who went into coma -- and then a long harangue about how many pills we consume. No statistics of any kind -- how many people have had these kinds of reactions to pills? Is there any kind of statistic correlation between people who develop (say, hypoxia) and the pills they consume? (After all, pills like these go through many many clinical trials before they're sold over-the-counter)
I'm not saying one should consume as many pain-killers as one likes. Just that this particular fear-mongering/sensational article was meant to scare you!! :)
You want something really scary? Here you go!
Yup what you have highlighted is scary too, indeed quite much more scarier than what I noted in my blog.
With regards to why the article did not talk abt any other case, you have to bear in mind that Mumbai Mirror is a tabloid, with no so much focus on high quality news. My observation - they blow up things out of proportion generally. So this is one of those kinda articles, I guess
The interesting thing is that people who would normally not know/pay attention, sat up after reading the sensational article.
I was shown the article by a neighbour who got it from someone else.
If it reduces people popping OTC pills in Mumbai that would be progress.
I still believe that as an article, one of the major pretexts behind the article was just scaremongering...
But it still is an interesting read in the sense that most of us play doctors to ourselves and do not even blink an eyelid before popping a self-presecribed pill
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